"Honey, no one wants to know that their children are having sex."
That wasn't really the response my friend was looking for when she told her mother she was pregnant (my friend is married and in her 30s), but that's not to say mom doesn't speak the truth.
So much so that there's an entire movie hung on the idea of not wanting kids to have sex, and it's opening this week at the Whistler Village. Of course, the kids in question are three teenage girls who've make a pact to lose their virginity on prom night, so the parental anxiety is a bit more understandable, as is the adults' ridiculous plot to foil their children's #sexpact2018. And oh yeah, and the title of the film is Cock Blockers.
Well, officially it's just Blockers, but they put a little picture of a rooster on top of the word (remember: images/emoji are actually some of civilization's oldest forms of communication; we used to call them hieroglyphics.)
In any case, Cock Blockers is better than it sounds. First-time director Kay Cannon (she wrote the Pitch Perfect movies), presents characters that feel lived-in and real enough that we buy into even the most juvenile set pieces (cue the ass-chugging).
Basing a teen sex comedy on three young women, then showing they can be just as raunchy as the dudes, fits nicely with the shifting times and Cannon also dishes up a much more inclusive vibe than the standard Hollywood fare (minorities! Gay characters! Who knew such a thing would work in a movie!??)
Part Superbad and part Parenthood, Cock Blockers is almost two movies in one, both funny. It elevates itself above the standard teen-sex clichés while still serving up a touching story about love, family and independence. Cock-a-doodle-do it.
Also opening this week, A Quiet Place is a sleeper hit starring Emily Blunt and John Krasinski (who also directs) about a young family trying to survive an alien invasion/post-apocalyptic nightmare. The kicker is that the speedy, spidery, bloodthirsty alien monsters can't see you—they hunt by sound. Make noise and you die, luckily this family has a deaf child and already knows sign language.
There's huge hype surrounding this one. The screenwriters wanted to play with the old-school silent film concept and with Krasinksi at the helm, A Quiet Place takes that silence, and punctuates it with booming death and mayhem.
Emily Blunt continues to prove her incredible skill, and at 90 minutes, this flick is the right length for a monster movie.
The only red flag (and it's a massive one) is that the filmmakers all spoke about how much they love the work of M. Night Shyamalan. Sure, The Sixth Sense had a good twist, but generally Shyamalan plots are as smooth as scrambled eggs and I almost always end up screaming at the screen in the third act.
Here's hoping A Quiet Place knows where to forge out on its own.
And if sound-based, atmospheric horror is your jam, check out Canadian legend Bruce McDonald's Pontypool, a 2008 flick where an on-air radio crew are forced to hunker down and keep broadcasting even though a zombie-death virus has found its way into the English language–certain words work on certain people (who then go find someone to violently kill) and there's a word out there for all of us.
Like much of McDonald's cadre (Roadkill, Highway 61) Pontypool is a bit convoluted, subtext heavy, and not that easy to digest at first, but at least you don't have to worry that it will go all Shyamalan on ya at the end. Download of the week.
The Village 8 is also opening a based-on-true high school girls volleyball movie called The Miracle Season (I'll pass) and the Passport to the World film this month is Chateaux of the Loire: Royal Visit, a look inside some of France's classic castles from the 14th and 15th centuries.
Think drawbridges, renaissance architecture, and the kind of lavish excess that can only exist after multiple generations of church-driven slavery/serfdom, a couple bullshit crusades and a plague or two to keep the common folk down. But who doesn't need 282 chimneys in their house, right? We need to keep those rich kids warm; that's good breeding stock.
