MEAT PUPPETS

In theaters this weekend:

Stopmotion--The peculiar low-tech magic of stop-motion animation has always been one of the special delights of cinema for me; it's one of the reasons I became a movie lover as a child. Because of the work of masters like Willis O'Brien, Jim Danforth, Karel Zeman and the great Ray Harryhasuen, the labor-intensive, expensive technique is often associated with whimsical fantasy or science fiction. But it can be used for nightmarish horror as well, and this nasty, self-referential British chiller, directed by Robert Morgan from a script he wrote with Robin King, takes us to that dark side.

Ella (Aisling Franciosi) is the daughter of famous stop-motion animator Suzanne (Stella Gonet), and an animator herself.  Because she no longer has the use of her hands, Suzanne directs Ella in painstakingly manipulating her puppets; she refers to Ella herself by the affectionate--or maybe not so affectionate--nickname of "puppet," and she's quietly, passive-aggressively tyrannical toward her, constantly unsatisfied with her work, constantly demanding retakes. Ella would like to contribute her own ideas to her mother's work, yet when asked what these ideas are she's stymied, daunted by Suzanne's greatness. 

But when Suzanne falls into a coma, Ella meets a nervy little girl (Caoilinn Springall) in her building who talks her into abandoning Suzanne's project--a traditional tale involving a cyclops--and starting a new stop-motion film based on a storyline she suggests. It involves a terrified girl fleeing through the forest and taking refuge in a cabin, stalked by a hideous figure called the Ashman. She also insists Ella start using actual dead animal parts, and worse, over her armatures. Before long Ella is haunted by visions, some of them pretty hair-raising, of the gruesome characters in her film.

The live action side of Stopmotion has a strong streak of Cronenberg-esque "body horror," while the stop-motion sequences show the influence of Jan Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers. It's a potent one-two punch of creepiness. This is one of those movies where the line between dreams and reality isn't always certain, but Morgan keeps enough of a coherent narrative that this doesn't become tiresome, and there are freaky erotic touches, as when Ella is having sex, and fingers her lover's back as she would a stop-motion puppet.

Like many films of this sort, when Stopmotion shifts to overtly murderous, gory grapples in its last half-hour or so, it loses some of its macabre potency. But Franciosi, who played the stowaway in The Last Voyage of the Demeter, is a compelling presence, and on the whole, this is one of the more memorable horror pictures in a while. The only real complaint is the same one that applies to most films that showcase stop-motion: there isn't enough stop-motion.

MY COUNTRY, 'TIS OF THEOCRACY

Now playing at Harkins Shea:

God & Country--Produced by Rob and Michele Reiner and directed by Dan Partland, this documentary about Christian Nationalism in American politics is impassioned but lucid and not hysterical. Based on Katharine Stewart's book The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, the movie is presented as a warning to secular or non-evangelical citizens for whom the propaganda and political agenda of that movement may be largely invisible.

The talking heads here are mostly Christians themselves, ranging from Russell Moore to Reza Aslan to Jemar Tisby to Kristin Kobes du Mez to Sister Simone Campbell to Bishop William J. Barber II to Veggie Tales co-creator Phil Vischer. They speak calmly, even a little sheepishly, but firmly and with an indisputable insider's perspective, and their message is: Christian Nationalism isn't about religious practice; it's about amassing political power.

It's not exactly breaking news when we're informed that Christian Nationalists are terrified of and enraged by feminism, LGBTQ rights, secular education, uncensored libraries and abortion rights, or that the movement is historically connected to racism and segregation. But too many people may not grasp the degree to which Christian Nationalism's ultimate aim is a non-democratic, Christian-supremacist America, and the startling degree to which it's making progress.

In support of this, Partland shows us copious clips of wild-eyed rants by Evangelical heavy hitters stating these aims in no uncertain terms. A comedic highlight comes when, in the midst of one of the movie's many montages of preachers bleating and screeching, we see Robert Jeffress say, with a straight face, "We cannot be silent any longer!"

Partland also works to debunk some of Christian Nationalism's favorite falsehoods, notably that America was intended by the Founders as a "Christian Nation" or that the Separation of Church and State is not found in the Constitution. Attorney and author Andrew Seidel observes here that true religious freedom is impossible without Separation of Church and State.

By way of emphasizing its urgency, the movie also notes that Christian Nationalists were central agents of the January 6 Insurrection, despite the irony of President 45 as the object of their veneration. "When I was a young Evangelical minister," notes Faith and Action founder Rob Schenck, "we used Donald Trump as a sermon illustration for everything a Christian should not be."

God & Country shares a twofold difficulty with many other worthy progressive political documentaries. First, though well-organized and smoothly edited, it's full of unavoidable footage of the likes of Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell, Paul Weyrich, Greg Locke, Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, Kenneth Copeland and Paula White, not to mention 45 himself, that can be painful for many of us to watch no matter how necessary. Secondly, many of the people who most need to see this movie probably won't watch it. To employ a more than usually apt cliché, it's preaching to the choir.

COMMUNITY FEST

Check out my short column, online at Phoenix Magazine, about this year's edition of the Greater Phoenix Jewish Film Festival...

...February 18 through March 3 at three different Harkins Theatres around the Valley.

WHAT A STITCH

Opening this weekend:

Lisa Frankenstein--Our teenage heroine's misfortunes start with her name: Lisa Swallows. She's survived the murder of her mother by a masked maniac, and the remarriage of her father into a new family, complete with a tirelessly perky stepsister, and her transfer to a new school. The understandably morbid-minded, socially awkward, vaguely Goth Lisa spends her spare time in an abandoned cemetery, tending the grave of a long-departed young fellow on whose romantic-looking memorial statue she has a bit of a crush.

The young man is jolted back to something like life by a lighting bolt, but he's still a moldered corpse until Lisa starts supplying him with new body parts, obtained from irksome people who end up dead around her. This process involves needle and thread, and a terribly strange tanning bed. With each new addition, The Creature becomes a bit, well, hunkier. 

Released just in time for Valentine's Day--and for the February Island of Misfit Movies dump--this off-the-wall teen horror comedy-romance, directed by Zelda Williams from a script by Diablo Cody, is every bit as broad and silly as it sounds, but in a good way. Cody has attempted horror before, with the misfired Jennifer's Body in 2009. This one works better, even though it's uneven and sloppy at times, and the story makes less sense than that of the earlier film. This may even be part of the reason it works better; the wispy, nonsensical plot makes no claim that it's anything but a pretext for Cody's ornately loopy dialogue, and for some good-natured gross-outs.

And, more importantly, it's a pretext for the acting. Cole Sprouse manages to be both bestial and Byronic as the revived Creature, and he may have the best aggrieved monster moans since Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein. Carla Gugino hams it up as the self-adoring wicked stepmother, and Liza Soberano, as the stepsister Taffy, is a charming surprise; in a characteristic touch of Cody generosity, she's allowed be genuinely instead of insincerely sweet.

But what really makes Lisa Frankenstein worthwhile is Kathryn Newton. Her performance is a comedic tour de force, at least as good as her riotous turn in 2020's Freaky, layered and mannered and truly funny, with the puckish slyness of the young Susan Sarandon. Newton could be the next big scream queen, not because she does a lot of screaming, but because she's a scream.

Also, this movie is a period piece, circa 1989. It's remarkable how refreshing it is to see a teen flick without a cell phone in sight.

ARGYLLE SUCKS

Okay, it doesn't totally suck; I just really wanted to use that headline.

Opening in theaters this weekend:

Argylle--For about the first half or so of this action comedy, our heroine Elly is pulled through chases and shootouts, squealing in girlish fright. Played by Bryce Dallas Howard, Elly is an author of popular spy thrillers featuring the flawlessly suave secret agent man Argylle, represented in her mind's eye by Henry Cavill.

One day on an Amtrak train she's accosted by Aidan (Sam Rockwell), a scruffy obnoxious guy who tells her that she's in grave danger, as her books are proving prophetic in real-world counterintelligence. Within seconds Aidan is defending her, and her put-upon Scottish Fold cat Alfie, from countless assassins in extended, cartoony hand-to-hand and gun combat, all the while dispensing reassurance and encouragement, and she's swept off into a globetrotting adventure.

You may recall that this was the central gag in the lame 2010 comedy Night and Day, with Cameron Diaz as the civilian and Tom Cruise as the hypercompetent and comically supportive secret agent man. Rockwell's woebegone manner is funnier and more agreeable than that of Cruise, but even so too much of this film feels derivative of previous spy parodies, both recent and vintage, from 2022's Bullet Train to the Mission: Impossible and Bourne flicks, and beyond. As in many of those films, the preposterously over-choreographed action scenes carry no real emotional weight, and I found the first part of the movie pretty tedious.

It started to grow on me after a while, though. The stars help; I've long been inclined to approve of Howard, with her lush pin-up beauty and her sweetness, and as Elly delves deeper into the case and gains more confidence, Howard is able to overcome the condescending hysterical woman stereotype she's forced to play along with early on. And she and the self-assured sad sack Rockwell play off each other nicely and without phony bickering.

The supporting cast is also top-notch; director Matthew Vaughn and screenwriter Jason Fuchs would have to work hard to prevent Bryan Cranston, as the fed-up evil kingpin, or Samuel L. Jackson as another spy boss, or the great Catherine O'Hara, pestering Elly to spend a weekend with Mom, from giving the audience any amusement. Along with Cavill's Argylle, the movie offers such overtly glamorous types as Jon Cena and Dua Lipa and Sofia Boutella and Ariana DeBose and Richard E. Grant, and they add another layer of drollery.

But just about the time I was loosening up and starting to think that Argylle was pretty good after all, it overplays its hand in the way of so many contemporary action blockbusters, shoveling one exhaustingly explosive finale after another at us. At two hours and twenty minutes it's at least thirty minutes too long. After a while you might start wondering if the movie has ended, and you're already a half-hour into Argylle 2.