Category: Entertainment

The catchy premise motoring “Sender,” a story about a harried woman who moves into a rental home and quickly becomes inundated with packages she didn’t order, transforms beyond its simple, straightforward hook. Writer-director Russell Goldman re-fashions the puzzle box constraints of his short “Return to Sender” into an intricately-faceted feature, making way for a deep character study to emerge, crawling under our skin to truly unnerve in its damning examination of how commercialism is insidiously interwoven into our daily lives. Boldly off-kilter, brilliant and bizarre, its dark humor and taut psychological horror are laced together in a delightfully heady blend.

Julia (Britt Lower) has recently experienced a few major lifestyle changes. She was fired from her low level job, quit drinking and moved into a rental home three weeks prior to when we first meet her hiding in the kitchen at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. After the group breaks for the day, she introduces herself to Whitney (Rhea Seehorn), who appears to be struggling with some light anger issues on top of her drinking problem. Julia asks for Whitney’s help on her sobriety journey, but Whitney is reluctant to agree, offering a recommendation for a different rehab program. Whitney’s compliance doesn’t really matter anyway as Julia is hell-bent on having her as a sponsor, so when Julia’s overbearing, soft-spoken sister Tatiana (Anna Baryshnikov) drops by to check on her, Whitney can provide a buffer.

Meanwhile, mysterious packages begin showing up to Julia’s home from an Amazon-esque e-commerce site, Smirk. First, it’s a lipstick that’s similar in color to her own signature shade. But then the goods become specifically targeted to items in Julia’s hazy, destructive past, from condoms to jugs of protein powder that her former colleague (Utkarsh Ambudkar) now sells. Even a creepy, homemade duct tape balaclava mask shows up. Not knowing how to proceed, she consults the kindly Smirk delivery driver she’s befriended, Charlie (David Dastmalchian), but he’s not much help either. Julia’s psychosis starts to shatter, overcome by cardboard shipping boxes and torturous insomnia. Matters worsen for her when Tatiana moves in and Whitney disappears. It’s up Julia to battle her way through the corporate red tape to uncover the answers for herself, which turns into trippy, mind-blowing insanity and shattering revelations.

Goldman keeps things moving at a quick clip to augment the film’s atmospheric pull and tighten the tension. Making the unreliable narrator a recovering alcoholic gives the prickly psycho-thriller a character-driven edge. Her journey towards long-lasting sobriety aligns with her unfolding detective work to find her anonymous aggressor. Characters’ emotional catharses are earned. The mystery of who’s behind it all is revealed in an amusing manner, unfolding before we’re ahead of anyone on screen and never collapsing into lazy, expository speech dumps. Editor Marco Rosas’s montages and abrupt cuts give the proceedings an electric energy and deliberate discomfort.

The auteur places us directly in his heroine’s tormented psyche through the use of ingenious sound design (courtesy of Nathan Ruyle’s outside the box thinking), unsettling cinematography (courtesy of Gemma Doll-Grossman’s innovative utilization of blurred-edge lenses and light) and a percussive score (courtesy of Gavin Brivik’s compositions forming a cohesive identity through their disparate rhythms). Distressing environmental sounds – like the low crackling hum of a guitar amp ready for use, Julia’s booming punches as she pries open her mystery deliveries, or the sharp surprise of a blender or shower turning on – plug us into Julia’s destabilizing experiences. Her sobering memories are accompanied by stark, cold daylight, shot with a handheld camera to express immediacy and intimacy.

Because the dialogue is perhaps a little too lean, we’re left to infer some of the character construction through the world these players inhabit. Melisa Myers’ clever production design adds intrigue. Julia’s mixed medium mural hanging on her family room wall clues us into her cluttered, frenzied mindset. Rather than show her living quarters growing messier the longer she’s tormented by her stalker escalating their threats into excruciating psychological warfare, it’s a shrewd juxtaposition to see her home transformed into a tidy, attractive and cozy space.

The ensemble elevates the sharp material. There are no weak links in the cast either. Lower has the yeoman’s task of heightening the narrative’s frenetic unease. In her capable hands, her flawed heroine is infused with an innate rootability. We like her in spite of her caustic tendencies. She’s absolutely captivating, adopting an imposing physicality when guarded, yet shrinking when scared. She gets her steps in by pacing, jittery from chugging Celsius energy drinks. Seehorn is equally as magnetic a performer. Though she doesn’t have a lot of screen time, she’s a looming presence, thanks to her curt way of dealing with her pesky, persistent charge. Baryshnikov is the soul of the film as the beleaguered victim of Julia’s hijinks. Yet it’s Dastmalchian who serves as the MVP of the supporting cast. He’s charming, tender and vulnerable, striking up sweet (but never saccharine) rom-com-inspired chemistry with Lower.

In addition to Goldman’s visual dexterity capturing his anti-heroine’s insular life, he exercises a compelling gift for world-building. The prologue, featuring a disabled elderly woman (played by an almost unrecognizable Jamie Lee Curtis, who also serves as the film’s producer) feeling suicidal after opening a package containing a meaningful childhood memento, hints at a larger context in which the filmmaker’s thematic and narrative concepts could exist outside of one film. It’s perfectly suited for expansion through spinoffs, sequels and prequels. With a creeping dread bubbling beneath the surface, ruminating on the ease with which bullies and corporations inextricably insinuate themselves into our lives, “Sender” deserves to be added to your cart.

Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas rocked SXSW with “Power Ballad,” the latest music-themed comedy film from “Once” and “Sing Street” director John Carney.

The movie follows Rick Power (Rudd), a wedding band singer who stumbles into a late-night jam session with former boy band star Danny (Jonas) and reignites his passion for songwriting. But Danny leaves not only with a newfound motivation — he lifts one of Rick’s songs, turns it into a No. 1 hit and claims it as his own. Rick then embarks on a quest to reclaim the recognition he deserves, sacrificing everything he loves in the process.

The film features several drunken duets between Rudd and Jonas after the former offers the latter some of his marijuana. If there’s one takeaway from the film, Jonas put it like this: “Be careful who you share a blunt with.”

The Jonas Brothers singer behind solo hits like “Jealous” and “Close” said he boarded “Power Ballad” after he heard Carney was writing a script about “a wedding singer and a former boy band member turned solo artist trying to find himself.” In a nod to the obvious parallels between his character and himself, Jonas quipped: “I said yes!”

“Outside of the more obvious themes … one of the things that I was really drawn to is this idea of how many rooms I’ve been in as a songwriter where it could have gone one way or the other — success and failure and everything between — and moments where your character is called into question,” he added during the Q&A portion of the premiere. “Having been in this business for 20-plus years, it’s wild to see how many people have gone down that path where they come out the other side with success and their friends still around them, and some that come with success and lose everybody in their life.”

Rudd said he was attracted to the film because, like Rick, he is the father of a teenage daughter, and he is a “huge music fan.”

“This is a guy who has a real desire to do something and express himself and has a dream,” he said. “There are certain things that are unrealized, and he’s faced disappointment. These are things that are very relatable, so the character really meant something to me.”

Before the film rolled, Carney was welcomed to the stage by a SXSW programmer who proclaimed, excitedly, “John Carney is the shit!”

“If my mother heard that expression, she wouldn’t have understood the irony of this,” the director replied. “She’d be like, ‘Why is she calling my son shitty?’ I accept this very modern compliment.”

Introducing the movie, Carney warmed Texas hearts by giving a heartfelt shoutout to Austin legend Richard Linklater. “He’s the reason that I’m a filmmaker,” he said. “Not in terms of inspiration, but in terms of giving people permission to make films.”

In 2005, a San Jose woman found a human finger in her Wendy’s chili. Well, she claimed to. When it was discovered that she planted the finger in the bowl herself for financial gain, she was sentenced to nine years in prison for the scam that cost the fast-food chain millions. Edd Benda and Stephen Helstad’s agile and entertaining crime caper “Chili Finger” is ripped from those headlines, but mostly fictionalized, opening with the caveat that only some of the events portrayed in the film are truth-based.

The usually breezy script (by Helstad) is smart enough not to feel like a bargain version of the Coen brothers dark comedies it winks at, even when “Chili Finger” aggressively goes off the rails in its final chapter. Unfolding with an immersive pace to earn our attention and chuckles throughout, the film’s opening sequence is its most brilliant, with an employee of a beer bottling factory in the Midwest dropping his vape on the ledges of fast-moving machinery. While his dangerous attempts to reclaim it scream an impending disaster (frankly, he shouldn’t be operating heavy machinery while high), the loss of his finger still manages to play out as an uproarious surprise, setting the stage for the cheeky black comedy of twists and turns that follows.

Here, the scammer in question is played by the wonderful Judy Greer, whose recent villainous turn in the cozy snow mystery “Dead of Winter” was an inspired casting choice for the prolific actor known mostly for playing agreeable people. Her presence in “Chili Finger” made this critic wonder whether we’ve missed out on some great lead roles from Greer when she was mostly cast in supporting parts for a long while in the aughts. With “Chili Finger,” Greer finds a diverse range of opportunities to give both her comedic and dramatic muscles a workout as Jessica Lipki, a frustrated Midwestern divorce attorney Greer brings to life with a dangerous sense of mystique and relatable vulnerability.

Married to Sean Astin’s (also great) angelic Ron, whose constant naïve sweetness and idiosyncratic hobbies would be a little less irritating if he talked a little less and observed a little more, Jessica doesn’t seem to know how to navigate her newfound status as an empty-nester after sending her daughter off to the East Coast for college. It would be one thing if she and Ron could visit her for the upcoming parents weekend. But to the perennially strapped-for-cash couple, this seemingly ordinary trip would be nothing but an outrageous luxury.

With this grim financial reality at the backdrop, Helstad’s script subtly yet intelligently engages with the urgent economic anxieties of the American middle class, people who live paycheck to paycheck while barely making ends meet, and don’t have enough money to call an ambulance even when a workplace accident as severe as the one we witness early on takes place. Within this context, it’s halfway understandable why an emotionally strained, hardworking middle-aged person desperate to be a present parent in her daughter’s life would think of gaming the system that she legally knows so well. Her method might be despicable, but you can at least see how she rationalized it to herself. What’s wrong with a modest sum to afford a pair of economy-class airplane tickets, some fancy food on the dinner table for a change, and some humble home updates here and there? The insurance will pick up the tab anyway.

Enter the local fast-food chain Blake Junior’s that Ron is a big fan of, and their famous bowl of chili Jessica digs into. When the finger pops up in her food to the horror of the customers and waitstaff, the corporate negotiator to arrive is Blake Jr. II (Madeline Wise), who agrees to pay $100,000 for the damages. (Ron negotiates far beyond Jessica’s small initial offer, unknowingly upping the stakes of her scheme.) Except, business owner Blake Jr. I (a hardball and very welcome John Goodman, in case there is any doubt that we’re in a Coen-esque world) won’t have his reputation tarnished that easily. So he sends his sturdy pal Dave (a hilarious Bryan Cranston), an uncompromisingly tough ex-Marine who immediately sniffs something fishy in the incident.

Crime movies like this are often funny because the rookie criminals are clueless and incompetent, and things snowball beyond their wildest imagination with everyone demanding a slice of the loot they haven’t earned. That is certainly the case in the final act of “Chili Finger,” which also involves the fingerless and broke Trevor (Paul Stanko, the aforesaid factory worker) and his very pregnant girlfriend Nia (Sarah Herrman). Too bad the script feels less controlled and more directionless when each of these characters go head to head with an increasing body count across several bloody incidents.

And yet, “Chili Finger” is still a fun and riotous ride. Like a hearty bowl of (hopefully finger-free) chili would, it hits the spot.

Much has been theorized about how “Jackass,” the MTV stunt show from the early 2000s that spawned multiple movies and enthralled a generation of young people with its gross-out and pain-inducing antics, exhibits an absurdist version of hyper-masculinity and genuine camaraderie. These men hit each other relentlessly, put their bodies at risk, and reveled in sidesplitting laughter as a warped way of bonding with each other physically.

Such an unruly approach to brotherhood also fuels “Crash Land,” actor Dempsey Bryk’s directorial debut, a movie as poignant as it is rooted in the crass humor, recklessness, and idiocy of young men whose preferred mode of diversion is to endure bodily harm for the sake of a “cool” video or simply a shared cackle. Punches to the genitals, stupidly daring acts involving fire or firearms while under the influence of alcohol are the daily bread of Bryk’s trio of amateur stuntmen, or stunt boys, in the small, isolated Canadian town of Inch.

When Darby (Billy Bryk, the director’s brother) dies unexpectedly, from an aneurysm and not as consequence of a stunt, his closest buds, Lance (Gabriel LaBelle) and Clay (Noah Parker) refuse to acknowledge those who claim his life and theirs amounted to nothing. To prove their detractors wrong, Clay suggests they make a movie, “the greatest of all time,” to be precise, which will combine preexisting footage of Darby and new scenes in which Clay will play him wearing a paper mask (it’s as ridiculous as it sounds). There’s a heartwarming idiocy to their pursuit, yet what festers underneath is their inability to process grief consciously and the fear that those who deem their existence meaningless might be right.

The technology available to the characters — a low-grade digital camcorder and flip phones — suggest they exist some time in the early 2000s. Grainy footage of the goofy, but nonetheless risky stunts they’ve carried out over the years reflects their carefree, extremely rough-around-the-ages personas and the wildness of their banter. That those clips come off as authentic outside of their aesthetic shoddiness, attests to Bryk’s casting choices and how these young actors can convincingly portrait lifelong friends with a shared, foolish devotion. LaBelle gives in to the walking ruckus that is Lance. An agent of chaos, his one-track-minded character is perpetually on the verge of an explosive reaction, which provides a healthy dose of amusement, but also makes him erratic and dangerous.

The film’s revelation is Parker, a Quebecois actor recently seen in the French-language drama “Who By Fire.” He holds the heart of “Crash Land” on his endearingly confused visage. Clay’s innocent expression of sadness after Darby’s passing gradually gives way to the face of a young man whose inner world is expanding as he considers that maybe amateur and vulgar stunts may not be a sustainable path forward — especially if other opportunities await outside of Inch’s limits. Each time Parker comes on screen works as a warm reminder that there’s soulfulness here, not just a trite “boys will be boys” tirade.

“Crash Land” takes a turn into the realm of expected tropes when introducing a romantic interest for Clay, who arrives as a catalyst for the guys to consider growing up. The soft-spoken, overprotected Jemma (Abby Quinn), a girl from Quebec in town for a while, doesn’t judge the boys, but takes their silly bravado and poor decision-making as a sincere, if misguided expression of who they are, but not the only thing they are. That includes the humorous neuroticism of Sander (Finn Wolfhard of “Stranger Things” fame), a third man in the operation (and an orphan) tasked with directing the Damsy tribute film. There’s a bit of a meta element at play since “Crash Land” is the newest feature from Kid Brother, a production company that Wolfhard and Billy Bryk co-founded, after “Hell of a Summer.”

The psychology that Bryk wrote for these young men is the key as to why these brutes are more lovable than unbearable. They move through the world unaware of the disconnect between how they understand their actions and how they are perceived. Despite what they’re known for in town — crashing out before ever taking off — Clay is heartbroken when learning that their neighbors see them as “bad boys.” In his mind, their wacky and irresponsible outings don’t come from a place of malice or a desire to harm anyone, but function as the language through which him and his friends communicate. Through the timid charisma of Quinn’s performance as Jemma, as the damsel in the equation who is not in distress but a voice of reason, Bryk doesn’t suggest Lance and Clay or even Sander should forsake the playfulness that bonds them, but allow themselves a chance to explore other facets of their selves. In turn, Jemma gets from them a modicum of their fearlessness.

A new entry into the “dudes rock” canon (movies that celebrate male camaraderie at its most earnest and less toxic) and simultaneously a coming-of-age yarn, “Crash Land” moves through familiar avenues structurally, yet its winsome nitwits become its greatest virtue.

At this fraught moment in our culture, it comes as a small surprise that a movie called “Drag” is not about the terrors of “gender ideology,” nor the apparent threat to Western civilization of people dressing up in garb generally associated with the opposite sex. Instead, writer-directors Raviv Ullman and Greg Yagolnitzer’s debut feature draws its title from the simple action of pulling a dead-weight object along the ground or floor. That item happens to be a woman — and she isn’t even one of the victims (at least yet) of a serial killer figuring significantly in the plot. Grievous bodily harm, nonconsensual drugging, murder, yes…still, thank god there’s nothing unwholesome here, like say a man in a dress.

Actually, there is quite a bit of John Stamos in underwear. But his character’s heterosexual bona fides are a given, however eccentrically those desires may manifest themselves. Nonetheless, “Drag” is mostly a sister act, with Lizzy Caplan and Lucy DeVito as quarrelsome siblings who find themselves in ever-deepening trouble during a house robbery gone wrong. It’s a narrow, somewhat one-note, crisis-driven premise that might’ve worked just as well as a short. To the filmmakers’ credit, though, tension and edgy humor are sustained for nearly 90 minutes of caustic entertainment. Their enthusiastically nasty little bon-bon is likely to go over well as an opening-weekend premiere in SXSW’s Midnighter selection. 

Sparring with the familiarity of lifelong familial conflict, the two protagonists do not enjoy the benefit of being named — a final cast scroll designates Caplan simply as “Fuckup,” and DeVito as “Sister.” (Two remaining dramatic personae get the even more generic labels of “Man” and “Woman.”) The more ignobly categorized heroine is a ne’er-do-well who’s scraping by as a bartender, with various dubious side gigs and an even more dubious relationship history. Her sibling — a comparatively upstanding grownup with husband, daughter and restaurant business — has once again gotten reluctantly corralled into assistance, this time as driver/lookout while sis breaks into the home of “some guy who owes me money.” 

That is a likely fib, as the long-suffering lady behind the wheel is all too aware. Things do go well enough for a couple minutes, as surprisingly this well-isolated rural house full of valuable-looking objets d’art does not have any evident security system. Once inside, however, the miscreant sister communicates (via walkie-talkie) in a squeal of wordless agony. Forced to investigate, DeVito finds Caplan immobilized in an upstairs jacuzzi bathtub. Against all odds, in reaching for some item to steal, she’s managed to fall and throw out her back. 

This is but the first in a series of escalating misfortunes. Sis can hardly move. But she must be moved, before the owner’s expected return in a half hour or so. An unnoticed protrusion on the floor she’s dragged across renders her injury considerably worse, turning temporary acute discomfort into a real medical emergency. Such new problems delay exit until they can only hide from the sole occupant (Stamos), a successful painter of abstract female portraits. He is perilously close to discovering the intruders when the doorbell rings. Turns out he has a date this evening, a younger woman (Christine Ko) who’s an aspiring artist herself, met via a dating site. 

Suffice it to say, this invited guest should be a lot more careful about accepting invites from strangers. By the time Responsible Sis reports “He’s roofied a girl or something!,” it has become clear that quite a number of women have entered this household — but possibly none have ever made it out alive. Our heroines must somehow rescue themselves as well as an oblivious third party, while keeping the host unaware of their presence.

It initially seems like a mistake to have the main protagonists so consistently at each other’s throats, one sick of being pulled into another’s messes, while the second resents her fed-up sister’s  moral superiority. The co-directors’ script is eventful enough, however, to keep their squabbling more as comedic background noise than an irksome dominant element. Caplan effectively negotiates a gamut of punishing physical pains, played close to slapstick, while DeVito mingles exasperation and sympathy — we know she won’t abandon her sister, much as she might like to. Ko from the FX “Dave” sitcom is funny as a flirtatious guest so brashly overconfident, she stays unaware of her peril even in the most extreme circumstances. 

Cast against type, Stamos has fun slyly underplaying a thoroughly depraved character. Though when he’s finally seen in full evil flight, the actor is arguably allowed to wax a little too cute about it. Speaking of which, the soundtrack also overdoses a bit on the calculated wackiness of vintage cuts by Bonzo Dog Band, the Monty Python-adjacent 1960s British novelty music act. 

In contrast to those comedy elements, Patrick Stump’s original score takes a useful straight-suspense approach. Cinematographer Ben Goodman straddles the line between both with sharp lensing that places particular emphasis on overhead shots, underlining Caplan’s horizontal helplessness. Production designer Neil Patel has outfitted Chez Stamos with a lot of eye-catching decor detail, not least the paintings attributed to that malevolent “Man,” but in fact daubed by Yagolnitzer. 

Some viewers may find “Drag’s” denouement a tad more cruel than strictly necessary. But this modest, resourceful exercise in gallows humor can’t be faulted for not sticking to its guns.