Review: "Hereditary"

by Chris Feil

Hereditary gives so much: a bold lead performance from Toni Collette, genuine skin-crawling scares, and a stream of ominously manicured imagery to obsess over on multiple viewings. And yet its mightiest power is how and when it withholds. Layers revealed in its central family mystery only yield more questions and terrifying unreconciled implications on its descent into madness. You think at first the film is keeping you at arm’s length, when really it is picking you up by the shoulders and placing you down precisely where it knows it will unnerve you most. Letting it get its sadistic claws on you is simply one of the year’s essential cinematic experiences.

The feature debut of writer/director Ari Aster, Hereditary is uncommonly patient in delivering on its horrific promises. The film is less of a slow burn than an enticing bear trap, meditatively luring the audience with all of its pieces before suddenly closing its jaws on us with furious velocity. But that’s the thing about nightmares: rarely do they announce their punishment immediately. Hereditary is as wise and calculating as a demon ready to pounce.

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Soundtracking: "Muriel's Wedding"

by Chris Feil

It’s a sad truth that the closest thing we’ve gotten to Toni Collette starring in a screen musical is Muriel’s Wedding (and Connie and Carla, but that's for another day). The forgotten half-truth is that it isn’t the only screen ABBA musical. Sure, Mamma Mia! actually features full blown singing and dancing, but just because Muriel’s Wedding’s musicality exists in the daydreaming of its heroine, that doesn’t mean we’re spared the delights of a slew ABBA’s biggest hits. But the tunes are so crucial to the film’s identity and omnipresent throughout that it’s a huge missed opportunity that Muriel’s inevitable stage adaptation will never be the ABBA jukebox musical that could have been.

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'just link a prayer, your click can take me there... 🎵

• Guardian has a really fascinating interview with Sean Penn about his novel (yes he wrote one), his ex-wives, his humanitarian work, the Me Too movement and more
• AV Club Netflix suggests it's going to back away a bit from its war against the movies... or at least from competing on the awards battlefield. Does this mean they're abandoning their Oscar campaigns? This statement is quite vague.
• Boy Culture connects two of my favorite things of all time: Madonna's "Like a Prayer" phase and... Natalie Wood?
• Time Can Oceans 8 bring back the glamourous caper?

• EW Uma Thurman willing to work with Quentin Tarantino again
• W interviews Grace Jone about her fierceness "I pack a good wallop"
• Variety YES! A24 is planting the seeds for an Oscar campaign for Toni Collette in the horror film Hereditary
• Coming Soon For some reason Monty Python's Spamalot is going to become a movie
• Variety Olivia de Havilland talks about being Cannes very first female jury president decades ago
• Electric Literature "storytelling" in WestWorld and how literary it actually is
• Awards Daily Academy votes to expel Roman Polanski and Bill Cosby
• AV Club Steve Martin and Martin Short are actual best friends
• i09 beautiful posters for King Kong's Broadway musical debut
• Playboy "Hollywood's pansexual moment" - interesting points in this article but I'm really quite annoyed that we've jumped from gay rights to "let not define ourselves and let's explore fluidity" and are acting like homophobia is solved / gays are accepted. There are literally still laws being pushed in the US to discriminate against queer people - even this very week! 

Click to enlargeAvengers Mania
<-- This Captain Marvel poster going around looked so official I thought it was. Apparently it's actually fan art by a Brazilian illustrator Fabio Rodrigues

• Vulture Infinity War facial hair rankings
• Monkey See Glen Weldon coins a genius term for the ending of Avengers: Infinity War. Well worth a close read.
• Crooked Marquee Eric D Snider wins the award for "best headline to an Avengers Infinity War review"
• /Film Black Widow's solo film actively looking for a director (even though no screenplay is written yet. Hmmm)
• AV Film how are we supposed to care about Ant-Man and the Wasp post the brutal ending of Infinity War
• Coming Soon Infinity War has been out just one week and it's already nearly at a billion dollars globally. Jesus.
• Express a very elaborate theory on how Captain Marvel and Ant Man could save the day in Infinity Wars Part 2

Toni Collette meets superfan John Early

Chris here, tiptoeing out of the bubble I've placed myself in to avoid Hereditary plot details. The horror film is coming this summer and, per Sundance audiences, is best entered completely in the blind about its scares - including a raved-to-the-heavens performance from Toni Collette. To get the promotional ball rolling on the film, distrib A24 had Collette sit down for their podcast with none other than genius comedian and noted Collette superfan John Early. To those unawares, one of Early's signature bits is recalling his teenage years when he created a fansite for the actress on GeoCities. Stars, they're just like us!

While A24 seems to be stoking the potential for an Oscar campaign for Collette that some reviews have begged, we'll do our best to keep hopes at bay. (She already pulled off the uncommon feat of an acting nomination for a horror film once, so twice is all the more uncommon.) But I suspect the performance will be one we'll be talking a lot about once the film arrives on June 8. Listen to Toni and John talk fandom and Hereditary here.

New episode of The A24 Podcast tomorrow! @bejohnce tells Toni Collette all about the Geocities fansite he ran for her as a not-yet-openly-gay 13 year-old. Tears are shed, gifts are exchanged, @HereditaryMovie is hyped pic.twitter.com/X9ahUYiMIb

— A24 (@A24) April 25, 2018

"Hereditary" and Toni Collette Lurking

by Chris Feil

This year has made for a quiet Sundance Film Festival, no? While there seems to be less word on major deals and potential Oscar players in the year to come, one premiere that has quickly become must-see material is Ari Aster's horror debut Hereditary. Cryptic reviews have promised genuine genre scares and (much to our excitement) a worthy showcase for Toni Collette. Collette's co-stars include Ann Dowd and Gabriel Byrne.

The film centers on a family after the death of their not-so-beloved grandmother. Her artist daughter (played by Collette) deals with the increasingly spooky fallout...

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