Though you’ll spend most of your time in Astro Bot clearing original levels set in the game’s own universe, each of its galaxies ends with a level based on a beloved PlayStation franchise. One of these is the splendidly sarcastically named Dude Raiding, which provides Astro with Uncharted protagonist Nathan Drake’s…
Plot: Based on a true story, Reality Winner is a brilliant young misfit from a Texas border town who loves her pink gun almost as much as helping others. After teaching herself Arabic in high school so she can be of service in the Middle East, Reality is recruited by the Air Force but quickly becomes disillusioned when she finds her morals challenged. After transitioning to a money gig as an NSA contractor, Reality stumbles upon government secrets regarding Russia’s election hacking during the 2016 Presidential campaign. Does she expose the truth or keep quiet? Ultimately, she decides to leak the truth, which leads to her trial and historic sentencing for espionage.
Review: Winner is the second film in the last two years based on the true story of Reality Winner. The uniquely named whistleblower who leaked classified documents confirming Russian interference in American elections, Winner’s story was previously told in the film Reality starring Sydney Sweeney. Based on a stage play, that film used the recorded interrogation of the suspect upon her arrest for violating the Espionage Act. It focused on a very specific part of her life. A dark and serious film, Reality exists in stark contrast to Susanna Fogel’s Winner, which takes a more comedic tone to deliver a biopic that pulls in the subject’s childhood and life, leading to her decision to break the law as a holistic look at how she reached her fateful decision in 2017. Winner is a funny film that some may find offputting based on the subject matter, yet it still delivers a message about doing what is right even when the stakes are high. Boasting another stellar performance from Emilia Jones, Winner is somewhat uneven in its tone but still manages to live up to its title.
Using a darkly comedic approach like Craig Gillespie’s I, Tonya, and Adam McKay’s Vice, Winner opens with a voice-over from Reality Winner (Emilia Jones) as she is led away in handcuffs. Her narration then takes us back to her childhood living with her social worker mother, Billie (Connie Britton), unemployed father Ron (Zach Galifianakis), and older sister Brittany (Kathryn Newton). While Billie and Brittany are more traditional, Reality follows her father’s more political worldview, which is shaken during the events of September 11, 2001. As she grows up disillusioned with politics, Reality is recruited to join the Air Force, where she can learn more about the languages and people of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond. A quick learner and natural polyglot, Reality becomes adept at translation but becomes divided when she sees the drone-strike outcome of what her skills lead to. A natural defender of those who need defending, Reality struggles with doing what is right and doing what she is good at.
Throughout Winner, Emilia Jones imbues Reality with a whipsmart ability to backtalk and put people in their place while trying to figure out how to stick to her personal ethics. Reality struggles with relationships with anyone other than her father, who suffers from a debilitating addiction to painkillers. At one point, she maintains an ongoing romantic relationship with Andre (Danny Ramirez), giving her some semblance of normalcy. Both Jones and Ramirez make for a charismatic couple, but it is Reality’s desire to always do more for those who cannot do for themselves that prevents her from settling down. Galifianakis, Connie Britton, and Kathryn Newton are good in their limited supporting roles, which sometimes feel like cliche family characters rather than fully developed supporting players. There are even a few moments where Reality does something inappropriate or radical, and her family is given close-ups as they smile and shake their heads. The only thing missing from these scenes is the line “Oh, Reality!” which would make them cringeworthy.
Where Winner may rub audiences the wrong way is with the levity of the film itself. There are many moments, both during Reality’s time as an enlisted soldier and her opinions after the fact, that some could construe her as anti-military. There are mild jabs at Fox News, both in the actual footage from the cable network and in excerpts from interviews with both Barack Obama and Donald Trump. The timing of the film’s release comes at the heart of another divisive election cycle. There will be outspoken commentary that this movie is decidedly on one end of the political spectrum. In reality, pun intended, this is a fairly apolitical film that sets out to defend truth and justice, not a specifically conservative or liberal ideology. But, by taking a comedic vantage, Winner feels like something we have seen often over the last few decades from indie filmmakers aiming to deliver anti-establishment characters with sharp dialogue and quirky sensibilities. You cannot get much quirkier than a character named Reality Winner, and I think the filmmakers took that to heart.
Based on her own New York Magazine article titled “Who is Reality Winner?”, Winner‘s screenplay was scripted by Kerry Howley alongside director Susanna Fogel. While Howley has a resume full of articles and interviews surrounding political figures and current events, this is a unique project for Fogel. Having co-written Olivia Wilde’s acclaimed Booksmart and directed the action-comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me, Fogel reunites with Emilia Jones from last year’s festival hit Cat Person, also based on a well-received article. Fogel and Howley’s approach to the film version of this story should have worked had they stuck with it consistently throughout the film, but the shift between comedy and drama loses some of its balance in the film’s final act. By the time Reality is incarcerated for four years, the importance of the rest of the ensemble and their support for Reality seems disingenuous after how we have seen them for the first parts of the movie. The emotional moments in Winner feel a bit much, but they are well-acted by Galifianakis, Britton, and Newton.
Emilia Jones, who has proven herself to be one of the best actors working today, adds another excellent performance to her filmography alongside CODA, Cat Person, and Locke & Key. Her range is excellent, and she portrays Reality as a person with a larger-than-life name who is more grounded than you would imagine. While the tonal inconsistencies throw Winner off a bit, it is a fascinating companion to 2023’s Reality. Taken together, they give us a look at an average American who made a choice that altered quite a bit of what we know and trust about the government and foreign powers while doing so entertainingly. Winner may be considered inappropriate subject matter for a comedy, but it ends up worth watching for Emilia Jones’s performance alone. Whether you agree with what Reality Winner decided to do or are against it, you will likely learn more about why she did it when you check out this movie.
The post Winner Review: A Star-Studded Indie Based On A True Story appeared first on JoBlo.
It’s been a confusing and chaotic year for Destiny 2. There have been delays, multiple rounds of cuts at Bungie, and a constantly shifting content roadmap of what we’ll be rolled out when. The Final Shape capped off 10 years of storytelling in a way that dazzled diehard players, but now everyone’s wondering what will…
It’s been a confusing and chaotic year for Destiny 2. There have been delays, multiple rounds of cuts at Bungie, and a constantly shifting content roadmap of what we’ll be rolled out when. The Final Shape capped off 10 years of storytelling in a way that dazzled diehard players, but now everyone’s wondering what will…
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice had a phenomenal opening weekend at the box office. The latest film from director Tim Burton managed to bring in over $140 million globally, easily beating the total box office earnings for the original Beetlejuice in just three days.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice had a phenomenal opening weekend at the box office. The latest film from director Tim Burton managed to bring in over $140 million globally, easily beating the total box office earnings for the original Beetlejuice in just three days.
As I’m sure you wonderful gore-hounds know by now, we love every weird and wonderful sub genre the twisted world of horror has thrown our way over the years. Sit this particular horror fan down to watch the latest splatterfest, zombie massacre, creature feature or slasher flick, to name but a few, and I’d be happy as a pig in shit. Happier in fact. Folk horror and witchcraft is one subgenre that I’ve grown to increasingly appreciate over the years, and most recently the work of Robert Eggers, for example, has had me enthralled. It was his 2015 folk horror, The Witch, that first introduced me to his nuanced, macabre yet beautifully crafted movies, and everything he’s produced since has been a must see. The trailer for his take on Nosferatu has just dropped at the time of writing this video and it looks immense. However, with the world of folk horror very much at the forefront of my horror binging recently, I figured what better time to take a look back on a movie that has its roots in witchcraft and folklore, 2005’s The Skeleton Key, starring the very, not almost, famous Kate Hudson, and Peter Sarsgaard. It’s crazy to think that the movie is almost twenty five years old, and from what I remember when I first caught it as a young whipper-snapper, it wasn’t great. But… I was probably too busy rocking out to Metallica and Slayer to fully appreciate some of the movies we’d either catch as a family, or that my friends and I would watch through beer soaked late adolescent eyes, to fully appreciate it. It also received very mixed reviews from what I recall, but time can often be kind to movies such as this one, so let’s find out if it’s an effective horror movie after all, here on WTF happened to The Skeleton Key.
I guess the best place to start before we dive into the movie itself is to establish the difference between voodoo and hoodoo, as the movie’s plot centers mainly on the former, yet there’s often confusion over what the differences actually are. Voodoo, which is also spelled Vodou, Voudou, and Voudon, is an actual religion that is commonly thought to have originated in Haiti, and has roots in West African spiritual traditions. It also has a set of spirits and deities that are worshipped. Hoodoo, on the other hand, differs in that although it doesn’t have any specific deities you must follow, there is still a belief in spirits and life-giving energies. There’s also no organized hierarchy and it doesn’t have the structures generally associated with the more religious voodoo. There have been many weird and wonderful horror movies with voodoo at the forefront of the narrative; The Serpent and the Rainbow and it’s nasty genital mutilation, the once x-rated Angel Heart, classics such as White Zombie from 1932 and yes, even Disney went full voodoo with The Princess and the Frog. All great examples of witchcraft in Hollywood, but it was The Skeleton Key that really embraced the hoodoo side of spiritual practices.
Before we dive into the merits of the movie though, just how exactly did it come about in the first place, and who are the key players involved in its production? The script was written by Ehren Kruger, an American screenwriter and producer who’s probably best known for writing three of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies: Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon and Age of Extinction. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the awesome Top Gun: Maverick and he already had some horror credentials with The Ring and The Ring Two, plus Scream 3 and uncredited rewrites on Scream 4 when Kevin Williamson had to leave the production. On directing duties was English filmmaker Iain Softley whose movies include Backbeat, Hackers, The Wings of the Dove, K-PAX, Inkheart and the BBC adaptation of The Outcast.
As we know, the main protagonists in the movie were played by Kate Hudson and Peter Sarsgaard, who at the time were not necessarily actors who you would associate with the horror genre. The excellent Cameron Crowe coming-of-age drama Almost Famous catapulted Hudson’s stardom, and before she took on hoodoo in The Skeleton Key her most prominent roles were in The Four Feathers, The Divorce and Raising Helen. Peter Sarsgaard is probably best known for his many superb character actor roles, plus some villainous turns also. He first came to prominence in Dead Man Walking which was followed by more substantial roles in The Man in the Iron Mask and Boys Don’t Cry. His career was very much on the ascendency by the time The Skeleton Key was offered to him and like Hudson, it was a great opportunity for him to stretch his acting muscles in a more horror-centric role. The rest of the cast includes the legendary, and sadly late, John Hurt plus roles for Joy Bryant, Gene Rowlands and Jeryl Prescott, to name just a few of the key players.
Almost twenty five years on then, how does the movie hold up and was it well received upon release? Well, I’ll dive into the critical reception of the movie a little later, but from a personal viewpoint, I had a fairly decent time with The Skeleton Key. Mostly. There’s several moments in the film where some of the characters explain that hoodoo only works if you believe in it, and to be fair, the same can be said of the film itself. This kind of horror movie only works if you’re able to suspend your disbelief and buy into the fact that in the real world, hoodoo is able to conjure up all kinds of bad mojo, ghosts and other mildly scary things that go bump in the night. Also, while the script goes to certain lengths to explain that hoodoo is, in fact, quite different to voodoo, what we get doesn’t look quite so different from other black magic thrillers that have preceded this movie. One scene even includes a nightmare where one of the characters resembles a traditional looking voodoo doll. The themes of the occult and the imagery we see are all fairly convincing but don’t add much to the bog standard house with a dark past trope we’ve seen countless times before.
The plot centers on Hudson’s nurse Caroline Ellis, who quits her job to look after John Hurt’s stroke victim Ben Deveraux. Shortly after meeting Ben’s creepy and very suspicious wife, Violet, Caroline discovers a room in the attic full of spells, hair and bones used to practice hoodoo. Violet has warned her about entering the secret room and soon it becomes apparent that Ben may have been affected by it somehow, and that Caroline will also soon become susceptible to a malevolent force in the house. At one point, on a dark, threatening and stormy night, Ben tries to escape the house through a second-story window. Which, let’s be honest, would normally raise all kinds of alarm bells for everyone involved, but remember gore-hounds, we’re suspending our disbelief with these voodoo hoodoo shenanigans. Instead of seeking outside help, Caroline vows to help Ben, mainly due to her own regrets involving her own father’s death.
One thing The Skeleton Key has going for it, is the production design which makes for an atmospheric trip into the ominous and very dark history lurking in the house. There’s a nice amount of attention to detail, and director Softley has obviously done his spooky house homework. However, despite an effective build up of tension, the movie falls into some of the most obvious and overused tropes of the genre; we have the mysterious elderly woman who knows all about the black magic in the attic, boo scares aplenty with characters suddenly appearing in the frame, plus those cheap and ineffective very loud bursts of music at key moments. That shit isn’t scary. It’s lazy writing!
The cast do a good job of bringing the spooky shenanigans to life and while Hudson is a terrific actress, she doesn’t have too much to work with here. Also, while Sarsgaard is as dependable as ever, it’s a shame his other key male co-star, William Hurt, is left with a largely thankless role that seems to be a waste of the late actor’s huge talents. Like I said towards the beginning of this retrospective, I did have fun with the movie but it’s definitely a missed opportunity and should be filed under the category of ‘watch it if it pops up on your streaming service when you’re bored on a Monday night’. It has some decent production values and there’s a nice twist towards the end which, if you’re a clever clogs, you’ll probably spot early on, but overall this one is too tame to satiate this gore-hound.
The Skeleton Key was released in the U.S. on August 12th, 2005, which was a couple of weeks after those lucky folk in the UK, where it opened on July 29th. It made $16.1 million over its opening weekend domestically and went on to gross $47.9 million, which eventually equated to a worldwide haul of $92 million worldwide. There wasn’t a great deal of competition for the film at the time with movies such as Four Brothers, The Dukes of Hazard, Wedding Crashers and Deuce Bigalow: European Bigalow in and around the movie in the box-office charts.
Critically the movie was met with a lukewarm response with Roger Ebert writing that, “The Skeleton Key is one of those movies that explains too much while it is explaining too little, and leaves us with a surprise at the end that makes more sense the less we think about it. But the movie’s mastery of technique makes up for a lot.” The Los Angeles Times were more positive, calling it, “tightly plotted and suspenseful enough to keep you guessing until the satisfying, unexpected end, which is worth suspending disbelief for”. However, The New York Times were less enthused, describing the film as “enjoyably inane”.
Which, I guess is more or less where I stand on the movie and although it’s arguably a waste of the talent involved, I did have some fun with it. But perhaps not for the reasons the filmmakers intended. However, the most important opinion we always love to hear is from YOU guys, so what’s your take on The Skeleton Key? Am I being too harsh on its lazy writing and cheap boo scares, or did the filmmakers craft a thriller with enough tension to merit its hoodoo inspired mythology? Let me know in the comments and I’ll see you wonderful gore-hounds next time. Thanks for watching!
A previous episode of WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
The post The Skeleton Key (2005) – What Happened to This Horror Movie? appeared first on JoBlo.
As a “definitive” edition of the phenomenal 2006 RPG, 2024’s Persona 3 Reload was lacking in a few key features like the 2009 PSP port’s female protagonist route. Still, perhaps the most egregious omission was the lack of The Answer, the meaty, playable epilogue that was included in the 2007 Persona 3 FES re-release.…
As a “definitive” edition of the phenomenal 2006 RPG, 2024’s Persona 3 Reload was lacking in a few key features like the 2009 PSP port’s female protagonist route. Still, perhaps the most egregious omission was the lack of The Answer, the meaty, playable epilogue that was included in the 2007 Persona 3 FES re-release.…
People in the 1930s had it rough. Alongside the Great Depression, one of the most tragic eras in U.S. history, food scarcity was a constant threat while authorities mythologized violent crimes instead of shooting straight with citizens. It’s a good thing there isn’t a deadly dust storm blowing through town while a cold-blooded killer is on the loose. Oh, wait. There is. In Searchlight Pictures’ Hold Your Breath trailer, Sarah Paulson protects her family against the dangers of a relentless storm while a phantom killer runs loose. Grab your masks and hold onto your butts!
Karrie Crouse (Westworld, Com Truise: Propagation, Be Still) and William Joines (The Push, Into the Depths, Fallout), who regularly collaborates with Crouse, direct Hold Your Breath from Crouse’s script. The duo’s period thriller takes place in 1930s Oklahoma amid the region’s horrific dust storms, where a woman believes a sinister presence is threatening her family from the fog of swirling debris.
In today’s Hold Your Breath trailer, Sarah Paulson‘s Margaret Bellum joins a sewing circle with local ladies to pass the time and hear the latest gossip while waiting for a hail of dust storms to pass through town. While catching up, the women inform Margaret about a drifter who’s murdered a mother and her children in cold blood. Margaret prepares for the worst with the killer still on the loose and the dust storm approaching. As the storm begins to blow, Margaret recalls the tale of The Grey Man, a mysterious phantom who, like the dust, can seep through the cracks of your home to do his worst. When the storm comes raging through, Margaret begins to suspect the Grey Man is waiting within the spirals of the grime of soot. Is the Grey Man real, or a figment of Margaret’s imagination as she defends her family from a phantasmal invader?
Amiah Miller and Alona Jane Robbins play Margaret’s daughters, Rose Bellum and Ollie Bellum, respectively. Annaleigh Ashford, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Aron Shiver, Frances Lee McCain, and Courtney Cunningham are primary players in Margaret’s dust-choked delusions.
What do you think about today’s Hold Your Breath trailer? Let us know in the comments section below. Hold Your Breath blows onto Hulu just in time for Spooky Season on October 3, 2024.
The post Sarah Paulson encounters a killer in a deadly fog of dust in the maddening Hold Your Breath trailer appeared first on JoBlo.