Review: Jake Gyllenhaal's one-man show "The Guilty"

by Matt St Clair

Despite being a proponent of Bong Joon-ho's advice to overcome the "one-inch barrier" of subtitles, I confess that I never got around to seeing the popular Danish film The Guilty (2018) which became an Oscar finalist for Best International Feature in its year. As a result of this blind spot, none of my thoughts on the new English-language remake will pertain to how it measures up to the original. Instead, let's talk about what a tense one man show this is. 

Although Jake Gyllenhaal has actors surrounding him, both in-person and through vocal performances on the telephone, The Guilty is laser focused on his character, 911 dispatcher Joe Baylor. Joe is on the phone trying to save a woman named Emily (voiced by a skillfully elusive Riley Keough) who’s being kidnapped by her ex-husband...

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I'll Link You Last

• AV Club Sue Mengers superagent biopic in the works with Jennifer Lawrence to star and Paolo Sorrentino behind the camera. You may recall that Sue Mengers got this treatment on Broadway already with the play "I'll Eat You Last" starring Bette Midler
• Collider in unexpected casting news Luiz Guzmán is the new Gomez Addams in a future live-action Netflix series spun off from The Addams Family
• MNPP the first poster for Parallel Mothers is never going to make it to the US
• Celebitchy Looks like Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander had a baby during those couple of years when neither of them were in the press or on the screen 

Gemma Chan, Beanie Feldstein, West Side Story's non-reopening on Broadway, South Park forever more, Clue memories, Zola tweets and more after the jump...

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"Zola" is a must-see

Spend some time in batshit insane Florida this weekend. Writer/Director Janicza Bravo's stripper comedy Zola (co-written by Tony-nominated playwright Jeremy O. Harris) which was a major Sundance hit way back in January 2020 before the pandemic, is finally in theaters. It was worth the wait. Murtada raved about it last year...

Zola is the first film to get how social media interactions have shaped the way people talk to each other IRL. How many times have you said "LOL" to someone’s face? Admit it, many times. Bravo and Harris manage the find the right speech cadences for that sort of phone jargon. Then, Bravo masterfully realizes them visually so that they are seamless. [Read the full review] 

It's a great and wild time at the movies headlined by fast-rising wonder Taylour Paige (so fun as Viola's girl in Ma Rainey last season) in a nimble deadpan funny star turn. She had me in stitches with a one word line reading "...word" early on in this weekend misadventure before the gallows-humor comedy rubbernecks around its rather serious and frightening sex-trafficking elements. She and the underappreciated Riley Keough are both expert at keeping their performances both real and "in quotes" for the different points of view and emotional facades the women wear to survive. 

Riley Keough is our queen!

by Cláudio Alves

Nepotism is alive and thriving in modern Hollywood. Just look at the enviable careers of Margaret Qualley, Maya Hawke, Emma Roberts, Dakota Johnson, and more. Another name to add to that list would be Riley Keough, daughter of Lisa Marie Presley and Dany Keough. Naturally, she's also the granddaughter of none other than "The King of Rock 'n' Roll" himself, Elvis Presley. 

Keough, like many current rising stars, was already born with a foot in the door and the benefit of her celebrity lineage in an otherwise tough business to break into. However, she has more than proven herself once inside. We'd go so far as to say that she's one of her generation's brightest rising stars, having shown excellence in a variety of tones, genres and acting styles across an already enviable young filmography...

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Review: The Lodge

by Chris Feil

Horror films of the moment are somewhat defined by their expressiveness, rendering intimate terrors with expulsive force. Jordan Peele is at the fore turning intellectual and social ills into visceral experiences, while Ari Aster borders on expressionism while working within a bizarre emotional toolbox. Elsewhere, the genre has been finding something essential in loudly lurid aesthetics and points of view, like Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria and Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge. Even some of the last month’s horror duds try to find the soul of their scares through bolder stylistic swings.

What makes The Lodge so darkly thrilling is how it goes against the grain at every opportunity to go big. Instead, it does the opposite - what terrifies is when it looks inward toward the void, only a blunt emptiness flows out in response...

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