I first saw the trailer for The Beast Within a few months ago and it definitely piqued my interest. A UK set werewolf film with Kit Harington as the wolf? Sign me up! I was recently given the opportunity from Well Go USA to check out The Beast Within. Did it live up to the hype?

Synopsis

After a series of strange events leads her to question her family’s isolated life on a fortified compound deep in the English wilds, 10-year-old Willow follows her parents on one of their secret late-night treks to the heart of the ancient forest. But upon witnessing her father undergo a terrible transformation, she too becomes ensnared by the dark ancestral secret they’ve tried so desperately to conceal.

The Beast Within was directed by documentary filmmaker Alexander J. Farrell in his narrative feature debut. The film was written by Farrell and Greer Ellison. The film stars Kit Harington (Game of Thrones), Ashleigh Cummings (Hounds of Love), Caoilinn Springall (Stopmotion), James Cosmo (The Kindred), Andrei Nova, Adam Basil, Martina McClements (There’s No Such Thing As Zombies), and Ian Giles.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I dove into The Beast Within and discovered the film was from the perspective of the daughter Willow, played by Caoilinn Springall, who I thought was wonderful and creepy as Little Girl in Stopmotion. She gets the opportunity to play a much different role here. Willow is a girl that is sick with an unnamed illness which leaves her short of breath and reliant on oxygen tanks. She lives in isolation near the woods with her parents Noah and Imogen, her sole human contact beside her grandfather her lives in a building next door.

Her father is suffering from an ailments that requires him to be secluded in the woods from his family one day a month in the woods. After following her parents one night she discovers her father’s dark secret and becomes deathly afraid of her father. Springall is perfectly cast as Willow. She is very expressive and is able to capably show the range of what her character is feeling. Kit Harington does a solid job as the father Noah, though we don’t get to see as much of his duality as I would have liked. We are mainly subjected to his dark side and its side effects, only briefly seeing the loving father in him.

Ashley Cummings is great as Willow’s mother Imogen, who is clearly struggling with protecting her daughter and her love for her husband. I loved James Cosmo’s performance as Willow’s grandfather Waylon. You can tell her how much he loves his granddaughter and wants to protect her from her father as well as how strained his relationship with his daughter is due to her relationship with and defense of Noah.

The Beast Within does a good job of building tension, helped greatly by the sense of isolation the characters are subjected to. It feels like the characters are truly alone in their struggle. Willow’s fear that she is like her father is palpable. The mood of the film is very oppressive. The werewolf and gore effects, though we don’t get much, is executed well, particularly a particularly gruesome scene I won’t spoil involving a fingernail. While I enjoyed the majority of The Beast Within immensely, there is a late final act twist that I feel could ruin the enjoyment for some viewers.

Final Thoughts 

The Beast Within is a film that excels at mood and a feeling of dread and isolation bolstered by solid effects and strong performances, thought a final act twist could potentially ruin the film for some viewers. Recommended.

We are at the apex of “Saturday Night Live” appreciation. Now entering its 50th year, “SNL” has never been more unquestioned as a bedrock American institution. The many years of cowbells, Californians, mom jeans, Totino’s, unfrozen caveman lawyers and vans down by the river have more than established “SNL” as hallowed late-night ground and a comedy citadel.

So it’s maybe appropriate that Jason Reitman’s big-screen ode, “Saturday Night,” should arrive, amid all of the tributes, to remind of the show’s original revolutionary force. Reitman’s film is set in the 90 minutes leading up to showtime before the first episode aired Oct. 11, 1975.

The atmosphere is hectic. The mood is anxious. And through cigarette smoke and backstage swirl rushes Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), who’s trying to launch a new kind of show that even he can’t quite explain.

“Saturday Night,” which opens in theaters Friday and expands in the coming weeks, isn’t a realistic tick-tock of how Michaels did it. And, while it boasts a number of fine performances, I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone hoping to see an illuminating portrait of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players.

No, Reitman’s movie is striving for a myth of “Saturday Night Live.” Michaels’ quest in the film — and though he never strays farther than around the corner from 30 Rock, it is a quest — is not just to marshal together a live show on this particular night, it’s to overcome a cigar-chomping old guard of network television. (Milton Berle is skulking about, even Johnny Carson phones in.) In their eyes, Michaels is, to paraphrase Ned Beatty in “Network,” meddling with the primal forces of nature.

In mythologizing this generational battle, “Saturday Night” is a blistering barn-burner. In most other ways (cue the Debbie Downer trombone), it’s less good. Reitman, who penned the script with Gil Kenan, is too wide-eyed about the glory days of “SNL” to bring much acute insight to what was happening 50 years ago. And his film may be too spread thin by a clown car’s worth of big personalities. But in the movie’s primary goal, capturing a spirit of revolution that once might have seized barricades but instead flocks to Studio 8H, “Saturday Night” at least deserves a Spartan cheer.

A clock ticking down to showtime runs as ominously as it might in “MacGruber” throughout “Saturday Night.” Nothing is close to ready for air. John Belushi (Matt Wood) hasn’t signed his contract. Twenty-eight gallons of fake blood are missing. And, most pressing of all, the network is poised to air a Carson rerun if things don’t take shape. An executive pleading for a script is told, “It’s not that kind of show.”

What kind is it? Michaels, himself, is uncertain. He’s gathered together a “circus of rejects,” most of them then unknown to the public. There is Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), Jane Curtin (Kim Matula) and Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien). Also in the mix are Jim Henson (Nicholas Braun), who spends much of the movie complaining about the untoward things the cast has been doing to Big Bird, Andy Kaufman (Braun again), Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany) and the night’s host, George Carlin (Matthew Rhys).

Most of them pass too quickly to make too much of an impression, though a few are good in their moments — notably Smith, playing up Chase’s braggadocio, O’Brien and Morris. Garrett Morris, the cast’s lone Black member, is in a quandary over his role — because of his race and because he was a playwright before being cast. Though “SNL” was revolutionary, it hardly arrived a finished product. Morris here is a reminder of the show’s sometimes — and ongoing — not always easy relationship to diversity, in race and gender.

It also wasn’t always such a break from what came before. When Chase faces off with Berle in a contest over Chase’s fiancee, Jacqueline Carlin (Kaia Gerber) — one of the movie’s few truly charged scenes — they seem more alike than either would like to admit.

It’s not a great sign for “Saturday Night” how much better the old guard is than the young cast. Along with Simmons’ Berle is Willem Dafoe’s NBC executive David Tebet. He provides the movie its most “Network”-flavored drama, seeing “a prophet” in Michaels and, despite wavering skepticism, urging him to be “an unbending force of seismic disturbance.” Also in the mix — and a reminder that the suits had newbies, too — is Dick Ebersol (a refreshingly genuine Cooper Hoffman ), a believer in Michaels but only up to a point.

Ultimately, this is Michaels’ show, and he’s played winningly by LaBelle, the “Fabelmans” star, even if the characterization, like much of “Saturday Night,” is a little thin. Sometimes by his side, as he races to get the show ready is the writer and Michaels’ then-wife, Rosie Shuster (the excellent Rachel Sennott), who you want more of.

It seems to be an unfortunate truth that dramatizations of “Saturday Night Live” inevitably kill it of laughter. That’s true here just as it was in Aaron Sorkin’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” The exception to that, of course, is Tina Fey’s “30 Rock,” which was smart enough to abandon all the “SNL” mythology and focus on what’s funny.

This “Saturday Night” may have a legacy of its own; a lot of this cast, I suspect, will be around for a long time. And, ultimately, when the show finally comes together, it’s galvanizing. The cleverest thing about Reitman’s film is that it ends, rousingly, just where “SNL” starts.

“Saturday Night,” a Columbia Pictures release is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language throughout, sexual references, some drug use and brief graphic nudity. Running time: 108 minutes. Three stars out of four.

Meiyazhagan Movie Review: Like his warmly received ’96, director Prem Kumar’s Meiyazhagan is an engaging, conversation-filled emotional drama, that’s filled with affecting moments and leaves us chuffed. The story revolves around two men — one, reticent and with an emotional baggage, and the other, cheery and winsome. The former, Arulmozhi Varman, is played by Arvind Swami, while the latter is played by Karthi, and it’s his identity that provides a bit of suspense to this simple tale.

The plot kicks in when Arulmozhi, who has been forced to uproot himself from his hometown, Thanjavur, decides to visit the place after 22 years — to attend his cousin sister Bhuvana’s (a superb Swathi Konde) wedding. Even though he and his family are estranged from their money-minded relatives and have been living in Chennai, Bhuvan is the only relative he has an affection for, apart from the affable uncle Chokku mama (Rajkiran). His plan is to attend the reception, for Bhuvana’s sake and return to Chennai the same night. But then, he runs into a young man whose naivete is equally annoying and charming, and this meeting leads him on an unexpected journey of self-discovery.

Despite the potential for overblown melodrama inherent in the plot, in Meiyazhagan, Prem Kumar goes for a tone that’s somewhere between melancholy and heartwarming. The film does have a handful of moments, like the one between Arulmozhi and Bhuvana, that leave us all misty-eyed and choked up. But it’s the smaller moments that make it even more special. Like the scene between Arulmozhi and a wistful female relative (Indumathy Manikandan), who candidly tells him about her drunkard husband and how her life would have been better if she’d married him instead.

The director also injects humour into the scenes with throwaway quips that bring a chuckle and also help lighten the sombre mood a little. Mahendiran Jayaraju’s cinematography captures the comforting quietness of small-town nights while Govind Vasantha’s evocative score and haunting songs, especially Poraen Naa Poraen and its reprise version Yaaro Ivan Yaaro (in the impassioned voice of Kamal Haasan), worm their way into our hearts.

In his interviews, Prem Kumar has spoken about writing his stories as novels that he adapts to screen, and we see that literary quality in many portions. A lesser filmmaker might have even broken portions of the film down into episodes — The Saga Of A Cycle, The Victorious Bull, History Lessons, and so on — to inject additional drama into the plot and show off their new-age-y credentials. However, Prem Kumar is more of a classical filmmaker and chooses to let the scenes play out in organic fashion, in an uninterrupted manner that adds an experiential quality to the film; when Arulmozhi and his relative have their conversation, it feels like as if we are a fly on their wall.

Perhaps this wouldn’t have been an issue if this were a mini-series, but some of these episodes, like the portions involving a bull, and a speech by Karthi’s character on history, heritage and wars, do feel long drawn out. Some of it also feels like political posturing, and comes across as elements force-fitted into the narrative. Given the sedate pacing, they make the film seem overlong and a bit overindulgent.

That said, the first-rate performances from the cast ensures that even minor moments and characters, like the ones played by Karunakaran, Raichal Rabecca and Ilavarasu, linger in our memory. Even if senior actors like Rajkiran, Devadarshini, and Jayaprakash appear only for a handful of scenes, they make their characters feel real with their astute performances. Even Sri Divya, despite appearing only in the second half, makes an impression.

But the film belongs to Arvind Swami and Karthi, and the two actors do some splendid work here. Arvind Swami, in his most vulnerable role yet, superbly captures the angst of a man unable to escape his past; even the actor’s shoulders droop down, signifying the burden that the character’s carrying within himself. And playing a slightly tricky character, one that could have become an irritant with just one false step, Karthi finds the right pitch to make his character endearing.