Tomm Moore – Memphis Flyer

Katheryn Newton in Freaky

If you’re tired of doomscrolling (or its newly-minted opposite, hopescrolling), and want to look at something different for a little while, there are plenty of options at the drive-in and other movie theaters this weekend. (You can review Malco Theatres’ COVID-19 safety protocols here.)

With major studio tentpoles on hold, the biggest release is Freaky. Remember Freaky Friday, the 1976 film where teenage Jodi Foster switched bodies with her mother, played by Nashville‘s Barbara Harris? Okay, how about the 2003 remake with Lindsey Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis?

Well, I have a confession. The plot, which was meant as light comedy, freaked me out really badly when I saw it as a kid. Maybe I just saw it at an impressionable age, but having your consciousness trapped inside someone else’s body is pure horror for me. Finally, someone else sees it my way — and that person is Christopher Landon, director of the Paranormal Activity sequels and Happy Death Day.

Produced by horror powerhouse Blumhouse, Freaky takes the premise to its logically awful conclusion. What if instead of your mom, you switched bodies with a serial killer? Even more horrible, what if that serial killer was Vince Vaughn? It’s chilling stuff, and its been getting great reviews. I’ll let you know how it is as soon as I can, so here’s the trailer.

Freaky, Wolfwalkers, and Classic Holiday Comedy on Tap at Malco Theatres (2)

If you’re not up for something quite so scary (and really, at this point, who can blame you?), there’s a new animated feature that looks spectacular. Wolfwalkers was created by Irish animator Tomm Moore, who has a 100-percent Oscar nomination rate for his films, but no wins yet. My eyebrows perked up with I saw Moore’s name attached to this one, as his 2014 Song of the Sea is a criminally underrated animated film. From the trailer, this story of friendly Celtic lycanthropes looks like another winner.

Freaky, Wolfwalkers, and Classic Holiday Comedy on Tap at Malco Theatres (4)

Now that we’re in November, with the sure-to-be-strange holidays bearing down on us, you might be developing an appetite for holiday movies. Among the other classic titles on offer at Malco (like the Nolan Batman movies, for example) is a pair of favorites. 1989’s National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, the third Chevy Chase vehicle of the decade, added a term to the collective lexicon. If you hear someone saying “He went full Clark Griswold on his Christmas decorations,” you know what that means — excessive lights, and possible catastrophic electrical malfunction.

Freaky, Wolfwalkers, and Classic Holiday Comedy on Tap at Malco Theatres

At the drive-in, Christmas Vacation is paired with the film that is probably Will Ferrell’s finest hour. Elf is a classic fish-out-of-water holiday comedy in the tradition of Miracle on 34th Street, only much stupider. And I mean that in a good way.

Freaky, Wolfwalkers, and Classic Holiday Comedy on Tap at Malco Theatres (3)

You can buy tickets to all these films at Malco.com.

One of the reasons I love animation is because it can be such a richly expressive medium. Live action film is constrained in several ways: It needs to clearly convey plot and character information, it has to look reasonably realistic, and there are severe budgetary restraints on big spectacle. Animation is more flexible in those areas, particularly once you have convinced an audience to follow you into an unreal world.

Song of the Sea is a prime example of animation’s limitless potential. The plot follows tween boy Ben (voiced by David Rawle) and his mute sister Saoirse (eventually voiced by Lucy O’Connell) who live in a lighthouse with their father Conor (Brendan Gleeson). Their mother Bronagh (Lisa Hannigan) mysteriously disappeared when Saorise was born, and sense of melancholy hangs over their tiny island on the Irish coast, where they are occasionally visited by their Granny (Fionnula Flanagan).

One night, on her birthday, Saoirse finds a chest filled her late mother’s belongings and puts on a pure, white coat she finds inside. Drawn to the sea by the calls of sea lions, she is transformed into a white seal and swims joyously in the ocean. But when her concerned Granny finds her asleep on the beach, she convinces Conor to send the children to live with her in Dublin. Deprived of her connection with the sea, Saoirse sickens, and Ben must navigate the treacherous route back home through big city, open country, and the supernatural underworld that reveals itself to the siblings.

Director Tomm Moore based his sophomore film on a number of stories from Irish folklore, most prominently the myth of the selkie, a benevolent were-seal. Moore’s animation style doesn’t fit into any easily defined categories. It’s not big-eyed anime, smoothly rendered Pixar 3D, or traditional, hand-drawn, full animation. It’s flat, but he expertly combines layers that he can use to either create the illusion of foreground and background or spread out and wheel around the frame. His character design is a little reminiscent of Charles Shultz Peanuts, but is distinctly original.

Song Of The Sea is visually lush, but it’s story is never too cluttered or busy. It doesn’t depend on manic sugar rush energy to keep its intended audience of kids attention, but rather seeks to draw them into a fascinating, unique world. This is the second of Moore’s movies that was nominated for the Best Animated Feature Academy Award, and I expect we’ll be seeing his name again in that category in the future. The film is playing through Thursday at the Malco Paradiso, so if you’ve got kids who love animation, or if you’re like me and a die-hard animation fan yourself, I highly recommend you find time to see this one on the big screen.