In the opening minutes of Oddity, the new project from Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy, a woman named Dani (Carolyn Bracken) is murdered while renovating the remote home where she lives with her husband, Ted (Gwilym Lee), who was away at the time. The suspicion falls on Olin (Tadhg Murphy), a patient recently released from the mental asylum where Ted works and life goes on for everyone. Well, everyone but Dani’s twin sister, Darcy (also played by Bracken), a blind woman who owns a store that buys and sells occult curios and who may have certain psychic abilities of her own. Following a brief visit to her store by Ted, Darcy turns up on the anniversary of the murder at the house, which Ted now shares with sales rep Yana (Caroline Menton), with a mysterious crate that contains a strange wooden mannequin that apparently belonged to her and Dani’s parents. Of course, no one actually sees her opening the crate but all of a sudden, the contraption, which includes special keepsakes tucked away in the holes in its head, is sitting there. That is weird but trust me, things get progressively stranger over the course of that long night as Ted leaves for an evening shift at work, leaving Yana alone with an increasingly inquisitive Darcy and that contraption, which seems at times to be moving on its own.
Following its fairly gripping opening sequence, Oddity settles into a more methodically paced groove, favoring a slow-burn approach over rapid and relentless shocks to the system. The trouble is that while the film does have its pluses—the production design is effectively creepy and some of the interactions between the quietly suspicious Darcy and the increasingly uncomfortable Yana are darkly amusing—it is relatively easy to figure out where the narrative is going and even at a mere 98 minutes, it feels as if it takes forever to get to its inevitable denouement and the fear factor dips considerably during that time, unless the sight of a mostly inert mannequin is enough to send chills down your spine. Watching it, it felt to me like a feature-length version of the kind of story that might have turned up in one of those old Amicus horror omnibus films from the early 70s, one that might have be reasonably effective at around 30 minutes or so but which kind of drags at three times that length. In the end, Oddity is stylishly made, I suppose, but eventually winds up succumbing to tedium, though those who do find mannequins to be inherently creepy may wind up finding this one to be somewhat scarier than I did.
Part grindhouse, part film collective and part waystation for people to spend an entire evening in the company of other oddballs while watching some of the strangest movies ever produced, the legend of London’s infamous Scala theatre continues to reverberate among fans of outré cinema more than three decades after its untimely demise. That legend should continue to grow with the release of the new documentary Scala!!! Or, the Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World’s Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-Up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits, co-directed by Ali Catterall and Jane Giles, the latter the theater’s original programming manager back in the day. The theater was founded in 1979 by Stephen Woolley (who would go on to produce such films as Absolute Beginners, Mona Lisa, The Crying Game and Carol) just outside of Soho and would relocate two years later to an old theater in Kings Cross, a place where Lou Reed and Iggy Pop made their British debuts and where the rumbles from the nearby underground station could be felt throughout. The programmers decided to favor more offbeat films, running the gamut from Pasolini to Russ Meyer and including such venerated cult favorites as Eraserhead and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as well as the supremely strange X-rated horror-comedy-porno hybrid Thundercrack, and would featuring programs running all night long for a fan base as eclectic and surprising as the movies themselves.
The film charts the theaters rise and fall in three parts that features a vast array of clips from a number of the movies that played there during that time as well as interviews with the likes of John Waters (who remarks about the rave reaction that Pink Flamingos received from the crowd when he showed it there) as well as such former patrons of the place as writer Alan Jones, actor Ralph Brown and filmmaker Mary Harron, all of whom have plenty of wild stories to tell about crazy things they experienced there. The film also makes time to discuss the innovative monthly programming guides that they would distribute as well as their support for the marginalized communities that made up a good portion of their attendees. A lot of this is quite entertaining, especially for those whose taste in cinema leans towards the stranger stuff, and it only stumbles a bit during the final section, a too-rushed encapsulation of the events leading to the theater’s eventual shuttering in 1993, kicked off by, of all things, a clandestine screening of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, a film that had been withdrawn from release and therefore illegal to screen in England at the time. Beyond that, a film like this is basically catnip for movie buffs and, for the most part, it is a fun trip down memory lane to a pre-multiplex universe when movie theaters had actual personalities to them and what happened in the aisles was often as exciting and strange as what was unspooling up on the screen.
Following on the heels of the likes of Air, BlackBerry, Tetris and Flamin’ Hot, Widow Clicquot is the latest film offering us the origin story of another famous brand name, in this case, the esteemed Veuve Clicquot champagne brand. As the film opens, Barbie-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot (Haley Bennett) is reeling from the aftermath of the death of her husband, Francois (Tom Sturridge), who had been struggling to run the family vineyard in the face of sever restrictions brought upon by Napoleon’s reign. Francois’s father, Philippe (Ben Miles), plans to sell the vineyards to rival winemakers in order to provide financial security for Barbie-Nicole and her daughter, who was the one who actually inherited the property, refuses the deal as she is determined to revitalize both the land and the resulting champagne in the manner that Francois had planned to implement before his death. The combination of these newfangled ideas and old-fashioned sexism cause everyone from her own workers to winemaking rivals to expect her to fail quickly and decisively but with the aid of Louis (Sam Riley), a wine dealer who had his own close relationship with Francois, she is determined to outwit everyone from her competitors to Napoleon himself in order to get her creation out into the world. (If you don’t want to know if she succeeds or not, try avoiding liquor stores for the immediate future.)
Widow Clicquot is a little more structurally ambitious than the other product-related biopics cited above with Erin Dignam’s screenplay utilizing multiple timelines to chart both Barbie-Nicole’s struggles to get the champagne produced and sent to the market (which include everything from finding the right bottles to figuring out how to get the unrefrigerated bottles distributed without the wine being destroyed by the blazing sun in the process) and her initially passionate and increasingly complicated relationship with Francois, who may be ahead of his time in terms of wine production but who has plenty of issues and secrets of his own. Unfortunately, while it often seems on the verge of becoming something new and unique, it keeps leaning back on a familiar formula that feels somewhat at odds with the story being told. Another problem is that while the film does contain a good performance by Bennett as Barbie-Nicole, the film never quite manages to make her endeavors particularly gripping or interesting—there are points when it feels as if Barbie-Nicole is getting lost within what is theoretically meant to be her inspirational story. Widow Clicquot is certainly handsomely mounted and will probably appeal to hardcore wine aficionados but others are likely to find it not nearly as memorable as the beverage at its center.