Miss Meadows (2014)

Katie Holmes plays a peculiar vigilante in "Miss Meadows"

During the opening scene of “Miss Meadows,” the title character played by Katie Holmes is taking a stroll through her quaint Ohio town—the kind of tree-lined utopia where birds are gently chirping and it’s quiet enough to see a pair of fawns casually prance across a lawn—when suddenly a creepy guy pulls up in a pickup truck and begins to threaten her. Undaunted, she pulls out a short barrel pistol from her tiny purse and shoots him dead without a flicker of emotion.

It’s not exactly the same as discovering a severed human ear in a field, but the way an idyllic, peaceful neighborhood is abruptly jarred by violence is reminiscent of that notorious first sequence of David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet.”

Written and directed by Karen Leigh Hopkins, “Miss Meadows” is also a close cousin to the “Death Wish” films, with the titular heroine—who doubles as an elementary school teacher and wears clothes (white gloves, bar shoes) that make her look like she stepped out a 50s sitcom—fearlessly protecting the suburbs from bad guys the way Charles Bronson’s Paul Kersey covered the inner city. She’s similarly conflicted, we learn, when a lurid flashback reveals that as a child, she witnessed her mother being slain in a drive-by shooting.

As the body count rises, the dull town sheriff (inertly played James Badge Dale) arrives and instead of arresting Meadows predictably falls in love with her, believing their strange, quickly evolving romance—she gets pregnant during an embarrassingly comic sex scene and they later agree to get married—will turn the deranged sociopath into a suitable housewife and mother. Meanwhile, a sinister looking ex-con moves into the neighborhood and starts skulking around the kids at school, setting up an inevitable showdown with Meadows.

“Miss Meadows” is an intriguing but ultimately messy mix of style and tone, hitting notes of dark comedy and folding in awkward bits of social commentary that feel forced and preachy rather than genuinely edgy or provocative. The usually sunny Holmes gamely takes the lead, but the bizarre vigilante satire has her treading murky waters. There’s ideas and an attitude here, but not enough cohesion.

Spotlight (2015)

From left: Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Brian d'Arcy
Adams, Michael Keaton and John Slattery in "Spotlight."

The most ironic moment in “Spotlight” takes place when a priest, worried that the internet might be providing too much information, laments during a sermon. “Knowledge is one thing,” he cautions, “but faith is another.” Most among his congregation nod along approvingly, but Sacha Pheiffer, a reporter for the Boston Globe, looks on with a mixture of disillusionment and incredulity. She knows hypocrisy when she sees it.

By this point, Pheiffer and her colleagues have figured out that the leader of the Boston Archdiocese, Cardinal Bernard Law, reportedly knew that one of his priests, Fr. John Geoghan, had a history of predatory child molestation. But rather than removing Geoghan from the priesthood, Law shuffled him from parish to parish for years, where his abuse continued.

Directed by Tom McCarthy from a script by McCarthy and Josh Singer, “Spotlight” takes its name from the team of investigative reporters—including Pheiffer (Rachel McAdams), Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) and editor Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton)—who broke the lid off the watershed case with a comprehensive and blistering series of articles in 2002.

Using the Geoghan case as a springboard, the Globe ultimately revealed that more than 80 priests in the Boston Archdiocese committed various acts of rape and pedophilia on hundreds children over three decades, crimes the Church carefully kept out of public view by paying out hush money to scores of victims and seizing official documents. The newspaper eventually published over 600 articles about the scandal and won the Pulitzer Prize.

“Spotlight” is really like two great movies—one is an infuriating, spellbinding document of the most deeply immoral and sinister chapter in the Catholic Church’s history; the other is a soaring, rapturous love letter to the newspaper business itself and a celebration of passionate, professional journalism.

Watching the smart, savvy reporters in this movie painstakingly doing their work—in the office on a Sunday, working from home, researching in the library until it closes, jotting down notes, making phone calls, checking facts, knocking on doors, interviewing subjects, taking more notes—one is reminded of Orson Welles in “Citizen Kane” when he took over at the New York Inquirer and justified turning his new publisher’s office into his personal apartment by declaring, quite succinctly, that the news goes on for 24 hours a day.

There's a wonderful shot that celebrates the subtle, vibrant pulse of a daily city newspaper. Walter is chatting with editor Ben Bradlee (John Slattery) about the story. In between them, at the far end of the newsroom, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber)—the Globe’s intrepid, unpretentious new chief editor—sits in his office late in the day, still working.

Baron, a strikingly composed, baritone-voiced outsider who daringly suggested the Globe take on the church in the first place, is perhaps the unsung hero of the film. At a time when the internet was already beginning to chip away at advertising revenues and the newsroom was staring at cutbacks, Baron committed resources to an important story and showed his faith in the value of essential journalism.

“Spotlight” is a reminder of the measure of stories the public gets when honest and talented reporters are doing their jobs. It’s also about what happens when a venerable daily newspaper functioning at a high level—telling important truths, letting people know what's going on, holding suspects accountable, and just being a responsible citizen—becomes the eyes and ears, the legitimate moral center, of an American city.

Inside Out (2015)

Mind Games: Core emotions--Sadness, Fear, Anger, Disgust
and Joy--at the controls of a young girl in "Inside Out."

For any befuddled parent that has ever been curious as to what’s going on inside the head of their child, “Inside Out”—the funny and furiously inventive latest entry from Pixar Animation Studios and director Pete Docter—intrepidly journeys behind the eyes of a smart, sensitive 11-year-old girl and opens up the curtains on a warm, wondrous new world full of splendidly offbeat characters, colorfully strange places and endlessly imaginative gadgets.

The main character, Riley (voice of Kiatlyn Dias), is an average, energetic kid from Minnesota whose days revolve around school, friends, hockey practice and spending time at home with her parents (Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan). Her life by itself seems pretty mundane, but the magic of “Inside Out” is that what’s happening outside Riley’s head isn't half as interesting as what's going on inside.

That’s where Riley’s distinctly tinted core emotions have taken form. There’s Joy (Amy Poehler, perfectly cast), a yellow bundle of optimism who literally glows like sunshine; Sadness (Phyllis Smith, also terrific), a short, blue figure of depression; Anger (Lewis Black, very funny), a small, red box of grimaces and frowns whose head bursts into flames whenever he gets mad; Fear (Bill Hader), purple, fretful and bug-eyed; and Disgust (Mindy Kaling), green, sardonic and repulsed by anything gross.

The core emotions take up residence in a huge control room in Riley’s mind. There, they anchor and organize her thoughts, collecting memories in small, crystal balls colored for what mood they represent and storing them on towering shelves in cavernous spaces meant for short and long term memory. Beyond the control room are more wonderfully inspired places—floating lands called personality islands (there’s one each for imagination, honesty, and goofiness) symbolizing elements of Riley’s individuality; a deep, yawning abyss where forgotten memories end up; and a surrealistic room for abstract thought that Picasso would have admired.

When dad gets a new job and the family is forced to relocate to San Francisco, Riley confronts an unsettling combination of factors—the anxiety of a new school, having to make new friends, trying out for a new hockey team—that causes her to increasingly miss her old life in Minnesota. Clearly, the dramatic change of scenery leaves her homesick, flooded with melancholy feelings that even she doesn’t quite understand and has difficulty expressing.

Adjusting to a new school is just one of the sweeping changes
for Riley, the main character in Pixar's animated "Inside Out."

Meanwhile, the perpetually upbeat Joy has problems at the controls when Sadness begins touching Riley’s happy memories, turning the bright yellow bulbs to a gloomy blue. Before Joy figures out what’s really going on—that part of growing up requires Riley to need shades of both sadness and happiness to learn to cope with life’s challenging vicissitudes—she and Sadness are whipped from the control room and spend part of the film marooned in other areas of Riley’s mind, each of them visually delightful and highly original.

If “Inside Out” sounds like a carnival funhouse for the eyes, it is that but also a great deal more. Beyond the inventive visuals, amusing one-liners and hilarious sight gags lies an intelligent, perceptive essay about the complexities of being a preteen, the anxieties of communicating with adults, and the challenges of understanding our emotions.

Not since “Pinocchio” has there been an animated movie with such an incisive sense of childhood and such a profound grasp on the nature of growing up. Unlike that dark pit in Riley’s mind where mercurial memories go to be forgotten, the enduring brilliance of “Inside Out” ensures that it’s likely to be remembered—and adored—for a very long time to come.

The Forest (2016)

Natalie Dormer in "The Forest."

Haunted forests have suddenly become a regular subject for horror movies. Last time, we looked at “The Hallow,” a darkly atmospheric tale about an army of malevolent gremlins guarding an Irish forest from tree-cutting developers. Now, in “The Forest,” the setting shifts to Japan, where the dense woods underneath Mount Fuji come eerily shrouded in fog, madness and death.

Natalie Dormer plays Sara, a young American summoned to the far east when she learns that her twin sister Jess (also played by Dormer) went into the woods and didn't come out. It is assumed that Jess committed suicide, as this particular destination is known for such things. But Sara, insisting to have some kind of psychic connection to her sibling, believes her twin is indeed alive.

Once she arrives at the notorious forest, Sara resolves to begin searching for Jess, even against ominous warnings from locals that sinister spirits deep in the forest cause erratic behavior, possibly making her believe and see things that aren't there. Meanwhile, Taylor Kinney plays a seemingly innocuous journalist tagging along for a story, only to have his motives eventually called into question when Sara’s visions and suspicions unravel in a violent panic.

Directed by Jason Zada, the most effective scenes in “The Forest” take place during the few night scenes, when the screen is drenched in blackness and the action becomes increasingly claustrophobic. As Sara tries to find her way using a small cellphone light and Zada’s jittery camera bounces nervously, the movie evokes “The Blair Witch Project,” the indie shocker from the 90s known for achieving scares using striking minimalism.

The Aokigahara Forest, where the movie is filmed, is reportedly Japan’s most popular destination for suicides—a place where vengeful ghosts seek angry retribution on the living as payback for their own violent death. The premise seems ripe for a crackling ghost story, but “The Forest” is too caught up in its own silly narrative to be serious about either ghosts or suicide. It’s a missed opportunity.

A better story about Japanese ghosts, or yurei, can be found in Takashi Shimizu’s “Ju-on” and its American remake, “The Grudge,” which was visually scarier and had a dark subtext about the twisted consequences of raging anger and domestic violence. The biggest problem with “The Forest” is that it never feels half as haunting or disturbing as a documentary might be about the same subject.

The Hallow (2015)

Creature Feature: Bojana Novakovic tries to escape "The Hallow."

The gently rolling hills and lush forests of Ireland aren't as placid and picturesque as they seem in “The Hallow,” a messy and derivative but effectively grim and darkly atmospheric horror yarn that premiered at Sundance last year.

Mysterious busted windows and strange noises coming from deep in the forest force a young couple (Joseph Mawle and Bojana Novakovic) living with their infant son and a dog in a remote, decaying country house to call local authorities. But their concerns go unresolved. Out here, the policeman says, “things go bump in the night.” That line could have been read for cheap, easy laughs, but credit goes to first time director and co-screenwriter, Colin Hardy, for playing it straight and keeping the tone eerily serious.

Later, another character will talk ominously about the Hallow, a legend that has something to do with malevolent banshees and demonic fairies that live in the woods, kidnap babies, and don't like it when strangers move in. Eventually, the protagonists are stalked and terrorized by the forest creatures—hissing, shrieking, hideously deformed beings that suggest a cross between the Whomping Willow of “Harry Potter” and Gollum of “The Lord of the Rings.”

Hardy is an unapologetic fanboy of sci-fi and horror and “The Hallow” is peppered with allusions to popular films of the genre—the leathery book full of creepy illustrations evokes the flesh-bound volume from Sam Raimi’s wildly inventive “The Evil Dead”; the inky, black ooze that portends the monsters suggests “Aliens”; and the ability of the creatures to take over human hosts hints at “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

Hardy also lovingly mentions Ray Harryhausen (“made me believe in monsters”) in the closing credits. It’s hard not to think of Ymir—the stop-motion animated, outer space creature who crash lands on Earth in Harryhausen’s dazzling, enduring “20 Million Miles to Earth”—as another inspiration for “The Hallow.”

It’s far from perfect—the noisy, chaotic second half undermines the measured sense of a growing, sinister tension in the first—but “The Hallow” has enough subtle creepiness and legitimate scares to be worth a look.

The Hunting Ground (2015)

Sexual assault on college campus is the subject of the
gripping documentary, "The Hunting Ground."

“The Hunting Ground” begins with blissful scenes of young people reacting joyously to acceptance letters from colleges and universities, institutions of higher learning they no doubt dreamt about attending, meeting new friends and sharing wonderful experiences together. Shortly later, however, the idyllic mood turns decidedly darker and more solemn, when more students, mostly women, begin tearfully recounting harrowing, nightmarish accounts of being sexually assaulted or raped on campus.

When it comes to memories gathered from college, these surely are not ones meant to last a lifetime. The fact that they do—and sometimes have tragic, heartbreaking consequences—is one of the haunting themes of “The Hunting Ground,” the furious, gripping and substantial new documentary from Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, the terrific team behind “The Invisible War” (which similarly examined sexual assault in the military), and “Outrage” (about scandal and political hypocrisy on Capitol Hill).

Combining victims’ testimony and bleak statistics, the movie paints a disturbing picture of shocking neglect and systemic abuse by universities. More than 16 percent of female students, the film explains, will experience some type of sexual harassment or assault during their time in college. While many victims are too ashamed and traumatized to even report crimes, those who do encounter an icy tangle of subterfuge, misinformation and victim-blaming from school administrators eager to sweep bad press—and its negative financial impact—under the rug.

The film targets popular and notorious fraternity houses where wild parties mixed with peer pressure and alcohol often lead to violent sexual crimes against women. Many universities have every reason to dismantle these victim farms, but they recoil because millions of dollars in annual donations come from alumni with loyal fraternity ties.

Then there are the front page stories, tales of wayward athletes shielded by powerful, lucrative sports programs. One of the film’s most provocative segments—the allegations of rape against star quarterback Jameis Winston while he attended Florida State University—unfolds like a thriller and will be familiar to anyone who has followed college football over the past few years. The victim became a target of vicious hatred by fellow students and the community around FSU; she dropped out of school in disgrace.

Meanwhile, at the center of “The Hunting Ground” is the heroic story of how two brave, smart students, Andrea Pino and Annie Clark—both victims of sexual assault while attending the University of North Carolina—filed a Title IX complaint against their school with the federal government. Using networking tools like social media and blogs, the case brought other victims across the country out of hiding while shining a national spotlight on the issue.

This is an angry, important chronicle about an ugly, epidemic scourge afflicting higher education. “The Hunting Ground” should be required viewing for all current and soon-to-be college students and their parents.

Victoria (2015)

Run Laia Run: Laia Costa on the move in "Victoria"

By now, “Victoria,” the internationally acclaimed German film by director Sebastian Schipper, is more famous for its technical distinction than its functions as a movie. The film—a sprawling crime drama about a bank robbery involving three delinquent young men and a naïve woman—was shot in a single continuous take on the quiet, pre-dawn streets of central Berlin.

The movie opens, rather inauspiciously, in a crowded subterranean nightclub pounding away with thrumming techno music, gyrating bodies, and pulsating strobe lights so relentless and unwatchable that the resulting discomfort amounts to a visual flogging. Eye strain aside, this is where we meet the eponymous Victoria (Laia Costa), a new resident of Berlin by way of Madrid, Spain.

Victoria doesn’t have any friends in Germany and doesn’t speak the language, but before all is said and done, she’ll meet a disparate group of English-speaking male bandits—Boxer (Franz Rogowski), a bald hothead who used to be in prison; Blinker (Burak Yigit), a curly-haired rogue named after a turn signal; and Sonne (Frederick Lau), a sensitive fellow that Victoria falls for—and accompany them on a dizzying and dangerous adventure through the city. There’s a tense meeting with gangsters, a daring if unlikely bank robbery, and a frantic police chase and bloody shootout.

Of course, all of this is done in real time. Counting three false starts, the entire shoot of “Victoria” took two and a half hours, beginning late one night and ending just after sunrise. The script, reportedly only twelve pages long, consists of mostly improvised dialogue. It’s an ambitious piece of filmmaking that’s remarkable in that it was pulled off at all. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the story isn’t very original, the characters aren’t especially interesting, and for all of its technical bravura, the blurry and often grainy visuals captured by cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen’s single, jittery hand-held camera just aren’t all that fun to look at.

It doesn’t help that “Victoria” takes forever to get going, padding its thin plot with a lot of superfluous filler. The first hour or so consists of extended scenes of the characters mind-numbing peregrinations around Berlin in the wee hours—robbing a convenient store, goofing around on the street, arguing at a café where Veronica works (apparently, she never sleeps). The movie plods on for 138 minutes, even though a more thoughtfully planned 98 would have been plenty.

“Birdman” is another prominent, recent example of the single take movie. Its director, Alejandro Iñárritu, memorably defended the approach saying, “We live our lives with no editing.” True enough. But in the case of “Victoria,” while spending time with drunk, derelict twenty-somethings can be fun for a short time, a little goes a long way.