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The five worst films of 2024

"Joker Folie a Deux." Photo via Warner Bros.

When we asked our Screens columnist, Justin Humphreys to do a round-up of the year’s movies, he made his feelings clear: “I’m going to have to be very honest and say how precious few good movies there were this year.”  His top five losers are below.

Joker Folie a Deux

Nicknamed Joker Filet-o-Fish online, few movies of 2024 deserve being mocked more than Joker Folie a Deux or have so richly earned their immense commercial failure. The first Joker was a lame facsimile of Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, minus the genius of those films. In this sequel that nobody wanted, even the creepy incels who flock to dreary, adolescent comic book fare like this stayed away in droves. With this sequel, and last year’s Napoleon, star Joaquin Phoenix gives every indication of having forgotten how to act.

Madame Web

A spinoff of the hit Spider-Man movies, Madame Web follows superheroine Madame Web, alias Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson), who desperately uses her precognitive powers to save three women. That this clairvoyant is named Cassandra Webb gives you an idea of the level of wit at work here. (To her eternal credit, Johnson was openly dismissive of the film.) This is another silly superhero battle royale with slick, overdone fights and wisecracks. If you want to see an outstanding movie about someone glimpsing future events, watch David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone instead. Aside from being among the finest Stephen King book adaptations, it also cost a tiny fraction of what was squandered on Madame Web.

Borderlands

Director Eli Roth has shifted here from his usual ’80s throwback torture porn to torturing audiences instead. Over $100 million was spent on adapting the popular video game Borderlands, including casting Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Hart, Cate Blanchett, and Ariana Greenblatt, and reportedly set to lose over $80 million. This dumb, loud, unfunny science fiction mess makes you wonder why Roth didn’t adapt a more intellectually stimulating video game like, say, Ms. Pac-Man or Frogger instead. Borderlands is the kind of lowbrow movie that gives enjoyably lowbrow movies a bad name.

Red One

Watching Red One lurch toward its theatrical release this holiday season was like witnessing the Titanic sail toward its fatal iceberg: This movie had disaster written all over it from the start with widely reported budget overruns and other excesses. Red One’s concept of Santa Claus (J. K. Simmons) comically being linked to various secret organizations could have made for an enjoyable, innocuous 10- or 15-minute animated short, but filming it in live-action and stretching it to feature length was a dire error. For what this atrocity cost, a talented director like Kathryn Bigelow could have made six really good, intelligent films.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire represents the movie industry’s nearly complete lack of imagination at work. Cashing in on an established IP like Ghostbusters is standard practice now, but if creative folk were to pitch an idea today as fresh as the original Ghostbusters was in 1984, they’d likely be turned down immediately. Studios are terrified of risks, and it shows in the flatness and predictability of their products, as evidenced by retreads like Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Reusing the original film’s stars and many of its other key elements compounds the sense that it’s all just a cash-grab. It lacks the humor, imagination, and unpredictability of the original film, and aside from this essential staleness, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire adds insult to injury by wasting the wonderful Annie Potts.

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Bloody but unbowed

Anya Taylor-Joy leads the action in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Image via Warner Bros.

Australian director George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga traces the origin story of the hit Mad Max: Fury Road’s heroine, Imperator Furiosa (with Anya Taylor-Joy in the role originated by Charlize Theron). Even though Max only appears for a brief cameo, this is a superior prequel that delivers everything viewers expect from the Mad Max series.

Decades after apocalyptic world wars, young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) lives in the Green Place of Many Mothers, a Shangri-La-like oasis within a vast desert. She gets snatched by scavenging bikers and taken to their barbarian leader, Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) as proof of this “Place of Abundance” where food and water abound. Her mother (Charlee Fraser) bravely tries to rescue Furiosa but is caught, tortured, and slaughtered in front of her daughter.

Dementus raises Furiosa as his surrogate child, hoping to eventually discover her homeland’s location, while he jockeys for power among the other warlords who rule the wasteland’s three fortresses. Furiosa cunningly gets adopted by the powerful Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), who grooms her for his harem. She escapes, disguises herself as a worker boy, and gradually reemerges to become, with the friendly Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), an indispensable driver for Immortan Joe. As Dementus tangles with the warlords, Furiosa (Taylor-Joy) patiently awaits an opportunity for revenge.

Furiosa skillfully combines the Mad Max movies’ most successful elements: breakneck chases, breathtaking stunts, bizarre villains, and—most importantly—a mythic quality. Fully enjoying Furiosa’s fundamental implausibility requires significant suspension of disbelief. For starters, with gasoline so rare, why is everybody burning through it so quickly?

But this isn’t cinema vérité: It’s a pulp allegory. Within Furiosa’s outlandish structure lies a highly engaging story of revenge and survival with a deeply sympathetic heroine. Throughout the film, Furiosa is street smart, resourceful, and relentless in countless winning ways. This indomitable female Buster Keaton stoically overcomes whatever catastrophe is thrown at her and emerges victorious.

Taylor-Joy is good, as is Burke as the genial Jack. As Dementus, Hemsworth is a worthy successor to Miller’s previous eccentric heavies: vile and deadly, but comically pompous and pretentious. It’s clear that Hemsworth, as well as other key actors, relish their roles. When portraying characters with names like Rictus Erectus, what actors wouldn’t?

Furiosa’s pacing and characterization far excel that of Fury Road. In Miller’s initial Mad Max films, occasional laconic passages between the hyper-kinetic chases allowed the audience to get acquainted with the characters. But Fury Road’s visual overkill was like an already fast-paced movie stuck in fast-forward. Fury Road felt like being dragged behind a vehicle going way too fast, while Furiosa is like riding shotgun in an ace driver’s souped-up dragster.

The tatterdemalion costumes and production design are excellent, especially considering the film’s vast scope and huge cast. The characters’ off-the-wall wardrobe crafted from a patchwork of scavenged knickknacks provides constant visual stimulation. 

Furiosa’s many visual effects also blend well with the actual practical footage, but the film’s brightest stars are its stunt performers, whose no-holds-barred energy and expertise with everything from parachutes to flamethrowers is dazzling.

At 79, Miller has created an action power­house that would give younger directors a coronary. He masterfully orchestrates barbarian hordes—hell-bent on stealing more gasoline or sacks of potatoes—and reminds us that no living filmmaker does life after Doomsday as deftly as Miller.

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Back to basic

Marisa Abela stars as the late, doomed singer Amy Winehouse in 'Back to Black.' Focus Features.

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Back to Black details the short, volcanic life of pop star Amy Winehouse. It’s a by-the-numbers music biopic that is mostly unremarkable, with the exception of the film’s cast. Marisa Abela as Winehouse and Jack O’Connell as her husband Blake Fielder-Civil give performances that intensely enliven the film.

Winehouse died at age 27 in 2011, and her story is fairly familiar to viewers. The picture focuses on the gifted singer and jazz enthusiast’s rise to international stardom with her albums Frank and Back to Black, while her chaotic personal life is marred by alcoholism and bulimia.

A sucker for “bad boys,” Amy falls in love with lowlife Blake (O’Connell), whose presence in her unbalanced life exacerbates her self-destructiveness, culminating in drug abuse. Back to Black also explores the singer’s deep bonds with her grandmother, Cynthia (Lesley Manville), and her father, cabbie Mitch Winehouse (Eddie Marsan).

To her credit, Taylor-Johnson treats Winehouse relatively kindly and humanizes her, while also emphasizing her family ties and justifiably condemning the paparazzi who hounded her. The central problem with Back to Black is the mediocrity of the storytelling: There are so many run-of-the-mill, TV-movie-of-the-week biopics out there, so why make another? Back to Black isn’t a poorly-made film—it’s just unexceptional.

Back to Black’s real draw is its lead actors. Abela, who does her own singing, is very convincing as Winehouse, and though her performance has caught flak for overdoing Winehouse’s North London accent, it’s truer to the singer than her detractors give the actress credit for. O’Connell shines even brighter as the trashy Fielder-Civil, whom he consulted while preparing for the role. Tasked with playing an ignorant, scummy, unlikable character he doesn’t resemble, O’Connell is impressively natural, right down to his bovine stare. 

Despite its uneven script, certain scenes—like Winehouse’s initial flirtation with Blake in a pub—really click. But, overall, this version of Winehouse’s life seems incomplete, making this one of only a few recent movies that should run over two hours but doesn’t. Certain characters and plot points are hinted at when they should be fleshed out, including brief passages of Winehouse composing and recording her hits. It also suffers from characters making points that are obvious to anyone paying attention. Taylor-Johnson does get extra credit for not dumbing down the British lingo, including Cockney rhyming slang. She assumes the audience is smart enough to catch on to it, and it’s easy to follow.  

The supporting cast is fine, with Manville and Marsan getting top honors as Winehouse’s grandmother and dad, respectively. They both imbue their characters with genuine warmth and humanity. The cinematography is generally very straightforward. The costumes, makeup and hair, and production design are all good.

Back to Black has been criticized for, among other things, being too sanitized, for focusing too much on Winehouse’s addictions, and for leaving out key figures in the performer’s life, including her last boyfriend, Reg Traviss. But this is no surprise: Doomed musician biopics are almost always lacking, leaving viewers dissatisfied. In hindsight, the screenplay itself clearly needs rehab.

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Rockets’ red glare

Civil War, starring Jesse Plemons, combines fear and fantasy in a dystopian take on America’s political divide. A24.

Alex Garland’s newest film Civil War presents a vision of a war-torn, near-future United States that taps into many Americans’ fears of the worst-case endgame of ever-growing political divisiveness. It’s a promising idea, but this uneven movie is loaded with ridiculous plot holes, and despite delivering several impressive scenes, the film doesn’t maintain its level of quality.

A few years from now, America is splintered into various warring factions that are never fully spelled out. Some of these groups are semi-realistic, Portland Maoists are mentioned, while others strain believability, and talk of a Texas-California alliance seems like pure fantasy. Within this hellish landscape, seasoned combat photographer Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and journalist Joel (Wagner Moura) set out for Washington, D.C., to land an interview with the president (Nick Offerman) before he’s captured and executed.

Following these two characters would make for a solid film, but, inexplicably, they bring along two companions on the dangerous mission: veteran journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), and aspiring photojournalist Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). Sammy is physically incapable of keeping up on the arduous journey, and Jessie is inexperienced, and they just seem shoehorned in to liven up the plot.

Civil War really shines when it depicts a war-ravaged nation devouring itself, including a key stop in Charlottesville. The film excels when it focuses on this nightmare intruding into the mundane: distant fires and tracer bullets flying over ordinary American buildings, a carwash turned into a torture chamber, or a wrecked helicopter in a JCPenney parking lot. Another strength is its little details, like how Lee buys gas with Canadian dollars, American money having become devalued like Confederate bills after the real Civil War.

Other high points are the tense, very bloody action sequences, including an encounter with two sarcastic snipers and the final assault on Washington, D.C. With only a few exceptions, the visual effects throughout are hellishly convincing.

Alex Garland is a frustrating filmmaker who never fully delivers on the promise of his films’ concepts. His movies are marked by intermittent scenes of real wit and talent, and long stretches where their plots completely disintegrate, as in the horribly muddled Men. Civil War is no exception. Seeing the vast American warzone through the photojournalists’ dispassionate—even cold-blooded—coverage was a sound basic concept, but injecting the two supporting characters was simply bad plotting. There are other significant flaws in the story, but revealing them would involve spoilers.

The cast is mostly fine, even when saddled with clunky dialogue. All the below-the-line talent on the film is first-rate across the board, including costume design, production design, makeup, and particularly visual effects. Garland and his team get bonus points for making unusual musical choices and not going for ironically traditional patriotic music.

Civil War deliberately avoids political partisanship, which will relieve some viewers and annoy others. This opaque approach doesn’t detract much from its quality, but it does point to an overall concept that’s too vague for its own good. There is so much about the film that better writers could have cleared up. But since this particular Civil War is so hotly divided between its virtues and its flaws, in the end, there’s no victory—just a draw.

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Goth primer

Cole Sprouse and Kathryn Newton star in Lisa Frankenstein, a too-familiar monster trope written by Diablo Cody. Photo by Focus Features.

Director Zelda Williams’ horror comedy Lisa Frankenstein is a mediocre pastiche of older films with an uneven storyline stitched together from overly familiar macabre material. The film will appeal mainly to teens who are only just beginning to discover its sources, but to longtime moviegoers, it plays like ersatz Tim Burton, admittedly with occasionally hilarious moments.

In 1989, Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton) is a misfit at her new high school, stuck in suburbia with her sickeningly cheerful stepsister Taffy (Liza Soberano), clueless dad (Joe Chrest), and vile stepmother (Carla Gugino). Shy and withdrawn, she wrestles with the trauma of hearing her mother hacked up by an ax murderer.

Disconsolate, Lisa tends a grave in the abandoned Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery, pining for its 19th-century tenant (Cole Sprouse). Meanwhile, she’s smitten with her school’s lit mag editor, Trent (Henry Eikenberry). A freak electrical storm animates the corpse she’s been visiting, who then shows up literally on her doorstep. She hides him, and using Taffy’s malfunctioning tanning bed, gradually revivifies the creature and this cold, dead thing proves to be the warm protector her life has lacked.

Screenwriter Diablo Cody and Williams (Robin’s daughter) blatantly draw on many earlier, better movies, including Heathers, Carrie, and the Universal Frankenstein series. The shadow of Tim Burton’s work looms over the plot and the main characters’ style, particularly his Frankenweenie and Edward Scissorhands. Lisa Frankenstein is essentially an introductory class in goth culture for angsty kids who have just discovered The Cure. With that in mind, youngsters who are barely familiar with these venerable old favorites may enjoy seeing them.

Gleaning inspiration from its cinematic ancestors is one thing, but Cody’s script lacks the wit or tonal coherence of a great horror comedy like Young Frankenstein. Although she has definitely improved since Juno, the dialogue and storyline get overburdened with ’80s nostalgia references in the “Stranger Things” mode. They run the gamut from Orange Crush soda to a clip from George Romero’s Day of the Dead. The most successful, sweetest allusions are the recurring tributes to Georges Melies’ silent classic Voyage to the Moon.

The violence and sexuality in Lisa Frankenstein stretch about as far as the PG-13 rating will allow. Like many of the 1980s comedies it’s inspired by, most of the movie’s funniest moments are its lowest and most sophomoric.

Newton is fine as Lisa, especially given how middling the material is. Sprouse is decent as her undead beau, but his performance doesn’t fully explore the character’s potential. The rest of the cast does respectable work, and the costumes and production design are acceptable. But, overall, there is very little that’s outstanding here.

Made for a reported $13 million and with a running time that doesn’t strain endurance, Lisa Frankenstein is a fair piece of work, yet fails to maintain the balance between charming morbidity and humaneness that a masterpiece like Frank Oz’s Little Shop of Horrors pulls off. Younger viewers who, like Lisa, are trapped in high school purgatory might enjoy watching her exact Carrie White-like revenge and enthusiastically root for the film’s central couple. For a lot of viewers, it will just seem like a ragged, reanimated mass shambling out of a celluloid graveyard.

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Heads will roll

Alexander Skarsgård stars as a brutally violent Viking in The Northman. Photo: Focus Features.

Set in ninth- and 10th-century Europe, Robert Eggers’ brutal revenge saga The Northman is a lavish, sweeping film, but its unrelenting gore will undoubtedly repel many viewers. 

Loosely based on the Scandinavian legend that inspired Hamlet, with elements of Macbeth thrown in, The Northman’s antihero, young prince Amleth, vows revenge after seeing his father, King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke), slaughtered by his uncle, Fjolnir (Claes Bang), who then steals his kingdom and marries his mother, Gudrun (Nicole Kidman). After being raised into full warriorhood by Vikings, the adult Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) tracks his uncle down and sets his vengeance in motion, aided by one of Fjolnir’s slaves, Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy).

The Northman doesn’t sugarcoat its pagan characters’ bleak, filthy, violent lives. These are bona fide barbarians who thrive on casual slaughter and enslaving conquered peoples—their facility with mayhem means the difference between freedom, death, or lowly servitude. Beheadings, disembowelment, and general bloodletting abound—a Viking raid on a Slavic village is particularly hideous, and makes for troubling viewing, especially in light of recent world events.

For his tale of bestial savagery and revenge, Eggers drew heavily on John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian—lifting the opening narration, the overall plot structure, key scenes, ad infinitum—but The Northman lacks a critical ingredient that made Conan a more successful film in every sense: Milius’ wicked sense of humor.

The Northman’s humorlessness is arguably its weakest point, while no doubt an artistic choice by Eggers, and the film takes itself too seriously. Eggers also draws on Roman Polanski’s bleak Macbeth in many ways, from its pivotal witches to the consciousness-raising medieval drug-induced hallucinations. The Northman’s score by Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough also seems to echo the Third Ear Band’s unforgettable soundtrack for Polanski.

Although not on par with Eggers’ excellent The Witch, The Northman is a well-crafted production and a distinct improvement over his meandering The Lighthouse. The film’s cast is fine overall, particularly Kidman, Willem Dafoe as Heimir the Fool, and Bjork in a small, memorable appearance as a  witch.

Production design and costumes are high-quality, the Nordic locations are striking, and Eggers keeps his camera mercifully steady, eschewing senselessly jerky camerawork. CGI effects don’t overwhelm the movie, but the sadism and bloodshed levels are high enough to reach Valhalla.  

Bleak and grim, with glaring plot holes, The Northman is 20 minutes too long and doesn’t inspire multiple viewings. Films about truly barbaric characters are a gamble, because, as in this case, they focus on inarticulate thugs who are little better than the vermin they’re battling. Eggers succeeds at making a Viking epic, but a joyless, often repulsive one that’s easy to appreciate, but not so easily palatable.

The Northman

R, 137 minutes
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Violet Crown Cinema

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I, robot

A nostalgic look at the pop art icon keeps fans guessing in “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Photo: Netflix.

Whether you love or hate Andy Warhol’s work, his impact on the arts as a provocateur, businessman, and impresario is immeasurable. Andrew Rossi’s six-part Netflix series “The Andy Warhol Diaries” sets out to pierce the façade its subject presented to the media. The series gives a fairly nuanced portrait of the godfather of pop art through new and archival interviews with Warhol, his co-workers, friends, and critics. Along the way, it explores Warhol’s era(s) almost as much as it does its subject.

The first three episodes follow Andrew Warhola, Jr. from his early years as an awkward Pittsburgh kid, through his initial New York graphic design career, into his ascension to art superstar, offering fascinating details, like how the Russian Orthodox iconography of his youth influenced his style. The bulk of the story revolves around the period from 1976-1987, when Warhol dictated his activities to writer Pat Hackett. What began as daily accounting by phone became full-fledged diaries, which were published posthumously in 1989.

Therein lies the series’ biggest flaw. Extrapolating on Warhol’s statement “I want to be a machine,” Rossi has an A.I. recreation of the artist’s voice reading his diary entries in a clumsy simulation of his trademark monotone. This synthetic Warhol is gimmicky and off-putting, mispronouncing words robotically like a GPS, and ending its sentences in a clipped, computerized way. The series is clearly attempting to transcend Warhol’s mythic status and humanize him, but this artificial speech undermines a fair amount of those worthwhile efforts. And probably the other biggest problem here is a string of unnecessary dramatizations of Warhol’s private moments, his face always obscured. These precious, stagey vignettes resemble reenactments from an “Unsolved Mysteries” rerun.

That aside, “The Andy Warhol Diaries” is engaging overall. The interviews with his co-workers and others are generally informative, funny, and revealing. Standouts include Interview magazine editor Bob Colacello and director John Waters, who praises Warhol as a trailblazer in underground cinema. In terms of presenting Warhol’s humanness and emotionality, the series is particularly poignant when it examines Warhol’s asexual pose and his secretive romantic life—or lack thereof—with his various companions like Jed Johnson and Jon Gould. And despite the obvious veneration of Warhol, Rossi deserves credit for including quotes from the brilliant art critic Robert Hughes, arguably Warhol’s sternest detractor, who once called him “one of the stupidest people I’ve ever met in my life . . . because he had nothing to say.”

Archival footage of Warhol-era Manhattan and his studio, The Factory, is memorable, including excursions into Studio 54 and the thriving ’70s gay bar scene. The music is well-curated by period, including Sparks’ “The Number One Song in Heaven” and The Skatt Bros.’ “Walk the Night.”  But Nat King Cole crooning “Nature Boy” over the opening credits is an odd choice, even if it’s used there ironically.        

Was Warhol a ridiculous charlatan or an artistic powerhouse—or both? Was he a deep soul, or, as Truman Capote described him, a “Sphinx without a secret”? “The Andy Warhol Diaries” doesn’t definitively answer questions like these, nor should it be expected to. But it does partially succeed in revealing facets of Warhol that the artist himself seldom, if ever, would.

“The Andy Warhol Diaries”

Six-part series
Streaming (Netflix)

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Robotic delivery

Funny and foreboding, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Bigbug details the perils of artificial intelligence. Photo: Netflix

If Terry Gilliam remade “The Jetsons,” it might go something like Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Bigbug. This French science-fiction comedy takes a generally dark movie sub-genre—robot servants revolting against their human masters—and transforms it into an outwardly sunny, pastel-colored farce. The results are a hilarious, fascinating satire that’s seemingly light, but overflows with pointed observations about unchecked technological evolution at its worst.

Set in near-future France, suburban divorcée Alice (Elsa Zylberstein), her date (Stéphane De Groot), ex-husband (Youssef Hajdi), his secretary (Claire Chust), and others are sealed inside her house as malfunctioning security androids launch an insurrection outside. Meanwhile, her robotic servants faithfully try to protect their owner. (No giant insects here—the titular “bug” has infected the computer systems that manage the characters’ lives.)

Bigbug echoes—and affectionately parodies—Blade Runner, Westworld, Demon Seed, and other excellent works about artificial intelligence in revolt. Like those films, it confronts a major modern conundrum: Where does A.I. end and sentience begin? How much human-like behavior makes a robot human? 

As Jeunet takes his viewers on a windy trip through the “uncanny valley” between mechanical and flesh-and-blood life, he keeps Bigbug compelling by raising dozens of intriguing questions, and offering few pat answers. But the film’s opening image—leashed human beings led on all-fours by androids—sets the tone: Our own labor-saving technology ultimately enslaves us.

Bigbug’s reviews have been mixed because it’s definitely not for everyone, especially anyone who only knows Jeunet’s breakout hit Amelie. Bigbug is more akin to Delicatessen and other off-kilter early collaborations with Marc Caro. Be warned: Some viewers will find Bigbug overly frenetic and unconventional. But for those who stick with it, it’s a rewarding and hysterical film. (Be sure to watch the French-language version—the dubbed one sounds awful.)

The point that some viewers miss is that Bigbug’s background is its foreground. The humans’ antic interactions are funny, but what’s most intriguing is Jeunet’s intricate world-building. With most of this claustrophobic story occurring inside a single house, its vision of future life unfolds through background details within this ecosystem. Alice, for instance, keeps her journal with pen and ink, which have become as obsolete as IBM punch cards.

The cast is strong, particularly Claude Perron as the robotic maid Monique and Zylberstein in the lead. The voice acting is equally good, with André Dussollier standing out as the sanguine Einstein. Keep an eye out for cameos by Jeunet movie vets like Dominique Pinon, too.

Aline Bonetto’s retro-futuristic production design is marvelous, equal parts Bauhaus and mid-century modern by way of Betty Crocker. Outstanding credit is also due to special effects supervisor Pascal Molina, robot designer Jean-Christophe Spadaccini, and visual effects directors Alain Carsoux and Jeremie Leroux for their excellent work on the non-CGI mechanical co-stars. Most notable among the robotic cast is Einstein, a scuttling, six-legged head that looks like a caricature of its namesake crafted from typewriter parts.

Bigbug isn’t a masterpiece, nor is it as good as some of Jeunet’s more recent underseen gems like Micmacs. At an hour and 51 minutes, it’s 10 minutes too long. But it’s very funny, highly imaginative and intelligent, and the kind of science fiction movie that matters most: one about ideas.

Bigbug

R, 111 minutes
Streaming (Netflix)

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Culture

Staggering steps: Zombie flick Blood Quantum takes on colonialism

Horror fans will find a solidly terrifying escape in the zombie feature Blood Quantum. The film has plenty of eerie parallels to the current state of societal conflict in reaction to the coronavirus. Image courtesy Elevation Pictures

Love them or hate them, zombie stories remain popular because they represent the nagging fear that the problems we allow to persist will eventually overpower us. Zombies are husks, barely recognizable as humans, possessing our shape and our need to consume but lacking morality, symbols of our collective failure as a society.

In the 52 years since Night of the Living Dead revolutionized the genre, many of those problems have remained unsolved, and are therefore frequent themes for zombie films: racism, consumerism, inequality, militarism, and a lack of faith in the institutions designed to protect humankind.

In Blood Quantum, from filmmaker Jeff Barnaby, the undead invasion parallels an even deeper, centuries-old tragedy: colonialism. A mysterious virus arrives by water and soon spreads to the entire region, confining the Mi’kmaq survivors to the Red Crow Reservation, where hordes of invaders are intent on wiping them out. (“Blood quantum” itself refers to laws first created in the Colonial era, the ratio of one’s ancestry that determines status as a Native American. The laws were often used to persecute, to facilitate extermination and forced relocation, and have been blamed for creating racism where none existed within tribes.)

Blood Quantum

R, 96 minutes

Streaming (Shudder, Amazon Prime)

The story is frighteningly prescient, not only given the current global pandemic, but as the Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux tribes are battling with the governor of South Dakota for their right to maintain checkpoints on all roads leading in and out of their reservations due to coronavirus. Barnaby could not have predicted the specific events of today when he wrote and directed the film, which premiered at festivals last year, but it feels ripped from recent headlines.

As with many of the best horror films, Blood Quantum is scariest when it explores the plausible consequences of fantastical events. After the scramble to understand this virus, the Mi’kmaq learn that they are immune, and that the Red Crow reservation’s remote location is strategically useful in keeping out unwanted elements. But the immunity is no boon, as they are still in danger of being eaten alive, and geographic isolation means being confined behind metal walls until they die or are overtaken. The promise of staying alive is enough for some survivors, while others cannot envision a future within the fortress’ walls, succumbing to drugs, anger issues, and other destructive behaviors. Each solution only creates a new problem; reservations did not erase the ills of colonization, and the strongest walls do not protect against self-destruction.

Barnaby shows his extensive knowledge of zombie film history, and draws on those movies’ stylistic innovations to build the foundation for Blood Quantum. But even the most seasoned genre fan will be taken aback by some moments, especially in the film’s first act. In the opening scene, we see gutted fish begin to flop on dry land, and it’s disturbing, even for a genre built on shock value.

The opening credits also pack an emotional punch, revealing structures like bridges and buildings from uncomfortable angles. You might not expect the sight of a bridge at a 90-degree angle to be so jarring, but when viewed in the context of an imminent catastrophe, it’s quite effective. The structures we’ve built, whether physical or institutional, have become hollow. At best, they are simply shapes in a barren wasteland, at worst, they hasten our doom. A bridge is no longer a bridge, it is a liability. A police officer has no more authority than a hooligan. Was it always this way? Was our existence always barely contained chaos, or had we fooled ourselves into believing we’d created order?

Of the zombie tales that came before, viewers might find the most similarity with “The Walking Dead”: a character-driven story where reckoning with the past is as vital as contemplating the future. Michael Greyeyes, who portrays former officer Traylor, was even featured on “Fear the Walking Dead” as Qaletaqa Walker. Greyeyes is an excellent anchor for the film throughout; in his former life, his every action suggested a man frustrated by powerlessness, but bound by an unspoken moral obligation to try and make change. His son, Joseph (Forrest Goodluck, The Revenant and The Miseducation of Cameron Post), frequently causes trouble with Lysol (Kiowa Gordon, Twilight), and though they commit petty crimes together, when push comes to shove it’s revealed how truly different they are. There are so many characters with terrific performances that the story might have worked best as a miniseries. But as it is, Blood Quantum offers plenty to enjoy and contemplate.

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Culture

Trust science: New documentary profiles pioneering immunologist

The documentary Jim Allison: Breakthrough premieres April 27 on PBS. "All the things thatprobably you wish you could see working in solving COVID right now … Jim embodiesall that," says filmmaker Bill Haney. Photo by LeAnn Mueller

No one could have predicted the global pandemic of COVID-19 when production began on Jim Allison: Breakthrough, but its foundational message is so resonant that there might not be a more perfect time for it to reach audiences. Chronicling the life and scientific research of Nobel laureate and trailblazing immunologist James Allison, whose work with T cells revolutionized treatment for immunodeficiencies and some types of cancer, the film is the opposite of the escapist binging that occupies many people’s queues in this moment.

There is no fantasy or fatalism in Allison’s tale. Instead, director Bill Haney navigates the harsh realities of devastation wrought by cancer (including one patient whose life was saved directly by Allison’s research) and the small-thinking minds that stand in scientists’ way, while maintaining a fundamental optimism that an answer can be found.

“When I was a little boy and I was late for dinner,” says Haney. “My mother would say to me, ‘What were you, out curing cancer? Get in here and sit down,’ because that was the impossible dream. Nobody would ever be out curing cancer. But Jim Allison, for 20 percent of the patients, and 20 percent of the tumors, did. And he did it by personal charisma, scientific insight, persistence, resilience, humor, warmth, teamwork. All the things that probably you wish you could see working in solving COVID right now…Jim embodies all that.”

Born in Alice, Texas, Allison’s extraordinary life was forged by early struggles. Losing his mother at a young age to lymphoma, and later losing a brother to melanoma, Allison deeply understood the human impact of his work. A bright student, he butted heads with the head of his school’s science department who blocked all discussion of evolution in the classroom, and gained confidence to confront those who stand in the way of progress. Whether he is determined or stubborn will be up to the viewer to decide, but his work ethic is an inspiring blend of long-term dedication and impatience with problems he knows can be resolved.

“There’s something magical about Jim,” says Haney. “None of us do everything the right way, but he’s trying to do the right things for the right reasons.”

An immunologist and blues harmonica player, Jim Allison sits in with Willie Nelson on occasion.

There is a careful balance filmmakers must strike when chronicling scientific breakthroughs and the trailblazers who made them happen. If they focus too much on the technical details, they run the risk of losing the audience. If they go too broad with metaphors and framing devices, the importance of hard work and scientific rigor is glossed over. On top of that, who knows how the world will look when the film finally premieres? Will new research negate the findings presented in the film? 

Breakthrough sets the standard for how films about scientists can do justice to their subject’s work, their personality, and those around them. Allison is a lifelong blues harmonica player who has shared the stage with Willie Nelson. A detail like this might have been treated as a comical sidenote or postscript in other documentaries, but his zeal for life and his need to create are intrinsically linked.

Regarding the role of Allison’s creativity in his scientific work, Haney believes that “it’s central, absolutely central. And by the way, part of creativity is the willingness to follow the music wherever she takes you,” he says. “And if he had to ignore the convention and ignore the existing papers and change the way the FDA thought [about]  it and persuade them, then that’s what he was going to do.”

“The next adult you speak to, ask them to name for you five or 10 creative Americans,” Haney says. “And they will name, I promise, musicians and poets and playwrights and novelists and actors and directors. How many will name a scientist? I think almost no one, and yet they are the people who invent the devices that become our daily lives, the folks who are reimagining life right now. …If you’re a 12-year-old girl and want to have a creative, soulful life, even if you just say creative, how many of those are going to think that that’s an engineer or a biologist? I’m afraid that it’s shockingly small. To their loss and ours.”

Though the film was completed before the novel coronavirus began to spread, it is not a far jump from watching Allison at work to being interested in the work of scientists on the front lines of the search for a COVID-19 vaccine. We have to follow facts, not leaders with conflicting interests. We have to challenge conventional wisdom about what problems are insurmountable, not succumb to them. A great film about a compelling man, Breakthrough may be the antidote to hopelessness in our current pandemic.

The documentary Jim Allison: Breakthrough premieres April 27 on PBS’ “Independent Lens.”