From the nasty fun corner of our big screen entertainment menu comes Longlegs, the feel-spooked hit of the summer. Here, writer-director Osgood Perkins has cooked up a horror film which both nods to the tropes and beloved elements of form in the B-movie genre while injecting it with intelligent twists, a keen visual and place-conscious eye, and variations on the form.

Oh, did we mention a truly new and newly unnerving demonic villain in the man called “Longlegs?” This conniving, Manson-esque serial killer (or killer by proxy), with a mop-haired, pasty-faced madman countenance and confessed obedience to “Mr. Downstairs,” is creepily embodied by Nicholas Cage. Cage, also the film’s producer, doesn’t have to dig very deep in his thespian and psychological playbook to conjure up the required frightful eccentricity for the job.

An added attraction in the film is the unexpectedly nuanced and magnetic performance by Maika Monroe, born and raised in Santa Barbara and an actress who first made her splash in another horror flick, It Follows, a decade ago. In Longlegs, she is less a classic imperiled damsel-ish “scream queen” than a complicated character with a past, decoding an ugly crime pattern involving slain families, girls with common birthdays and demonic dolls. She plays an FBI agent on the Longlegs case, with a “half-psychic” awareness and connections to a harrowing past only slowly revealed through the film. Monroe is excellent as the presumed voice of reason amidst the anarchic narrative and in the face of Cage’s manic manipulations. But reason starts to get real personal as the film careens into its surprise final act.

As one last touch of a winking easter egg in the film (they know that we know some devil-ish fun is at work here), the end credits break with tradition by scrolling downward — aka hellward. Meanwhile, Marc Bolan sings “Bang a Gong,” circling back to a quote from the song in the film’s intro: “you’re a dirty sweet/you’re my girl.”

Longlegs is a thinking person’s horror outing, validating the notion that such presumably “lowly” genres as action and horror can also be containers for cleverly crafted and engaging cinema art. It may scare the bejeezus out of some viewers or impress those of us seeking out sneak attack art-making on the summer movie circuit. Or both. 

See trailer here.

It’s usually at the end of the review that I talk about a film’s MPAA rating, but I’ll twist it up for “Twisters.” Or rather, for its 1996 predecessor “Twister” and its all-time terribly-worded rating justification. The film was rated PG-13 for “intense depiction of very bad weather.” Yes, the depiction was intense, and yes, the weather was very, very bad, but those twisters were so violent and destructive that “weather” seems like the wrong word to describe them. They may as well have used the term “extreme windiness.” The twisters are similarly violent and destructive in “Twisters,” which is much more sensibly rated PG-13 for “intense action and peril, some language and injury images.”

The new film stars Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kate and Glen Powell as Tyler, two storm chasers with different reasons for traveling Oklahoma looking for tornadoes. She’s trying to set up a 3-D mapping system that will help scientists understand how tornadoes form and thus save lives. She used to think she could rig up a chemical reaction that could actually stop a fully-formed tornado, but a field test in the film’s opening moments turns deadly, so she has to settle for the mapping system endorsed by her old friend Javi (Anthony Ramos). Tyler wants to shoot fireworks into a tornado to make a cool visual that gets him subscribers on Youtube and increase his celebrity so he can sell tacky merchandise. Kate is glad to have the moral high ground, or so she thinks.

As the film progresses, Tyler shows he has more layers than Kate initially thought. He’s a learned meteorologist and a big-hearted humanitarian. It also turns out that Kate may have jumped on the wrong bandwagon. She and Javi are noble, but their team’s sponsor isn’t. Kate and Tyler find that they like chasing the storms together, helping recovery efforts together, and just plain spending time together. Cute squabbling turns to cute flirting. Please tell me it’s not much of a spoiler to find out that there’s romantic chemistry between the smoldering cowboy and the beautiful scientist.

Then there are the twister sequences themselves. I used to be terrified of tornadoes, but the fear mostly dropped off when I hit my teens. This movie may rekindle some of that fear, especially after the opening sequence. The rest of the sequences are fine. I was never unconvinced that there was danger afoot. One thing I knew going in was that twisters, while they can form quickly, don’t lend themselves to jump scares, so I was wondering what the film would have to do to push my buttons that way. There are two effective jump scares that made me scream for half a second and then laugh for several full ones.

You can probably guess the kind of experience that “Twisters” provides. It’s a PG-13 disaster movie. The action scenes, while fraught with mortal danger, aren’t going to feature anyone getting ripped limb from limb. The comedic and romantic scenes are perfectly predictable as well, with Edger-Jones and Powell having the pleasing chemistry I knew they’d have. Of the characters that survive among Kate, Tyler, Javi, and Tyler’s colorful team, I wouldn’t mind seeing these characters in more movies. I’m sure the filmmakers can come up with more creative storm scenarios. For now, this was exactly the movie I expected it to be, but I had a reasonably good time watching very bad weather.

Grade: B-

“Twisters” is rated PG-13 for intense action and peril, some language and injury images. Its running time is 117 minutes.

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Simu Liu, Nathalie Emmanuel

Director: Simon Cellan-Jones

Language: English

Animals are not merely equal to humans, sometimes their resistance ends up being far superior and far more rousing for us to witness as audiences in cinema. We recently saw the apes protecting their planet, what belonged to them. We wept when the adorable pet Hachiko waited for its master to come back even when we knew he would never. And then there are creatures that turn into monsters that revel in galloping their prey in the most hideous and monstrous of visuals. Think of Jaws, Jurassic Park, Anaconda. Films that can still send a chill down the spine.

We now get Arthur The King, where it’s a dog who’s the King and not its master, played by Mark Wahlberg. So what is the film all about? In 2015, in Costa Rica, Michael Light, an American runner, and his adventure racing team gets stuck on the first day after their leader takes the poor decision to kayak against the tide. Leo, one of the members of the team, is outraged that Michael has not paid attention to their opinions. This is how Wikipedia has described one half of the plot. The rest is mystery for those who would choose to watch the film now available on Lionsgate.

The visuals are stunning and the film keeps you on the edge of your seats. Cinematographer Jacques Jouffret sucks you in the world he shoots and handled ably by Simon Jones, the director. The dog, no, the king does a fine job of doing what these creatures do best- share a loyal chemistry with their master and save lives when needed. And since this is a film filled with some thunderous adventure, there comes an opportunity when Arthur literally puts his life to allow others in this game of life and death to survive.

It says a lot about where humanity is heading when you constantly root for animals more than humans. Okay, not to mention those creature features again where humans were being wiped out at the speed of light. But here, you root for the canine from the word go. And the director shoots their scenes with care and attention. Humans can fumble when it comes to acting, but infants and animals are the most natural and effortless, acting or not. The more they are not acting, the more they are. And the better for the film. And Arthur The King is no exception. A theatrical experience would have been much better since the film boasts off some adrenaline pumping action choreography and impressive visuals, a small screen won’t harm either. By the end, Arthur would have stolen the show, size of the screen notwithstanding.

Rating: 3 (out of 5 stars)

Arthur The King is now streaming on Lionsgate