Tag Archives: Sturgill Simpson

Brad reviews THE HUNT (2020), directed by Craig Zobel!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

If you’ve ever spent any time on the political side of X, formerly known as Twitter, you know that it can be an ugly and hateful place. Writers Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof have certainly spent some time in that part of Twitter, because they’ve created a story that understands its absurdity and then uses that silliness as the basis for a bloody and funny action thriller. THE HUNT was quite controversial when it was released back in 2020, so I decided to finally check it out for myself.

The story begins with a group of strangers waking up in the middle of nowhere, confused, gagged, and wondering how in the hell they ended up that way. The field they’re in has a large crate that contains a sharply dressed pig, as well as a variety of guns and knives. Once they’ve helped themselves to the weapons, all hell breaks loose, with several of them being immediately killed in brutal ways. We soon learn that they’re being hunted by a group of wealthy elites who are sick and tired of dealing with these conspiracy-spreading, climate-denying deplorables and have decided to do something about them. One thing they didn’t account for was the amazing fighting and survival skills of Crystal May Creasey, played by Betty Gilpin. Before long, Crystal has turned the tables and the hunters have become the hunted.

I’m just going to say it right off, Gilpin is incredible as Crystal. I had not really seen her before, but I’m definitely going to be on the lookout for some of her other work. She plays Crystal with a confident coolness, which makes her reactions to the madness around her that much more effective. Hilary Swank, who plays the leader of the elites, knows her way around a fight scene, and their showdown delivers big time. Think of the fight between Uma Thurman and Vivica A. Fox in KILL BILL, and you’ll get an idea of their fight’s intensity, but this one lasts longer. The cast is sprinkled with some well-known actors like Amy Madigan, Justin Hartley, Macon Blair and Emma Roberts. I’ll just say that this isn’t the kind of film where you want to get too attached to the characters and leave it at that!

Did I mention earlier that THE HUNT is graphically violent? We know we’re in for a bloody ride when a guy’s eyeball is ripped from its socket in the second scene. The film will go on to present a wide array of impalings, blown up bodies, close-range shotgun blasts, long-distance rifle splatters, and many other creative deaths. While the violence is shown in graphic detail, it’s also played with an exaggerated sense of humor that made it easier for me to watch. It’s also presented in a way that matches the tone of the story.

What really sets this movie apart for me, though, is its political satire. I spent quite a bit of time on Twitter during Donald Trump’s first term, and this movie does an outstanding job of painting both sides in the broadest of strokes that are instantly recognizable for those in the know. The deplorables consist of a variety of conspiracy theorists, gun rights absolutists, big game hunters, and rednecks. The conspiracy theorists get it the worst, with something ridiculous to say for every occasion, even though a couple of times they’re revealed to be right! On the other hand, the elites have a hard time carrying on a conversation because they’re always correcting each other’s word usage, and they’re constantly lecturing everyone around them. And for a group of people who are never wrong, the elites make a crucial factual error that threatens to upend their entire plan. I’ll leave all of those details for you to discover, but I like that director Craig Zobel and his writers take aim at the absurdity of the entire online political spectrum, with no one getting a free pass. For me, that’s a big part of what makes THE HUNT so much fun. Beneath all the blood and guts is a recognizable version of the silly social media politics that I watched play out online just a few years ago.

I think those who understand the toxicity of American politics in the time of Donald Trump will get the most out of this film, but I still think it can work as entertainment for those who don’t. The action is energetic, the violence is outrageous, and it has a wonderfully twisted sense of humor. And it has Betty Gilpin, who plays one of the toughest, most badass female characters I’ve seen in a movie in a long time. Hell, she was worth the watch for me!

Horror Song of the Day: The Dead Don’t Die by Sturgill Simpson

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die still tends to get a mixed response from horror fans and I can certainly understand that.  It’s one of those films where you’re either on its wavelength or you aren’t.

That said, I do like the theme song.  From Sturgill Simpson, here is The Dead Don’t Die.

 

Playing Catch-Up With The Films Of 2019: The Dead Don’t Die (by Jim Jarmusch)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Uh-oh, the dead are rising again.

Seriously, I’ve lost track of how many zombie films I’ve seen over the past ten years.  This last decade was the decade when zombies went mainstream and I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about it.  Zombies have become so overexposed that they’re no longer as scary as they once were.  I mean, there’s even PG-rated zombie movies now!  How the Hell did that happen?  Everyone’s getting in on the act.

There were a brief flurry of excitement when Jim Jarmusch announced that his next film would be a zombie film.  Myself, I was a bit skeptical and the release of a terrible trailer didn’t really help matters.  The fact that the film was full of recognizable names also made me uneasy.  Would this be an actual zombie film or would it just be a bunch of actors slumming in the genre?  The film opened the Cannes Film Festival and received mixed reviews.  By the time it opened in the United States, it seemed as if everyone had forgotten about The Dead Don’t Die.  It was widely chalked up as being one of Jim Jarmusch’s rare misfires, like The Limits of Control.

Last month, I finally watched The Dead Don’t Die and you know what?  It’s a flawed film and yes, there are times when it even becomes an annoying film.  That said, I still kind of liked it.

In The Dead Don’t Die, the Earth’s rotation has been altered, the result of polar fracking.  No one seems to be particularly concerned about it.  Instead, they’re just kind of annoyed by the fact that the sun is now staying up in the sky a bit longer than usual.  Cell phones and watches stop working.  House pets abandon and occasionally attack their owners.  In the rural town of Centerville, the dead rise from their graves and start to eat people.  Whether or not that’s connected to the Earth’s rotation is anyone’s guess.  (I like to think that the whole thing about the Earth’s rotation being altered was Jarmusch’s homage to Night of the Living Dead‘s suggestion that the zombies were the result of space radiation.)

We meet the inhabitant of Centerville.  Zelda (Tilda Swinton) is the enigmatic mortician.  Bobby (Caleb Landry Jones) is the horror movie expert.  Farmer Miller (Steve Buscemi) is the red-hatted farmer who hates everyone.  Zoe (Selena Gomez) is the traveler who is staying at the run-down motel with two friends.  Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) is the police chief who wants to save everyone but Farmer Miller.  Ronnie (Adam Driver) and Mindy (Chloe Sevigny) are police officers.  They’re all in the middle of a zombie apocalypse but very few of them seem to really be that surprised by any of it.

Throughout the film, we hear Sturgill Simpson singing a wonderful song called The Dead Don’t Die.  Cliff demands to know why the song is always one the radio.  Ronnie replies that it’s the “theme song.”  Ronnie, we discover, has an answer for almost everything.  He explains that he knows what’s going to happen because he’s the only one that “Jim” allowed to read the entire script.  Cliff isn’t happy about that.

That’s the type of film that The Dead Don’t Die is.  It’s an elaborate in-joke, a zombie movie about people who know that they’re in a zombie movie but who are too detached to actually use that information to their advantage.  The script has been written so they have no choice but to do what the script says regardless of whether it makes them happy or not.  It’s a clever conceit, though a bit of a thin one to build a 103-minute movie around.

As I said, the film can occasionally be an endurance test.  Everyone is so deadpan that you actually find yourself getting angry at them.  But, whenever you’re on the verge of giving up, there will be a clever line that will draw you back in or the theme song will start playing again.  Bill Murray and Adam Driver are fun to watch and Driver reminds us that he’s actually a good comedic actor.  (In the year of Marriage Story and Rise of Skywalker, that can be easy to forget.)

It’s a flawed film and definitely not one of Jim Jarmusch’s best.  At the same time, though, The Dead Don’t Die is not as bad as you may have heard.