Short Takes Archives | Deep Focus Review

Oh, Hi!

Brian Eggert — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 21:17:54 +0000

“I did a thing,” confesses Molly Gordon’s Iris, the sympathetic if somewhat unhinged protagonist of Oh, Hi!, a familiar, convoluted rom-com that escalates into bad-sitcom level absurdity. When Iris and Isaac (Logan Lerman) escape to a picturesque farmhouse—singing the Dolly Parton-Kenny Rogers duet “Islands in the Stream” in the car like an old married couple—their weekend trip brings some details about their relationship status to light. The “thing” she admits to over the phone, speaking to her best friend Max (Geraldine Viswanathan), is that she has chained Isaac to the headboard and refuses to release him. It started as playful bondage and good sex, until he remarked that he didn’t consider them boyfriend-girlfriend. “I’m not really looking for a relationship,” he says, after four months of dating. And so, Iris has resolved to leave him there, hoping that he might come around after twelve hours or so. This twisted look at modern dating from writer-director Sophie Brooks is the kind of insufferable movie where, if the characters just had a quick conversation to clarify their feelings, they could have avoided everything that follows. But then, of course, there wouldn’t be a movie—meaning Oh, Hi! exists to perpetuate itself. Brooks lays […]

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Predator: Killer of Killers

Brian Eggert — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 04:05:16 +0000

Dan Trachtenberg’s new animated Predator movie will tide fans over until something more substantial comes along. Light on character, heavy on action and gory deaths, Predator: Killer of Killers presents an animated not-quite anthology where the iconic alien hunter faces off against some of history’s fiercest warriors. Conceived by Prey (2022) helmer Trachtenberg and Micho Robert Rutare (Z Nation) and written by the latter, the movie is a showpiece for elaborate fight sequences in a visual style reminiscent of Sony’s Spider-Verse movies. The conceit is little more than the realization of a nerdy conversation: Who would win in a fight between a Predator and a Viking? What about between a Predator and a samurai—or what’s more, a Predator versus a samurai and a ninja? How about in a dogfight between a Predator ship and a US fighter plane from World War II? Well, if you’ve ever wondered about these mashups, Predator: Killer of Killers explores them in a feature that only cracks 80 minutes with the end credits. Co-directed by Trachtenberg and Joshua Wassung (from the animation house The Third Floor), this Hulu original opens with three short chapters. In “The Shield,” a Viking matriarch protects her fledgling warrior son from […]

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Wake Up

Brian Eggert — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 11:13:46 +0000

Anouk and Yoann-Karl Whissell are two-thirds of the French-Canadian director trio RKSS, aka Roadkill Superstars. They helm the new thriller Wake Up, minus their usual partner Francois Simard, but still credited as RKSS. Written by Alberto Marini, the movie doesn’t have the same absurdist comic energy as their post-apocalyptic breakout hit, Turbo Kid (2015), nor the overly nostalgic vibe of their slasher throwback Summer of 84 (2018). But if their latest has anything in common with their earlier features, it’s a tendency to place young people in the path of bloody danger. Wake Up is a mostly humorless independent production set in the present day, following a group of young people whose sole purpose seems to be supplying human fodder for the movie’s body count. But with a short runtime (under 76 minutes, not including credits), it’s barely a feature and doesn’t leave a lasting impression. A group of six activists breaks into a superstore to vandalize the place in protest of its policies, armed with paintball guns, animal masks, and vaguely stated ideals. They plan to trash the store and send a message about its unethical products. Their personalities and identities are beside the point; the movie hardly explores them, […]

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Freaky Tales

Brian Eggert — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 12:59:16 +0000

“Oakland in ‘87 was hella wild.” After their MCU experience with Captain Marvel (2019), filmmaker duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck explore a punkish ode to Oakland in Freaky Tales, an anthology set in 1987 that doubles as an homage to the green-glowing alien energy of Repo Man (1984). Adopting a nonlinear structure of overlapping stories, clearly derived from Pulp Fiction (1994), this out-there affair has a delightfully rebellious energy and haphazard style that could hardly be called consistent. However, the slipshod result offers plenty of throwback fun, whether exploring music battles or the cinematic joy of seeing neo-Nazis receive their comeuppance, even if the filmmakers’ influences prove too obvious to feel original, inspired, or even particularly innovative. The four tales offer thematic throughlines and recurring characters, such as Ben Mendelsohn’s creepy racist cop; Sleepy Floyd (Jay Ellis), the NBA player and spokesperson for Psytopics, a school for mastering cosmic energy; and several references to “that actor from Oakland,” Tom Hanks, who makes a brief cameo. Otherwise, Oakland remains the main connective tissue. In the first story, a community of anti-fascist punk rockers defend their club from a gang of skinhead neo-Nazis (think Green Room, 2016), using force that might […]

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Better Man

Brian Eggert — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:02:35 +0000

Note: Paramount Pictures will release Better Man in theaters on December 25. If, a few weeks ago, you had asked me to pick Britpop star Robbie Williams out of a lineup, I wouldn’t have been able to. Through some twisted set of circumstances, I have lived over four decades on this planet without ever hearing his name or being exposed to his music, neither through the boy band Take That nor his solo career. So, the conceit of his musical biopic, Better Man, where Williams appears throughout represented by a CGI ape—in a style recalling this century’s Planet of the Apes series—hardly landed with the same confronting force that I suspect a longtime superfan would have experienced. Instead, the film follows a similar trajectory as most biographies about pop stars. They all seem to rise from humble beginnings, persevere through their issues with their rocky upbringing to achieve fame, squander their celebrity on drugs and bad behavior, and then make a comeback after cleaning up their act. Better Man follows the same path, though the apish hook lends some novelty to this otherwise standard but well-made biopic. Directed by Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman, 2017), the movie’s introspective yet critical approach harkens […]

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Get Away

Brian Eggert — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 13:36:28 +0000

Dutch genre filmmaker Steffen Haars reteams with Nick Frost, his star of this year’s far superior ’90s sitcom satire Krazy House, for another bloody and chaotic comedy called Get Away. But unlike most movies in Haars’ oeuvre, he doesn’t share directing and writing duties with Flip Van der Kuil; rather, after years of collaborating with other writers, Frost provides his first solo screenplay. And the concept is killer: In 1824, on the (fictional) Swedish island of Svälta—the original title and a word that, fittingly, means famine—a flu pandemic led to an island quarantine, and the remote inhabitants resorted to cannibalism to survive. Today, they commemorate their history with the Karantan festival. The Smith family from the UK visits the island for a vacation, and despite grim warnings from local harbingers not to go, they plan to watch the famous play staged for the festival. Of course, the residents have some dark secrets, placing the Smith family at risk of becoming a sacrifice, or worse, lunch. Frost plays Richard, who shares a macabre enthusiasm for the Svälta holiday with his wife, Susan (Aisling Bea). Her ancestor died on the island, though Frost’s script doesn’t make much of this detail. Their older […]

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Your Monster

Brian Eggert — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 03:55:45 +0000

Your Monster is “Based on a Trueish Story.” Director Caroline Lindy wrote the screenplay after she was dumped via text while in the hospital. Lindy’s debut feature, an expansion of her 2020 short, could be described as a blend of two 1991 films: it’s Drop Dead Fred meets Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. A delightful Melissa Barrera plays Laura, a would-be musical performer whose selfish, wannabe Broadway-director boyfriend, Jacob (Edmund Donovan), leaves her while she’s recovering in the hospital from cancer surgery because, he says, “I need time for me.” Dejected and in a low place, she returns home to discover the monster who lived under her bed and in her closet as a child is back. Known simply as Monster (Tommy Dewey), he’s charming and sort of attractive, in the same way that some find the animated Beast sort of cute. They agree to share the space as temporary roommates and then lovers, all in an elaborate mental-break-of-a-movie. The story plays out with the usual romantic comedy beats, particularly of the Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) rebound romance variety. Laura distracts herself from the agony of abandonment by becoming closer to Monster, who turns out to be the perfect guy. […]

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The Outrun

Brian Eggert — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:41:13 +0000

Director Nora Fingscheidt’s film of Amy Liptrot’s 2016 memoir, The Outrun, showcases Saoirse Ronan’s considerable talent. Ronan plays a fictionalized version of the author, named Rona, who returns from London to her childhood home in Orkney, a Scottish archipelago, to recover from her substance addiction. Fingscheidt adapts alongside Liprot and screenwriter Daisy Lewis, employing a nonchronological structure that echoes Rona’s fragmented mind into an impressionistically edited and presented piece of filmmaking. Liptrot’s book reportedly contains a blend of self-examination and intermittent biological facts, and the same is true here, including Rona’s symbolic voiceover about Nature—such as the percentage of DNA shared among humans, cucumbers, and jellyfish. The Outrun plays as an earnest and personal expression that dabbles in familiar dramatic banalities, albeit using a faux-Malickian style. Notable for Ronan’s performance, the film doesn’t leave much impact beyond what she brings to the screen. Rona first appears bruised and battered, going through the intake process to get treatment for the alcoholism that has destabilized her life. Throughout Fingscheidt’s film, she and editor Stephan Bechinger create an evocative form that leaps around through time, like someone grabbing puzzle pieces at random to assemble a picture of how they ended up where they […]

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Wolfs

Brian Eggert — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 02:57:06 +0000

At one point in Wolfs, a mobster unleashes a storm of bullets at George Clooney and Brad Pitt, shouting, “You’re not wolfs! You’re buddies!” That’s the central idea of director Jon Watts’ new movie for Apple TV+. The premise involves two “lone wolf” fixers for the criminal underworld—think of Harvey Keitel’s The Wolf from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994), and you’ll get the idea. Clooney and Pitt’s characters have similar reputations to each other. “There’s nobody who can do what I do,” they both say. Each thinks they have a unique skill set to dispose of bodies or generally make problems go away for the rich, powerful, and well-connected. After they meet under precarious circumstances, their initial petty rivalry and competitive streak evolve over the course of one evening when they’re forced to work together until, eventually, they become pals. Given its leading men and the familiar criminal milieu, the result should exude charm and entertainment value to spare. However, it’s all rather flavorless, unexceptional, and devoid of anything memorable. Watts, who has been making entertaining Spider-Man movies for the MCU since 2017, returns to his roots in pulpy criminal fare such as Cop Car (2015) with this slick, star-studded […]

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Daddio

Brian Eggert — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 02:23:21 +0000

Originally developed as a stage drama, Christy Hall’s directing debut, Daddio, plays like a movie version of HBO’s 1990s phenomenon, Taxicab Confessions. It’s a naturally dramatic arena. The spatial limitations of a cab ride, coupled with an extended period alone with a stranger, make for a distinct stage on which one can let their guard down and reveal hidden aspects of their inner lives to someone they’ll likely never see again. Pulling off a feature-length narrative in this setting, with just two actors in a confined space for 101 minutes, is an accomplishment. However, the content of Hall’s spec script proves too familiar and somewhat generic; though, her assured direction and the measured pacing denote an evident talent at work. The film is a showcase for its two leads, but above all else, it’s impressive for how cinematographer Phedon Papamichael and editor Lisa Zeno Churgin make the limited scale feel visually alive and unrepetitive, and watching the ensuing conversation feels more engaging than it might be without its technique. In a situation that might seem impossible for those of us who find taxis or rideshare conversations awkward, an unnamed woman, played by Dakota Johnson, gets a cab from JFK International […]

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