Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - January 17, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM ● C3 IT’S not good critical practice to date a film review to a certain time and place. A film review should be ever- green, to exist outside of a specific set- ting or era. It should be able to grasp anyone, anywhere. But criticism is also subjective, and so it’s almost impossible to ignore the ways in which the silly L.A.-set com- edy One of Them Days takes on new resonance in the wake of the devastat- ing destruction wreaked by wildfires in Los Angeles this month. It’s in the stunning aerial shots of palm tree-lined streets that make up L.A.’s distinct, sun-splashed grid. It’s in the themes about economic precar- ity for communities of colour and the lack of affordable housing in the city. It’s in the fact that this movie (spoil- er alert) culminates with a firefighter rescue! It’s almost too apt, even if some of the moments might hit too close to home for Angelenos right now. But the universal is found in the specific, and those L.A. specifics are the strengths of One of Them Days, starting with the tilt down on the icon- ic sign of beloved diner Norm’s, where our protagonist, Dreux (Keke Palm- er), is a star waitress, hoping to earn a crucial promotion to a managerial role. She’s got an interview later that day, after her night shift, from which her best friend and roommate Alyssa (singer SZA) picks her up. Her daytime rest is interrupted when Dreux discovers that Alyssa’s boyfriend Keshawn (Joshua David Neal) has failed to deliver their rent money and they’re about nine hours away from a threatened eviction. Set in South Central Los Angeles over the course of a day, with two friends doing everything to procure a meagre but significant sum of money, One of Them Days is a buddy come- dy inspired by F. Gary Gray’s 1995 film Friday, starring Ice Cube and Chris Tucker. The script is the debut of writer Syreeta Singleton, who also worked on the HBO series Insecure, and the film is directed by music video director Lawrence Lamont. As much as the DNA of Friday runs through One of Them Days so too does the influence of Insecure, with Issa Rae serving as a producer on the film, and Insecure cinematographer Ava Berkofsky behind the camera. Berkofsky’s photography of Insecure captured this part of Los Angeles with sun-dappled beauty and authenticity, and so the setting, the female per- spective, and the look all combine for One of Them Days to feel much like a raunchier version of the series. Palmer, who has been acting since childhood and has established herself as both a personality and performer, can seemingly do anything onscreen. One of Them Days gives her an op- portunity to demonstrate her comedy chops but also deliver a well-rounded lead performance of a young woman struggling to achieve a modicum of upward mobility and tackling every obstacle that comes her way, from shady landlords to predatory lenders to bullies and gangsters and even gentrifiers. She not only doesn’t want to leave her crumbling apartment, she’s fight- ing to stay in it. Dreux’s biggest obstacle is also one of her strongest supports: her space cadet artist roommate Alyssa, who’s simultaneously manifesting abundance while her synapses are scrambled by boyfriend Keshawn’s pheromones. Alyssa is one of those friends who (unintentionally) makes every frus- trating wrong decision, but also knows how to big her bestie up — no one gives better pep talks. In her film debut, SZA proves to be a charming screen presence and capable comedian; she and Palmer display winning chemistry together. The entire supporting cast is terrific, from Maude Apatow as a clueless gentrifier who becomes their surpris- ing salvation, to Keyla Monterroso Mejia as a gleefully unhinged payday loan lender. Katt Williams and Janelle James are also hilariously memorable in small roles, and Aziza Scott terrify- ingly tears into her performance of the main antagonist, Bernice. When the comedy is small and spe- cific about culture, relationships and community, One of Them Days shines. When it gets broad and big, however, the comedic tone struggles. Some ele- ments are just too goofy and over the top, despite how game everyone is. Thanks to Palmer’s talents and her chemistry with just about everyone, One of Them Days proves to be a fun, light comedy, threaded with real socio- economic issues that are thrown into even starker relief thanks to current events. But we could all use a laugh right now, and a love letter to L.A., and One of Them Days delivers both. — Tribune News Service F ANS of SCTV may remember a Monster Chiller Horror Theatre episode in which Joe Flaherty’s late-night host, Count Floyd, mis- takenly programs a made-up Ingmar Bergman film, Whispers of the Wolf, thinking it’s a simple werewolf picture instead of a moody, existential mashup of Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf and Persona. The new Wolf Man from Universal Pictures and co-writer/director Leigh Whannell may likewise provoke some puzzled Count Floyd-esque looks of confusion among horror fans. Not that it’s a failure or a joke. Whannell, whose bracing, sharp-edged 2020 remake of The Invisible Man ushered us into the cold-creeps COVID era, makes genre films for a wide audience, adults included. He doesn’t play these Universal franchise reboots for kicks. In Wolf Man, he really doesn’t. The results are equal parts marital crisis, sins-of-the-father psychodra- ma and visceral body horror. They’re also a bit of a plod — especially in the second half, when whatever kind of horror film you’re making should not, you know, plod. The first half is crafty, patient and deceptively good. A 1990s prologue introduces young Blake (Christopher Abbott) and his surly father venturing into a remote corner of the Oregon woods (New Zealand portrays Oregon) on a hunting expedition. They live nearby; Blake has yet to hear about the rumoured “face of the wolf” creature sharing the same woods that First Nation tribes have feared for centuries. Protecting his son in a shrewdly staged attack, the father disappears into the woods, presumed dead. Thirty years later in present-day San Francisco, Blake is an unemployed writer and full-time caregiver, mar- ried to workaholic journalist Charlotte (Julia Garner). She’s stress incarnate, envious of her husband’s close emo- tional bond with their daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth). With the arrival of his long-missing father’s death certificate, Blake in- herits the rural Oregon house. For the sake of the troubled family, Charlotte agrees to spend some time with Ginger in this place. From there, the movie narrows its geographic parameters, transforming into a close-quarters drama of three people in an old dark house surround- ed by lots of shrewdly designed sounds and beset by a werewolf stalking the visitors like it means business. Once Blake suffers a flesh wound at the hands of this predator, Whannell’s devotion to, among other films, David Cronenberg’s The Fly becomes appar- ent. Wolf Man delves into the fractured psyche and grotesque physical disin- tegration of a man stricken with an animal-borne virus, terrified of what it’s doing to him and what he may end up doing to those he loves. In other words, it’s a movie about every indignity an unemployed writer must suffer, lycanthropy included. Even when her character takes a more urgent role in this hermetic story, the excellent Garner doesn’t have much to play outside a parade of slow-roll non-verbal shots of Charlotte peering this way and that, taking charge of a rapidly dissolving situation but never really getting her due. (The script is by Whannell and his partner Corbett Tuck.) Wolf Man’s seriousness is heavy going. Its leitmotif sticks, doggedly, to the idea of transmutable, unholy fears, and sins of the fathers, transmitted like a virus down the family line. A rare in-joke pops up on the side of the moving van Blake rents to clear out his father’s house: the company has been in business since 1941, the slogan notes, taking us back to the year Universal made hay with Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man. That was neither the first nor the last werewolf movie. This one, originally slated for Ryan Gosling and director Derek Cianfrance, goes about its busi- ness with a solemn air, even when it’s super-blechy and Abbott is chewing on his own forearm for obvious reasons: an unemployed writer’s gotta eat. — Chicago Tribune MOVIE REVIEW WOLF MAN Starring: Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Matilda Firth ● Polo Park, Grant Park, Kildonan Place, St. Vital ● 103 minutes, 14A ★★★ out of five FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 2025 New take on hairy horror trope goes from bold and biting first act to whimpering close Part man, part wolf, PART GOOD NICOLA DOVE / UNIVERSAL PICTURES The usually excellent Julia Garner (left), with Matilda Firth, doesn’t have much to work with. UNIVERSAL PICTURES Christopher Abbott plays a son haunted by his missing father. OTHER VOICES There’s so much interior creaking and panting, and so little dialogue or plot, that if you closed your eyes, the projectionist could have swapped reels with a different genre of doggy style. — Amy Nicholson, Los Angeles Times The film moves from quietly morose to spectacularly cheesy via special effects that split the difference between (Lon) Chaney’s heyday and today, landing some- where near 1980s Roger Corman. — Carla Meyer, San Francisco Chronicle As a fable about parenthood, it doesn’t quite work — lacking either feminist oomph or any more novel riposte. But Whannell’s sturdy craft rescues the film on the level of a visceral ride, and it’s exciting enough while you watch. — Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph (UK) Whatever its strengths or weaknesses, every werewolf movie is ultimately judged by how well it handles the transformation and creature effects, and in that depart- ment, Wolf Man is a dud. — Peter Debruge, Variety MICHAEL PHILLIPS ARTS ● LIFE I MOVIES A love letter to L.A. and to Black female-led comedies KATIE WALSH MOVIE REVIEW ONE OF THEM DAYS Starring Keke Palmer, SZA ● Polo Park, St. Vital ● 97 minutes, 14A ★★★1/2 out of five Many of the best scenes punctuate social analysis with ribbing humour. — Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter The movie is a likably bent portrait of a community whose residents revel in their energized dysfunction, which is never so cartoonish that it can’t inspire an honest laugh. — Owen Gleiberman, Variety For the still too-rare, Black-led female theatrical comedy, One of Them Days has a tendency for overkill, but makes its moment count. — Adrian Horton, Guardian Even though the physical shtick comedy sometimes plays like something out of a cartoon, Palmer and SZA make the friendship between Dreux and Alyssa the glue that holds the story together. — Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times SONY PICTURES Keke Palmer (left) and SZA SONY PICTURES Singer-songwriter SZA (right), opposite Keke Palmer, makes a strong film debut in One of Them Days. OTHER VOICES ;