28 Years Later: Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Alfie Williams – Photo: Columbia Pictures
Based on its stunning trailer — propelled by early-Hollywood actor Taylor Holmes’ ripping 1915 recording of the Rudyard Kipling poem “Boots” — one might expect 28 Years Later to focus on a father and son’s war for survival against zombie-like hordes.
Directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, creators of the 2002 series originator 28 Days Later, the film does venture with 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) and his rugged dad, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), into territory crawling with rage virus-infected human predators.
Yet, that’s just a piece of a richer narrative anchored by the drama of domestic dysfunction within Spike’s family, which also includes his homebound, mentally ill mom, Isla (Jodie Comer).
Boyle still makes chilling use of Holmes’ intense “Boots” oration, set to the electro sirens and thrums of the score by alternative hip-hop trio Young Fathers. Evoking the horrors of combat, the poem underscores a vintage-film montage of soldiers marching towards death, as we follow Spike and Jamie across the tidal causeway separating their peaceful, fortified island village from the British mainland.
As noted in onscreen text, the virus started in Great Britain, which has been entirely quarantined from the rest of the world, including the European continent. You wanted Brexit? You got it — along with thousands of remaining infected roaming the British countryside in search of fresh flesh and blood.
Inside that quarantine zone, Spike has fortunately grown up safe in isolated Holy Island Mission, a collective of tradespeople: shepherds, farmers, fishermen, carpenters, and such. Their society registers as cultish, but the Mission’s inhabitants survive seemingly peacefully.
In some ways progressive, with a village council led by tough cookie Jenny (Stella Gonet), it’s also a primitive existence, governed by primitive-looking rituals. Spike’s trek onto the mainland with his dad, each armed with a bow and arrow, clearly represents a rite of passage celebrated by his community.
The boy is meant to learn how to hunt and kill the ravenous creatures roving across land that the villagers still use for natural resources like lumber. “The more you kill, the easier it gets,” Jamie tells his son.
Does that also apply to filmmakers? Boyle wrought gut-wrenching suspense from the eerie atmosphere of a deserted London in 28 Days Later, contrasted by the action onslaught in the heart-pounding sequel 28 Weeks Later, directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.
Boyle stages a good share of edge-of-your-seat sequences here, many bouncing along to music, though still brutally unrelenting, for both the trauma they inflict on certain characters and for not cutting away from the gore and violence. The film ups the ante on the threat posed by the infected, introducing alphas who are stronger, faster, and smarter than the average bloodthirsty ghoul.
Alphas have an alarming tendency to rip their quarry’s head off with the spinal column attached and dangling, so maybe they’re gaining high-potency nutrition that way. A recurring shot of a giant alpha waiting in perfect stillness on a hillside, an ominous silhouette on the horizon, perfectly frames how frightening just one of these monsters can be.
There are still dozens of quick, surprisingly wily regular infected to chase and terrorize Jamie and Spike, rendered as a fast learner and courageous hero by newcomer Williams.
The boy’s first trip to the mainland is just the start of a treacherous journey that also leads to encounters with a Swedish Navy private, Erik (Young Royals star Edvin Ryding), effective as comic relief, and the mysterious Dr. Kelson, a rascally hermit portrayed as a committed kook by Ralph Fiennes.
Experiencing a crisis of faith in his father, Spike looks to the doctor for salvation, echoing the film’s harrowing prologue in which a different boy seeks hope in the chapel of his reverend father. That boy’s faith turns out to be woefully misplaced.
For Spike, that question won’t truly be decided until the next sequel, shot back-to-back with this one by director Nia DaCosta (2021’s Candyman), and set for release in another six months.
As Julia Izumi jokes early on in Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (With Live and Active Cultures), there can be something a little awkward about a playwright appearing in their own autobiographical play. And she's right: the squirm factor threatens to be dangerously high when a writer stands there within spitting distance, baring their talents, story, and soul.
The truth is, it's the theatrical equivalent of a hostage situation, and the play's got to be oh-so-very-good if it's going to set anyone free.
Unfortunately, the hour and 45 minutes (sans intermission) of Akira comes without any such reprieve. In fact, Izumi's entire approach -- from that first joke onward -- is to basically keep reminding us in one way or another that this is her play, her journey, and that our role is to sit back and admire how cute and meaningful it all is. For her. Asking for the occasional show of hands to check if anyone in the audience feels the way she does (an identity-conflicted perfectionist), in no way changes the fact that this is "The Izumi Show."
Brent Askari's Andy Warhol in Iran could shift some theatergoers' perspectives on a variety of complicated topics, from the junction of art and commerce, to Western interference in the affairs of modern Iran.
Making its D.C. premiere at Mosaic in a crisply-mounted production directed by Serge Seiden, the tidy two-hander takes on a world of troublesome issues without ever leaving a luxury hotel room in Tehran.
That's where the artist Andy Warhol (Alex Mills) is holed up, having been invited by the wife of the Shah, Empress Farah, to create pop-art portraits of her and the royal family.
Not every couple has a fairy-tale beginning, or meet-cute origin story to share in "Awww"-inducing social media posts. Romance, for some, blossoms under less decorous circumstances. That's the case for W. Tre and Free, the Black queer couple at a crossroads in Tarell Alvin McCraney's brilliantly observed, and deliciously frank and funny love story We Are Gathered.
Tre and Free met at an outdoor cruising spot inside a city park, where men gather in the dark for surreptitious, mostly anonymous sexual hookups. It so happens that, for this couple, lust at first sight led not only to quick sex, but also a genuine connection that then grew into something deeper.
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