Pop

Finale, finally

Pop-punk band Promise Game plays last show at Shaskeen

A few weeks ago the members of Promise Game met in a rehearsal room for the first time in nearly two years. Guitarist Adam Elverson went in a little bit nervous. “I haven’t picked up my guitar in a year and a half,” he warned his bandmates. “I don’t know how this will go.”

He needn’t have worried.

“That was the best practice,” he said in a recent Zoom interview, accompanied by singer Colin VanDenBerghe. “It was full-on like riding a bicycle.” That muscle memory comes from years together in a band, but also from all the time they’ve spent together without music as the glue.

“We’re friends before the band,” VanDenBerghe said. “That’s why we started it, just to play music with our friends.” They began with punked up versions of rock hits like Sheryl Crow’s “If It Makes You Happy” and “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls, the latter of which grew into a reliable set closer when they began playing out.

Because Promise Game formed a few months before the pandemic arrived, hitting the stage was hard. The upside of that was two years of woodshedding that prepared them for playing live. Their first tour grew out of an online friendship between VanDenBerghe and Justin Humenik, singer of the pop-punk band Cheer Up Dusty.

They two traded posts about each other’s music, which led to an agreement that Promise Game would do a show in Philadelphia, Cheer Up Dusty’s home base, and then follow them back to New England. Goalkeeper signed on, as did Driveways, whom VanDenBerghe recruited at their merch table after a sold-out show at Jewel.

The raucous tour that ensued is among VanDenBerghe’s best memories of his time in the band. At one show in New Jersey, 300 people eager to see Driveways came to a bar expecting 50. When the sound man bailed, VanDenBerghe took over the console. Before the night was over he’d become future headliner Driveways’ first booking manager.

On Saturday, Oct. 10, the pop-punk band plays its last show at a room VanDenBerghe calls the band’s “home court,” the Shaskeen in Manchester, a makeup date for a late 2024 farewell show that was canceled after VanDenBerghe’s father, Don, passed away suddenly on Thanksgiving Day.

Adding to the tragedy, it happened just one day before the band released its final EP, One Last Goodnight.

“Luckily, I had the guys,” VanDenBerghe said. “We’re all best friends. We’ve been friends forever; the ability to do it again is just a testament to how much we stayed friends.”

The reason for stopping after one last show is simple: life got in the way.

“We had been doing it for a long time,” VanDenBerghe said, and the members were getting busy with family. One wanted to cut back; another agreed. A lot of things happened throughout 2024, Elverson continued, “and that was like, ‘OK, we’ll put a kibosh on it.’”

The shared history of Promise Game and Cheer Up Dusty makes them essential for the sendoff. “It wouldn’t be the same if we [played] our last show without you guys,” VanDenBerghe told Humenik and guitarists Brayan Marin and Nick Silvidio. They’re making the long drive from the Philadelphia area, with another gig booked on the way.

House Lights will open the show. The Manchester five-piece mixes post-hardcore and emo, and was booked for the farewell that never happened. Also performing is True Crime, another local band who formed during the pandemic lull. Led by singer Ethan Harrison, they draw on bands like Third Eye Blind, Saves the Day and Hot Water Music.

The lineup for the last show includes bass player Matt Eisenstadter, and Adam’s younger brother Mark Elverson on drums. Guitarist Mike Cochran won’t be there due to another gig at the Milford Pumpkin Festival, but does plan to be in the audience. Adam is determined to coax him onstage for their last pass at “Iris.”

The Elversons have been in bands together since their teens, and Adam will think about that as the final notes ring out at Shaskeen. “Playing shows with my brother, I’ll miss that,” he said, as VanDenBerghe echoed his bandmate’s thoughts about what he’ll look back on.

“The camaraderie, the friendship,” he said. “Our weekly time to get together and just focus on what we love to do.”

Promise Game Farewell Show, w/ Cheer Up Dusty, True Crime and House Lights
When: Saturday, Oct. 10, at 8 p.m.
Where: Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester
Tickets: $15 at the door

Featured Photo: Promise Game. Courtesy photo.

Secrets!

Half-baked but fully fun Verity

Anne Hathaway understands how to do the most. In Verity (in theaters), Hathaway plays Verity Crawford, a famous and wealthy author, as a cartoon Disney wicked stepmother-type, all arched eyebrows and devious glares. It’s a big, fun, campy performance and I wish the movie could have given it even more room to do its big campy thing.

Verity has suffered traumatic injury from a car accident and can no longer move or talk or communicate in any way. Cared for in her home by her husband, Jeremy (Josh Hartnett), and a nurse, Anna (Irina Dvorovenko), Verity has left behind enough notes that her publisher believes ghostwriter Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson) will be able to piece together three new novels. Lowen goes to Verity and Jeremy’s secluded Vermont lake house — where Jeremy lives with his young son Crew (Brady Warner) — to dig through Verity’s notes. The couple also had a daughter, Harper (Sienna Kulovitz), Crew’s twin, who recently drowned in the nearby lake. Also, Lowen’s mother, with whom she had a difficult relationship, recently died of cancer. Also, as the movie starts, Lowen is walking to her publisher’s office when she is showered with the blood of a bicyclist who is killed just steps away from her. The absurdity of how all this is presented was, for me, “ha!”-inducing and really set the tone for the operatic wail of a movie to follow.

When Lowen gets to Vermont, she paws through Verity’s things and finds a secret — secret! — manuscript which we hear/see Hathaway narrating as though it is an entry in some sort of “It was a dark and stormy night” contest for Most Dramatic! Was Verity harboring deep dark secrets — secrets! — or is something else behind the sinister vibe in the family’s home?

The fun part of a movie like this is that for any of this to work, everybody needs to seem a little bit like a serial killer and we, in the audience, get to guess who is the killeriest. Hathaway and Hartnett both walk this line — maybe a killer? — pretty well. Johnson, who the movie even pegs as having “resting bored face,” is probably less successful, with her built in “cool girl” quality pushing her just out of phase with the playing-it-straight performances that Hathaway and Hartnett are giving. When Lowen takes an earnest turn toward the end of the movie, it also feels sort of jarring and not quite fitting.

But also, so what? This movie is amusing even when it doesn’t entirely make sense. There is a dishiness, a smooth peanut butter richness to the movie that could use more bite but goes down easy enough that I didn’t really mind the smarter, stronger structure it was missing.

Featured photo: Verity.

Immortal Rose by Alexandra Bracken

(Avon, 496 pages)

I may have picked up Alexandra Bracken’s Immortal Rose for its gorgeous cover and pretty stenciled edges, but I stayed for the story. The romantasy follows the very common enemies-to-lovers trope, but there’s not much else that’s common about this book, from the use of scent as a source of magic to the vastly disparate cast of characters.

The book centers around Viola Lockwood, the final — and illegitimate — heir of House Rosebourne, who has inherited the family’s fairy-born gift of creating fragrances with a touch of magic that can heal or hurt, emotionally and physically. Her sense of smell is so intense that she can tell who’s approaching before she sees them and often knows if someone is lying, or what kind of person they are, based on their essence alone.

Viola is living on the streets when we meet her, forced to sell her concoctions illegally, and during a raid she’s thrown into jail with ruthless guards who have no qualms about abusing women. She’s saved, though, by a stranger: royal spymaster Hugh Thornton, Earl of Foxcourt.

This unexpected act of kindness is anything but — Hugh is the one who had her thrown into jail in the first place. King Alfred III has been poisoned, and Viola is the only person alive who can create Immortal Rose, a magical perfume that can act as an antidote to save the king. If the king dies, his throne will be overtaken by the Duke of Glenmoor, a villain — such a villain — who wants nothing more than to bring down the kingdom for his own gain. Viola begrudgingly agrees to create Immortal Rose, in exchange for her eventual freedom and the rights to her Rosebourne inheritance.

And so begins her tenuous alliance with Hugh. Viola has a fraught, violent past and has learned to take care of herself, so she wants nothing to do with a male “keeper.” Unfortunately for her, Hugh has just as much at stake in this quest, so they team up to search for the magical ingredient to make Immortal Rose, facing danger every step of the way.

As with any good romantasy, there is growing chemistry between these two “enemies,” much to Viola’s frustration. Can she trust Hugh? Does she want to?

“I could feel myself softening to the possibility of this place, to these people, to him, and there were few things more dangerous to a woman than an unguarded heart,” she thinks.

Hugh, meanwhile, is frustrated with Viola’s stubbornness and unwillingness to accept help, and also because she continues to engage with Oliver Radcliffe, her childhood friend who proposed marriage to get her out of prison. But despite his air of haughty arrogance, we see over time that he’s committed to keeping Viola safe, no matter the cost.

The book gets off to a slow start. You really have to be locked in to understand what’s going on as the Regency-era world unfolds with its complicated political system and family histories, and the mysteries start to build. I had to go back a page or two more than once, trying to identify all the pieces in a complex but very intriguing puzzle.

The pace picks up in the second half, with more action and unraveling backstories. Along with the many battles and interpersonal conflicts, we also watch Viola’s development as she tries to figure out who she is within the confines of her family history. She’s given some advice about this, an exquisitely written line spoken by Felicity, aka Fizzy, a maid at Foxcourt House (Hugh’s residence and, reluctantly, Viola’s temporary home): “The past is only a backstory, unless you allow it to wield the quill.”

Fizzy is actually a wonderful side character all around; she isn’t afraid to call Hugh out on his behavior, adding a level of comfort to Viola’s stay and revealing a more fallible and compassionate side of Hugh. Brecken gifts us with other compelling supporting characters too, like the rest of the gang of “servants” at Foxcourt House, each with a distinct personality and questionable background.

This is a character-driven story from the start; really, the magic and mysteries feel like a bonus, as do some unexpected plot twists at the end. Immortal Rose is the first in a duology, and thank god, because no book should be allowed to end the way this does without the promise of a follow-up. A-

Featured Photo: Immortal Rose by Alexandra Bracken

Album Reviews 26/10/08

Remy Wolf, Mud (Island Records)

There’s a possibility that Sia Furler’s voice is too obscure (or dated; after all, it’s been a whole two years and four months since her last record) to be cited as a soundalike for this Palo Alto-bred pop diva; most music journos throw out Lola Young as a reference and call it an article, but either way she’s in the same pew with, you know, Chappell Roan and such. The days when she was singing pure unadulterated bubblegum on 2024’s Big Ideas are long past, never mind her early taste of fame as a teen contestant on American Idol as a high school senior; these days this singer’s trying to cleanse her emotional palate of the taste of tour burnout, addiction problems and a few disastrous relationships; this one focuses instead on something of a soul cleanse. The bloopy, laid-back, Lorde-pilfering, self-body-shaming “Twiggy” is precisely the sort of angst-wringing, swear-filled, arena-ready singalong that’s been the only sort of thing that’s seemingly able to make a buck these days; “Bottle” gets its edge from an acoustic guitar arpeggio that’s not hideously common in the (now ridiculously overcrowded) genre. Another country heard from, as they used to say. A

Foghat, Live & Loud Across The U.S.A. (Foghat Records)

Boomers — the generation that Generation Z only recently stopped making insulting TikToks about, mostly because they’re their doting, cookie-baking grandparents and not their naggy parents, who are mostly Generation X, the generation that’s currently getting no respect at all online despite all the life-triage they’re doing for their whippersnappers — remember this British blues-rock band quite vividly for their 1977 Foghat Live album, which catapulted them into superstar status. Everyone had a copy of the thing, a gigantic record that sounds like all-out war on party poopers: You can practically hear the giant beach balls bouncing off people’s heads while they play hits like “Fool For The City” and “Slow Ride.” Hyper-aggressive blues rock with brain-squeezing guitar solos was the thing back then, and the album was as ’70s as it got, and then time went on. There’s an unfortunate New Hampshire connection to the band’s most recent chapter, namely the death of guitarist Rod Price in Wilton in 2005, according to Wikipedia, whose mastery over slide guitar has never faced a serious challenge until, well, this LP. Along with singer Dave Peverett, Price’s “bottleneck” sound was instantly identifiable, but drummer Roger Earl, the last remaining original member, has done an amazing job putting together a very similar sounding band, led by slide guitarist Bryan Bassett. This collection of live performances takes a minute to explode, but yeah, the same party-up energy is there. I’m not exaggerating, either; their 2023 album Sonic Mojo remained on the Billboard Top 10 Blues Albums chart for 34 weeks, quite deservedly. Give it a shot. A+

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Like a wicker Hobby Lobby cornucopia filled with rotten cabbages (and that reminds me, I need to put an alert on my phone for next year so I don’t miss the five whole weeks of late summer when Bartlett pears are in season, all yellow and soft and tasty, not hard, green, pear-shaped things that taste like someone’s desk), Friday, Oct. 9, will arrive with a smorgasbord of new albums, for your ears! Like every week, there are some that interest me, but let’s get the other stuff out of the way first, starting with the new one from Michigan’s most shameless Led Zeppelin wannabe band, Greta Van Fleet, called Palace For The People! I hope that by now they’ve finally gotten tired of ripping off Zep’s 1975 album Physical Graffiti (back when Zep was ripping off tunes from people like Sleepy John Estes) and have graduated to ripping off Zeppelin in their Led Zeppelin III era (when they were ripping off Stephen Foster and various obscure singers from the 1800s), but I’m sure I’ll be disappointed; I’m betting the new single “Tear It Down” will be what they imagine punk is supposed to sound like, some fast number like Zep’s “Communication Breakdown” or something, but let me go peek. Ah, it sounds pretty cool for the first part, but then it digs around in the trash for some second-generation depleted-soil Zep with a Southern rock flavor, in this case Heart’s “Crazy For You,” and why did they get so cheap with the background vocals? They sound like they were singing through a (totally vintage!) toaster. You know, it’s really lucky for these imbeciles that the real Led Zeppelin guys already own all the medieval castles they could ever want and have been pretending to encourage them, because they could sue them to Jupiter and any judge who’s ever had a radio in their car would throw them in the slammer for eleventy billion years (I’d place a joke about Sammy Davis Jr.’s old “Here Comes The Judge” Laugh-In bit here but all you twerking Bieber brats would just look at me like I stepped on one of your day-glo orange Crocs; trust me, the ’Fleets would probably sound a lot less like a tribute band if they all received a few giant foam-gavel blows to their heads).

• Aaand continuing, ugh, I suppose I could give a listen to the new Sheryl Crow album Pick You Up but I don’t wanna, OK, actually why not, we’ll get to something decent, just chill. The lyrics to the single “Freedom Bus” are completely calorie-free, something about “hate is bad”; form-wise the tune uses the second template of the only three she ever uses, the slow, really boring one where she microwaves something from The Beatles, in this case “Don’t Let Me Down,” will it ever end.

• But without further ado we should move onto something that’s practically guaranteed not to get me reaching for my big gallon jug of Pepto Bismol, because look, it’s A Man From The Future, the newest album from English synth-pop kings Pet Shop Boys, a concept album focused on mathematician Alan Turing! Yup, the single “Let The Music Play” is indeed awesome, a re-drawn low-key/gloom-pop version of the original 1984 neo-disco hit from Shannon, vocals courtesy of 66-year-old Carroll Thompson, known as “the queen of lovers’ rock.” Nothing to hate here.

• We’ll end with British drone/space-rock kooks Gnod, whose new LP, Chronicles of Gnowt Vol 2, will surely appeal to fans of crazed noise-rock. “Old Gold” is a Rickenbacker bass-driven assault on the senses, if that’s your jam.

Featured Photo: Remy Wolf, Mud and Foghat, Live & Loud Across The U.S.A.

Victory lap

Feat’s Last Farewell hits New Hampshire

Though they’re still at the top of their game musically, Little Feat’s Oct. 2 appearance at Portsmouth’s Music Hall is likely their final one in the region. Their Last Farewell tour isn’t a hard stop, but cruises and residencies in hubs like Los Angeles, New York City and Nashville will be the only way to see the legendary band after this run ends.

“There’s an end point to jumping on the bus,” founding member Bill Payne said by phone recently.

As to why now, close to six decades after Lowell George and fellow Mothers of Invention member Roy Estrada recruited Payne and drummer Richie Hayward as the nucleus of a rootsy band that would produce timeless songs like “Willin’” and “Dixie Chicken,” Payne offered a cryptic, albeit practical, reply.

“Groucho Marx used to say, ‘I love my cigar, but I take it out every now and then,’” he explained. “I was resistant to the idea, to be honest with you, and then I began to say, ‘Travel’s travel.’ I just want to be able to play at a certain proficiency.”

That’s not a problem, based on accolades the tour is getting in places like Nashville. On Sept. 8 they made their Grand Ole Opry debut, then returned to the Ryman Auditorium the following night, where young acolytes Marcus King and Maggie Rose joined them, along with veteran guitarist Tommy Emmanuel, for a fiery second set.

It’s a victory lap, both for the band and Payne. The singer, songwriter and keyboard player has a lot going on.

He’ll begin work on a solo album in December.

“It looks like in Nashville,” he said. With a batch of songs from late Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, Paul Muldoon and Richard Wheeler, he’ll be joined by Emmanuel and Trey Hensley in the studio. Hopefully, Daniel Donato and Molly Tuttle will also pitch in.

Next year, Payne’s memoir, Carnival Ghosts, will be published. He promises an honest appraisal of his band, while noting, “it’s a fine line to watch … being truthful, but not harming people.” This applies especially to his old band mate, whose tragic end is more than well known.

“Lowell was a storyteller, and even at his most compromised, he was still writing songs like ‘Mercenary Territory’ and ‘Long Distance Love,’” Payne said. “He had this incredible gift. The sadness of course was he and others like him rolled off the edge, but he had so much to share with people. That beauty, it’s not going to be tarnished.”

A few in George’s orbit are treated less kindly, he added. “I am hurting some other people that I felt deserved it.”

Similarly balanced is Little Feat – The Documentary, released earlier this year and now on the film festival circuit. Directed by Jesse Lauter, who also helmed Learning To Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen, it’s narrated by Jeff Bridges.

“I was thrilled with what Jesse Lauder came up with,” Payne said.

With the recent death of Estrada, Payne is the last surviving founding member of Little Feat. The group disbanded after George’s overdose death in 1979, reforming eight years later and making their comeback album Let It Roll in 1988. They’ve made multiple records since, though losing Hayward and guitarist Paul Barrere along the way.

Guitarist Scott Sharrard and drummer Tony Leone have stepped in for Barrere and Hayward, with results rivaling any version of the band; both possess unique talents in Payne’s view. “Somebody said it better than me: Tony’s not Richie Hayward, but Richie Hayward isn’t Tony Leone either.”

Payne is past seeing the two as new members.

“These guys are just wonderful musicians,” he said. “Tony studied Richie growing up, and Scott always wanted to be in Little Feat, even as a kid. Quite a few years ago I said to the guys, ‘You’re not auditioning for the band anymore, you’re in it. What do you want to do?’”

Little Feat
When: Friday, Oct. 2, at 7 p.m.
Where: The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
Tickets: $50 and up at themusichall.org

Featured Photo: Courtesy photo.

Twilight alums

A look at the latest from Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart plus more recent releases

Primetime, a recently-released-in-theaters look at NBC’s Chris Hansen at the height of his To Catch a Predator fame, does a good job at highlighting its best asset: Robert Pattinson throwing his whole body into playing a weird character with a weird voice.

Pattinson plays Hansen as a man singlemindedly obsessed with fulfilling NBC head Jeff Zucker’s (playing himself) command that he beat Lost, his time-slot competitor, in the new season’s ratings. This Hansen, who gives off the sense of spiritually being at the edge of a psychotic break despite looking like a standard, well-coiffed newsman, harbors deep insecurities, best demonstrated by his hilarious jealous rage at fellow Dateline reporter Stone Phillips (Bill Heck). Beneath the TV exterior of his personality, there seems to be a boiling cauldron of crazy — Hansen doesn’t know how to be a normal person with his wife (Anna Faris) and kids, with the woman (Caroline Hebert) he’s cheating with or with Dan Plumb (Skyler Gisondo), the 20something actor who Hansen calls “Decoy Dan” for his work playing a young teen when the predators show up to meet in person. Perhaps the only person who can break through his delusion and paranoia is Andie (Merritt Wever), his producer, who is fully aware that they are working in a sleaze-based medium but is also pretty desperate to keep her position as this sleazy endeavor’s captain.

IMDb calls this movie a “psychological drama” and “thriller” and Wikipedia goes with “psychological crime thriller” but throughout I was mostly reading this as bleak, dark comedy about a specific era in media. Dan, just hoping to get his union membership from this role, is maybe the closest the movie gets to a sympathetic character. Pattinson’s Hansen is more of a fascinating trainwreck happening in front of you. I have no idea if the real guy is anything like this; “he thinks he’s Mike Wallace” some sound engineers say at one point. Pattison plays Hansen like a guy who is straining to believe he’s Mike Wallace and maybe cracking because he can’t “believe” away his personal and professional sordidness. I don’t feel that Oscar heft that this movie’s marketing had me expecting, but I do think this is a solid watch if you enjoy tense satire.

The Robert Pattinson-ness of Primetime led me to check out The Wrong Girls (an August theatrical release available for rent or purchase), whichstars fellow “Twilight movies take up ¾ of my IMDb known-fors” actor Kristen Stewart. Written and directed by Stewart’s wife, Dylan Meyer, The Wrong Girls is a showcase for my favorite kind of Stewart performance: Stewart as total goofball. See also 2019’s Charlie’s Angels and her Saturday Night Live appearances. Here, she’s Frankie, a Stanford dropout treading water in life, giving up immediately on anything that seems to be hard and putting all of her brainpower into inventing, for example, a giant bong. Frankie and roommate Molly (Alia Shawkat), who works a job she hates and dreams of becoming an avant garde chef for dishes (e.g. brownies with blue cheese) that are apparently excellent when high. Which this duo is most of the time. Behind on rent and accidentally handed a briefcase full of bottles of a strange glowy substance, Frankie and Molly decide to attempt to sell what they presume are drugs to make up their cash shortfall. They of course try out their product first, which gives them the ability to read each other’s minds and, when mixed with THC, possibly makes them telekinetic. Because, of course, other people want this substance, Frankie and Molly soon find themselves on the run with their cats (voiced by Kumail Nanjiani and Seth Rogen), whose very judgy minds they can also hear.

Zack Fox, LaKeith Stanfield, Tony Hale and Kate McKinnon also appear in this movie, which I would consider a very relaxed comedy; the jokes are loosely constructed and float by at a non-urgent pace. And it’s fine — enjoyable and funny in a comfy sort of way. I could take or leave the stoner-ness of the movie but I was charmed by the friendship, both the chemistry between Shawkat and Stewart and the “desperate love with minor quibbles about each other” quality of their relationship.

Here are some more recent releases I caught up on:

• Best of the Best (Netflix) is every great thing about a dance movie, a Pitch Perfect-style college extracurricular movie and a best friend movie. Maya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and Anjali (Priyanka Kedia) are lifelong besties who have become roommates in their freshman year at UCLA. They also both love dance — though Maya doesn’t love that people know her as “Drone Strike” from a viral video shot at her high school talent show where a complex dance routine with drones lighting the stage went wrong and she took a drone to the head. When she learns about UCLA’s competitive Bollywood dance team, Maya encourage-pressures Anjali to join it with her, even though Anjali’s mother (Janina Gavankar) is extremely adamant that Anjali focus solely on her studies.

There are some boys (Ankur Rathee, Chaneil Kular) and some dance team politics but the true friction for this friendship is long-simmering resentments and fears — Maya says Anjali has always been the friendly, pretty one; Anjali fears Maya thinks she’s smarter and more talented. But we’re not friends, one says to the other at one point, we’ve always been sisters — hurray for best-friendship! In addition to this winning pair, the movie has some nice specificity about the experiences of Southeast Asian kids and their families and comedy that’s based on relationships and down-to-Earth (rather than, like, National Lampoon-style) aspects of college life. And we get some very fun dance numbers.

• The Rivals of Amziah King(an August theatrical release, now available for rent or purchase) is giving The Sticky vibes, if you recall that late-2024 series about maple syrup starring Margo Martindale on Prime Video (where it is still available and worth a watch), as well as some hints of The Lowdown (the latest very good Sterlin Harjo TV show on Hulu, slated to come back for its second season in October). Here (here being Oklahoma), Amziah King (Matthew McConaughey) is an expert in honey, which he produces (or rather, as he explains, his bees produce the honey — he is a man who deeply loves and respects his bees). The movie opens with law enforcement asking him to consult on some stolen honey, trying to help them track down who it might have originally belonged to. This leads to a strange series of events involving a dramatic farm injury that takes him to a hospital and then to a nearby diner several towns away from where he lives, which is where he runs into Kateri (Angelina LookingGlass), a young adult woman who was once a foster child Amziah and his wife raised for a few years before his wife died. Amziah brings Kateri back into his orbit and she seems delighted to be working with him on his bees and hanging out with his circle of musician friends who perform at church socials and the like. Their peace is broken when Kateri discovers that all of Amziah’s hives have been stolen. The police understand how devastating the loss is for the farm but they can’t really do much about it. Kateri decides to take it on herself to find the bees, retrieve the honey and maybe get some vengeance against the person who wronged them.

The movie starts with McConaughey and his buddies playing upbeat Americana at a drive-in restaurant, and throughout we get to know Amziah’s open-hearted personality in part through the music he plays. This feels like it should clash with the crime (some of it quite violent) and heist elements of the movie that come later, but somehow it all works together. The movie is kind and good-hearted and joyous and features murders and chosen-familial loyalty. It’s a weird mix but McConaughey plays it well and LookingGlass shows herself to be one to watch.

• Tony (an August theatrical release available for rent or purchase) gives us the “portrait of the artist as a highly slappable young man” tale of college student Anthony Bourdain. When we meet him, Tony (Dominic Sessa) is fairly confident that he’s got a writing fellowship in the bag, even though it would take saintly patience not to make barfing gestures when he describes the plot of the pretentious novel he plans to write. He is a world-class talent at being a massive jerk, a fact the real-life Bourdain was later aware of, based on the quote from his memoir Kitchen Confidential that starts the movie. When he doesn’t get the fellowship and can’t bear the thought of a summer spent with his parents, Tony basically runs away to Provincetown, chasing a girl from high school who he ran into at a bar. His attempts to pursue her are so bad I actually turned the volume down while watching it because Sessa is excellent at crafting a character who is an absolute wienball while thinking he’s being clever and charming, which makes his wienballness so much worse. Tony’s despair leads him to get so drunk at a local restaurant that he winds up sleeping it off first on the sidewalk outside the restaurant and then on the chef’s hammock. When Tony asks to stay another night or two, the Chef (Antonio Banderas, whose character Wikipedia calls José Vatel, though I don’t know if we ever hear his name) agrees in exchange for Tony’s services as a dishwasher in the restaurant. Five days a week, show up at 10:45 a.m. — a task that José makes easier by waking Tony up every morning with a pot full of sea water to the face. Tony continues to insist that he is a writer but we see him finding his place in the hyper-masculine camaraderie/abuse (and substance abuse) and discipline of the restaurant kitchen.

I remember some of this story — the vibes, really, more than specific incidents — from Kitchen Confidential. What we’re seeing here is more a slice of one young person’s growth — a completely insufferable adolescent becoming a slightly more mature, slightly more outward-looking person. And, especially once life humbles Tony a little, it’s a compelling watch, with Sessa playing against Banderas and Leo Woodall (playing, basically, kitchen worker cautionary tale), who are pulling Tony in occasionally opposing directions of order and chaos, respectively.

• Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (an August release available for rent or purchase) is the most recent movie written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, who also wrote and directed I Saw The TV Glow. This movie feels like continuation of the thoughts in that movie — what it means to watch a TV show or movie and your reaction to it and how your reaction is and isn’t a part of the overall package of what the movie is doing and how your reaction at a young age can be completely different from what you feel rewatching it decades later. This movie adds another twist of ouroboros-like meta commentary by being about a director, Kris (Hannah Einbinder), trying to do a reboot on the Camp Miasma horror series, which the movie explains as sort of a Friday the 13th/Sleepaway Camp multi-entry franchise of decades prior. Kris travels to the abandoned camp from the first movie to seek out Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), that movie’s “final girl” actor who bought the camp to serve as her retreat from the world. As an LGBTQ filmmaker, Kris explains to Billy, she knows she’s been brought in to smooth out some of the transphobic elements of the original film and to bring a “woke” twist to the movie while still being recognizable IP, the only thing movie studios are willing to spend money on. Billy approaches all of this explanation with an eyeroll to all the over-intellectualizing — and she isn’t fully sold on having any part of the project, which Kris feels is important.

Anderson seems like she’s having a blast here, playing Billy as a self-aware Norma Desmond (she claims she’s not and then wears the turban) in Dolly Parton hair who always seems like she might be floating away to woo-woo land or might just be messing with Kris to amuse herself. Or maybe both. She’s great, is what I’m saying, and she pairs nicely with the very serious, very “I’m here to do the work” of Einbinder’s Kris. The movie has fun with the horror movie tropes while also having fun with Billy and Kris having fun with horror movie tropes, including how horror movies approach sex and what that all means. And it all works? Or works enough for me, mixing Hollywood movie-making humor with strange little story elements.

• Fuze (an April Prime Video release), a movie that starts with the discovery of a World War II bomb in present-day downtown London, will not pain you to watch but it also will not, sorry, blow you away with its energy or innovation. Major Will Tranter (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is called in when a construction crew digs up what appears to be a large unexploded bomb in a building site. The surrounding area is quickly evacuated — though in one building, a group of men (including one played by Sam Worthington) sit quietly in an apartment, not moving at the knock by police. As the Army works to secure and disarm the bomb, the men and their brains-of-the-operation George (Theo James) scurry around the neighborhood, sneaking into a basement and jackhammering through a wall to get to the bank vault next door. Because the police (as personified by Gugu Mbatha-Raw) have drones and heat sensors, they eventually catch on that the bomb-endangered area might not be completely empty.

This setup is fine — fun even. Who doesn’t like an overly complicated heist? But there is some tonal weirdness — is this a bouncy fun bad guys versus badder guys versus lady cop situation? Or a tense and serious affair? Or did the movie want to somehow do both things? And the movie builds itself up only to sort of balloon-slow-leak to the end.

Featured photo: Robert Pattinson in Primetime.

Category: Pop