Category Archives: Reel Views
Asteroid City
Wes Anderson is the type of director whose work is so firmly situated in the cultural consciousness that even those who have only seen one or two of his films can immediately recognize his style. Over the years, parodies of Anderson doing X-Men or a horror movie have popped up on YouTube and SNL and more recently, AI has been used to create fake trailers for Star Wars and Lord of the Rings in Anderson’s emblematic style. The question around Asteroid City, the latest from the oft-caricatured auteur, is whether Anderson would drastically change things up to keep audiences guessing or continue with the muted and mannered methodology to which viewers have become accustomed. For the most part, Anderson plays to his strengths in terms of aesthetic and tone but the difference here is in the richness of emotions from the film’s panoply of characters.
Set within a play of the same name, Asteroid City takes place in a fictional desert settlement named after a meteorite that landed thousands of years ago and created a crater where a science fair is now held annually. Rolling into town for the 1955 Junior Stargazer Convention are five teenaged honorees, there to show off their impressive retrofuturistic inventions, along with their respective families. Fittingly, one of the teenagers, Woodrow Steenbeck (Jake Ryan), is nicknamed “Brainiac” and brings with him his photographer father Augie (Jason Schwartzman) and three sisters. He strikes up a fast friendship with fellow Stargazer Dinah Campbell (Grace Edwards), whose actress mother Midge (Scarlett Johansson) similarly begins a relationship with the recently-widowed Augie.
Being a Wes Anderson movie, Asteroid City additionally boasts dozens of other eccentric players and ornate vignettes to detail this world-within-a-world. He’s assembled impressive casts before but this may be Anderson’s most stacked ensemble to date; when superstars like Tom Hanks and Steve Carell pop up only for a few scenes each, seemingly because the film is already bursting at the seams with talent, it becomes even more apparent the embarrassment of riches this project has become. The sheer amount of familiar faces, which also includes Anderson stalwarts like Jeffrey Wright and Tilda Swinton, may connote that these characters are disposable or replaceable but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Some of their stories are funny and some of them are sad but they’re all interesting and would be worth diving into on their own terms.
The writing in Anderson’s work is often droll and direct, ripe for satire but also whip smart and difficult to emulate authentically. Asteroid City has several trademark pithy exchanges, the first conversation over phone between Augie and his father-in-law being a clear example, but over time, the dialogue becomes more reflective and introspective. The play can be seen both as a Cold War parable and a pandemic allegory, where isolation and fear underscore human’s desperate need for connection. Augie and Midge’s tryst is fueled by conversations between open windows in adjacent motel rooms, their framing resembling the video chat confines of computer screens. When juxtaposed with an alley-set chat between the actor playing Augie and the actress that was to portray Augie’s wife, Anderson’s comment seems to be that people will cross any barriers to carry out meaningful conversation.
If things in Asteroid City weren’t metatextual enough, there is another layer of artifice by way of a TV show narrated with Rod Serling-like candor by Bryan Cranston about how the play was performed. Though these scenes are in black-and-white and in a markedly different aspect ratio than the Panavision widescreen used for the play itself, it can be tricky keeping track of what world we’re in when. Cranston’s character even pops up briefly in one of the full-color scenes by accident, only to slyly slink away back to his own universe. Despite these veneers of unreality, Anderson is careful never to lose the thread of why each of these characters matter and why we should care about them. That’s a breakthrough worth celebrating for a filmmaker who has, from time to time in his stellar career, favored cerebral flourish over genuine sentiment.
Score – 4/5
New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, an action-adventure sequel starring Harrison Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge which concludes the 5-film arc of the titular archaeologist as he teams up with his goddaughter to retrieve a legendary artifact that can change the course of history.
Also coming to the multiplex is Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, an animated fantasy comedy starring Lana Condor and Toni Collette about a shy teenager who learns that she comes from a fabled royal family of legendary sea krakens and that her destiny lies in the depths of the waters.
Streaming on Netflix is Run Rabbit Run, a psychological horror film starring Sarah Snook and Lily LaTorre following a fertility doctor who must challenge her own values and confront a ghost from her past after noticing the strange behavior of her young daughter.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup
No Hard Feelings
The predictable but reliably funny sex comedy No Hard Feelings stars Jennifer Lawrence as Maddie, a thirtysomething Uber driver who’s in a bit of a pickle after her car is repossessed. While working her second job, Maddie’s co-worker friend Sarah (Natalie Morales) finds an ad offering a used Buick to anyone who will date their 19-year-old son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman). Desperate to dig her way out of bankruptcy, Maddie meets with Percy’s parents to accept the job and attempt to drag the awkward Percy out of his cocoon of video games and online interactions. Maddie’s early seductive passes at Percy evolve into dates that grow more meaningful and suggest that the two may have a genuine connection beyond the covert agreement between Maddie and Percy’s parents.
If the premise of No Hard Feelings feels refreshing, it speaks not to its inherent originality and more to how out of fashion raunchy romantic comedies have become in recent years. What makes this film slightly more progressive than past compeers like The Girl Next Door or She’s Out Of My League is that here, the female lead is the one calling the shots and it’s the male co-star who plays the ingenue. It’s also a tricky needle to thread to be crude but not offensive, shocking but not problematic. While the movie tends to be more on the safe side, save a few scenes that intended to provoke a reaction, director and co-writer Gene Stupnitsky finds a nice rhythm and balance between laughs and pathos. Like his similarly foul-mouthed Good Boys, the runtime here is also under 100 minutes, a brisk respite from the scourge of overstuffed outings.
After moving on from the Hunger Games and X-Men franchises, Lawrence took a short hiatus from the limelight but her return in last year’s Causeway and now No Hard Feelings remind us why she became so popular in the first place. Maddie is certainly rough around the edges and could be seen as objectionable for taking up the unsavory offer to “educate” a young man before he heads off to Princeton. But Lawrence hits the right notes with her licentious heroine, obviously able to pull off sexpot allure with aplomb but also unafraid to lean into the physical comedy, even when it gets ugly. The trailers have highlighted a moment where Maddie crawls on all fours crying after getting maced by a terrified Percy but a beach-set scene shortly after takes the cake in terms of no holds barred slapstick performance. You’ll know it when you see it.
Similar to his character, Feldman is more reserved earlier on in his performance and comes out of his shell as No Hard Feelings progresses. He pushes things a bit too far in the third act, in terms of how much his character changes, but the film’s mid-section allows for a burgeoning vulnerability to bring Percy to a sweet spot in terms of characterization. Feldman is also able to lend his musical theater bonafides to the role — he also played the title role in the hit musical Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway — during a restaurant scene that adds some nice dimension to his loner character. Feldman also has some well-handled scenes with his parents, played by Laura Benanti and Matthew Broderick, with the presence of the latter inspiring an inevitable Ferris Bueller’s Day Off riff towards the film’s conclusion.
As is often the case for rom-coms, the weak spot for No Hard Feelings comes with its plotting and the necessary contrivances that keep the narrative moving but simply don’t reflect real life. If you’ve ever seen a movie like this before, where characters make a secret plan that keeps one of the central protagonists in the dark, then nearly nothing about the second half of this film will be surprising to you. For as many hard-earned laughs as Stupnitsky and co-writer John Phillips work into the screenplay, I wish they could have come up with something in terms of story that wasn’t so well-worn. This is a comedy that relies mainly on the timing and chemistry of its two stars and that’s where the majority of its successes lie. No Hard Feelings is hardly a revelatory raunch-com but in its attempt to revive a stagnant genre, it rises to the occasion.
Score – 3/5
More movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Asteroid City, a sci-fi dramedy starring Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansson following a writer as he stages his world famous fictional play about a grieving father, while traveling with his tech-obsessed family to small rural city to compete in a stargazing event.
Also playing in theaters is God Is A Bullet, an action thriller starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Maika Monroe about a detective who takes matters into his own hands when he finds his ex-wife murdered and his daughter kidnapped by an insidious cult.
Streaming on Netflix is The Perfect Find, a romantic comedy starring Gabrielle Union and Keith Powers involving a career woman who transitions from the fashion industry to beauty journalism and subsequently falls for her boss’s son.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup
The Flash
Arriving with not-so-lightning speed towards the end of the DC Extended Universe’s cinematic run, The Flash is a project that’s technically been in the works since the 1980s and is finally bolting into theaters. Based around the lauded Flashpoint comic book storyline, the movie’s narrative integrates time travel and multiverses in ways that should be inspired but ultimately end up just creating a confusing mess. Even if one goes into the film with knowledge of the myriad storylines from this Universe, along with general knowledge from other superhero lore, there’s a good chance audience members will have issues keeping up with the leaps in continuity and logic that this film makes. Despite some winning performances and some of the most consistent humor in a DCEU entry so far, The Flash is too little too late.
The Flash opens with Barry Allen (Ezra Miller), now a full-time member of the Justice League as The Flash, in the midst of handling a speedy clean-up for Batman (Ben Affleck) during a particularly messy car chase. After that bout of crime fighting, Barry works to clean up grocery store footage that will exonerate his father Henry (Ron Livingston) after the wrongful conviction of his wife’s murder. In frustration one night, The Flash discovers that he is able to run so fast that he can travel faster than the speed of light and, in doing so, effectively travel through time. Hurt over his mother’s murder years prior, he jets back in time with the intent of preventing her death but his actions create an alternate reality where Barry runs into his former self. Along with an altered version of Batman (Michael Keaton), the two Barrys work to set the timeline right.
Yes, The Flash sees the return of Keaton donning the cape and cowl for the first time in over 30 years and despite the time that’s passed, he settles back into the role very nicely. His Bruce Wayne was always the most eccentric and cerebral of the bunch, traits that Keaton has refined even further in his career since Batman Returns. While director Andy Muschietti can’t help but bolster the performance with CG-enhanced virility that has Keaton moving like an impossibly spry sexagenarian, the best Keaton moments in this film call back to the ingenuity of those earlier Burton Batmans. Staging an escape in an elevator shaft, he quickly calculates the collective weight of the escapees, along with a handy tape measure, and sets an explosive charge with proportional propulsion to shoot them up to the roof.
Though Muschietti and his screenwriter Christina Hodson do their best to hold our hand through the time travel paradoxes and multiverse snafus, it’s enough to say that the concept of the “butterfly effect” is used very liberally throughout The Flash. After Barry makes his first interjection within the past, the ramifications are predictably severe and the storyline gets messier than an Ashton Kutcher nose bleed. But if going back in time and zipping back to the future is enough to completely alter the appearance of someone (Bruce Wayne, for instance, since he’s played by two actors), shouldn’t nearly everything else be drastically changed too? The way that these universes unravel relies heavily either on plot contrivance or comedic effect, as with the running joke that Eric Stoltz starred in an alternate version of Back To The Future instead of Michael J. Fox.
I’m not someone who tends to pick on CGI in these superhero epics; there’s often so much money on the screen that the majority of these blockbusters are arranged at least competently enough for me to ignore some choppy rendering or unconvincing shading here and there. Having said that, this movie has scenes containing some of the most jaw-droppingly outdated effects I’ve seen in the modern superhero era. When The Flash is speeding through time, he generates a large orb of energy around him that projects flashes of events as they were and could have been. It’s not clear to me if these images are meant to look as if real actors were present in creating these vignettes but as presented, they would barely pass muster as cutscenes from a Playstation 2 game. The Flash has flashes of brilliance when it tackles themes of regret and acceptance but stumbles in delivering a coherent standalone feature.
Score – 2.5/5
More movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Elemental, a Pixar animated movie starring Leah Lewis and Mamoudou Athie set in a world inhabited by anthropomorphic elements of nature where a fire creature and water creature strike up a romantic relationship.
Also playing only in theaters is The Blackening, a horror comedy starring Grace Byers and Jermaine Fowler about a group of Black friends who go away for the weekend, only to find themselves trapped in a cabin with a killer who has a vendetta.
Streaming on Netflix is Extraction 2, an action thriller starring Chris Hemsworth and Idris Elba continuing the story of a black-ops mercenary whose new mission involves the rescue of a ruthless Georgian gangster’s family from the prison where they are being held.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup
Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse
Four and a half years after the landmark Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, a follow-up has finally arrived but it was worth the wait and then some. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse does all of the things that great sequels need to do: it follows the continuity and ethos of its predecessor, boldly expands on the world that it set up and leaves us wanting even more. At 140 minutes, it’s the longest animated film ever produced by an American studio but it never feels bloated or dragged down by its densely layered storytelling. Assembled by a trio of directors entirely different from the three that worked on Into the Spider-Verse, this follow-up is another testament to the power of collaboration among storytellers with divergent creative backgrounds.
The previous film ended with Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) communing with Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) through a portal in his bedroom ceiling, her final line of “got a minute?” setting up further adventures across dimensions. The beginning of Across the Spider-Verse catches us up on her backstory and what she’s been up to since the events of the first movie, most notably her admission into the Spider-Society. This is a team of other Spider-Man variants, led by Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac), who aim to keep peace in the multiverse by disposing of dimensional anomalies and preserving “canon events”, crucial moments of growth similar amongst the Spider-People. Rejoined by mentor Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson) along with new Spider faces Pavitr Prabhakar (Karan Soni) and Hobie Brown (Daniel Kaluuya), Miles and Gwen must stop a new villain wreaking havoc across the multiverse.
Across the Spider-Verse joins recent films like Best Picture winner Everything Everywhere All at Once and MCU entry Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness whose storylines go deep into parallel universes. There are essays and thinkpieces to be written about why audiences are seeming to respond so strongly to movies with this theme but it’s enough to say that the “what if?” aspect of the plot device remains effortlessly effective here. Where Into the Spider-Verse introduced us to a few twists on the Spider-Man character we typically know from movies and TV shows, this latest film gives us glimpses of dozens of new Spider people, creatures, and machines that exist in other dimensions. There are tangents and cameos of the LEGO and live-action variety that constantly remind us of the boundless creative energy that goes into making these movies.
Into the Spider-Verse introduced a bold new animation style that visualized the comic book experience like never before and Across the Spider-Verse goes even further with its artistic ambitions. While Miles’ timeline on Earth-1610 retains the Ben Day dots and chromatic distortion of the first movie, we spend more time in other dimensions like Gwen’s home on Earth-65. Her world is rendered with draw-dropping impressionist vigor, where every frame is a painting that emotes with the scene it’s canvassing. The film’s most moving moments are between Gwen and her police captain father, reeling with the news that his daughter is a vigilante crime fighter. The frame is awash with watercolor paint whose hues bleed into one another; watching paint dry has never been this exhilarating. This is a new cinematic language of animation being created before our eyes and it’s simply a wonder to behold.
Reuniting frequent screenwriting partners Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Across the Spider-Verse adds veteran scribe David Callaham for a script that is somehow just as clever as the screenplay for its predecessor. It keeps up with all of the manic mythology surrounding the Spider-Man character but packs in gobs of pathos and wit too. There’s a clever bit about redundant initialisms that is set up in a New York bodega and then called back during Pavitr’s introduction in Mumbattan, which I take to be a portmanteau of Mumbai and Manhattan. It’s no secret that the superhero genre is a packed clubhouse when it comes to modern movies but if you’re sleeping on these Spider-Verse chapters, you’re missing out on the finest films this pocket of cinema has ever produced.
Score – 4.5/5
New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, an action sequel starring Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback which takes the franchise back to 1994, where the machine creatures Maximals, Predacons and Terrorcons aid Optimus Prime against the Unicrons.
Streaming on both Disney+ and Hulu is Flamin’ Hot, a biopic starring Jesse Garcia and Annie Gonzalez about a Frito Lay janitor who disrupted the food industry by channeling his Mexican heritage to turn Flamin’ Hot Cheetos from a snack into an iconic global pop culture phenomenon.
Premiering on Netflix is The Wonder Weeks, a comedy starring Sallie Harmsen and Soy Kroon which follows three modern couples as they juggle relationships and demanding careers while navigating the unpredictable terrain of new parenthood.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup
The Little Mermaid
After a pair of mild artistic successes in Mulan and Cruella, Disney retreats to the tried-and-true live-action remake formula that’s made them billions in worldwide box office previously with The Little Mermaid. The latest entry from the Disney Renaissance period that now belongs in the current Disney Retread-issance era, this latest offering, like Aladdin or The Lion King before it, only exists to remind us of the original. There are bare minimum efforts to distinguish it from its source material or, heaven forbid, improve on it; there are a few new songs, some new subplots and a new character or two. But unlike the Dumbo or Cinderella remakes, the latter of which remains a shining example of what these “updates” should do, not enough time has passed for the 1989 original Mermaid to need refreshing.
We’re reintroduced to the young mermaid Ariel (Halle Bailey) as she spends her days in the underwater kingdom of Atlantica while quietly longing for life above the ocean’s surface. Thanks to her friends Scuttle (Awkwafina) and Flounder (Jacob Tremblay), she’s developed quite a collection of human trinkets that she must hide from her human-hating father King Triton (Javier Bardem). After a shipwreck allows Ariel the opportunity to rescue seafaring prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King), she becomes infatuated and even more determined to make her above-land dreams come true. In crawls Ursula (Melissa McCarthy), a devious sea witch who offers to transform Ariel’s tail into human legs to chase after Eric but demands her voice as payment.
Bailey obviously has big fins to fill in the title role and she certainly does all she can with the opportunity. She’s a fantastic singer and unlike, say, Emma Watson in Beauty and the Beast, she doesn’t have to rely on vocal processing to enhance her timbre. But there’s something about the underwater scenes that limit the expressiveness of her face, which Bardem falls victim to in almost all of his scenes as well. I would assume it’s whatever computer-generated effects they render atop the faces of the actors to make it look like they’re underwater but they really hinder the emotive facial qualities that make dramatic scenes work. Once Ariel makes it above water, Bailey’s performance finally feels more alive, even though her songs are performed in voiceover since the character isn’t able to actually sing along at that point.
Most of the fan favorite songs return, including the most-cherished of the Disney “I Want” ballads “Part of Your World” and the dastardly show-stopper “Poor Unfortunate Souls”. The respective performers do a commendable job replicating the magic of the original tunes, even though there isn’t really much that can be added to them. “Under The Sea” gets the live-action “Be Our Guest” treatment of whipping a bunch of blurry CG effects across the screen and calling it fun. Lin-Manuel Miranda contributes new numbers “Wild Uncharted Waters” and “For The First Time”, which fit in lyrically and thematically with the existing songs but don’t best any of the classic original tunes. Hamilton fans will delight at the rap-sung Awkwafina-Daveed Diggs collaboration “The Scuttlebutt”, while Hamilton detractors will likely groan and roll their eyes.
The Little Mermaid suffers from the same problem as the rest of these Disney remakes when it comes to how the animals are designed. Even though we’re dealing with talking crabs and seabirds that can somehow hang out for minutes underwater to converse, director Rob Marshall and his team still attempt to make these creatures look realistic as opposed to the cartoonish liberties that the animated original took. The fish Flounder suffers the most from this treatment; his bulging eyes and agape mouth make him more fit for a Mediterranean plate than as an active participant in this story. Of course, none of this looks better with 3D presentation and for a movie that already has a lack of defined color and visual sharpness, I can’t understand why this is even playing in 3D anywhere. Please stay out of the water and watch the far superior animated The Little Mermaid, in hopes that it will inspire Disney to get out of the shallow end and get back to producing new stories instead of rehashing existing IP.
Score – 1.5/5
New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, an animated superhero sequel starring Shameik Moore and Hailee Steinfeld continuing the story of Miles Morales as he joins Gwen Stacy to complete a mission to save every universe of Spider-People
Also coming to theaters is The Boogeyman, a supernatural horror movie starring Sophie Thatcher and Chris Messina about a pair of sisters who are still reeling from the recent death of their mother when their therapist father takes in desperate patient who unexpectedly shows up at their house seeking help.
Streaming on Peacock is Shooting Stars, a sports biopic starring Marquis Cook and Wood Harris depicting a young Lebron James and his three best friends as they become the number one high school basketball team in the country.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup
Fast X
Cars and characters continue to collide in Fast X, the tenth entry in the ever-expanding and the ever-ludicrous Fast & Furious film franchise. The first part in either a two or three part finale (depending on whether you ask Vin Diesel or the bean-counters at Universal), this latest installment ends abruptly after multiple cliffhangers and that’s before an inevitable mid-credit stinger that teases yet another add for the sequel. In case it wasn’t obvious already, this action franchise has become Universal’s response to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hoping to emulate the feverish fandom and box office success of Disney’s juggernaut. As that’s the case, it’s not difficult to view Fast X as the Infinity War of this series, an overstuffed and overwhelming culmination of plot threads and accrued players which sets up a gambit waiting to be resolved.
The basic narrative of Fast X is a revenge plot, borne from the death of a drug lord from a Fast Five bank vault heist that retroactively serves as a supervillain origin story for his son Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa). Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew of heisters and hackers are called to Rome to steal a computer chip but the mission is revealed to be an ambush set up by Reyes to frame the team as terrorists. The Rome job fractures the group, with Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Ludacris), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) and Han (Sung Kang) scrambling for supplies in London, while Dom tries to track Reyes down in Rio. All the while, henchmen are sent after Dom’s son Little B (Leo Abelo Perry) in Los Angeles but are headed off by Dom’s brother Jakob (John Cena), who works to get him to safety.
If that wasn’t enough, Fast X also introduces two new characters from the Agency: new lead Aimes (Alan Ritchson) and Tess (Brie Larson), the daughter of former Agency head Mr. Nobody. For anybody who needs help remembering the gist of this series, the pair’s first scene together is a helpful recap of this franchise’s myriad through lines and characters both major and minor. Taking place in what looks like the Cerebro room from the X-Men series, Aimes fills Tess in on all the highlights from Dom and his “family”, which he describes as a “cult with cars”. The knowing commentary continues when Tess asks “so we’re all just a beer and barbecue away from corruption?” after Aimes says the team has turned on the Agency. This kind of humor is a good reminder that this is a series that has no problem poking fun at aspects of its kooky lore.
These movies have had their share of villains in the past, some of whom even pop up again in this entry, but Fast X introduces a Thanos-level supervillain by way of the larger-than-life Dante. Played with perpetual panache by Momoa, this big bad has the knack for mastermind planning and impossible forethought à la The Dark Knight‘s Joker, with what seems to be the limitless resources of Bruce Wayne. Somehow, Dante may be even crazier than either of them; after licking knives of fresh blood in his first big scene, his level of psycho either stays at that level or escalates from that point forward. Whether he’s crooning opera over walkie-talkies or having nail-painting tea parties with corpses, Dante is always extra 100% of the time. In a film defined by excess, Momoa is somehow even more and delivers his most pleasurable performance to date.
I should mention that this is the first Fast film that I’ve seen since The Fast and the Furious, the sleeper hit that kicked everything off 22 years ago. Frankly, I figured the wheels had fallen off after the third entry Tokyo Drift jettisoned all of the previous characters for what is ostensibly a standalone entry. But over the years, the movies have kept coming and, as I quickly learned watching this chapter, expanded vastly on the humble street-racing roots of that inaugural installment. Naturally, I couldn’t keep up with every line of dialogue or cursory character that popped up for a cameo; even those who have seen all of these, including Hobbs & Shaw, may have to glance Wikipedia for a refresher now and then. But it’s a credit to Louis Leterrier and his crew that I was able to embrace the absurdity and enjoy the ride.
Score – 3/5
New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is The Little Mermaid, yet another live-action Disney remake starring Halle Bailey and Jonah Hauer-King retelling the tale of a young mermaid who makes a deal with a sea witch to trade her beautiful voice for human legs so she can discover the world above water and impress a prince.
Streaming on Max is Reality, a biopic starring Sydney Sweeney and Marchánt Davis about a former American intelligence specialist who was given the longest sentence for the unauthorized release of government information to the media about Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
Premiering on Netflix is Blood & Gold, an action dramedy starring Robert Maaser and Marie Hacke set at the end of World War II where a German soldier is looking for his daughter while an SS troop is looking for a hidden treasure.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup
Hypnotic
The pulpy actioner Hypnotic is the kind of movie that entrances one with just how many other movies it very closely resembles — say, Danny Boyle’s Trance, for starters. Its general premise has been covered before in both cinematic adaptations of Stephen King’s Firestarter and the “Pusher” episode of The X-Files, while director Robert Rodriguez borrows liberally from the styles of Rian Johnson and Christopher Nolan in the process. Heck, there was even a forgettable Netflix thriller that came out two years ago that was also titled Hypnotic and both films share similar elements of reality-bending and psychological manipulation. If the movie had managed to wield these influences wisely, then it could have been salvageable but with a progressively preposterous plot and lifeless performances, this is one you’ll want to snap away from your memory immediately.
Ben Affleck stars as Daniel Rourke, an Austin PD detective who hasn’t been the same after his daughter was abducted from a playground years prior. His partner Nicks (JD Pardo) treads lightly with him and tries to keep his head on straight as they go about their work, which includes responding to an anonymous tip at a bank one day. The appearance of a mystery man, played by William Fichtner, at the scene causes Rourke to give chase, only to be thrown off the trail by what seems to be the perp’s ability to control the minds of strangers. The bank tip is traced back to Diana Cruz (Alice Braga), a fortune teller with whom Rourke meets and learns of Hypnotics, individuals trained by a shadowy government organization to psychically control others. With the help of Diana, Rourke follows the clues that point to the powerful Hypnotic known as “Lev Dellrayne”, in the hopes that it will lead him to his missing daughter.
Most specifically, Hypnotic recalls a mid-aughts Philip K. Dick action movie adaptation like Minority Report or Next — in fact, Affleck himself even starred in one: Paycheck. Working with DP Pablo Berron, Rodriguez’s camerawork also borrows the saturated hues and harsh shadows of a Jerry Bruckheimer product from that era. Rodriguez’s screenplay, penned with co-writer Max Borenstein, similarly indulges in the hard-boiled dialogue you’d expect from a pre-Transformers Michael Bay picture. In fact, if the action in Hypnotic was more wall-to-wall and there were more explosions and lampposts, one could be convinced that this was a lost film Bay shot in secret with Affleck in between Armageddon and Pearl Harbor. Even though Bay has moved on to better fare since then, apparently Affleck inexplicably finds himself obligated to star in instantly dated potboilers like this.
It would make more sense if Affleck gave a committed or compelling performance in Hypnotic but he seems like he couldn’t care less about his character or what he’s going through. He’s almost comically gruff and stoic as our primary protagonist, until he gets completely sidelined by an avalanche of reveals and twists in the third act. Braga and Pardo don’t make much of an impression in supporting roles but they’re saddled with dialogue that’s either leaden with sci-fi exposition or cop movie clichés. “Mind control? Bank accounts? Sounds like my ex-wife!” Nicks scoffs at Diana during their first meeting. The all-too-brief presence of veteran players Jeff Fahey and Jackie Earle Haley further underscores the notion that Rodriguez should have diverted some screen time away from Affleck to highlight more engaged performances.
Though Rodriguez has often worn many hats during his previous productions, it’s not clear why he put so much of his time and effort into a project that is working at the direct-to-streaming level. He’s a fascinating filmmaker who’s working outside the traditional Hollywood machine, alternating between passion projects like Machete and family entertainment like the Spy Kids series. I don’t know where his latest venture fits within his previous filmography but I respect someone who puts everything they have into an undertaking, even if it’s ultimately unsuccessful. Rodriguez came up with this story, co-wrote the script, co-shot and co-produced the movie, along with editing it by himself. How many creatives working with a $65 million budget can say that?
Score – 2/5
New movies coming this weekend:
Speeding into theaters is Fast X, the tenth chapter in the Fast & Furious franchise starring Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez involving the son of a drug lord who seeks revenge on the Fast crew for the loss of his family’s fortune at their heist in Rio de Janeiro.
Streaming on Hulu is White Men Can’t Jump, a sports comedy remake starring Sinqua Walls and Jack Harlow about a pair of young basketball hustlers who team up to earn extra cash.
Available to rent is Outpost, a thriller starring Beth Dover and Dylan Baker about a survivor of a violent attack who searches for strength in the solitude of a lookout job but finds that her demons are still catching up with her.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup
BlackBerry
Opening at Cinema Center this weekend, the riveting new docudrama BlackBerry stars Jay Baruchel as Mike Lazaridis, the founder of tech startup Research In Motion. We meet Mike and his cohort Doug Fregin (Matt Johnson) in 1996, as they shuffle their PocketLink presentation posters and easel across a parking lot to pitch to executive Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), who initially seems intensely disinterested in their product. After getting fired from his position, Jim pays a visit to RIM and accepts their offer to take over as co-CEO to help right the company following poor business acumen. Together, they made BlackBerry, a once-ubiquitous line of smartphones that forever changed how we receive information and communicate with one another. But as impressively as the company rose, it’s not nearly as impressive as how quickly it fell.
It’s easy to look at a film like BlackBerry and compare it to something like The Social Network, another movie about personalities clashing at the forefront of a technological revolution. There are, of course, similarities to be found in the Zuckerberg-Saverin-Parker dynamic between the three main characters here and both films sport scripts that marry zippy dialogue with technical information. But BlackBerry has a very different look and feel to it, similar to in-the-room urgency of The Big Short but without the incessant winks to the camera. It feels like cinematographer Jared Raab is actually capturing these events as they’re unfolding and he’s just doing his best to get as much footage as he can. Audiences are more accustomed to this faux-documentary aesthetic thanks to shows like The Office and Modern Family but the tone here is obviously much more tense and business-minded.
That’s not to say that BlackBerry doesn’t have its share of laughs. After all, Howerton is best known for his work on It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia and Baruchel has been in plenty of comedies over the years. Howerton carries over elements of that Dennis Reynolds fire and hubris, letting loose scorched-earth f-bombs and unearned confidence across office bullpens and board rooms. Playing a nerdy developer isn’t outside of Baruchel’s wheelhouse but there’s growth beyond that in this performance and he finds the humor in the character’s sometimes awkward transition to tech mogul. Director and co-writer Matt Johnson also generates hilarious moments in what don’t typically seem like scenes of comedy. During a tirade from a fierce COO played by Michael Ironside, Johnson holds on a shot of a confused developer just long enough for the punchline to land.
If we’ve seen some of the dramatic beats from BlackBerry‘s first hour before in films about tech companies taking off, it only emphasizes how much of the second hour is quite different from these other stories. It’s not just fascinating how quickly RIM and the BlackBerry line fell but just how inevitable their demise was given how spectacularly the company was mismanaged. It’s a wonder that Lazaridis and Balsillie ever saw eye-to-eye at any point in their collaboration but the chasm that develops between their business ethics and professional intentions is truly staggering. Since we already know that the BlackBerry is totally defunct, we know that we’re watching a catastrophic car crash just waiting to happen, in this case due to someone texting on their QWERTY keyboard while driving.
The screenplay that Johnson has co-written with Matthew Miller peppers in insight about the seeds of innovation and the earnest desire to make the world better through technology. As cynical as Balsillie is about marketing their product, Lazaridis and Fregin seemed to have created PocketLink after seeing futuristic communication from sci-fi staples like Star Trek and Blade Runner. RIM took their company movie nights seriously, not just to kick back and have fun but take mental notes on what could actually be possible when tinkering around with their components. Without Balsillie, it’s likely their designs would’ve never seen the light of day but it’s doubtful their company would have imploded so fantastically either. As a guide for how not to run a tech startup and a constantly engaging Icarus tale with outstanding performances, BlackBerry bears the fruit of its labor.
Score – 4/5
Also coming to theaters this weekend:
Book Club: The Next Chapter, starring Diane Keaton and Jane Fonda, is a romcom reuniting four elderly best friends as they take their book club to Italy for a fun girls’ trip that turns into a once-in-a-lifetime cross-country adventure.
Hypnotic, starring Ben Affleck and Alice Braga, is a sci-fi action thriller which follows a detective as he investigates a mystery involving his missing daughter and a secret government program surrounding a group of powerful hypnotists.
Knights Of The Zodiac, starring Mackenyu and Famke Janssen, is a fantasy action movie about a street orphan who discovers that he is destined to protect a goddess of war who is reincarnated in the body of a young girl.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Writer/director Kelly Fremon Craig follows up her dynamite directorial debut The Edge of Seventeen with Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret., another coming-of-age tale that beautifully conveys the painful process of trying to find one’s place in the world. The contemporary setting of The Edge of Seventeen allowed more colorful language and lustful inclinations for its characters but Are You There God?, adapted from Judy Blume’s landmark novel, is comparatively much more wholesome. The stakes are small, the conflict is minimal and the dramatic highs and lows are not as dynamic as they are in better films of the same genre. But a winning cast and a tender story that connotes empathy and understanding make this family dramedy easy to recommend.
We meet young Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson) as she comes home to New York City from summer camp before she begins the sixth grade. Her mom Barbara (Rachel McAdams) picks her up in a new car but that’s not all that Margaret has missed during her time away. A promotion at work for her dad Herb (Benny Safdie) means they’ll be moving across the Hudson to New Jersey, much to the consternation of Herb’s mother Sylvia (Kathy Bates). Thanks to assertive new neighbor Nancy (Elle Graham), Margaret starts to make friends soon after relocating and also develops a crush on lawn-mowing eighth-grader Moose (Aidan Wojtak-Hissong). But as the transitions associated with early adolescence begin to crop up, Margaret leans on faith and family for guidance.
Amari Price and Katherine Kupferer play Janie and Gretchen, respectively, who are members of a secret club that Nancy heads up and invites Margaret to be a part of when she moves into the neighborhood. The scenes revolving around their meetings generate some of the biggest laughs in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret., as when the girls steal one of Margaret’s dad’s Playboy magazines and gawk at the models whose bodies they envy. Conversely, there are dispirited reactions to the male section of an anatomy book that one of the girls lifts from the school library. The film retains the early 1970s setting of the novel upon which it’s based and while the forthright discussions of puberty in the book were taboo upon its release, the girls’ mischievous inclinations are quaint by today’s standards.
The movie doesn’t quite have any knockout scenes of poignancy but the moments that come closest are those where McAdams is able to carve out more emotional space for Barbara in the narrative. Taking a break from her job teaching art, she’s at something of a crossroads herself as she tries to fit in with the PTA moms and hone her skills as a homemaker. While cutting out fabric stars for the school gym’s ceiling, Barbara spots a chirping robin outside that sticks around long enough for her to start a canvas painting, only for it to get scared off by the sound of a doorbell. McAdams is terrific as a loving mother trying to power through her insecurities in hopes of harnessing her passions, all while being burdened with estranged parents and an overbearing mother-in-law. “It gets tiring trying so hard all the time, doesn’t it?”, Barbara laments to Margaret as they lean on each other in a wonderful moment of mutual appreciation.
While Craig’s approach to this material is generally quite safe, I appreciate the way that she depicts Margaret’s religious journey and her earnest search for something greater. I wouldn’t describe this as a “faith-based” movie, which increasingly means preaching to the choir as opposed to trying to actually reach the unconverted, but it is a movie that values faith and takes it seriously. Margaret goes to temple, church services and mass — she even goes to confession on her 12th birthday — but she can’t seem to exactly find her place in any of it. The pressure that Margaret feels from different members of her family to make a choice about what religion she is ultimately causes her to reject all of it, a sentiment to which I’m sure those in interfaith families can relate. Whether someone is listening to us or not, films like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. remind us that caring earthly voices deserve to be nurtured and amplified.
Score – 3.5/5
New movies coming this weekend:
Debuting in theaters is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, a superhero sequel starring Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldaña continuing the adventures of the titular gang of outlaws as they pursue a dangerous mission that could lead to the team dissolving if they fail.
Also coming to theaters is Love Again, a romantic drama starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan about a young woman who tries to ease the pain of her fiancé’s death by sending romantic texts to his old cell phone number and forms a connection with the man to whom the number has been reassigned.
Playing at Cinema Center is Showing Up, an art dramedy starring Michelle Williams and Hong Chau which tells the story of a struggling sculptor preparing to open a new show as she tries to work amidst the daily dramas of family and friends.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup
Beau Is Afraid
With only three features under his belt, writer/director Ari Aster has already made quite a name for himself with back-to-back nervy horror hits Hereditary and Midsommar. He returns after a four-year break with Beau Is Afraid, a three-hour Oedipal odyssey that is certainly anxious enough to argue that it incorporates elements of horror but mainly plays like a pitch-dark comedy. Massively expanding on his eleven-minute short Beau made twelve years prior, Aster seems to throw everything he has into his latest venture but in its attempt to exorcise personal demons, the film loses the plot along the way. There are scenes of demented comedy and well-directed chaos that almost make the journey worthwhile but the experience in retrospect is more exhausting than awe-inspiring.
As can be expected at this point, Joaquin Phoenix gives another fully committed and involving performance as Beau, a middle-aged man struggling with neuroses and arrested development. On the anniversary of his father’s death, he plans to visit his mother Mona (Patti LuPone) but several obstacles near his threatening apartment dwellings preclude him from making the flight. As he crosses the street to a convenience store, he is struck by a food truck driven by Grace (Amy Ryan) and her husband Roger (Nathan Lane). Feeling guilty about the accident, the couple take Beau into their care until he heals enough to make the trip but their initial benevolence is not as altruistic and nurturing as it seems to be. After a misunderstanding with their daughter Toni (Kylie Rogers), Beau flees to the woods nearby and his long strange trip only gets weirder from there.
The structure of Beau Is Afraid isn’t exactly a traditional three-act structure but the movie can be thought of in three distinct sections that roughly correspond with about an hour of runtime each. There are portions from each of these chapters that work and could be rearranged to make a more cohesive story but all three also have too much extraneous material that should’ve never made it to final cut. That first hour is both the most structurally approachable and comedically accessible, setting up Beau’s paranoid perspective on his urban environment with crime-addled surroundings so hyperbolic that we don’t have a choice but to laugh. As someone who gets nervous by the overactive nature of big cities, I got a kick out of Aster pushing the heightened reality of street-level activity to ridiculous proportions.
If the first act is mother! meets Misery, then the ensuing act set in a forest is Aster’s attempt at an esoteric and verbose Charlie Kaufman affair, specifically Synecdoche, New York. It’s here that cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski really gets to shine, balancing the ornate set design and inventive effects work with aplomb and splendor. But Aster completely loses his way from a storytelling perspective in this section, weaving a lengthy post-modern yarn that doesn’t lend nearly enough significance to the central plot. While the wheel-spinning is often pretty to look at, it stops any narrative momentum that the first section built up dead in its tracks. There’s an explosive end to this act that carries over the comical levels of violence from the movie’s first hour and at least tries to get things moving forward once more.
By the time the third act rolls around, it becomes more obvious what Aster is attempting to say and accomplish with Beau Is Afraid but it takes a long while to get to that final punchline at the finish line. Like the previous two sections, there are individual segments that work terrifically here; if nothing else, you’ll never listen to a particular Mariah Carey track the same way again. In stretches, it evokes the parental spiritualism of Eraserhead and The Truman Show but without the former’s cogent symbolism or the latter’s sense of childlike wonder. It’s a film destined to spawn a thousand “Explained!” video essays on YouTube, even though it’s simply not worth all the effort. The self-indulgent Beau Is Afraid finds Aster at the crossroads of what kind of filmmaker he’s going to be moving forward and I hope whatever path he picks leads to more fruitful results.
Score – 2.5/5
New movies coming this weekend:
Opening only in theaters is Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret., a coming-of-age dramedy starring Abby Ryder Fortson and Rachel McAdams, which adapts the groundbreaking Judy Blume novel about a middle schooler who navigates friends, family and religion in 1970s New Jersey.
Also playing only in theaters is Polite Society, an action comedy starring Priya Kansara and Ritu Arya about a younger sister who goes to great lengths to stop her older sister’s wedding from occurring to preserve their independence and sisterhood.
Premiering on Disney+ is Peter Pan & Wendy, a fantasy adventure starring Jude Law and Alexander Molony that retells the classic tale of a boy who wouldn’t grow up as he recruits three young siblings in London to join him on a magical journey to the enchanted Neverland island.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup