#19 – Gretel and Hansel
Directed by Oz Perkins, written by Rob Hayes
“Gretel and Hansel” is a triumph that was not going to be appreciated by the majority of the audience in wide release. It imagines the siblings in a grim world dominated by hunger, which makes the temptation of a house in the woods overloaded with food utterly irresistible no matter how improbable the source is.
Eventually the movie reveals its real horror. Is it Alice Krige’s witch devouring children in the woods, or it is the combination of external pressures that begin to warp Gretel and turn her against her younger brother? The film ends on an appropriately ambiguous note. Also this is Sophia Lillis’s THIRD appearance on the list, so maybe she’s pretty good at this?
Sidenote: I bet Alice Krige is probably one of the nicest people around. I feel like she’s feeding the homeless in a soup kitchen somewhere and then her agent calls and says that she’s a genocidal robot or a cannibalistic witch and she just sighs, designates some money to an orphanage and fliess to the set. We need a day on Twitter where we just talk about really nice stuff Alice Krige did for people.
Number #20 – The Dark and the Wicked
Written and Directed by Bryan Bertino
Bryan Bertino makes incredible looking films. ‘The Dark and the Wicked’ pulls off the metaphor of destructive depression and general dread in a way that a lot of films flat out miss. In the film a pair of siblings are pulled back to the their childhood farm after a family death.
Things turn out badly.
The forces involved are not particularly explained or defined, which is ideal, because the effects are familiar. A dysfunctional family dynamic does this to a lot of people. And as Marin Ireland’s character is increasingly isolated, the movie lives up to its name.
Tom & Tom : Black Like You 