movie reviews david and margaret

David & Margaret review 2020

Australia’s most-loved reviewers critique the world's least-loved year..

• Published by David Knox
• on December 18, 2020
• Filed under News , Video

And on that note…

News satire The Shovel asked Margaret & David – Australia’s most-loved reviewers – to critique the world’s least-loved year.

This sketch was written by James Schloeffel, produced by Chaser digital and directed by Victoria Zerbst and Jenna Owen.

• Tagged with At the Movies , The Movie Show

8 Responses

OMG Margaret’s eye roll at the end!!!!! Killing myself with laughter

David and Margaret’s review of ‘2020’ 2020 is brilliant. But unequivocally there must not in any way, shape or form be a sequel ‘movie’ expanding on the same plot and subplots.

10 please sign them up to “Celebrity Gogglebox Australia”

This is great – thanks for sharing David.

Love and miss these two.

Great chemistry these up and coming presenters. Maybe they should have a show together? 🙂

I miss these guys. This was great.

Just goes to show that David & Margaret are the best reviewers we have ever seen. Note to ABC bring these 2 back to TV in some form.

This is just excellent.

I miss these two soooo much.

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Arts & entertainment, design & style, travel & leisure, search concrete playground, margaret and david have reunited on-screen to review (and argue about) 2020.

In this comedic segment for 'The Shovel, of course they disagreed about this hectic year.

Australia doesn't have many famous figures that are referred to by their first names alone, but Margaret and David are definitely two of them. Yes, they have full names — Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton — but when you're on TV together for almost three decades, and you're as entertaining to watch as this pair, those surnames just fall away.

It has been six years since their second film review series, the ABC's At the Movies , finished up in 2014 . It started in 2004, and followed their previous program, The Movie Show , which aired on SBS from 1986–2004. Both Margaret and David have still been active as film critics since, but not together — until satirical news site The Shovel asked them to reunite on-screen to share their thoughts on the past 12 months as part of the Chaser-produced digital War on 2020 .

No, they don't review movies from the past year, although Christopher Nolan's Tenet gets a mention. Rather, they use their familiar style — including their bickering and bantering — to discuss just how ridiculous 2020 has been. David is disappointed all round, noting how little sense it all makes, while Margaret finds it quite humorous. So, as fans of the pair will know, it's classic Margaret and David, right down to the contrasting star ratings.

That's the point, of course, but it's still very amusing to watch. You can view the clip below — and here's hoping that if Margaret and David repeat the feat in 2021, they have something brighter to argue about.

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Too Beautiful for You 1989

Watched 10 May 1989

David Stratton’s Review for Variety.

Bertrand Blier, whose films usually have made sardonic fun of such staple themes as friendship and sexual relationships, has come up with a new charmer in “Too Beautiful For You,” this time bringing fresh insight to the old, old story of marital infidelity. This witty, cleverly structured film should have audiences chuckling wherever quality French films are screened.

In his last film, “Menage” (“Tenue De Soiree”), Blier had husky Gerard Depardieu play a gay guy…

My Grandmother 1929

Watched 19 Apr 1989

This silent film, made in Soviet Georgia in 1929, was such a frontal attack on communist bureaucracy that the authorities in Moscow promptly banned it. It was released only in 1976, when Gruziafilm, the Georgian production house, added a music score and sound effects. In this version, it unspooled at the 1977 New York Film Festival.

Director Kote (Konstantine) Mikaberidze (1896-1973) was an actor and cartoonist, but “My Grandmother” was, apparently, by far his most…

Me, Grandma, Iliko and Ilarion 1962

An early film from the director of the prize-winning “Repentance,” Tengiz Abuladze, this charmer is blessed both with a quirky sense of humor and a typically (Georgian feeling for the rocky landscape of small towns and villages.

The story spans a number of years, from pre-World War II until some time after the conflict, but the war is seen only as it affects this isolated part of the world. A parade is held as men…

Salt for Svanetia 1930

Watched 12 Apr 1989

Celebrated as a classic example of silent Soviet documentary, “Salt For Svanetia” would by today’s standards be considered dramatized documentary, since it was filmed according to a screenplay, and, though it uses nonprofessional actors, is filled with staged scenes.

Svanetia is a valley in Georgia, 6,000 ft. up, where the Greater and Lesser ranges of the Caucasus meet. Access to the area is blocked by snow for most of the year; even in July (as…

Jesus of Montreal 1989

Audaciously conceived and brilliantly executed, “Jesus Of Montreal” should be a sure-fire arthouse hit worldwide, and anticipated controversies surrounding the film will only garner it free publicity. It should be in the running for a major Cannes prize.

Writer-director Denys Arcand tops his “Decline Of The American Empire” with this wickedly funny, searingly honest satire on the way the message of Jesus Christ has been distorted through history. Story involves a young actor, Daniel, hired…

Spirits of the Air • Gremlins of the Clouds 1987

Still awaiting Australian release several months after its completion, “Spirits Of The Air...” is an offbeater looking for a cult audience. It’s a film with a distinctive style and vision, but it adds up to a minimal screen experience.

Setting is the desert, sometime in the future. Felix, a manic type, and his sister, Betty, live in a wood house in the middle of nowhere. The siblings have a religious fixation, so the place is…

Malpractice 1989

A gripping docudrama about a childbirth that goes wrong, “Malpractice” is, for most of its length, a powerful experience. Fest outings are indicated followed by tv sales, with theatrical possibilities slim.

Coral Davis, superbly played by Caz Lederman, is a workingclass woman married to an auto mechanic (Bob Baines) and mother of two girls. Her third pregnancy appears to be normal until she enters hospital (on a Saturday) for delivery and things start to go…

Sweetie 1989

“Sweetie” is an original, audacious tragicomedy about two sisters, one who’s afraid of trees but believes in fortune tellers, the other who’s plump and plain and eager to make her mark in showbiz.

Director Jane Campion, whose short films “A Girl’s Own Story” and “Peel” and telefilm “Two Friends” were screened at Cannes a couple of years ago, is competing in the fest with this, her first cinema feature.

Though early scenes play a little…

My Name Is Harlequin 1988

Rewatched 10 May 1989

Hard on the heels of “Little Vera” comes this new Soviet film about rebellious youth. This one’s even more hard-hitting, though not as well handled as the earlier pic. Still, it could make its mark on the international scene.

The teenagers here live in a provincial town near the city of Minsk, and seem exceptionally influenced by fashions from the West. They go to discos and concerts where the songs are sung in English; they…

★★★★½ Watched 30 Apr 2019

MARGARET: ★★★★½ DAVID: ★★★★

Margaret Pomeranz’s Review for SCREEN on Foxtel:

1985 is not just a film title - it's a year; a significant one. It's Christmas and Adrian (Cory Michael Smith) returns to his home in Fort Worth from New York. It's the first time in three years he's visited. This is the heart of Bible Belt America, where records and tapes of so-called secular music are disposed of, and the morality is strict. His father Dale (Michael Chiklis)…

In Our Courtyard 1956

Director Rezo Chkheidze, co-director with Tengiz Abuladze of the Cannes prize-winner “Magdana’s Donkey” (1955), produced “Our Courtyard,” his first solo feature, apparently under the influence of such Italian films as “Sunday In August.” Tale is a simple one involving a group of teenagers all of whom live in apartments overlooking the same Tbilisi courtyard.

The film is peopled with stock characters, like the nosy concierge and the elderly bore, but the teenagers themselves are freshly…

Blood Reincarnation 1974

“Blood Reincarnation” was made in 1974 and played at the London film fest the following year. As a good example of Hong Kong cinema of the macabre, it was included in the recent Hong Kong film fest retro of “phantom” films, and is reviewed here for the record.

Pic consists of three stories; the first two about 15 minutes each, the third lasting an hour. The kick-off is, in many ways, the best of the…

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‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’ review: A film adaptation well worth the wait

Movie review.

Watching a long-awaited movie version of a book you loved in childhood can be a fraught experience; you sit in the not-yet-dark theater, popcorn in hand, worried that the magic just won’t be there. In the case of Kelly Fremon Craig’s “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” I needn’t have worried. It’s a movie that made me laugh, smile, tear up — and, by its end, wish I could give it a hug.

Like a lot of us, I was probably 11 when I first read Judy Blume’s novel (published in 1970, and still selling today) about a sixth grader coping with adolescence, a move to the suburbs, religious turmoil and parent/grandparent drama, and I remember believing myself then to be quite grown up. Now, more than a few years later, what may strike many viewers of Craig’s film is how very young Margaret (the charming Abby Ryder Fortson) and her friends look; they’re little girls, eager to be older and bigger, not yet realizing how quickly the time goes. It’s a story that’s on its surface about bras and periods — which is revolutionary enough, even now — but is ultimately about something else: a girl and her mother, navigating a strange land separately and together.

While I imagine Craig’s film might be delightful for 11-year-old girls, its nostalgic setting reminds us that it’s really for their mothers and grandmothers — for all of us who grew up with Margaret Simon, who remains forever in a world of the 1970s. (If Margaret and her friends could text or access the internet, their stories might be quite different.) And Craig, recognizing this, makes a subtle but crucial change to the novel: Margaret’s mother Barbara (Rachel McAdams) is given more prominence and her own story, seen through our eyes rather than Margaret’s. A loving parent to her only child, Barbara willingly quits her job as an art teacher when the family moves from Manhattan to New Jersey after her husband (Benny Safdie) gets a promotion. She tries dutifully to be a PTA mom, but her heart’s not in it; her work, as we see in a lovely sequence in which Barbara paints a bird perched outside her living room window, brings her joy. McAdams, decked out in big ’70s hair, is all warmth in the role; a dream mom who ultimately gets her own happy ending.

Craig’s film is full of funny, rich detail: the casual snobbery of Margaret’s new best friend Nancy (young Elle Graham is terrific in the role, tossing off lines like “I live in the bigger house up the street” like she’s in her own reality show); the way Margaret’s plaid back-to-school dress is a little too big, so she can grow into it; the bad-boy grin of sixth-grade heartthrob Philip Leroy (Zackary Brooks); the eager nervousness of new teacher Mr. Benedict (Echo Kellum); Kathy Bates hamming it up delightfully as Margaret’s very dramatic grandmother Sylvia. And Fortson, wide-eyed and sweetly vulnerable, invites us on every step of Margaret’s journey. “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is both lovingly faithful to its source, and very much its own creation; how lucky we are to have both book and movie, preserved for girls past, present and future.  

With Abby Ryder Fortson, Rachel McAdams, Elle Graham, Benny Safdie, Echo Kellum, Kathy Bates. Written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, based on a novel by Judy Blume. 105 minutes. Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving sexual education and some suggestive material. Opens April 27 at multiple theaters.

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At the Movies: Margaret and David’s most divisive films revealed

David was a harsher reviewer overall than Margaret, and only six films achieved a five-star rating from both

Team America, Friday Night Lights and Sex and the City are among the most divisive films reviewed by Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton.

Following news that At the Movies will end on 9 December , I’ve collated every score they’ve given to a film since they moved to the ABC in 2004 .

I’ve analysed the review scores from the list of 1,983 movies to see which caused the most division between the reviewers. I created a simple index by subtracting David’s score from Margaret’s. Here are the 12 most divisive (click the plus symbol to see the full entry if you’re a smaller device):

Topping the list with high scores from Margaret but low scores from David were Friday Night Lights , Mondovino , Only God Forgives , and Project X.

At the other end of the scale are films with high scores from David, but low from Margaret including Death Proof , Louise-Michel , and Mozart’s Sister .

Here’s how the review for sports flick Friday Light Nights went down:

MARGARET POMERANZ: David?

DAVID STRATTON: Margaret, I almost think I have to disqualify myself from talking about this film. Does it ever happen to you that you’re sitting in a cinema watching a film and hating every second of it and really wishing you could be somewhere else?

MARGARET POMERANZ: Yes.

DAVID STRATTON: It does? It happened to me with this film.

MARGARET POMERANZ: Oh, no!

Classic! You can click through the links in the table or text to see the transcript for each review.

Both reviewers actually agreed on the score more often than not, with no difference in scores being the most frequent outcome at 31.9%:

David was a little harsher overall than Margaret with a lower average rating of 3.2 to Margaret’s 3.4.

Only six films ever achieve a rating of five stars from both reviewers while at the ABC: A Separation , Amour , Brokeback Mountain , Good Night and Good Luck , No Country For Old Men , Samson & Delilah .

Have you got a favourite Margaret and David moment? Do you agree with their reviews?

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More on this story

'That's all folks': Margaret and David farewell At the Movies

Margaret and david’s teary at the movies farewell – video.

Margaret and David's favourite movies, directors, genres ... and biggest bust-ups

David and Margaret – the head and heart of Australian film culture

Margaret and David call it quits after 28 years as ABC axes At the Movies

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See how the movie show took to tarantino, in this trip down memory lane., watch the movie show's original review of pulp fiction above, interviews: pulp fiction at cannes 1994, watch pulp fiction.

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Over 11,000 hours

At the Movies with Margaret and David (partially found Australian movie review TV series; 2004-2014)

Promotional image for the series.

Status: Partially Found

At the Movies was an Australian TV show where hosts Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton would review the new movies of the week, rating them on a five star basis. The show ran on ABC from 2004 to 2014, and each episode would appear on the ABC website in a downloadable form after its broadcast, which would remain on the website for two weeks.

Every review they did for the program was also available as a transcript on the website, though these were all removed in 2017, [1] claiming the content has been archived by the ABC and was removed because "the site has outdated content." [2]

Margaret and David had previously done movie reviews on The Movie Show , which was broadcast on SBS from 1986 to 2004, but the critics moved to the ABC due to their displeasure with SBS and what the channel had become. This show, on the other hand, is completely archived on the SBS On Demand website, where any of their reviews can be seen.

• 1 Availability
• 3 References

Availability

There are a handful of clips and reviews from At the Movies on YouTube, made available by many different channels. Hopefully, since the show was at one point available for download, that the entire 11 seasons of Australia's Siskel and Ebert can be found.

• ↑ An article on the ABC removing all of the show's content from their website. Retrieved 18 Mar '22
• ↑ The ABC website claiming the content was archived. Retrieved 15 Mar '22
• Partially found media

Find anything you save across the site in your account

The Unexpected Delight of “Sasquatch Sunset”

By Richard Brody

In movies as in life, never assume. One of the joys of being a film critic is encountering surprising work from filmmakers whose habits seemed all too ingrained. Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” a spectacular fantasy from a director whose previous films were realistic, is one such splendid surprise; another is Bruno Dumont’s “Li’l Quinquin,” a flamboyant three-hour-plus feature that marked a decisive break with his earlier, more dour work. “Sasquatch Sunset,” a new movie by the independent filmmakers David and Nathan Zellner, offers the same kind of unexpected delight. This scruffy but finely nuanced drama follows an unusual group of characters: four Sasquatches—mythical beings better known singly, as Bigfoot—making their way through the forests of the Pacific Northwest in the course of a year. For the Zellners, the film’s sincere attention to the practicalities of its characters’ lives represents a major departure and a great advance. Their portrayal of the Sasquatches’ wanderings is a fictional form of cinematic anthropology, showing how the creatures cope with the elements, with the looming presence of humans, and with the deeper mysteries and energies of life—including the rising of consciousness itself.

The Zellners, who are brothers, have been working together for nearly three decades. They’ve built a career dramatizing near-absurdities, whether grim or merely eccentric, with earnest intensity. (They directed three episodes of “The Curse,” a satire of reality TV.) In their 2012 feature, “Kid-Thing,” a neglected child connects with a woman trapped at the bottom of a well. In “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter,” a Japanese woman who believes that the movie “Fargo” is a documentary travels to America in search of that tale’s buried ransom money.

The brothers have long had mythic simians in view: in 2011, their short film “Sasquatch Birth Journal 2,” a clever four-minute goof depicting a female of the species giving birth unassisted, played at Sundance. Their work until now has depended on keeping straight faces while telling tall tales, but in “Sasquatch Sunset” they approach a still taller tale with a seriousness that drives out parody, and the movie thrums with palpable pleasure arising from their own sense of wonder and curiosity. They’ve previously bent reality to fit their fantasies; now, in trimming fantasy to resemble reality, they display a deepened artistic purpose.

The four Sasquatches don’t speak; they only grunt and howl, as if lurching toward language. They’re bearded and covered in brown-gray fur, which is sparser on their chests and stomachs; their skin is thick and wrinkled. These looks are achieved not by way of motion capture (as in the ongoing “Planet of the Apes” franchise) but with costumes and makeup, which, amid tangles of fur and crusts of dirt, leave the performers’ faces discernible. The Zellners recruited four notable actors—or, rather, three and a ringer—to endow these difficult mime-like parts with potent individual personalities. Riley Keough portrays the group’s only female, who’s raising a lively and inquisitive young Sasquatch, played by Christophe Zajac-Denek. The pensive and mild-mannered member of the group, played by Jesse Eisenberg, is subordinate to its apparently senior member, portrayed by the co-director Nathan Zellner. If not a famous actor, Zellner is certainly an experienced one (largely in the brothers’ own films), and he brings psychodramatic authority to the role of the foursome’s alpha male—essentially a Sasquatch directing Sasquatches, with the power and the peril that such leadership entails. (The four Sasquatches have no identifiable names; I’ll call them by their respective actors’ first names.)

The movie begins in springtime and quickly addresses the inevitable, showing Riley and Nathan brusquely hooking up. Jesse and Christophe, holding hands, look on in fascinated awe—Jesse perhaps teaching the young Christophe the birds and the bees—while the couple, out in the open, displays no shyness. The Zellners imagine Sasquatch sex at an intermediate stage between animals’ functional reproduction and humans’ governing morality—fraught with feeling but not with shame. The result of this liaison is the eternal drama: Riley, scratching her genitals and sniffing her hand, determines that she’s pregnant, setting in motion the film’s overarching plotline.

The movie depicts a wide spectrum of Sasquatch life—the need for shelter, the varieties of play, the pleasures and pitfalls of eating newly discovered flora and fauna, the experience of grief and the rituals that it spawns, the Promethean hazards of intellectual curiosity, the trouble sparked by lust. In doing so, it reveals admirable conceptual audacity, skirting the constant risk of silliness. It’s often funny, but it’s no comedy, except to the extent that ordinary life is filled with incongruities and weird surprises. When funny things happen to the Sasquatches, the species’ naïveté pushes the humor toward danger, as when Christophe kisses a turtle that then bites his tongue and won’t let go, or when Nathan rages with horny delusions while standing in uneasy proximity to a cougar. The movie comes by its sweetness naturally, in the inherent cuteness of such ingenuousness—which is also the secret weapon of children and animals, of reality-TV celebrities (whether horrible bosses or selfish spouses), and even of documentary subjects (the rich and the famous who come off as ordinary people). In the Zellners’ other films, the action seems fabricated to yield images of twee idiosyncrasy—a woman trudging through snowy fields while wrapped in a quilt, a pioneer unloading a miniature horse from a crate on a beach—but there’s nothing contrived about the action or the images here, which feel like logical yet spontaneous discoveries about these four mysterious characters and their hidden world.

“Sasquatch Sunset” shows no humans but is haunted by the possibility of contact with them. Its neorealism demythologizes the cryptids, presenting them as just another endangered species whose fragile existence is made all the more poignant by its similarities to human society. (After a viewing of this movie, the nickname Bigfoot comes off like a slur.) The cast’s blend of choreographic precision and uninhibited animal energy is at the core of this authenticity; the actors’ mastery of their crudely expressive gestures conveys delicate emotions, and their grunts and hoots possess the dramatic flair and nuance of dialogue. What the movie offers, in effect, are baby pictures of the human race, and it respects the opacity of the primal experience that such infancy implies. Even as the film abounds in behavioral details, rendering its four protagonists’ personalities in sharp outlines, it never presumes to know too much about them; the movie shows what Sasquatches are like without assuming what it’s like to be a Sasquatch.

Though it’s not established that Riley is Christophe’s mother, she at least acts like a devoted one—he seems like an adolescent, but she’s still nursing him, and she also plucks the bugs from his fur (and eats them). When the newborn comes, she caresses and nurses and (when necessary) rescues it; wandering with the group while carrying the baby, she exhibits a keen alertness to hidden dangers. The tenderhearted Jesse has an incipient mathematical mind—gazing at the stars, he tries to count them but has only two numerals (“euh” and “ah”). His thoughtfulness converges with his communal spirit: when he finds a nest with four eggs, he picks it up and exerts himself to discern whether there are enough of them for each Sasquatch in his group. This effort is quickly rendered obsolete when the gruff, hulking Nathan, whose appetites are matched by his arrogance, relieves him of the nest and eats the eggs himself, leaving Jesse to look forlornly at his empty hand.

That gesture is one of many psychologically resonant moments that endow “Sasquatch Sunset” with its outsized power; it suggests the dawn of human-style imagination, the capacity to inwardly evoke an absent object. The finest such touch involves Christophe, who takes a step of Sasquatch imagination that amounts to a giant leap for Sasquatchkind. When the trio can’t find Nathan, Christophe searches for him in a distinctive way—he holds a hand in front of himself and, like a ventriloquist, has it talk to him in inchoate squeaks, to which he responds. It’s a breathtaking dramatic metaphor for the birth of thought, the awareness of consciousness as something like an other that’s also part of oneself.

With consciousness comes melancholy, which is induced for the Sasquatches by mounting clues of human proximity—a tree with a painted red “X,” a paved road, a well-appointed but unpeopled campsite. The Sasquatches move from defiant contempt of these artifacts’ strangeness (they mock and defile the road with piss and shit) to a growing recognition that the world they’ve discovered, complete with its rusting hulks of metal machinery and its inhospitable expanses of asphalt, is inimical to their survival. It’s only in a final shot of calculated theatricality that the Zellners tip their hands that the entire project is, after all, not just a work of fiction but a thoroughgoing fantasy. Here, they reveal the greatest danger that humans pose to Sasquatches: not the reasoned belief that they don’t exist but the mythologizing certainty that they do. ♦

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The trailer for “Abigail” tells you almost everything you need to know about the movie, a wacky high-concept horror thriller about a group of kidnappers who bite off more than they can chew when they unwittingly abduct a child-sized vampire ballerina. The vamp, played with some relish by Alisha Weir , only really comes alive when she’s leering at or stalking her prey. Genre fans will also spot some familiar faces among the movie’s ensemble cast, all of whom do their best with this tic-y, schtick-y material. They curse (enough to seem like they’re overcompensating for some things); they run (around each other, mostly); they get picked off one by one. 

You already know what you’re in for if you’ve come to “Abigail” to watch a body count caper featuring plummy character actor performances from That Guys like Kevin Durand and Dan Stevens . Most of their co-stars keep up in less attractive roles, including Melissa Barrera ’s thinly drawn anti-heroine team leader. There’s also plenty of viscous-looking blood splatter and some modestly good-looking vampire makeup—the fangs, in particular. Some action scenes are well-choreographed, but generally over-edited and shot just ahead of whatever’s moving on-screen. The rest of this 90-minute genre exercise is unfailingly conventional, though that’s also a big part of its ostensible appeal.

I can’t really get or stay mad at “Abigail” for essentially delivering what its marketing promises. Sure, the movie’s creators, led by co-helmers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (better known as “ Radio Silence ,” directors of “ Ready or Not ” and the 2022 “Scream” reboot), could have delivered more, even though disenchanted viewers can’t exactly claim false advertising. The setup is strictly by the numbers and the characters are all stock types.

A team of bickering misfits kidnaps the title character (Weir). They follow her home with a comically oversized gizmo stuck to the bottom of her chauffeur’s car. Then they bring the 12-year-old-looking girl to a secluded mansion, where they’re reminded of their mission’s stakes. Shady but well-dressed ring-leader Lambert ( Giancarlo Esposito ) gives us and them the rundown: no real names, no cell phones, nothing personal—it’s 24 hours of baby-sitting a pre-teen who really likes to plié and step-toe her way through “Swan Lake” rehearsals. Simple is as simple does.

We learn very little about everyone, thanks in no small part to a scene where Lambert nicknames the characters after members of the Rat Pack. Durand’s character, a jolly-but-dim muscle-bro named Peter, tries to find the sense in being nicknamed after rats. Later, he gets that it’s a disposable pop culture reference and promptly moves on.

Peter’s the most sympathetic character in “Abigail,” partly because he’s constantly straining against the limits of what his character can know and do. He’s joined by a call sheet of tropes, including Abigail’s minder, the empathetic and observant Joey (Melissa Barrera); their irritating and wasted driver Dean (the late “ Euphoria ” star Angus Cloud ); and the strong-silent ex-soldier Rickles ( William Catlett ). Eventually, the team has to worry not only about Abigail, but a few predictable liabilities, like their bratty and easily bored electronics hacker Sammy ( Kathryn Newton ) and their foul-mouthed, inexplicably accented ex-cop backup leader Frank (Stevens).

None of these party game-light character traits really matter once Abigail gets loose from her handcuffs. The house that Abigail’s prey stay in has more personality, but it’s basically the house from “ Clue ” with some extra goth-y touch-ups. Maybe that’s all you need to enjoy watching a game cast check off every box as they struggle to figure out how to stop a “real” vampire. Nothing worth writing home about comes to mind.

It’s hard to get too excited watching so many talented actors try and barely succeed in making you want to care about their characters, especially since that isn’t the same thing as making you care. More could have been done with less tedious dialogue, as what's here is designed mostly just to hold the hands of viewers as the plot skips from beat to beat. More could have also been done with Joey, who, at one point, stuffs a loaded gun into her tight jeans’ waistband. I do and I don’t believe it.

“Abigail” may find its audience given a lucky combination of good timing and wishful thinking. It’s not badly made, just uninspired and played out. If you like B-movies made with a budget and are specifically looking for an undemanding time, “Abigail” might be for you. “Abigail” might also disappoint you, especially if you’re hoping for more than what’s advertised.

This review was filed from the Overlook Film Festival. It will be released on April 19th.

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in  The New York Times ,  Vanity Fair ,  The Village Voice,  and elsewhere.

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Movie Review: Should you watch ‘Sasquatch Sunset’ about a family of Bigfoots? Not yeti

This image released by Bleecker Street shows Jesse Eisenberg in a scene from the film “Sasquatch Sunset.” (Bleecker Street via AP)

This image released by Bleecker Street shows Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keough, and Nathan Zellner in a scene from the film “Sasquatch Sunset.” (Bleecker Street via AP)

This image released by Bleecker Street shows Jesse Eisenberg and Christophe Zajac-Denek in a scene from the film “Sasquatch Sunset.” (Bleecker Street via AP)

Jesse Eisenberg attends the premiere of “Sasquatch Sunset” at Metrograph, Monday, April 1, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Jihae Kim attends the premiere of “Sasquatch Sunset” at Metrograph, Monday, April 1, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

The Octopus Project’s Yvonne Lambert, Josh Lambert and Toto Miranda, from left, arrive for the Texas premiere of “Sasquatch Sunset” at the Paramount Theatre during the South by Southwest Film Festival on Monday, March 11, 2024, in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Jack Plunkett/Invision/AP)

Christophe Zajac-Denek attends the premiere of “Sasquatch Sunset” at Metrograph, Monday, April 1, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Christophe Zajac-Denek, David Zellner, Nathan Zellner and Jesse Eisenberg, from front left, arrive for the Texas premiere of “Sasquatch Sunset” at the Paramount Theatre during the South by Southwest Film Festival on Monday, March 11, 2024, in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Jack Plunkett/Invision/AP)

Emily Meade attends the premiere of “Sasquatch Sunset” at Metrograph, Monday, April 1, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

This image released by Bleecker Street shows Riley Keough in a scene from the film “Sasquatch Sunset.” (Bleecker Street via AP)

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Do you reckon Sasquatches snore? C’mon, you know the answer, deep down. Of course, they do. They snore and eat noisily and pick bugs out of each other’s fur and then eat those bugs, noisily.

What else do Sasquatches do, you wonder? One of the wildest movies of the year — or the century, for that matter — suggests they mourn, cuddle, bury their dead, enjoy throwing rocks in rivers, make art and wonder if they’re alone in the world.

Even so, “Sasquatch Sunset” from filmmaking brothers David and Nathan Zellner , is a bewildering 90-minute, narrator-less and wordless experiment that’s as audacious as it is infuriating. It’s not clear if everyone was high making it or we should be while watching it.

Nathan Zellner, Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keough and Christophe Zajac-Denek play a makeshift family of four Sasquatches, lost in hair suits and prosthetics and communicating only in grunts, snorts and howls. They also pee a lot.

Why the filmmakers hired such starry actors instead of paying scale to some unknowns is puzzling. None of the Sasquatches do more than what could be called Method Chimpanzee — jumping up and down, whooping and growling. A group of real chimps would ding the quartet for overacting.

As an exercise in creating empathy for monsters, “Sasquatch Sunset” does an admirable job. In the first frames, when we see a loping Bigfoot in the middle distance — and then three more — it’s clear that they are telling this story, not the folks who usually capture them in shaky camera frames.

There are plenty of Sasquatches-are-just-like-us moments, like when one brings flowers to seduce another or two Bigfoots comfort each other after a death. Perhaps the most poignant moments are when they pound trees with sticks in unison, a rhythmic question that echoes through the valley. It’s a call, waiting for a response — anyone out there like us?

But then there’s a lot of gross-out stuff. We’ve mentioned the peeing, but it turns out that Sasquatches sneeze, procreate loudly and like to touch their genitals and then smell their fingers. They can also poo on demand and throw that poo to scare off predators.

One juvenile Bigfoot makes his hand into a makeshift puppet and talks to it — like a nod to the kid in “The Shining” — and another considers inserting his manhood into a small tree hole, like a prehistoric riff off that famous scene in “American Pie.”

Both things can be true, of course: Bigfoot can be disgusting and deep at the same time. But it’s not always clear what the filmmakers are going for here — satire, metaphor, sympathy, naturalism or gross-out comedy?

The Sasquatches reveal deeply human characteristics and may be stand-ins for our innocent pasts, a lost link in our evolution, showing the unrelenting violence of natural life or just the voiceless among us now. Or the filmmakers might just like the image of tossing poo.

Gorgeous vistas of pristine forests and misty valleys don’t help us figuring out when this all takes place but gradual clues emerge, including evidence of logging and a truly surreal bit at a human camping site, scored by the Erasure song “Love to Hate You.” But if the Zellners had an environmental lesson here, they shanked it.

There’s great music from The Octopus Project, veering from bright electric guitar noodles to sci-fi electronic dread reminiscent of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Stick through the roll of end credits and see one of the best credits ever in film: Sasquatch Wrangler. You don’t see that every day. You don’t see Sasquatch movies every day, either, but this is one you should probably let lope past you.

“Sasquatch Sunset,” a Bleecker Street release that lands in some theaters on April 12 and goes wider April 19, is rated R for “for some sexual content, full nudity and bloody images.” Running time: 89 minutes. One star out of four.

MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Online: https://bleeckerstreetmedia.com/sasquatch-sunset

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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Escape from Germany

1939, Hitler's army was closing borders, and eighty-five American missionaries were in Germany serving their church. The escape of these missionaries from Nazi Germany is one of the most dra... Read all 1939, Hitler's army was closing borders, and eighty-five American missionaries were in Germany serving their church. The escape of these missionaries from Nazi Germany is one of the most dramatic events to occur in modern church history. 1939, Hitler's army was closing borders, and eighty-five American missionaries were in Germany serving their church. The escape of these missionaries from Nazi Germany is one of the most dramatic events to occur in modern church history.

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Angel Studios Believes Its David and Goliath Animated Musical Will Be Bigger Than ‘The Lion King'

L ast year, Angel Studios opened a booth at CinemaCon in Last Vegas to launch its distribution arm. That paid off handsomely after "Sound of Freedom" exploded to a $250 million worldwide gross. This year, they took to a much bigger stage for a Caesar's Palace breakfast presentation and announced its intention to stun the industry again.

The Angel headliner was "David," an animated musical based on the Biblical story of David vs. Goliath. Or, as the studio's chief marketing officer Alex Nielsen told the audience: "We intend to release the most successful animated film of all time." (The current record holder is "The Lion King," which grossed nearly $1.7 billion in 2019.)

Angel dated "David" for Thanksgiving weekend 2025, but it presented a full trailer and a full song to a packed, standing-room only house inside the Palace Ballroom. The trailer also touted that former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow is an executive producer on the project.

"David" is a spinoff of Angel's animated mini-series "Young David," which launched on its internal streaming platform available to Angel Guild members last November. The series focuses on David's life as a young shepherd boy before he became a king.

Angel Studios also took a victory lap on behalf of "Sound of Freedom" and talked up both Angel Guild and its pay-it-forward models as ways to get new audiences into theaters. However, the two new films it teased for 2025 did not include a "Sound of Freedom 2."

It screened trailers for "Sight," which opens May 24 for Memorial Day weekend. Starring Terry Chen and Greg Kinnear, it's based on the true story of a Chinese immigrant who became a renowned eye surgeon who tries to restore the sight of a blind orphan. Tickets for "Sight" are now on sale and are "going strong," according to Angel.

"Possum Trot," which has the "Sound of Freedom" date of July 4, is about the Bennett Chapel church in the East Texas town of Possum Trot and the work done by Bishop and First Lady Donna Martin in helping kids in child welfare services. The trailer leaned heavily on the "Sound of Freedom" messages about child trafficking and abuse. "Black Panther" star Letitia Wright is an executive producer and it stars "Euphoria" actress Nika King.

Opening over Thanksgiving week"Bonhoeffer," which is based on the true story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a man who preached love while he attempted to assassinate Hitler. Over Christmas is another action thriller, "Homestead," described as a "post-apocalyptic family survival drama."

Angel's 2025 slate but announced without details were "Jacob" and "Young Washington."

Angel opened its presentation with the reminder that it was the No. 8 domestic theatrical distributor for 2023. "It's not our team that greenlights a theatrical release, it's the audience," said Jared Geesey, Angel's head of distribution. "We believe in the wisdom of the crowd. It redefines the relationship between filmmakers and fans."

Brandon Purdie, Angel's executive VP and head of global theatrical distribution, previously told IndieWire he doesn't believe any of the films on the 2024 slate are strictly "faith-based" in the narrowest sense, even though members of the Angel Guild are largely "faith-friendly," and all the films are designed to "amplify light." The Biblical "David" is certainly an exception.

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