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The last movie weekend of March gives us a great horror movie and a horrible comedy.
The horror movie is "It Follows," which Sundance Film Festival attendees saw in the Park City at Midnight program. The movie is a creepy, unsettling tale of a young woman (Maika Monroe) who finds, after having sex with her new boyfriend (Jake Weary), that he has passed on a curse — and that a supernatural entity no one else can see is now pursuing her. Writer-director David Robert Mitchell takes familiar slasher-movie ideas and makes them shine like new.
The comedy "Get Hard" works hard to offend — with racial and homophobic stereotypes — and not hard enough to be really funny. Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart, two really funny guys, are wasted in this tale of an oblivious rich guy (Ferrell) about to go to prison and hiring a black guy (Hart) to toughen him up. Avoid at all costs.
The animated "Home" is a nice movie with a boring title. It's about an alien invasion of cute, cowardly E.T.s, called The Boov, and how one of their klutziest members, Oh (voiced by Jim Parsons), must team up with a human girl, Tip (voiced by Rihanna), to reunite with her mother. It's a colorful, funny and sweet ride.
At the art houses this weekend, the return of "Grey Gardens" is an event. Albert and David Maysles' 1975 verité documentary introduces us to the Beales, mother and daughter Big Edie and Little Edie, and their eccentric, dysfunctional relationship in their rundown Long Island mansion. It's even more fascinating now, after 40 years' distance and a steady diet of reality TV, so viewers can see the psychological strains under the oddball behavior.
The British thriller " '71" is an action-packed ride, following a green Army private ("Unbroken" star Jack O'Connell) caught alone on the streets of Belfast during "The Troubles." The action is intense, as the young soldier struggles to survive and figure out who, if anyone, he can trust.
Danish director Kristian Levring tries his hand at an American Western in "The Salvation," and the iconography is as enduring as ever. Mads Mikkelsen ("Hannibal") plays an ex-soldier who has built up a homestead, but when he finally brings his wife and child to live with him, they are brutally murdered and he seeks bloody revenge.
Lastly, there's "Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter," a dry-as-dust comedy about a mousy Japanese office worker (Rinko Kikuchi) who ventures to Minnesota convinced the loot buried in "Fargo" is real. There is some Coens-esque humor here, but the delivery is off-putting.