End Credits #295 - May 3, 2023 (Beau is Afraid)

This week on End Credits we're going to go big or go home. Well, we're going to go big and then go home because why can't we do both? We're going to try this week with a very peculiar movie from one of our most peculiar directors right now, and since he's taking a gamble, we take a gamble too by talking about other directors that like to embrace risk.

This Wednesday, May 3, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss:

Big Swings! This week's movie might be characterized as a big swing, meaning a director with clout who uses every bit of it on a movie that has a 50/50 chance of working out. Maybe that's the work of some British director who gets ahead of his American counterparts by two decades, and maybe that's the executive who bets his studio on some New Zealand's director's interpretation of a fantasy novel, but the thing they have in common is they're... big swings!

REVIEW: Beau is Afraid (2023). Ari Aster knows how to provoke an audience. He did it with Hereditary, he did it with Midsommar, and he's back again with Beau is Afraid, the story of man trying to get home. Joaquin Phoenix plays the titular Beau, who lives in a vaguely near future America in a horrible urban hellscape. And then his mother dies. If you don't think things can't get any worse for Beau, you've clearly never seen any Ari Aster movie because its obviously going to get worse. The question is whether or not we want to take the ride, so do we?

End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.