A Quiet Place: Day One Surprises With a Solid Story and Good Lead Performances

One of the most ominous things in the trailer for A Quiet Place: Day One was the promise that the movie would reveal "how our world went quiet." If there's anything this franchise doesn't need, it's belabored explanations for why those sound-sensitive aliens came to Earth. That kind of lore is good for Wikis, not movies. Thankfully, Day One as an actual motion picture is not interested in such explanations. Instead, writer/director Michael Sarnoski has delivered a new Quiet Place saga that keeps the frights of the previous two films intact. Meanwhile, the more intimate parts of the piece are shockingly reminiscent of Sarnoski's 2021 indie classic Pig. Unlike Michel Gondry dojng The Green Hornet or Ben Wheatley on Meg 2: The Trench, Sarnoski kept his creative spirit intact through the franchise filmmaking meat-grinder.

Day One begins in New York City, with protagonist Sam (Lupita Nyong'o) living in hospice care. With a severe form of cancer running through her veins, Sam doesn't have long to live. This fate has led her to become understandably surly with others save for her cat Frodo. While traveling into the city with other hospice patients, a seemingly routine day turns into a nightmare as those Quiet Place aliens descend from the heavens. Immediately turning New York City into a shell of itself, most people in the city begin to head towards evacuation boats. Sam, however, is determined to get a slice of pizza at Patsy's in Harlem. On her journey across the city, Sam encounters Eric (Joseph Quinn), a law student overwhelmed with everything happening around them.

The first two Quiet Places were about survival at all costs. These were horror films about the classical nuclear family attempting to endure the apocalypse. A Quiet Place: Day One nicely differentiates itself from its predecessor by opting for a story recognizing how life is finite. What do you want to do with your limited existence? What do you want to consider important in your life? "We don't get a lot of things to care about," as a previous Sarnoski protagonist once proclaimed. What you do care about, then, should matter. Filtering the story through that lens works on multiple layers. It gives Day One a distinct identity and lends Sarnoski familiar thematic terrain he can deftly handle.

That intimate gaze is something Lupite Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn handle quite nicely. Neither performer delivers work suggesting they're phoning this material in because this is summertime franchise fare. The dramatic material clicks into place partially because of their commitment and believability. Nyong'o especially is such a fascinating presence on screen. There's always been something so instantly meaningful and layered about her facial expressions. Like the great silent movie performers, Nyong'o has consistently demonstrated a gift for communicating so much with just a look or a tilt of the head. What better place to use that skill than in a Quiet Place installment?

Thanks to competent writing from Sarnoski and two solid leads, A Quite Place: Day One is perfectly fine summertime entertainment. It's the kind of movie that registers as perfectly pleasant Friday night fare, with the biggest thing holding it back from greater heights being the more generic scare sequences. Sarnoski leans heavily on jump-scares when it's time for frights in lengthy set pieces that don't add new visual or conceptual flourishes to what's been previously established in the Quiet Place saga. To be sure, some fun chase scenes abound, especially one involving the main duo trying to get past an alien in the sewer. However, the frights don't receive nearly as much personality as the character beats.

Still, Day One functioning as a reasonable extension of the Quiet Place universe is quite surprising (pleasantly so!) considering how the very idea of sequels in this franchise initially sounded like a doomed prospect. Sometimes, it's the simple things that keep your prequel afloat, like emphasizing a cute kitty or taking cues from a movie as good as Pig. Eschewing simple origin stories for the aliens also helps! 

Ultraman: Rising and Brats Capsule Reviews

Credit where credit is due, Ultraman: Rising looks terrific in terms of its animation. The new take on the Japanese superhero Ultraman comes to life under the watch of directors Shannon Tindle and John Aoshima through animation building on the heightened visuals popularized by titles like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The Industrial Light & Magic crew (doing their only third fully-animated film following Rango and Strange Magic) deliver fantastic work providing stylized touches to Ultraman's various skirmishes with big monsters and other adversaries. Fire and smoke are realized in a style evoking hand-drawn animation. Brightly-colored impressionistic backgrounds surround the lead characters to accentuate powerful emotions. Even just the movements of Ultraman are enjoyably dynamic and angular. Just this massive superhero's body language is a lot of fun to watch!

Unfortunately, Ultraman: Rising's glorious animation touches are undercut by the screenplay by Tindle and Marc Haimes. Rather than function as a streamlined action-oriented tale propelled by visuals, Rising is a way too crowded narrative that crumbles under the weight of too many subplots. The story of Kenj Sato/Ultraman (Christopher Sean) caring for the newborn offspring of a kaiju foe is enough to sustain a motion picture. The proceedings eventually dovetail into Sato reconciling his complicated daddy issues. Then there's Sato's exploits as a baseball player. Eventually, even the Ultraman persona becomes an afterthought in the movie!

The busy plot especially becomes a blur in the second half where key character beats (like Sato learning to be more of a team player in baseball) breeze past in the blink of an eye. Tindle and Haimes also take an unfortunate page from modern animated movies like The LEGO Ninjago Movie in thinking endless dramatic monologues will make your kid's feature as emotionally resonant as Up. Given its striking images, one would hope Ultraman: Rising would have more confidence in visual storytelling. Alas, Ultraman: Rising is far too much in love with characters like reporter Ami Wakita (Julia Harriman) flat-out explaining obvious character defects in Sato. A little more simplicity and a lot less sweaty screenwriting would've served the gorgeous-looking Ultraman: Rising well.

Death Comes in the Form of a Memorable Parrot in the Audacious Tuesday

Death takes many forms, both in real life and cinema. In the latter case, the most famous versions of death come in an ominous man in a cloak, popularized by titles like The Seventh Seal and various adaptations of A Christmas Carol. That's not the only way death can show up in movies, of course. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish delivered a great family film villain with a genuinely eerie wolf version of Death. How could anyone forget about Helen Mirren's possible portrayal of the actual personification of death in Collateral Beauty? Tuesday, the feature film directorial debut of writer/director Daina O. Pusić, makes history with its depiction of death, though. By manifesting this concept through a gigantic talking parrot, this is the first personification of death I wanted pet on the head.

Death (voiced by Arinzé Kene) deals with endless misery in his work. His job of ending people's life brings him face-to-face with all kinds of humans and animals, many of them not ready to die. But he's never met anyone quite like Tuesday (Lola Petticrew). This teenager, living with a terminal medical condition restricting her movement and breathing, greets Death not with fear but a joke. She then proceeds to offer this critter kindness by washing off some glue stuck to his feet. While Tuesday is helping Death, her mother, Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is struggling to cope with her daughter's condition. Zora would rather not talk about what's plaguing her only child, the person her entire world revolves around. That personal anguish will need to be confronted, though, Death has literally come for Tuesday, as it comes for all of us. Nothing can stop this parrot from doing his job...not even a mother's love.

If the premise of Tuesday already sounds like an odd creation, just wait until you see the strange corners the plot travels to in its second act. Those familiar with a certain Treehouse of Horror XIV segment will instantly get slight deja vu with where the plot goes! Pusić at once makes Tuesday a fairy tale, farce, tragedy, and even some occasional trappings of a horror film. Spanning so much territory at once results in an inevitably disjointed movie. However, that jagged narrative approach feels somewhat appropriate given the subject matter. Coping with death is never a linear process devoid of messiness. Why should movies concerning the topic be cohesive? Even the grim Seventh Seal made room for Death to whip out a cartoonishly large saw straight out of a Looney Tunes cartoon to secure one of his victims!

It doesn't hurt that Tuesday frequently wrings moments of effective pathos out of bizarre detours. This lends an emotional consistency to the piece even when the tone or unexpectedly offbeat plot turns upend the movie. Pusić and performer Petticrew prove especially skilled at crafting moving moments of intimate bonding between Tuesday and Death. Back in the 1980s, Bob Hoskins nearly lost his mind working against an invisible co-star on the set of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. That infamous yarns, not to mention countless modern anecdotes of actors working off tennis balls on green-screen sets, are cautionary tales about performing off co-stars who won't exist until post-production. Hoskins delivered an excellent performance even under those conditions. So does Petticrew in Tuesday.

The key to Petticrew's believable rapport against this CG parrot and Pusić's direction of their scenes is commitment. There are no sly self-referential lines to wink at the audience about how "weird" this scenario is. Instead, Petticrew instantly commits themselves to portraying a teenage girl exuding kindness to a wounded stranger. It's often easy to forget that Tuesday is interacting with a fully digital co-star. Meanwhile, Pusić's approach to realizing Death plays a big factor in making these sequences work. Death is not a deeply anthropomorphized creation. He's a parrot that can shift his size at will, but he doesn't have fingers, clothes, or even a radically cartoony face to allow for more human expressions. Juxtaposing that realistic approach with the increasingly warm dynamic between Tuesday and Death proves mighty affecting. Little bursts of humanity from Death like his line "I love sarcasm" are shockingly moving because of these character design choices. 

As the plot of Tuesday gets more complicated once Zora discovers the existence of Death, Pusić's script gets a little lost in the woods while her filmmaking sensibilities are challenged by the confines of her budget. It's especially disappointing that there's a 20-ish minute stretch of Tuesday where the titular lead character is largely a disposable character. Tuesday was such an engaging protagonist that it's a shame when she's not at the center of the narrative. This stretch of the story also reinforces the unfortunately disappointing creative tendencies of composer Anna Meredith's score. Meredith is a deeply talented musician, but here, her compositions often hammer home the underlying emotions of key images or plot turns too heavily. Tuesday's more unusual developments and visuals need breathing room and ambiguity. The more ham-fisted musical choices in Meredith's score often deprive those elements of such vital qualities.

Despite being a movie involving a fully CG co-star, Tuesday works best when things get sparse. When the movie is just Tuesday and Death talking, the script really sings. That's an aesthetic Julia Louis-Dreyfus also thrives in. When portraying Zora lying on the couch with Tuesday, this performer is downright masterful in depicting the simultaneous affection and avoidance at play. There's genuine bonding here, Louis-Dreyfus never leaves the audience doubting her love for Tuesday. Even so, Zora quietly ignores her daughter's inquiries while they sit on this faulty couch. The nuances of that mother/daughter dynamic, where love and more complicated emotions can co-exist, are hard to realize. Louis-Dreyfus executes those intricacies with aplomb. Best of all, unlike other comic performers going dramatic like Steve Carell in Beautiful Boy, Louis-Dreyfus understands the importance of subtlety in selling a darker performance. The most emotionally devastating details of her work as Zora are worlds away from her gifted comedic turns in other projects.

Tuesday is a bumpy ride of a movie, mostly held by more rudimentary filming choices from Pusić and cinematography Alexis Zabé. The confines of shooting a VFX-heavy film like this one on a tight budget, not to mention the restrictions of filming around a digital parrot co-star, mean the shot choices in Tuesday are often not quite as imaginative as the script. However, it's also a deeply original production rich with inspired narrative risks and moving contemplations of coping with death. A cross between A Monster Calls, the third act of Terms of Endearment, and a Treehouse of Horror XIV segment, Tuesday is an audacious directorial debut worth commending. Plus, it's got the cuddliest depiction of Death I've ever seen in a movie. That counts for a lot! 

Thank You, Marie's Crisis: How One New York City Piano Bar Gave Me Musical Memories to Last a Lifetime

I didn’t expect the New York piano bar Marie’s Crisis to be a life-changing locale. I simply went because it was the latest place my friends wanted to go to. After all, I was a zygote gay both traveling on her own and visiting her online queer friends in real life for the first time. I still couldn’t bring myself to say the word “bisexual” out loud, let alone “trans lesbian. I was just so inexperienced talking out loud about queer stuff with people my own age. Just getting to the Big Apple felt like a triumph! I tended to just go wherever my friends wanted to and experience what came my way. Even as someone who didn’t drink, that meant I happily transversed to whatever bar they wanted to go to.

I initially thought Marie’s Crisis would be like the other New York bars I’d seen; interesting atmosphere, some cool decorations, a bit too noisy to stay in for long. Those other bars, though, didn’t have a giant piano against the wall and pianist playing various showtunes. That was the cool thing about Marie’s Crisis: there was always a song playing live that you could sing along to. Very quickly, I discovered that there’s nothing more enjoyable on this Earth than singing Broadway ditties in cramped confines. In other circumstances, these claustrophobic surroundings would’ve sent my autism brain into overdrive. However, my love for musicals, my friends, and communal bonding ejected any thoughts of being overwhelmed.

I’ve always become transported to the past through particular songs. Various 60s and 70s songs like “Moonage Daydream” immediately place me into memories of bonding with my mom. David Allan Coe tunes bring me back to me and my dad were driving around Plano in his car. Certain chords of Eric Church’s “Springsteen” immediately make my hands go clammy as I prepare myself to once again endure the misery of 10th grade. Yet, in that 2018 Marie’s Crisis excursion, that phenomenon ceased. “Defying Gravity,” “One Day More,” “Over the Rainbow”, I’d heard them countless times before. I had fond pre-2018 memories attached to them. However, this piano bar was such a glorious experience that my feet firmly remained in the present. No evocative memories of yesteryear could compare to the joys and exhilaration in that moment.

After all, how could I get lost in the past when I was getting nearly thrown out of a bar for the first time? Yes, my inaugural Marie’s Crisis experience almost became my last thanks to me absent-mindedly sitting my frame on a nearby table. A bouncer had to step in and tell me to stop that. Imagine that! I’d never even been in a bar before June 2018. Now here I was being so “rowdy” that a bouncer had to intervene. I had gone from dipping my toes into the water to suddenly swimming laps in the Olympics. Charlie Sheen in 2010 couldn’t keep up with my bar shenanigans!

Returning to the songs, the showtunes came at a steady clip at Marie’s Crisis, there was no lull to let the energy seep out the door. Big group numbers like “One Day More” especially got the bar thumping. The bounciness of "You'll Be Back" from Hamilton was extraordinarily fun to do with a boatload of other people. A “Frozen on Broadway” balloon that had entered the bar sometimes bounced around the crowd in a reflection of all the vigor floating around. Nostalgic Broadway tunes from productions like Rent really got the older members of the bar wistful. Oh my goodness, "Defying Gravity" is also a euphoric ditty to do live with a horde of other souls. Truly nothing feels like it can ever bring you down when so many people are united in harmonizing that number! 

As a big Little Shop of Horror fan, anytime the songs from that show came on, I was also overjoyed. Just getting to hear some of my fave musical numbers in history (Howard Ashman was such a lyrical genius) was a treat. However, there was unexpectedly extra emotional power in hearing something like "Somewhere That's Green" performed by a massive crowd. The underlying yearning of the lyrics just becomes extra palpable in those confines. Meanwhile, no offense to Audrey II, my personal favorite experience of all the sing-a-longs at the bar involved “How Far I’ll Go”. The first Moana song of the night, I was convinced this tune would play to a mostly silent crowd. After all, this was a newer Disney film that didn’t even have a Broadway adaptation to broaden our its fanbase. It would be understandable if 99% of the bar didn’t know what was going on when this ditty came on. However, the moment the song started, everyone in that bar immediately went “I’VE BEEN STARING AT THE EDGE OF THE WATER” 

It was utter magic. That excellent showtune wasn’t even two years old and yet it had already burrowed its way into everyone’s subconscious. It was a microcosm of how that bar transformed total strangers into close comrades. There’s nothing like a Sondheim or Ashman song to make everyone in the nearby vicinity feel like family. The closeness and familial nature of this environment felt so especially satisfying as a queer space. I couldn’t have been the only out-of-towner in that bar that night.

So many of us were coming from locations where it often felt like we were the only gays in the world. Now those souls occupied a space overflowing with queers! Our usual loneliness became a temporary memory in those crowded yet soothing confines. It was as if we were all packed into a separate dimension from everyday reality. There was no way the intolerance and discomforts of existence could hurt us. Here was a zone that belonged to showtunes and your beverage of choice. 

As I stood there harmonizing along to Chicago and West Side Story songs, one thought about the past did creep into my mind. “Boy, Uncle Doug would’ve loved this place.” Uncle Doug was a dear relative to me, an openly gay man, lover of theatre, a published writer, and devoured of Moose Tracks ice cream. When I was a few hours old, Uncle Doug cradled me in my arms and softy sung to me “Ooook-lahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain”. From then on, I was destined to be obsessed with musicals. I always felt so comfortable around Uncle Doug, he was always a great listener and a compassionate soul. Uncle Doug was taken away from this world in the early days of July 2017. Even with his years of suffering from a sickness, his death was still so sudden and devastating.

I never got to tell him I was always queer. I never could’ve even entertained the idea of being trans while he was alive. I’ll always regret I never got to tell him those qualities about myself. It could’ve been another way we bonded, another way we mirrored each other. Forever and ever, I’ll always think about Uncle Doug and all the memories we could’ve made together.

Back in June 2018, my brain briefly fluttered to the past thinking how much he would’ve loved Marie’s Crisis. Uncle Doug would’ve been singing louder than anyone else. He also would’ve made the funniest mock shudder of horror when a Cats tune came on (oh, how he hated that show!). Uncle Doug even told me multiple times that he wanted to take me to New York one day. He loved the place so much and wanted to share it with me. We never got to take that trip. We never got to make many memories.

But I made it. That fateful day in June 2018, I knew in the back of my head that Uncle Doug would been proud of me for making new memories, forming fresh friendships, and keeping his love of musicals alive. That glorious first trip to Marie’s Crisis beautifully intertwined elements of my past, present, and future as a queer woman. Immediately, I knew that this excursion, like so many of Uncle Doug outings, would be forever encased in my mind.

A week after that Marie’s Crisis trip, I was back in Allen, Texas working my cursed job at Walgreen’s. No longer was I surrounded by hordes of queer people. Now I was stuck behind a counter, selling cigarettes and beer to older people who referred to their autistic offspring as “damaged children” or made offhand homophobic comments. My long khaki pants and blue work uniform seemed to be suffocating me. I could feel them burning my skin. Because I was worried about having any physical evidence about being “queer” back then, I didn’t take any pictures of myself in Marie’s Crisis or in most of my NYC trip. All I could do to remind myself of that magical night was close my eyes, hum a certain showtune, and then conjure up memories of that night.  

Sitting behind that counter, Marie's Crisis might as well have been on Mars. I felt like I'd never get back there. But I did, albeit after four years. In that interim period, I realized I was actually a trans girly lesbian, went to UTD, got my Master's degree, and began making a living from my writing exploits. I was also returning to the Big Apple just a few weeks before I was starting HRT. I was entering Marie's Crisis a radically different person in many ways, including in my fashion choices. However, I was also re-exploring this establishment with my love for showtunes and communal queer connections firmly interact. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This June 2022 Marie's Crisis excursion was a solo mission for yours truly. While I went with a horde of other queer people last time, this go-around I went alone. Once inside, I ended up bonding with a couple of New York gays I didn't know mere hours earlier. However, after one or two songs, we began chattering and became friends. What a glorious experience. Marie's Crisis didn't just depend on the bonds with previously-established chums, it also could bring immediate closeness between queers. I also absorbed a story from the man behind the piano about his first Marie's Crisis trip decades earlier. 

His brother had taken this pianist to Marie's Crisis in the 1970s when he was just a little too young. While there, the sibling dubbed Marie's Crisis a grand sanctuary and revealed to this young pianist the "gay national anthem": "Over the Rainbow." At this point in the anecdote, the pianist's voice cracked with emotion and he had to pause. Then, he divulged to the bar that this sibling had died due to complications from AIDS decades earlier. It was a sobering but vital reminder of the queer community's past.

It also reaffirmed the power of these songs we were belting out. A rendition of "Over the Rainbow" didn't just make memories in the here and now. It connected us to our descendants, intertwining us with the past like a queen chain link. That pianist's brother, Uncle Doug, and any other LGBTQIA+ souls taken from us too soon were all in that bar. Like the deeply moving ending of BPM (Beats Per Minute), this story reminded me how enduring queer lives can be. Society wants to erase us. But our community can lengthen our lives far beyond what mortal coils can sustain.

---

It's a Wednesday morning in Allen, Texas. I sit here on a couch, pug heads on my lap, 23 months on estrogen. It's been two years since my last trip to Marie's Crisis. Yet, the memories I made there are so vivid. I feel like I can reach out and touch the bar counter or the little corner crevice to the left of the piano. Every time certain showtunes emerge on my Spotify shuffle, a smile emerges on my lips. I'm suddenly thrust back into the past singing that song with a boisterous crowd.

There are queer bars in Dallas, Texas. They even often house live karaoke events where you can sing with other gays. No offense to any of those, but they can't hold a candle to Marie's Crisis. How could they? There's something special about sitting in a bar rich with history not too far away from the streets of Broadway and the Stonewall Inn. Marie's Crisis is the place where queer history and musical theatre nerds intersect joyfully.

When I returned to Texas in June 2018, I felt distraught. It seemed like I'd never return to Marie's Crisis. Now? In my heart of hearts, I know I'll return someday. If I did everything I've accomplished in the last two years (started HRT, came out publicly, began living on my own, etc.), then anything is possible, for good and for ill. I will return to Marie's Crisis someday. Until then, those showtunes and memories will sufice. They remind me of all that I love about this queer community and the bonding great music can accomplish. Nothing better encapsulates those feelings than, naturally, a musical number. Specifically, a musical number belted out by a bit of a weirdo...

There's not a word yet

For old friends who've just met

Part heaven, part space

Or have I found my place

You can just visit 

But I plan to stay 

I'm going to go back there Someday