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Why do we love fantasy? I’m sure there are a million ways you can answer that question, but if you ask me, it’s because we were made for more than this world. As our faith tells us, we were made to desire things our earthly existence can never provide, and fantasy taps into that innate yearning for more. In that sense, the genre is almost like a tiny foretaste of heaven, so naturally, I was pretty excited for the new fantasy movie The Legend of Ochi. I bought a ticket for opening weekend as soon as I got the chance, and I couldn’t wait to be transported to this new world and see what magical thrills it had in store.
The Legend of Ochi was written and directed by Isaiah Saxon, and it stars Helena Zengel, Finn Wolfhard, Emily Watson, and Willem Dafoe. In the film, Yuri is a girl who lives on a small, somewhat isolated island in the Black Sea, and on this island, there’s a species of furry, almost baboon-like animals called ochi. Yuri has been taught to hate these creatures for as long as she can remember, but she learns the truth about them when she comes across an injured baby ochi that’s been separated from its family. The girl takes the animal back home and patches it up a bit, and after she wins its trust, she heads into the wilderness to bring her new friend back to its own kind. The next morning, Yuri’s father finds her bedroom empty and realizes she’s gone, but he doesn’t know why. He thinks his daughter has been kidnapped, so he and the kids who hunt ochi with him drive out to the woods to find her. If you’re a big movie fan, that plot synopsis probably sounds a bit familiar. It’s a time-honored storytelling template we’ve seen numerous times before, most famously in the sci-fi classic E.T., and The Legend of Ochi doesn’t add anything terribly new to that basic blueprint. Sure, it has a few small details you might not see coming, but for the most part, the plot is exactly what you’d expect from a film like this. The Legend of Ochi tries to draw you in with the way it tells its familiar story, but unfortunately, it doesn't succeed. To be fair, this movie isn't all bad. The ochi themselves are always fun to watch, as they’re brought to life brilliantly by a blend of puppetry, animatronics, and actors in suits. Anybody with an appreciation for practical effects is going to enjoy every second of these creatures’ screentime, and when you see the baby ochi at the heart of this story, you’re going to love it even more. It’s not quite as cute as, say, Gizmo from Gremlins or Baby Yoda, but it’s pretty adorable in its own right. The beautiful world these animals inhabit and the camerawork that captures that world are also delightful, but visuals and inhuman creatures can only get you so far. The Legend of Ochi also needs to impress with its human characters, and that’s where the movie falls short. Let’s start with the lead. Helena Zengel plays Yuri, and the girl does a decent job with her facial expressions. But when she opens her mouth, her dialogue sounds stilted and unnatural. It took me out of the film almost every time I heard her speak, so I had a very hard time buying into her character. In contrast, the supporting performances in The Legend of Ochi are fine, but the writing leaves a lot to be desired. To take just one example, consider Finn Wolfhard’s character. He’s a teenager named Petro, and to call him one-dimensional is generous. The kid mostly just follows Yuri from a distance without actually doing anything until the final few minutes of the movie, so you get the impression that a lot of his scenes were left on the cutting room floor. You can’t help but feel like there should be more to this guy than simply being Yuri’s silent shadow, and that suspicion makes his lack of depth even more bothersome. I’m not going to bore you with the details of why everybody else in this film is similarly flat and uninteresting, but I will tell you that even when some of them experience a change of heart at the end, their development is completely unearned. It’s like they flip a switch and they’re suddenly completely different, and for me, that was the rotten cherry on top of this horrible sundae of a movie. I simply couldn't bring myself to care about any of these characters or their journeys, and that ruined the entire experience. Sure, The Legend of Ochi looks beautiful, but no amount of visual spectacle can make up for a lack of humanity. This film is a textbook example of all style and no substance, so unless you just have to see it for yourself, I suggest giving it a pass.
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For a lot of horror fans, seeing a great non-horror filmmaker take a stab at our favorite genre would be a dream come true. We want someone like Martin Scorcese or Christopher Nolan to make something genuinely horrific, and with Sinners, that dream has finally become a reality. This movie was made by Ryan Coogler, the guy behind Creed and Black Panther, so naturally, there’s been a ton of excitement for it. Sure, Coogler isn’t Nolan or Scorcese, but he’s a truly great filmmaker in his own right, and along with a lot of other horror fans, I couldn’t wait to see what he would do in the horror sandbox.
Written and directed by Ryan Coogler, Sinners stars Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O'Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, Li Jun Li, and Delroy Lindo. The film is set in the 1930s Jim Crow South, and it follows two twins, Smoke and Stack, who’ve just returned to their hometown. The brothers buy an old building and start a blues club, but when opening night comes, they get a lot more than they bargained for. As the sun goes down, the club comes under attack by a group of vampires, and the twins and their friends have to do everything they can to survive until dawn. If you’re a hardcore horror aficionado, that plot synopsis might sound a bit familiar. It’s very reminiscent of the 1996 cult classic vampire flick From Dusk Till Dawn, and much like that movie, Sinners also divides pretty evenly into two halves. For about the first half of its runtime, this film plays almost entirely like a drama, with only a couple of brief hints of the horrors to come. It’s basically just Smoke and Stack getting everything ready for their big night, and despite the lack of scares, this part of the story is riveting. For starters, writer/director Ryan Coogler does an amazing job of recreating the movie’s nearly century-old setting. Granted, I’m neither from the South nor 100 years old, but to my admittedly amateur eyes, it looked pitch-perfect. Everything from the clothes to the cars to the dialogue and accents just screams old-timey southern Black culture, and if that doesn’t transport you to this bygone era, the score is sure to do the trick. It’s all blues music, and even though that’s not my preferred genre, I still found myself tapping my toes to these soulful melodies. That unique combination of sights and sounds brings the 1930s Jim Crow South to life in a way few (if any!) horror films ever have, so the first half of Sinners is an immersive experience that’ll grab you right from the get-go. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a great filmmaker like Ryan Coogler, but it’s not the only thing this movie gets right. The cast is also top-notch, so I could probably write a whole review just praising all the excellent performances. But of course, there’s more to a film than just acting, so I’ll limit myself to the two standouts. First, I have to talk about Michael B. Jordan. He plays both of the twins, and he’s just as good as you’d expect. He trades in his typical acting style for a more Southern gangster vibe, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d think this guy really was from the South (I looked it up, and he’s not). He’s that good, and to the surprise of no one, Jordan doesn’t lose an ounce of his signature charm. It’s just a great performance all around, so pretty much every time one (or both!) of his characters was on screen, I was a happy man. On the complete opposite end of the starpower spectrum, we have Miles Caton. Sinners is Caton’s feature debut, and despite acting alongside big names like Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, this guy just might steal the show. He impresses with his voice and guitar skills as well as his believable and likable performance, so I can’t wait to see where his career goes from here. All of those great elements carry Sinners for the first half of its runtime, and at around the midway point or so, the movie switches gears. Granted, the change is nowhere near as abrupt and dramatic as From Dusk Till Dawn, but it goes from leaning heavily towards straight-up drama to going all-in on the horror. And as I’m sure you can guess, that horror is fantastic. These aren’t the cool, sexy bloodsuckers we’ve gotten used to over the past two or three decades, and when the sun shines on them, they definitely don’t sparkle. They’re much closer to 30 Days of Night than Twilight, so if you like your vampires to be indisputably evil and soaked in blood, you’re not going to be disappointed. That being said, I do have to give one caveat. Like a lot of contemporary vampire fare, Sinners isn’t exactly scary. Sure, this film has a couple of genuinely hair-raising moments, but for the most part, it favors action, creepy visuals, and gore over outright frights. It’s a pretty good mix in my opinion, so if you’re a horror fan, I think you’re going to enjoy the cornucopia of terror Ryan Coogler has conjured up. Next, I want to say a few words about the themes of this film. Most obviously, Sinners deals with racism, but not in the way you might expect. See, the story doesn’t outright tell us that racism is wrong. Rather, it simply assumes racism is wrong, so you never feel like the movie is beating you over the head with a message everybody already agrees with. The way I see it, the real message of this film is about music. There’s a line that says certain people’s music can “conjure spirits from the past and the future” (it’s also in one of the trailers), and Sinners hammers that point home in some amazing ways. Most obviously, there are a couple of scenes that explicitly show music bringing together people of different cultures, places, and even times, and on a meta level, the movie as a whole does that as well. I already told you how great the score is, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. A lot of the characters in Sinners are musicians, and when they show off their skills, you’d be hard-pressed not to get a big smile on your face. Sometimes it’s blues, and other times it’s traditional European tunes, but whatever the genre, the music these people play is truly beautiful. It’s sure to please the vast majority of people who see this film, regardless of their culture or age, so like I said, Sinners as a whole embodies its message about the power of music. On top of that, these two main themes of music and racism also intersect in a great way. The connection is very subtle throughout most of the movie, so if you leave when the credits begin to roll, you might not catch it. It only comes to the fore during the mid-credits stinger, so if you do give this film a watch, I highly recommend that you stay for that bonus scene. Granted, it doesn’t add much to the story, but on a thematic level, it enhances the experience quite a bit. Last but not least, I have to mention a few issues I had with Sinners. To begin, there are a couple of brief sex scenes that don’t serve much purpose. To be fair, they’re not terribly explicit, and they never last very long, so they don’t take too much away from the movie. But their gratuitous nature is a real bummer, so they did chip away at my enjoyment a tiny bit. More egregiously, the film’s treatment of Christianity is very typical of modern Hollywood. It never explicitly disparages the faith as a whole, but the few times it does mention Christianity, the connotations are largely negative. In particular, the only clearly committed Christian in this story is a pastor who thinks blues music is evil, and there’s at least one scene that highlights the way Christianity has at times been forced on unwilling converts. Admittedly, there are people who abuse and twist the faith in those (and similar) ways, so I don’t have an issue with those particular criticisms per se. The problem is the lack of balance. More to the point, it's the pervasive lack of balance in American cinema. It seems like Hollywood movies today intentionally highlight the bad in Christians while completely ignoring the good, and Sinners continues that frustrating trend. Thankfully though, those two problems aren’t nearly enough to ruin the entire film. On the whole, the good in Sinners far outweighs the bad, so this is hands down one of the best movies of the year so far. I don’t think it quite reaches the top spot on my list (that honor probably still belongs to There’s Still Tomorrow), but it’s at least number two. I could even see it becoming a genre classic in the not-too-distant future, so if this sounds like something you’d enjoy, I highly recommend giving it a watch. I’m not going to lie, when I first heard about Warfare, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. The movie was directed by the odd-couple filmmaking duo of genre veteran Alex Garland and a complete newbie to the director’s chair, so I was a bit hesitant about it. I’m a huge fan of Alex Garland, but rookie directors are notoriously hit or miss, so I really had no idea how the film would turn out. Would it be up to Garland’s typical standards? Or would his inexperienced co-director drag him down? I had no idea, but in a surprising twist, that uncertainty actually intrigued me. I just had to see this movie for myself, so when tickets went on sale, I booked an opening-weekend seat as soon as I got the chance.
Warfare was written and directed by Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland, and it stars D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, Kit Connor, Finn Bennett, Taylor John Smith, Michael Gandolfini, Adain Bradley, Noah Centineo, Evan Holtzman, Henrique Zaga, and Charles Melton. Like a lot of movies, this one is based on a true story, but unlike most of its cinematic peers, it’s made by one of the people who lived that story. Co-director Ray Mendoza was a US Navy SEAL in Iraq, and Warfare recounts a particularly harrowing experience he and his platoon endured during their time together. When the film begins, the troops station themselves in a multi-story house in the middle of enemy territory, and not long afterwards, they come under heavy fire from hostile forces. They have to do everything they can to escape with their lives, but as you can probably guess, that’s much easier said than done. From that brief plot synopsis, you might not think Warfare sounds terribly interesting, and in a certain sense, you’d actually be right. The story is just as straightforward as it sounds, so there aren’t too many surprises. Sure, you don’t know exactly how it’s all going to play out, but for the most part, nothing truly unexpected happens. On top of that, Mendoza and his fellow warriors are all rather thinly drawn. In typical military fashion, these SEALS largely lose their individuality and function primarily as parts of a well-oiled fighting machine, so aside from a handful of familiar faces like Will Poulter and Joseph Quinn, it’s tough to remember who’s who in this platoon. Those rigid, almost wooden qualities keep Warfare from being a traditionally good movie with memorable characters and a captivating plot, but don’t let that fool you. This is far from a bad film. In fact, if you leave your expectations at the door and accept the movie for what it is, you’ll be blown away by the experience. And when I say “experience,” I mean it. The way I see it, the primary purpose of this film is to give those of us who’ve never served in the military an inkling of what armed combat is really like. It completely eschews the machismo and bravado we often expect from action movies, and the filmmakers don’t even give us a score or a soundtrack to remind us that we’re watching a fictionalized account. In fact, the only time we ever hear any music is in the opening scene, when Mendoza and his crew hoot and holler while watching an overly sexualized music video (thankfully, these images aren’t on screen for very long). The rest of the time, we’re left to stew in the sounds of war and the near silence that precedes it, and that hyper-realism is genuinely breathtaking. From the moment these troops set out to occupy the house, you’ll be on the edge of your seat. Even when nothing particularly thrilling is happening, the mere fact that this is a warzone is enough to crank the tension up to eleven, and when the fighting begins in earnest, it hits you like a ton of bricks. Much like co-director Alex Garland’s last film, Civil War, this one doesn’t sugarcoat or glorify the disgusting reality of war. The deadly attacks these soldiers have to endure and the brotherly concern they demonstrate for one another show just how much of an affront to human life and human dignity war truly is, so you can’t help but hope and pray that you’ll never find yourself in a similar situation. It’s a legitimately harrowing depiction of a scourge that’s plagued humanity for millennia, and for Catholics, the best thing I can compare it to is probably The Passion of the Christ. Granted, these two movies are very different, but they both use disturbing violence and gore to convey uncomfortable truths many people would rather ignore. The Passion of the Christ highlights the horrific reality of Roman crucifixion and the suffering Jesus endured for us, and Warfare sheds similar light on the horrors of war. It’s not pretty (but it’s beautifully shot!), and it’ll probably be a “one and done” for a lot of moviegoers, but it’s well worth that one viewing. It brings us face to face with arguably the darkest part of the human experience, so this isn’t just one of the best films of the year so far. It’s also one of the most important. |
Jp Nunezis a longtime film buff and theology nerd with master's degrees in theology and philosophy from Franciscan University of Steubenville. His favorite movie genres are horror, superheroes, and giant monsters. Archives
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