Tag Archives: Lulu Wilson

Movie Review ~ The Wrath of Becky

by Movie Review • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

The Facts:

Synopsis: Becky has been living off the grid for two years. She then finds herself going toe to toe against the leader of a fascist organization on the eve of an organized attack.
Stars: Lulu Wilson, Seann William Scott, Denise Burse, Courtney Gains, Matt Angel, Michael Sirow, Aaron Dalla Villa, John D. Hickman
Director: Matt Angel & Suzanne Coote
Rated: R
Running Length: 83 minutes
TMMM Score: (7/10)
Review: Back in 2020, I gave two major thumbs down to Becky. While I found it to be an overall ugly film that played too deep into violence against the vulnerable, it nevertheless became a small cult hit and pleased enough critics and audiences to warrant a sequel three years later. Considering my little regard for the original, I wouldn’t have given much thought to going back for seconds. Still, something told me to give The Wrath of Becky a fair shake because sometimes, not often, a follow-up to an iffy beginning can be the true test of the potential for a franchise in the making.

My gut instinct was correct because The Wrath of Becky is a leaner, meaner experience that trades in the awkward bad taste of the first film for a cheeky revenge-pulp fun vibe that goes a long way to entertain. Led by a powerhouse performance from Lulu Wilson, returning as the titular character, and overseen by a new directing duo, it may lack the intense bite of its predecessor but lands on the appropriate skewed tone that was missing in the first bloody round. The result is a movie that barely stops to catch its breath, let alone allow its viewers to pause for a breather.

In the years following the horrific attack that left her orphaned, Becky (Wilson, Annabelle: Creation) has bounced in and out of foster families accompanied by her dog Diego. Never staying in one place too long, she acts the part of a dutiful ward of the state until the authorities are out of sight, and then she’s off and running again. When co-writers/directors Matt Angel & Suzanne Coote (Hypnotic) find her, she’s staying with elderly Elena (Denise Burse, Vacation Friends) and working at a roadside diner. The older adult prefers to keep to herself and doesn’t ask much about Becky’s life, a perfect set-up for the two that have pasts they don’t speak about.

Things might have gone along that way longer were it not for a trio of right-wing extremists rolling through town (and Becky’s diner) on their way to meet local leader Darryl (Seann William Scott, American Reunion) at his secluded lakeside cabin. Tough-as-nails waitress Becky doesn’t suffer these fools, and her disrespect angers them enough to pursue her, leading to a dramatic confrontation that finds Becky again forced first to defend herself and then enact deadly revenge on the men and anyone in her way.

Coote and Angel (who plays one of the more passive extremists) have wisely given The Wrath of Becky more layers, turning over several surprising stones along the way. That has to be why Wilson is also on board as an executive producer; she’s helping to shape this character into something more than what was originally on the page in the first film. This added depth pushes the sequel into territory that builds our heroine up but still doesn’t address Becky’s delight in bloodlust, though it’s less gleefully enacted here. 

The new members of the cast, Scott so perfect as the smarmy slick villain, Michael Sirow (Disturbing the Peace) as a nasty P.O.S. pursuing Becky, and veteran character actors Jill Larson (The Taking of Deborah Logan) and Courtney Gaines (Queen Bees) are all finely showcased in the brief runtime, showing that the directors capably can move their players around without losing their threads. I enjoyed Burse as a cranky bird that feels like a grown-up Becky staring back at her younger self. She’s sadly not in it as much as I would have liked, but when she’s on-screen with Wilson, the two share pleasant moments. 

A late-breaking appearance from indie tv and film horror genre favorite Kate Siegel (Gerald’s Game) hints that the world created by the two Becky films is about to get a little bigger, and based on this superior sequel, I’m back on board with finding out what’s next. Keep Wilson engaged with the material and treat the audience with respect, and this might turn into a small franchise that more people will discover in the third or fourth film. I still loathe recommending the original, but a double feature may be in order because it’s a building block for The Wrath of Becky.

THE WRATH OF BECKY will be exclusively in theaters
May 26, 2023. 

Movie Review ~ The Glorias

by Movie Review • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Available for purchase on Digital and Streaming exclusively on Prime Video starting September 30th.

The Facts:

Synopsis: The story of feminist icon Gloria Steinem’s itinerant childhood’s influence on her life as a writer, activist and organizer for women’s rights worldwide.

Stars: Alicia Vikander, Julianne Moore, Janelle Monáe, Bette Midler, Timothy Hutton, Lulu Wilson, Lorraine Toussaint, Kimberly Guerrero, Enid Graham

Director: Julie Taymor

Rated: R

Running Length: 147 minutes

TMMM Score: (7/10)

Review:  One thing 2020 has definitely needed is more empowerment.  We’ve gone through this year feeling like we’re just behind in a lot of ways, from our health to our control over what happens within our government, even to what goes on in the neighborhoods we want everyone to feel safe in.  No one wants to be at odds with each other (at least I don’t think the majority of us do) and it becomes draining to watch news reports on the great division that appears to be widening between numerous groups that used to be able to find common ground.  The rise of social media and the ability for those that hid in the shadows to now speak their hateful rhetoric from the comfort of their anonymity has only added fuel to that and the spiral just continues downward.

That’s why in some small way a biopic like The Glorias feels like a welcome bit of relief right about now, even though it too focuses on an upward battle for acceptance and understanding in the face of adversity.  While a number of documentaries have been made and work has been written about the activist Gloria Steinem over the years and just in the last decade alone, this is the one that has sprung from her own words and is based on her 2015 autobiography My Life on the Road, written when she was 81.  Adapted by celebrated playwright Sarah Ruhl, directed by lauded auteur Julie Taymor, and starring two Oscar winning actresses sharing the role of Steinem at various points in her adult life, on paper The Glorias feels like a project that sounds like an ideal convergence of the right people.  Why, then, does it wind up feeling like a artistically curated Cliff Notes version of a colorful life, only finding some true resonance with its audience in its final half hour?

I honestly doubt a life as large and full as Steinem’s could ever be fully captured in a feature film and to whittle down eight decades into 140-some minutes does seem like a Herculean task, but Ruhl does her best by not taking the traditional biopic route.  This is not a straight-timeline kind of film, but rather one that seems to go from one memory to another, at least at first.  That may be frustrating for audiences that are used to seeing where someone began and watching their life unfold until they wind up in the present (or their version of the present if it’s a person that’s no longer with us) and discover what they learn along the way.  Here, Ruhl and Taymor make use out of the multiple Glorias (Becky’s Lulu Wilson and IT: Chapter Two’s Ryan Kiera Armstrong’s play younger Glorias) to replace others seemingly at will as a way of commenting on what is to come in her life or in service of reflection on her past.  It’s cinematic trickery that works some of the time, mostly when Julianne Moore (Still Alice) as the eldest Gloria subs in for one of her younger counterparts who may not have found her authoritative voice yet but it gets a little showy if a smaller one takes over for an adult.

This narrative alignments also makes it harder to review The Glorias in such a straightforward way.  Taymor and Ruhl jump around through different periods of Steinem’s life with such apparent abandon that it’s a bit of a whirlwind.  One moment we’re with the youngest Gloria (Armstrong) as she dances with her huckster father (a stalwart Timothy Hutton, Ordinary People) on the music hall pier he owns before he packs up the family and hits the road in search of another easy money opportunity.  The next thing we know, Taymor has us with ¾ Gloria (Vikander, The Danish Girl) on her travels through India or her early journalist days where she goes undercover working at the Playboy club.  Then we’re back to teenage Gloria (Wilson) caring for her bedridden mother (an excellent Enid Graham) before meeting the Gloria in full bloom Gloria (Moore) as she comes into her own as an activist fighting for the ratification of the ERA, forms Ms. magazine, and in her later years develops a friendship with Wilma Mankiller (Kimberly Guerrero, A Wrinkle in Time), the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.

What I found the most interesting in The Glorias was not the typical biographical data that makes up the usual films of this type.  Steinem’s upbringing, dealing with a dreamer Father that lived in the clouds and a Mother who toiled away making up for his frivolity, doesn’t feel so dissimilar than many that would go on to champion the rights of women who served unnoticed for so long.  Though Steinem had a number of relationships over the years (and was questioned often about them in interviews), the film bypasses any of these tangents in favor of exploring her friendships with other women, including feminist Dorothy Pitman Hughes (Janelle Monáe, Harriet), U.S. Representative and a leader of the Women’s Movement Bella Abzug (Bette Midler, Hocus Pocus), and civil rights activist Flo Kennedy (Lorraine Toussaint, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark).  Those that watched the FX series Mrs. America earlier this summer may be surprised to see how little the ratification of the ERA fits into the film, it’s almost a good thing to have watched that nine-episode series because it gave more context to conversations between Gloria and Bella that those who aren’t as familiar with the movement might feel a bit at sea in.

As she does with all of her projects, Taymor brings a keen eye to The Glorias but occasionally lets her artsy side get the best of her.  This is never more obvious than a misguided sequence where Moore’s Gloria steps in to respond to an interview question on live television and sends the studio into a Wizard of Oz-ish tornado that’s not entirely rendered with the same style or polish as other flights of fancy.  Another animation of the Hindu goddess Kali that becomes the first cover of Ms. magazine feels awkward and a tad childish in the context of what has been a more maturely delivered movie until that point.  Taymor’s blending of dreamy fantasy works best when its done subtly, like when the camera that’s focused on one Gloria will pan back to show another iteration of Steinem gently resting her head on the shoulder of her younger self.  It’s brief specialties like these that Taymor is so adept at that The Glorias needs more of throughout.

Even as it races through the decades, it’s when The Glorias finally slows down a bit in Steinem’s later years that Taymor and Ruhl strike something special.  Moore ages forward and with the help of believable prosthetics manages to look remarkably like Steinem without becoming a grotesquerie of plastics in the process.  These quieter later scenes of The Glorias make up for the frenetic earlier part of the movie and lead to a final transition that I should have seen coming a mile away but didn’t.  When it happens, you suddenly realize that Taymor and Ruhl have done what they set out to do and connect Steinem’s past to our present with a graceful sincerity.  Essentially, they hand the film back to their subject as a way of communicating “If this is what Gloria Steinem’s legacy is to be, then let the final word on the matter be hers.”  And, simply, it is.

Movie Review ~ Becky (2020)

by Movie Review • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,


The Facts:

Synopsis: A teenager’s weekend at a lake house with her father takes a turn for the worse when a group of convicts wreaks havoc on their lives.

Stars: Lulu Wilson, Kevin James, Amanda Brugel, Robert Maillet, Joel McHale

Director: Jonathan Milott & Cary Murnion

Rated: R

Running Length: 100 minutes

TMMM Score: (2/10)

Review:  When I was in my early 20s, I accompanied my parents on a trip to Las Vegas where we gambled, hit the buffets, and saw some shows.  It being our first time in the city, we did all the things the tourists do and by the time the week was drawing to a close, all my parents wanted to do was to take a night off and relax in the room.  I wanted to see one more Vegas show so I grabbed a last minute ticket to some random extravaganza playing at one of the off-brand hotels.  Sitting in my seat, I couldn’t believe my luck when before the show an announcer came on to tell the audience that going on between acts would be Kevin James!  Wow!  The King of Queens himself!  I waited through the dreary first half only to find out that a) it wasn’t the Kevin James I thought it was and b) this Kevin James was a lousy magician.

You’d understand, then, why I was trepidatious when reading the plot summary of Becky which listed Kevin James as an escaped neo-Nazi prisoner that terrorizes a family.  I mean, surely this time it really wasn’t the same guy, right?  Could the magician have gone into acting or was this really the funnyman known for his comedy turns on television and a string of half-hearted attempts to be a movie star?  Was James making a play for a more hardened character, distancing himself from the silly Adam Sandler umbrella he’s stayed safely under for more than a decade?  Admirably, Becky shows a new side of James but unfortunately for him the performance is part and parcel of such a repugnant film that the effort hardly seems worth noting.

Ever since her beloved mother died, Becky (Lulu Wilson, Annabelle: Creation) has had trouble adjusting to the new normal.  Her father Jeff (Joel McHale, The Happytime Murders) has tried to let his emotional daughter have her space to grieve but he’s decided to take steps to move forward, announcing his engagement to single mother Kayla (Amanda Brugel, Suicide Squad) at the start of what was supposed to be a father-daughter weekend at the family lake house.  Annoyed at the arrival of Kayla and her young son, Becky storms off to her tree fort in the woods…right about the time escaped prisoners Dominick (James, Pixels), Apex (Robert Maillet, Pacific Rim), and a few of their old friends show up on the hunt for an item stashed away.

As the audience, we’ve already seen the extent to which Dominick will go to get his way after his bloody flee from custody and a grisly crime that’s thankfully only hinted at.  He may have met his match, though, because Becky is an easily aggressed powder keg waiting to blow and doesn’t take kindly to the violence she witnesses going on in her home.  Thus begins less of a cat and mouse game but something more akin to two lions circling one another, with each devouring anything less important that gets in their way.  Becky uses her problem solving quick thinking and knowledge of the area to her advantage while Dominick relies on brute force to draw her closer, leading to a blood-soaked showdown.

The movie I’m describing sounds like an appealing and clever home invasion thriller and I bet the script from Nick Morris, Lane Skye and Ruckus Sky had some snap to it when it was originally conceived.  It wouldn’t be hard to sell me on a Home Alone meets survival horror movie but it’s a question of taste that has to be examined.  Under the direction of Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion Becky is about as repulsive an endeavor as you’re likely to see in 2020.  The bad taste on display is so egregious, from violence against animals to violence against children, it’s just absolutely no fun to watch and not even that fun to write about after the fact.  I’ve seen enough of these types of films to know that I don’t need to watch one that involves grown men beating up underage kids and killing pets – is that the kind of entertainment we’ve found ourselves craving and wanting to celebrate as a good time?

Honestly, it doesn’t help matters that Becky herself is awful – rude, dismissive, stubborn, and nihilistic, it goes beyond the typical beleaguered teenager and invites you to not so secretly want to root against her.  There’s the suggestion that maybe Becky has an evil streak in her as well, but no one involved behind the scenes was thoughtful enough to explore that more intriguing side to the character.  You get the feeling Wilson was trying to give her a sinister edge that wasn’t entirely on the page, but it’s largely silenced by Milott and Murnion’s glee for gore.  Instead of finding moments to see deeper within Becky’s psyche, we’re treated to another horrific bit of sleaze, often involving a sharp object and viscera.

Having two comedians (McHale and James) in dramatic leading roles also gives the movie a strange imbalance because there’s a sense of waiting for one of them to break during the deadly serious scenes.  McHale just isn’t cut out for dramatic acting and even his comedic turns are skating on thin ice, at least James does something with his part that feels like some homework was put in.  It’s not a revelatory performance but it’s a fine effort that should be noted and explored in further films down the line.  If the other supporting players offer little in terms of surprise, it’s only because there isn’t much space allotted to them seeing that Becky and Dominick suck up the air from most scenes.  Let’s also not forget that the entire movie hinges on Dominick being after something (I won’t reveal what) that makes precious little sense to anyone but him.  That all these characters should be swept up in the nonsense simply adds to the pointlessness of the whole exercise.

I felt really gross watching Becky and if it was something I’d casually picked out on Netflix, I probably would have turned it off twenty minutes in.  While I like the concept of what the script had laid out, it skewed too young and overly irresponsible for me and that left it feeling vacuous, like an experiment that failed to meet its potential.  It’s bloody and it’s brutal so gorehounds will likely sniff this one out fairly quickly, but will the connoisseurs of revenge thrillers go for a film served up with such foul ingredients?

Movie Review ~ Annabelle: Creation

by Movie Review • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Facts:

Synopsis: Several years after the tragic death of their little girl, a dollmaker and his wife welcome a nun and several girls from a shuttered orphanage into their home, soon becoming the target of the dollmaker’s possessed creation, Annabelle.

Stars: Stephanie Sigman, Talitha Bateman, Lulu Wilson, Philippa Anne Coulthard, Samara Lee, Tayler Buck, Anthony LaPaglia, Miranda Otto

Director: David F. Sandberg

Rated: R

Running Length: 109 minutes

TMMM Score: (8/10)

Review: In 2013, James Wan’s The Conjuring gleefully scared the bejeebus out of me and a bunch of other movie-goers that had been disappointed with horror movies for years. Smartly made, terrifically acted, and with significant replay value, it signaled a turning of the tides from the torture porn popularity of the Saw films into something with a bit more meat on its bones. Basically, it classed up the joint. Building off that film’s popularity and while waiting for Wan to deliver The Conjuring 2 in 2016, Annabelle was a quickie spin-off developed and released in 2014. Focusing on the freaky doll that was featured in the prologue to The Conjuring, it was clearly a cash-grab . Though it was competently made, it lacked the will to scare and wound up being a disappointment in my book.

With The Conjuring expanding into its own cinematic universe ala DC Comics and Marvel, a prequel to the spin-off sequel is here and it’s doozy. Annabelle: Creation is, as implied, an origin story and rights every wrong committed by its predecessor. The scares are there in droves, the acting is better than it has any real right to be, and director David F. Sanberg (Lights Out) brings some serious style to the proceedings with inventive cinematography and taut pacing. Best of all, it manages to connect to all the films that came before it and hints at what terrors await us in the future.

The prologue of Annabelle: Creation introduces us to the Mullins, a happy family living on the outskirts of a country town. Producing handcrafted dolls in his workshop, Mr. Mullins is putting the finishing touches on his newest wooden wonder when tragedy strikes and his daughter is killed in a car accident. Twelve years later, after they are forced out of their orphanage, a nun (Stephanie Sigman, Spectre) and six orphans in her charge come to live with the Mullins. This act of charity has deadly consequences for all when the girls start to experience strange occurrences all centered on a doll discovered locked away in a room lined with pages from the Bible.

An isolated house. A dumbwaiter with a mind of its own. A creaky stair-lift. A character that wears a porcelain mask to hide disfigurement. A battered scarecrow. There are so many warning bells going off in Annabelle: Creation that the audience and the characters are keen to and honestly that’s part of the fun. While there’s a mystery central to the story, it’s not complex enough to poke a bunch of holes in nor slight enough to write off as baloney.   Sandberg and screenwriter Gary Dauberman (IT) have taken extra time to flesh out most of the characters without sacrificing pace or the attention of the audience.

Unexpectedly, where the film shines the most are the performances with the children often surpassing the adults. Talitha Bateman (The 5th Wave) and Lulu Wilson are convincingly strong leads with Bateman offering the right amount of pluck as a child crippled by polio while wide-eyed Wilson colors her growing fear with a nice dose of moxie. I struggled with the flat line readings of Sigman’s nun at times but she grew on me before the movie was over. Anthony LaPaglia (The Client) and Miranda Otto (What Lies Beneath) as the grieving parents harboring a dark secret do a lot with what little expository dialogue they have and their presence here gives some good grounding to what could have been a cheap-o scare-fest.

Fans of this series will get a few surprises from previous films and make sure to stick around until the end of the credits for a little teaser of the next chapter in this burgeoning library of horror.