DOMESTIC VIOLENCE; THE MOODY BLUES

Opening today:

The Housemaid--Desperate for a job, Millie, played by Sydney Sweeney, applies as a maid to a rich young housewife and Mom, Nina, living in a spacious Long Island manse. At first Nina (Amanda Seyfried) is impossibly nice, friendly and welcoming, but within a day of starting the gig, it's clear she's given to scary acting out. Her hubby Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) is both hunkalicious and solicitously apologetic for his wife's behavior, while their daughter Cece  (Indiana Elle) is aloof, to say the least. There's a creepy groundskeeper (Michele Morrone) skulking around as well, glaring at Millie but not speaking.

Also, the door to Millie's snug little A-frame garret bedroom locks from the outside, not from the inside.

All of this would be more than enough for most people to see that they should get the hell out while the getting is good on day one. But director Paul Feig and screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshire, adapting the smash 2022 novel by Frieda McFadden, give Millie understandable reasons to stay in her place. Both Nina's outbursts and the attraction between Millie and Andrew escalate.

This feels something like a contemporary spin on the "hag horror" classics of the '60s, like Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, and also of later domestic thrillers like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Single White Female. Feig tightens the tension skillfully and then, in the last third or so of the film, executes a pretty good twist.

It's probably a hair longer than it needs to be, and it's hard to say how much scrutiny the plot logic could bear. But it's a polished production, the three leads are improbably pretty, and the rip-snorting gothic comeuppances of the homestretch are satisfying. I understand it's hard to get good help these days, but on balance, this Housemaid gets a good letter of reference.

Then again, before I start complaining that The Housemaid is too long, maybe I should consider it in comparison to...

Avatar: Fire and Ash--On the long list of James Cameron's strengths as a filmmaker, knowing when to quit is notably absent. Toward the end of Cameron's 1994 True Lies, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis kiss while a mushroom cloud erupts in the distance behind them. Most directors would grasp that this meant the movie was over; Cameron insisted on one last grapple on a harrier jet. He's like a little kid who wants to keep playing army when it's time to go home for dinner.

This trait--and I'm clearly in the minority for considering it a weakness--reaches an apex in this third Avatar epic, Avatar: Fire and Ash, which runs to well over three hours, well over an hour longer than Citizen Kane. It's the next clash between exploitative colonizing humans and the Na'vi, the tall, tailed, blue, holistic, new-agey inhabitants of the lush, idyllic distant world Pandora. I'd say it was the climactic clash, but apparently two more sequels are planned.

As someone who liked but didn't love the first Avatar, back in 2009, and also as one who tends to get grumpier the longer a movie runs over two hours, I must admit I wasn't the ideal target audience for this. So perhaps it carries extra weight when I say that I found it...well, too long, certainly, but still a compelling sci-fi spectacle, loaded with grand scenes that recall sources as venerable as the New and Old Testaments.

The dialogue isn't poetry ("Dude, they're fighting!") but the dialogue isn't the point; the shimmering, immersive visuals and mythic yarnspinning are what the movie is for. In the last hour or so I was fully invested; I wanted to see the good guys win and the bad guys lose.

Among many others, Sam Worthington, Stephen Lang and Sigourney Weaver--particularly good as a starry-eyed young Na'vi--lend their voices and motion-capture presences to the movie; Giovanni Ribisi, Jemaine Clement and Edie Falco are amusing among the humans. But easily the most striking performance is by Oona Chaplin as Varang, a hissing warrior Na'vi who sides with the earthlings against our heroes. She's fierce and seductive.

The Na'vi always remind me of blue-skinned Anne Coulters; nevertheless they have a certain glamour and sexiness. My favorite Na've trait was their ears; I love how they move expressively when they speak, or even change expression. If there was an Oscar for best ears, Fire and Ash would be a shoo-in.

INHALE FELLOW

Exclusively, for now, in theaters:

Don't Breathe 2--The 2016 shocker Don't Breathe was, essentially, Wait Until Dark in reverse. Three thieves break into the home of a blind person, but this time, they discover that he's an ex-Navy Seal with murderous skills that compensate for his blindness and then some, and that he knows the turf and they don't. The crooks find themselves fighting for their lives.

It was a gruesome but gripping and witty tale, and it was built around a stunning performance, by Stephen Lang as The Blind Man. The veteran Lang has long seemed to me like a great actor who's never quite had a great role, and with The Blind Man he elevated this movie's Grand Guignol corn, as if by force of acting will, to an almost Shakespearean level.

For this sequel, co-written and directed by the Uruguayan Rodo Sayagues (who co-wrote the original), The Blind Man has been made the hero, more or less; this time he's fighting to rescue an adolescent girl, Phoenix (Madelyn Grace), from a cadre of slimy creeps connected to human-organ trafficking. Although he wreaks gory havoc on the bad guys, his character is softened by comparison to the earlier film. This inevitably results in a shrinking of Lang's power, though he's still unforgettably baleful.

 

And Don't Breathe 2, like the first film, has an outrageous and unsavory plot twist that you aren't likely to see coming. But be forewarned: it's hideously violent, and animals are among the targets. Despite this, however, the movie does have a notably reverent attitude toward dogs; The Blind Man is reluctant to kill a dog even when his life may depend upon it, and the dog doesn't fail to reward his consideration.

BLIND RAGE

Opening this weekend:

Don’t Breathe—It’s sort of like Wait Until Dark in reverse: Three crooks are in a blind person’s home, but this time they’re the victims and the blind person is the menace.

Like the 2014 chiller It Follows, this shocker is set in the deserted economic wasteland of Detroit. It follows a trio of attractive young burglars (Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette and Daniel Zovatto) who learn of a blind guy living in the last occupied home in his ghost-town neighborhood, and reportedly sitting on a fortune.

They get into the once-beautiful, now fortified house, and discover that the man in question (Stephen Lang), an Iraq war veteran with, apparently, some specialized training, may be sightless, but he isn’t helpless, and has reasons beyond protecting his money to want them not to escape. They’re soon fighting for their lives.

Directed by the Uruguayan Fede Alvarez from a script he wrote with Rodo Sayagues, Don’t Breathe has some obligatory scenes early on meant to make us sympathize with the robbers. From there, though, it gets off to a sensational start—tense, atmospheric, simultaneously poignant and grimly funny.

After a while, the strain of maintaining its rather narrow central premise starts to show, but just as the complications are starting to seem contrived, Alvarez and Sayagues throw us an unsavory, messed-up plot twist that I didn’t see coming. And then, just as that’s sunk in, they throw us an even more unsavory, more messed-up plot twist that I really didn’t see coming. How plausible it all is, I can’t say, but it’s nasty and wild and I, at least, hadn’t seen it before.

Jane Levy and Dylan Minnette are likable (Zovatto is odious, on purpose), but what elevates the film from mere skillful lurid thrills is Stephen Lang. With only a few lines, spoken in a disused croak, and his craggy face adorned in a regal halo of silver-gray hair, he brings a Shakespearean bearing to this boogeyman part. The veteran Lang is a great actor who’s never quite had a great movie role, but through sheer force of his presence he makes this one come pretty close.

Opening in the Valley at Harkins Shea, and also available on DirecTV:

 Morris From America— Markees Christmas plays the title role in this coming-of-age tale. He’s a 13-year-old black kid from New York living with his widowed dad (Craig Robinson) in Heidelberg, Germany.

An aspiring rapper whose chubby cheeks undercut his attempt at a badass scowl, Morris is a miserable stranger in a strange land but, encouraged by his Dad, he gamely tries to make some German friends, and catches the interest of a flirtatious blond (Lina Keller). She probably honestly likes him well enough, but she really likes his potential to upset her mother. She gets Morris into mischief, with his eager consent.

Simply and tightly written and directed by Chad Hartigan, Morris From America is one of the funnier and sweeter films I’ve seen this year. Christmas makes an impressive movie debut as Morris, and he shows a nice rapport with Carla Juri as his German tutor. But the standout performance is by Craig Robinson as his Dad, trying to communicate with his kid, wanting him to experience life while knowing full well that he’s having the sort of adventures that terrify parents—trying, simply, to stay calm.

In the opening scene, the Dad, an old-school rap nut himself, tells Morris that he’s grounded, on the charge of “liking terrible music.” I wasn’t aware that this was a parental prerogative. Good to know.