From writers Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach, directed by Christopher Landon, comes Drop, a thriller about a woman on the first blind date since her husband died. But when she gets a mysterious and intimidating ‘drop’ to her phone, everyone in their restaurant becomes a suspect in a game of cat and mouse that threatens the life of her son.
The movie starts at high octane, showing abused Violet (Meghann Fahy) crawling for her life away from her abusive husband. There’s a jump cut to present day, where Violet is now a counselor for abused women. Violet gets ready for a date, propelled out the door by her sister (Violett Beane), who has come over to babysit Violet’s son (Jacob Robinson). Meeting Henry (Brandon Sklenar) at a posh, highrise restaurant, the evening seems off to a great start for Violet, until she receives repeated ‘drops’ on her phone from someone in the restaurant, which quickly escalate in intimidation. She’s advised to check her home’s security cameras, which show a man, armed with a handgun, in her house, threatening her sister’s and son’s lives. She’s instructed to keep it secret from Henry, who seems to be the real target of the mysterious plan.
Drop reminded me of Hitchcock’s movies, where the suspense came from the story and the camerawork. Most of the movie takes place at the restaurant, where the claustrophobia of the situation closes in on Fahy’s Violet. The drops are show as text overlays on the surrounding setting, but not in a distracting way. The flashbacks to Violet’s past, to that final night with her husband, serve to add context to the story and Violet’s character and are worked in a way that seems organic rather than forced. The climax and resolution are thrilling and satisfying, just as they should be.
All in all, I can definitely recommend seeing this movie. Suspenseful and original, it feels both classic in what it obviously owes to previous generations of thrillers and modern in its incorporation of technology into its story.
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From writer/director Ryan Coogler comes Sinners, a period piece set in 1932 Mississippi, about twins who have come back to their hometown to open a juke joint. But as the sun goes down, out of the shadows comes a white man, whose eyes glow malevolently in the gathering darkness.
The story starts with a voice narrating over animated drawings, telling us that some musicians have a gift to reach beyond their current moment in time, uniting present with past and future, but that this same talent can serve as a call to evil beings. We then are introduced to Sammie Moore (Miles Caton), who drives into a town, gets out of his car, revealing his clothes are covered in blood, and goes into a church while clutching the broken neck of a guitar. The people in the church recognize him and the pastor (Saul Williams), later revealed to be Sammie’s father, exhorts him to put the guitar down. Sammie seems torn, on the edge of complying, when we jump back to the previous day. After such a compelling opener that sets the tone of the story with its animation and narration, I found this in media res scene to be unnecessary. But that’s literally my only negative criticism of this movie.
It’s Sammie’s amazing guitar playing that summons the evil being (Jack O’Connell), but he often takes a backseat to his identical twin cousins, Smoke and Stack (Michael B Jordan). Arrived back in in their Mississippi delta hometown, the twins are at once easily confident and suave as well as brutal. Their past as soldiers and gangsters is alluded to constantly. It’s their dream of owning and operating a juke joint for the sharecroppers of the delta that serves as the crux of the story’s overt conflict, as well as its subtextual racial tensions.
I feel like I lack the cultural orientation to fully appreciate the movie, being a middle-aged white guy. But I also feel like stories like these are exactly what makes stories important to begin with: the chance to experience another perspective, another mindset, another time and place. The chance to appreciate that love is the same, that heartache is the same. This is a great movie, with a lot to get out of after multiple viewings. I saw it in IMAX, at the encouragement of a colleague of mine, and can say that the experience is definitely worth it.
The Chimerical Dark 