Imogen Poots – Tripping Through Gateways

Welcome to Christmas time at Hawthorne College. As people are getting ready to leave for break, sorority girls are disappearing. Riley is in her senior year and trying to still come to terms with being raped by a popular frat boy years earlier. She came forward and was not believed. Her best friend Kris is a crusading feminist, leading the cause to get the literature Professor fired. This has the girls a bit on the outs with the male class. It is made all the worse when at a party, the girls call out Riley’s rapist publicly.

The second remake of the Bob Clark classic avoids the biggest mistakes of the previous remake by really not being a remake at all. This is a new take with a different type of killer.

Other than a sorority and a college setting, there is little in common with Bob Clark’s original or the previous remake. And there are some real positives.

I really enjoyed the chemistry of the leads. I was able to buy their friendships. There are some great visuals taking full advantage of the college’s architecture and setting. And the adding of the gender politics angle is not as obtrusive as some one think (the irony being the folks most offended by the film are already echoing the villains). The film is pretty basic feminist theory, the kind that rankles guys like Stefan Molyneux. So, yeah, if you are set off by stuff like “the patriarchy” and references to “rape culture”? I suppose that you might struggle with this film.

The biggest flaw is that male characters never feel fleshed out enough to make sense beyond their stereotypical frat boys. The only exceptions are the boyfriend of sorority girl Marty, Nate and Landon… a polite love interest for Riley. They are, throughout the film portrayed and decent guys. Then there is Cary Elwes’ Professor Gelson. He is a character that could have been a great bit of misdirection. He is, after all, soft spoken and seemingly gentle. But the film also makes it clear from the start his bone to pick is related to the “Conflict of the Sexes”. And oddly, he just seems like such an empty character.

Overall, this is an okay slasher film. And if you are going to make more Black Christmas films? Maybe an anthology franchise of horror stories set at Christmas is the way to go. This is not a classic, (and face it, will be flattened by Jumanji the Next Level and Frozen 2) but it is a serviceable horror film.

I confess, for several years I was pretty lukewarm on Andy Samberg. I recall not finding Hot Rod all that funny. Over the years, I have been convinced I was wrong about Samberg. Especially with his hilarious performance as Detective Jake Peralta on Brooklyn 9-9 (easily one of my favorite comedies from the past few years). In fact, I am thinking of revisiting Hot Rod to see if my feelings on that film have changed.

I was unsure about Popstar, because while the trailers did look funny, I worried it would be unable to sustain the gag. Popstar is about popular pop artist Conner. Conner is from a popular boy band Style Boyz. He went solo and was propelled to even greater success, while his bandmates had…less success.

His second album is a critical and sales failure. He attempts to sustain his career as incident after incident makes it clear his is crashing and burning severely. While Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is not a wholly original idea, it is well crafted. Samberg and writer/directors Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone have packed the film so tightly with jokes, it overcomes the fairly pedestrian plot.

Samberg’s very clueless and shallow Conner somehow manages to still be likable. And this is where the movie shines. Its satire of the world of entertainment is simple but effective. The film could have overstayed it’s welcome, but they clearly knew when to cut a gag or scene that was unnecessary. Just under an hour and a half, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping has a high rate of jokes that hit their mark. I was laughing throughout the film.

Samberg is supported by a strong cast of comedy veterans, such as Tim Meadows (who seems to have comfortably slid into the straight man role) as Conner’s hard working manager. Chris Redd is very funny as Hunter, a rapper on the rise that is opening for Conner’s shows(he tells Conner, “I wanna be you, kind of, but not white. Like black still, ’cause it’s strong. It’s a strong color.”) and then starts to overshadow Conner.

Popstar was an unexpected comedy pleasure for me, delivers a load of laughter.

Green Room is one of Anton Yelchin’s final films. The story is simple. Pat and his friends are in a punk band. When their show falls through, they get a new gig in a remote club. They discover it is a Neo-Nazi bar. When they stumble upon a terrible crime, it is a fight for survival.

Once things start, the film is unrelentingly intense as the band fights for survival, along with a young woman who may or may not be on there side. The film is full of surprises and the performances are great. Yelchin’s performance as Pat (who starts out a quiet and peaceable young man then forced to fight) is solidly sympathetic. The absolute stand out is Patrick Stewart. As the head of the Neo-Nazi group, Darcy, he is unnervingly menacing. I am used to the kindly and wise characters Stewart has played for over two decades. None of that is here. He is cruel, manipulative and lethally skilled.

Imogen Poot’s plays Amber as a mystery. Is she trying to help the band, or is she actually devoted to Darcy and his crew?

The film takes many twists and turns, constantly giving you hope for success only to have it taken away in a shocking moment. Writer/Director Jeremy Saulnier shows a real understanding for creating tension. His first feature film, Murder Party was an amusing horror/comedy about a lonely guy invited to a costume party that turns out to be a a group of psychopaths who invite people to hunt and kill. Using a similar premise of innocents trapped by psychopaths, he trades in humor for intensity.

Green Room is a tense and exciting thriller that keeps the viewer engaged right up to the end.

Tag: Imogen Poots

Slash the Patriarchy (Black Christmas, 2019)

The Gift of Music (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, 2016)

Green Room Serenade (Green Room, 2016)