"Weapons"

 ☆☆☆½ 

It would be hard to conceive of a better set-up for a movie than the one Zach Cregger has dreamed up for his new thriller Weapons: 17 of the 18 children in one elementary school classroom get up out of bed at 2:17 a.m., leave their homes and run, arms trailing behind them like airplane, into the night.

They vanish.

Why?

Who's responsible?

Has some terrifying force, some evil spirit, taken possession of all of these children? And why is one boy left in the classroom where Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) teaches?

It's a story filled with tension, with deep uncertainty, a paranoia that goes far, far deeper than any ordinary tragedy — say, a school shooting, which the movie wants to evoke — would have generated. As a directer, Cregger has an amazing gift for milking that tension, both visually and through montage. This is a finely crafted movie, and though it utilizes many of the tropes of horror films, it plays much more like a disturbing, anxious update of the paranoid thrillers that were popular in the 1970s.

There is so much tension, that just the sight of a woman walking toward a car can get an audience screaming and fidgeting. The audience I saw it with seemed to regard this movie with a genuinely rare sense of dread, and Weapons leaves no doubt — particularly coupled with his previous horror film Barbarian — that Cregger is an incredible filmmaking talent.

It's in the fulfillment of the promise of those first 30 minutes that Cregger falters. Weapons bears more than a passing resemblance to the films of M. Night Shyamalan, even down to the rural Pennsylvania setting (though the film was shot in Georgia). The comparison extends to a fascination with creating a twisty, unpredictable plot that never quite connects all of its various threads.

Strangely, perhaps, there's another movie that came to mind while watching Weapons, one that I learned Cregger acknowledged served as sort of storytelling inspiration: Paul Thomas Anderson's 1999 masterpiece of anxiety, Magnolia. Thematically, the movies couldn't be more different, but certain elements — an overwound cop, a constant rain, a cascade of interrelated stories, an oppressive sense of foreboding — combine to make Weapons ambitious and impressive. But still ...

Like Magnolia, Weapons begins with an omniscient narrator who establishes the mood and then disappears. What the narration and the first third of Weapons never hints at (just as Magnolia didn't) is the out-of-nowhere event that will change the course of the story. In the case of Weapons, it's impossible to describe this event without spoiling things — and this is a movie that, despite my reservations, shouldn't be spoiled. In Magnolia, the event (frogs raining from the sky) needed no explanation; its randomness, its weirdness, its lack of any greater meaning was the point.

In Weapons, the event and the character who embodies it also get no explanation, and that proves to be the movie's undoing. Without a sense of motivation, without crucial details about what this person wants, exactly, and why, the story begins to fall apart. Weapons is a movie best enjoyed in the moment, and the good news it can be enjoyed in the moment, quite a lot. But if you're like me, and you begin to try to answer any of the many questions Weapons leaves wide open, the car ride home after watching this movie is going to be a long one. And frustrating.

Weapons needs, earns and demands a sense of mystery. But ultimately even David Lynch needed to offer contextual explanations for a lot of his weirdness. Weapons not only doesn't offer the explanations, the movie left me wondering if it even cared that people might wonder. It's a puzzle, all right — a moody, tense, sometimes frightening puzzle, but every puzzle needs to have a solution. I'm not sure there is one for Weapons.

Viewed August 10, 2025 — AMC Burbank 16

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"Sketch"

  ☆☆☆ 

Many movies make the mistake of having a great setup with a disappointing payoff. They've got a great idea, communicate it perfectly, and get the audience so excited that the inability to stick the landing makes the whole film suffer by comparison.

Sketch does things the other way around, which works to the movie's benefit. The opening 20 minutes are rushed and don't take the time to explain what it is we'll be seeing, that it's easy to imagine the rest of the movie failing on similar terms.

So, it's nice to report that after that failed opening, Sketch just keeps going and keeps on getting better and more intriguing, until its final few minutes, which are every bit as good as you may have hoped.

Those opening scenes, though, feel like something's missing — the story is about two motherless children, siblings Jack and Amber. Since the death of their mother, their father (Tony Hale) has been struggling, too, and has recently put the house up for sale, to both the delight and chagrin of a neighborhood real estate agent who's also a family friend (D'Arcy Carden).

The kids discover that a nearby pond holds the power to fix things and make artistic submissions come to life. Bianca Belle is the daugher, about 11 years old. She's been coping with her sense of loss and helplessness by drawing pictures in her notebook and posting them social media. They're odd pictures. They are mostly of giant creatures and imaginary monsters.

Then, Jack accidentally tosses the notebook into the pond, and before you can say lickety-split, the monsters are running amok.

The performances are the key in Sketch, and the performers are all uniformly game, especially Kalon Cox, a child actor who has impeccable timing. All of the performers, especially the adults, are subjected to some terrible indiginities, but they all are impressive under the circumstances, particularly the adults. Tony Hale and D'Arcy Carden seem both aware and committed to the idea that they are making a family film that may be aimed at kids but isn't made solely for kids.

The action leads up to a sincere, cathartic climax that feels earned and appropriate, and underscores the movie's wisdom about the impossibility of moving on in the face of devastating loss.

But something feels off about the whole endeavor. Sketch follows in the footsteps of Weapons, a movie that couldn't be more different in tone, in refusing to explain anything about its central conceit. Anything. Why is the pond magic? How is it possible they've never noticed? Does a movie made primarily for a family audience need to explain a lot? After all, Mary Poppins could do all sorts of magical things, but no one ever knew or cared to ask why.

It may be fair to say the same concept should apply, but Sketch exists in an arguably more sophisticated world, and its kids have come of age in the time of cell phones and instant communication. The movie stumbles around as it tries to get us to buy into its basic approach. Kids will be less critical. They'll accept the explanations for the magic, and they'll probably be delighted (if not a little traumatized — parts of Sketched are undeniably scary).

Adults: your mileage may vary. 

***

Postscript: It's worth noting that Sketch was produced and released by Angel Studios, which says it has a mission to release uplifting, family friendly films. Hardcore Christian messaging is usually part of these movies, and after further digging it's clear that Angel Studios is a faith-based film company. Sketch does not contain any overt messages about Christianity or religion. But Angel Studios has a clear, stated goal, and some viewers may want to know that before going in so they can make informed choices. The movie also contains an explicit fundraising message in its end credits, which may also turn off some viewers.

Viewed August 9, 2025 — AMC Universal

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"East of Wall"

  ☆☆½ 

The indie vibe that suffuses many major film festivals is at the heart of East of Wall, an intriguing and not altogether successful blend of fiction and reality, a documentary that tells a story, or a story that fits into a documentary. Without the big question-and-answer sessions that follow most film festival screenings, it's difficult for an audience to know quite what to make of this film, though that doesn't mean it fails. Not quite.

East of Wall "stars" Tabatha Zimiga and Porshia Zimiga, who are real people whose lives on a horse ranch in South Dakota form the basis of the movie. Tabatha is the matriarch of the farm, Porshia is her oldest daughter, and together they are part of an expansive, eclectic household of many, many children, some of whom were adopted by Tabatha, others of whom live with her in loose relationships.

Tabatha trains wild horses, then sells them at auction. After the death of her husband, Tabatha is struggling. The film feels a little bit like a documentary, but not quite, and for anyone who doesn't know what to expect — for instance, for those who didn't read about it in a film festival program — it's an odd an unsettling experience.

I went into East of Wall with no awareness of it whatsoever — it screened as part of AMC's "Screen Unseen" program, which presents movies before they open without revealing the titles. I walked into East of Wall not even knowing what movie I was going to watch, much less anything about its genesis, and I couldn't figure it out. The performers seemed simultaneously authentic and stilted, like they were reality show contestants trying to recreate moments from their own lives.

It turns out, that's pretty much exactly what East of Wall is — neither fiction nor cinema verité documentary, it's an uncomfortable but sometimes affecting exercise in creating docudrama with real people. And some not-real people. For instance, actress Jennifer Ehle plays Tabatha's mother. Actor Scoot McNairy plays a wealthy Texan who tries to convince Tabatha to sell her farm to him.

Other real people appear, sometimes acting out written scenes, sometimes letting the camera capture their lives, and it's never quite clear what's what.

The story sort of meanders along without much plot — which is odd. Writer-director Kate Beecroft has invested a lot of passion in making her story feel authentic and real, as if it weren't scripted. But it is. So, why make a movie utterly devoid of the kind of storytelling beats that work best in movies? Why create a story that's both hard to follow and lacking in tension?

Which isn't to say that East of Wall doesn't have some fine things to recommend it, including the quasi-performance (or is that performance-based reality) of Tabatha Zimiga in the lead role. She's playing herself, mostly convincingly, and she's quite a character — bold, independent, strong-willed, yet vulnerable. When the movie finally gets where it's going (which, truth be told, isn't very far), it's hard not to feel a little proud of this woman for what she accomplishes.

As a slice of modern Americana, a look at the way people live amid desolation and hardship, it's never uninteresting. It will probably best appeal to people who love horses and the broad, uninterrupted vistas of the midwest — the movie is partly set in the surreal, windswept crags of the Badlands. Whether that audience is likely ever to encounter this movie is a legitimate question. For those who harbor less affinity for its setting or its subjects, East of Wall may be a struggle.

Viewed August 4, 2025 — AMC Burbank 16

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