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

30 years after the nightmare vision of a live-action adaptation, the world’s most popular video game franchise finds new cinematic life through Illumination with The Super Mario Bros. Movie. As bright and cheery as 1993’s Super Mario Bros. was dank and enigmatic, this franchise kick-starter is designed to appeal to both those who have logged hundreds of hours playing Mario games and those who are discovering this world for the first time. With a simple story and cursory characterizations, it’s also a film that’s meant to be extremely palatable to all age groups, much like other Illumination series from Despicable Me to The Secret Life of Pets. But there’s so much care and craft that’s gone into the visual design and musical score alone that it’s difficult not to get swept up into the magic emanating from this charming crowd-pleaser.

Living in modern-day Brooklyn, brothers Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are doing what they can to get their fledgling plumbing business off the ground before it goes down the tubes. After seeing a massive mid-city manhole leak on the news, Mario convinces Luigi that they’re the ones who can fix it but as they make their way underground towards the deluge, the brothers get sucked into a large pipe. They get split up to two different areas of a magical world, brave Mario in the vibrant Mushroom Kingdom and timid Luigi in the ominous Dark Lands. Luigi is summarily captured by King Bowser (Jack Black) and his army of turtle-like Koopa soldiers, while Mario calls upon Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) for help in getting he and his brother back home to Brooklyn. Along the way, Mario and Peach recruit the mighty ape Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen) from the Jungle Kingdom in their quest to defeat Bowser.

The most striking aspect of The Super Mario Bros. Movie is not only the bright and stunning animation but how it’s used to create these distinctive areas of this enchanting world. Obviously there are numerous sprawling Mario games from which to draw upon when designing these settings but co-directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic focus these influences for one all-encompassing narrative. In a couple key sequences, they cleverly recreate the 2D side-scrolling nature of the early Mario games and repurpose the light-up blocks and obstacles as part of a Mushroom Kingdom training course. Naturally, there are innumerable references to platform game mainstays like the Fire Flower and Piranha Plants that even those who have never played the games will likely still recognize.

The music of Mario by Koji Kondo is another cultural touchstone that one doesn’t need to be a gamer to recognize and composer Brian Tyler beautifully weaves in leitmotifs from various Mario games throughout the years. In a moment of scheming, Bowser and his adviser Kamek sit together at the piano to duet the “Underworld Theme”, followed by Bowser crooning a hilariously overwrought new song “Peaches”. Aside from the Kondo music and the original tunes, The Super Mario Bros. Movie also includes some needle drops that aren’t unexpected from an Illumination entertainment but not really necessary either. Between this, the comparatively duller video game-related Tetris and the Shazam sequel, this is the third new release I’ve seen in the past few weeks that interpolates Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out For A Hero.” I can only be grateful it wasn’t in Air as well.

The voice cast isn’t filled with the most inspired choices for every role but the performers do what they need to in order to make the characters feel like they’re sharing this world together. Jack Black brings some heavy metal gusto to his put-upon Bowser that makes him alternately menacing and pathetic, depending on the scene. Charlie Day hits his high register for the perpetually nervous Luigi and Chris Pratt brings an easy confidence to his aplomb older brother. There’s a joke early on about the stereotypical Italian dialects that Pratt and Day chose not to lean on while voicing their characters and where the duo ended up tonally suits the movie just fine. Hopefully the inevitable sequels will get more ambitious with casting and plot but as a visually and sonic spectacle, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is an accomplished first level that will no doubt have audiences pining for the next one.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Renfield, starring Nicholas Hoult and Nicolas Cage, is a horror comedy about Dracula’s beleaguered servant and sidekick, who yearns to get out from under the thumb of his vampiric boss and the bloodshed that his lifestyle seems to accrue.
The Pope’s Exorcist, starring Russell Crowe and Daniel Zovatto, is a supernatural horror film following the chief exorcist of the Vatican as he investigates a young boy’s terrifying possession and ends up uncovering a centuries-old conspiracy in the process.
Sweetwater, starring Everett Osborne and Cary Elwes, is a sports biopic covering the life and career of Hall of Fame basketball player Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton, who made history as the first African American to sign an NBA contract.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

1968 saw the release of The Boston Strangler, a crime film loosely based on the real-life serial killer at the center of 13 still-unresolved slayings earlier that same decade. The notion of producing a movie so close to real events that were still under investigation divided audiences and critics alike; Roger Ebert opined, “This film, which was made so well, should not have been made at all.” Decades after the events, we now have Boston Strangler, a much more level-headed procedural about the pair of intrepid reporters who initially connected the murders. But just because this is more responsible in how it depicts the case doesn’t mean it’s not engrossing on its own terms. Like Zodiac, another quietly terrifying film about an unsolved murder spree in the 1960s, this movie gets us thoroughly involved with the characters first before the mystery takes hold.

Keira Knightley stars as Loretta McLaughlin, a columnist for the Boston Record American who is limited to covering “lifestyle topics” that her snippy editor Jack MacLaine (Chris Cooper) thinks would interest bored housewives. Eager to move beyond reviewing the latest toaster from Sunbeam, she bends the ear of fellow reporter Jean Cole (Carrie Coon) to figure out how she is able to tackle more meaningful subjects. Spotting a similarity between two murders within the same month, McLaughlin senses a pattern emerging and uses her newspaper credentials to lean on the police for information. After more elderly women in the area are strangled, McLaughlin recruits Cole to develop coverage around the elusive figure they dub the “Boston Phantom”, even while doing so puts their lives at risk.

Writer/director Matt Ruskin has a few projects under his belt, most recently before this with 2017 crime drama Crown Heights, but Boston Strangler seems to be the biggest productions he’s led so far. His latest effort has the sort of formal rigor that you’d want from a film about people working hard to put an end to a killing spree. It’s handsomely shot, it’s tightly edited and it packs plenty of subtext into the serial killer tale we’ve seen quite often in the past. The sexism of the era factors heavily into how McLaughlin and Cole were able to pursue the assignment in the first place and also informs the dismissive treatment they often received from law enforcement. Last year’s She Said, which also featured two reporters investigating a major story, deals with modern-day sexual politics much more bluntly but serves as a fitting companion piece about rising above implicit and explicit gender discrimination.

Through voiceover narration, Boston Strangler wisely includes excerpts from articles that McLaughlin actually wrote to convey the progression of the breaking news. Not only was she a groundbreaking journalist but she was also a compelling storyteller, crafting prose that was true to the facts while also being effortlessly absorbing at the same time. Ruskin goes for a similar approach, responsibly relaying an impressive amount of detail around the murders while including flavor about the toll that chasing this killer had on those doing the chasing. A pair of nicely juxtaposed scenes set outside of different residences suggest that as McLaughlin gazes into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into her.

Though Knightley is a fine lead, it’s a bit curious that she goes with a more “standard” American dialect as opposed to the Boston accent that Woburn native McLaughlin likely had. While I wasn’t expecting a full-on The Departed level of “r-dropping”, other ensemble players like Alessandro Nivola and Bill Camp at least try to evoke the region’s dialect in their performances. Regardless, Ruskin gets fine work out of his cast overall and does everything he can to make this true story register with his audience. As Boston-set journalism movies go, Boston Strangler isn’t quite on the level of Spotlight but it gets much closer than you may expect from a direct-to-streaming thriller.

Score – 3.5/5

More movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Shazam! Fury of the Gods, a superhero sequel starring Zachary Levi and Helen Mirren which continues the story of a teenager and his foster siblings who must transform into their superpowered adult alter egos to fight the Daughters of Atlas.
Streaming on Netflix is The Magician’s Elephant, an animated family film starring Noah Jupe and Mandy Patinkin following a boy on the search for his long-lost sister with the help of a mysterious elephant and the magician who will conjure it.
Streaming on MGM+ is There’s Something Wrong With The Children, a horror movie starring Alisha Wainwright and Zach Gilford about a couple who takes a weekend trip with longtime friends and their two young kids, the latter of whom begin to behave strangely after disappearing into the woods overnight.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe gets off to a fun start with Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, the third and likely final standalone movie for the other Avenger named after an insect who’s not Spider-Man. The first two entries seemed to be self-aware of the fact that Ant-Man is not the most impactful Marvel hero out there and as such, the stakes were appropriately low compared to the galaxy-level consequences of the Avengers movies. These days, I tend to tire from the humongous scale of the larger superhero epics and prefer the “smaller” stories but the first two Ant-Man films always felt too insignificant to leave an impression. Quantumania is unquestionably on a much bigger stage, tasked with building a world we’ve only seen glimpses of in previous MCU fare while also setting up the new big bad for the next batch of Marvel projects. It turns out that the little guy is up to the task.

We’re reintroduced to Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) as he adjusts to life as a celebrity after his substantial contribution to reversing the Blip in Avengers: Endgame. His now-teenage daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) is also trying to find her way, dabbling with activism and quantum physics on top of her regular school life. The latter hobby leads her to create a sort of GPS for the Quantum Realm, allowing her to explore the area without actually going there. When Scott’s girlfriend Hope/Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) and her parents Hank (Michael Douglas) and Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) observe Cassie’s new invention, all five members of the family are sucked into a portal from the satellite and are transported to the Quantum Realm. Separated during their trip, Scott and Cassie must reunite with Hope and her parents to get back home while avoiding an all-powerful adversary in the process.

One area where Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the most recent MCU movie before Quantumania, struggled was in building a compelling new setting by way of the murky underwater city of Talokan. The Quantum Realm has been seen briefly in the first Ant-Man as something of a cosmic purgatory where Scott lingered for a moment of peril but in this sequel, we get to see much more of the universe. That gives way for some vivid new locations to be unveiled and plenty of neat creature design to fill the always-busy frame. We meet all sorts of strange characters, like a telepath whose head glows when he gets inbound thought messages from others and a Kirby-like slime being whose ooze can be ingested to allow outsiders to understand Quantum Realm languages. There’s even a talking broccoli, though he’s sadly not voiced by Dana Carvey.

The antagonist of Quantumania was first introduced in the finale of Loki, a TV series that I would consider a prerequisite going into this latest MCU movie, as the variant He Who Remains. For the first hour of Quantumania, he could be called He Who Remains Nameless, as the movie always seems to cut away from any character right before they say his name. Eventually we find out: it’s Kang The Conqueror, a Multiverse-hopping tyrant played with prestige and menace by Jonathan Majors. Unlike Thanos, whose appearances leading up to Avengers: Infinity War were relegated to brief scenes and post-credit teasers, Kevin Feige and his team at Marvel Studios are showing us more of this supervillain up front before his inevitable clash with the Avengers. This is an auspicious start for Majors in these MCU films and I’m looking forward to seeing how his character develops over time, so to speak.

My Quantumania quibbles aren’t much different than the ones I tend to have with the rest of these movies. The lighting, especially in close-up, is inconsistent, the editing is incoherent at times and unlike the MCU output from last year, the third act is back to generally being a blur of clunky CGI action. But fans of the series likely won’t mind much of this because it’s potentially irrelevant to their experience and they aren’t new issues anyway. For me, this is the best of the three Ant-Man standalones because it finds new ways to flesh out this character — there’s a visual motif during a “probability storm” sequence that brought this home for me — in unpredictable ways. As a trilogy capper, Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania sends the underdog hero out on a high note and sets up as many future adventures as the box office can justify.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Cocaine Bear, an action comedy starring Keri Russell and O’Shea Jackson Jr. based on the true story of a bear who goes on a killing rampage in a small Georgia town after ingesting a duffel bag full of cocaine.
Also coming only to theaters is Jesus Revolution, a faith-based drama starring Joel Courtney and Jonathan Roumie covering the true story of a national spiritual awakening in the early 1970s and its origins within a community of teenage hippies in Southern California.
Streaming on Netflix is We Have A Ghost, a family horror comedy starring David Harbour and Anthony Mackie about a family who finds a ghost named Ernest haunting their new home and turns him into an overnight social media sensation.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Infinity Pool, the new nightmare vision from Possessor writer/director Brandon Cronenberg, finds itself at the intersection of two thematic landscapes that have captured the zeitgeist as of late. Hit shows like The White Lotus and Nine Perfect Strangers involve mystery and intrigue among vacationers on opulent resorts, while movies like The Menu and newly-minted Best Picture nominee Triangle Of Sadness satirize the entitlement of the ultra-wealthy. Even with these touch points intact, viewers should know that Cronenberg’s latest incorporates elements of body horror and hard sci-fi that push his film into territory that will likely make casual audiences uncomfortable. But those who go along for the ride will have their eyes widened and buttons pushed in a mostly productive fashion.

Though it was shot in Croatia, Infinity Pool takes place on the fictional island of Li Tolqa, where author James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) and his wife of 10 years Em (Cleopatra Coleman) find themselves visiting an all-inclusive resort. While on the beach one day, James is approached by Gabi (Mia Goth), a fellow guest at the resort who professes to James her fandom of his first novel and invites the couple to dinner with her and hubby Alban (Jalil Lespert). The quartet are brought close together after an off-resort jaunt takes them to the crime-addled countryside but the drunken drive back to their hotel yields an unexpected tragedy. After facing charges for their crimes by the local police, an alternative solution of twisted metaphysical justice is proposed to atone for their sins.

The trailers put out by Infinity Pool‘s distributor NEON have given far too many plot details away but it’s enough to say that the fallout from James’ punishment binds him to a group of hedonistic tourists who have their run of the resort and the surrounding area. Cronenberg’s commentary on the super rich and their propensity to operate outside society’s rules isn’t overwhelmingly nuanced but the class critique is only part of what he has on his mind. As with Possessor, this is a film that is meant to provoke our sense of what it means to be human and to live our lives as prisoners inside our own bodies. We see James tempted with desires of the flesh and forced with the decision to either break the cycle of depravity or succumb to its machinations.

Skarsgård is a fine audience surrogate, being slowly drawn into this band of miscreants even after his wife hightails it back to the States and he conveniently can’t find his passport to join her. It’s a 180-degree shift from his testosterone-fueled titular role in The Northman last year, channeling his inner schlub as an emasculated and insecure writer desperate for another hit. Goth was outstanding in companion horror films X and Pearl last year and she continues her winning streak here with a role that starts simple and seductive but morphs into something more sadistic and, at times, hilariously over-the-top. A scene late in the film, in which Gabi is drinking wine on the hood of a very slow-moving car, is scathing and darkly funny but also menacing and deranged at the same time. As with the cinematography in the rest of the movie, DP Karim Hussain nails the claustrophobic close-ups in this sequence.

Though the look of Infinity Pool is far grimier and asymmetrical than the aesthetic Stanley Kubrick favored throughout his filmography, Cronenberg seems to either intentionally or unintentionally channel narrative threads from several of his projects. The criminal atrocities carried out by the privileged ne’er-do-wells ironically mirror the acts of ultraviolence committed by the impoverished droogs in A Clockwork Orange. There are psychedelic sequences — photosensitivity warnings at the beginning of movies and TV shows are becoming more common these days and Infinity Pool certainly earns its disclaimer — that carry overtones from both 2001: A Space Odyssey and Eyes Wide Shut. Naturally, horror masterpiece The Shining is also referenced in shared themes including unraveling of identity and patterns of reincarnation. Infinity Pool may be too unpleasant for general audiences but its shock value is often matched by the heady ambition right below the surface.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming only to theaters is Knock At The Cabin, a psychological horror movie starring Dave Bautista and Jonathan Groff about a family of three on vacation that is suddenly held hostage by four strangers who demand they sacrifice one of their own to avert the apocalypse
Also playing only in theaters is 80 For Brady, a sports comedy starring Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda depicting four elderly female friends as they travel to Houston to watch their hero Tom Brady and the New England Patriots play in Super Bowl LI.
Streaming on Netflix is True Spirit, a based-on-a-true-story adventure starring Teagan Croft and Anna Paquin about a tenacious Australian teen who chases her dreams and faces her fears as she sets out to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Playing at Cinema Center starting this weekend, the indie dramedy When You Finish Saving The World stars Stranger Things‘ Finn Wolfhard as Ziggy Katz, a high school student desperately trying to discover himself. Using a live streaming platform called Hi-Hat, he routinely performs original music for his 20,000 Followers all over the world, which doesn’t quite register with his parents Evelyn (Julianne Moore) and Roger (Jay O. Sanders). Also underwhelmed by his online success is Lila (Alisha Boe), a fellow student that Ziggy has developed a crush on due to her impassioned lunchtime political exchanges. The film also follows Evelyn and her work at a domestic abuse shelter, where she attempts to make a connection with Kyle (Billy Bryk), the teenage son of a woman seeking refuge at the Spruce Haven shelter.

Though the film’s title is never actually uttered by any of the characters, the phrase that gives When You Finish Saving The World its name is fitting for a movie whose two primary protagonists are both unknowingly narcissistic and self-righteous. The central irony of the story is that despite this common ground, Ziggy and Evelyn have a stilted relationship where they just can’t seem to see themselves in one another. It’s obvious that the pair will reach some kind of reconciliation by the end of the brisk 87-minute runtime but thanks to a pithy script by writer-director Jesse Eisenberg, the journey getting there is piquant and piercing. Adapting from his Audible audio drama of the same name, Eisenberg restructures his story around the mother-son dysfunction that has the most narrative potency.

Along the way, When You Finish Saving The World pokes fun at the wince-inducing paths that young people often take in trying to figure out who they want to be. Ziggy and Lila meet up multiple times at a “Revolutionary Arts” gathering, a sort of open mic where over-earnest teens trade spoken-word and song-based offerings in an effort to one-up each other. “This is about the patriarchy, of which I’m a reluctant member,” a young boy dramatically laments before sharing a poem. When it’s Ziggy’s turn to perform an original tune, his lyrics about graduating and loneliness fall flat for an audience preening for something more sociopolitically enlightened. Still, he remains undeterred and his braggadocious passes at Lila contribute to the film’s finest moments of cringe comedy.

In juxtaposing his day-to-day with Evelyn’s, Eisenberg suggests that she isn’t any less guilty than her son of trying too hard when it comes to social interactions. She often comes off so severe to most that when she attempts to make small talk with a Spruce Haven secretary while waiting for an elevator, the receptionist feels the need to clarify that she’s not about to be terminated. Moore adds all sorts of touches to her performance that help us understand how someone so stern in their usual disposition could still come across as empathetic in specific contexts. She exudes the expected patience and understanding during intake with abuse survivors but when Ziggy says he needs “five seconds” to get ready, Evelyn looks down at her watch and counts to five in her head before walking out the door.

Though the film takes place in Indiana (Bloomington, specifically) and there are allusions to IU and the Pacers, When You Finish Saving The World was shot in both New Mexico and Canada, likely due to their respective tax incentives for the film industry. Eisenberg reportedly moved to Bloomington with his wife Anna during the pandemic lockdown of 2020 and his newfound affection for the area and its people comes through in his directorial debut. It’s unfortunate that Indiana is 1 of 16 States that doesn’t currently extend tax incentive programs for film productions, even for smaller-budget projects like this one. Until that changes, Hoosiers will likely have to settle for the occasional movie like When You Finish Saving The World that is set here, even if it’s not actually shot in-state.

Score – 3.5/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Missing, a screenlife thriller starring Storm Reid and Ken Leung about a teenager who begins using various technologies to find her missing mother after she disappears on vacation in Colombia with her then-new boyfriend.
Also playing in theaters is That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime: Scarlet Bond, an anime film starring Ricco Fajardo and Kristen McGuire which adapts the TV series about a super-powered being and his companions who get involved in a long-running conspiracy that swirls around a woman with a mysterious power.
Streaming on Netflix is JUNG_E, a science fiction movie starring Kang Soo-yeon and Kim Hyun-joo where the outcome of a civil war hinges on cloning the brain of an elite soldier to create a robot mercenary.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

There have been numerous cinematic adaptations of Carlo Collodi’s children’s book The Adventures of Pinocchio over the years, so perhaps it was inevitable that two would arrive in the same year. 3 months after Disney released a live-action “reimagining” of their own 1940 classic, Netflix responds with their own version of Pinocchio, a stop-motion effort co-directed and co-written by Guillermo del Toro. I could compare and contrast these two movies for the rest of this review but the important takeaway is that Disney’s film is another cynical re-do that drains the life from its predecessor and while Netflix’s film isn’t a masterpiece, it’s leagues more inspired by comparison. As one would expect, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is a darker and more complex tale but still carries out the original novel’s timeless themes.

This version of the story takes place in 1930s Italy, where woodcarver Geppetto (David Bradley) bitterly grieves over the loss of his only son due to an errant bomb dropping from a wartime plane. After a battle with the bottle one evening, Geppetto crafts a wooden puppet resembling his lost boy in a traumatized frenzy. In the middle of the night, a wood sprite (Tilda Swinton) gives life to the pine creation and when Geppetto wakes up, he meets Pinocchio (Gregory Mann), who sounds and behaves like his late son. In his effort to become a real boy, Pinocchio encounters the proverbial angel and devil on his wooden shoulders, in the form of Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor) and Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz), respectively.

Most of Pinocchio plays out in the way that you would expect from horror/dark fantasy maestro Guillermo del Toro putting his own twist on the classic fable. Reminiscent of his finest film Pan’s Labyrinth, the specters of war and ultra-nationalism loom large over this story about the good and evil of the world seen through the eyes of a young soul. Volpe’s carny huckster wouldn’t be out of place in last year’s Nightmare Alley and the sea-set finale with The Dogfish (named Monstro in the 1940 Disney version) recalls the marine creature work from Best Picture winner The Shape of Water. There’s inevitable Henry Selick influence in a recurring purgatorial gag and the associated appearances of Death (also voiced by Tilda Swinton) reminded me of the endlessly creepy Mysterious Stranger sequence from 1985’s The Adventures of Mark Twain.

Aside from being the umpteenth cinematic variation of this fairy tale, Pinocchio does commit some unforced errors that aren’t necessarily tied to its companion pieces. While the musical score by Alexandre Desplat is transportive, the songs sung by the characters feel like an afterthought and whiff of forced whimsy to counteract the film’s darker nature. Waltz is perfectly menacing as always in his villainous role but the overly-peppy voicework from Gregory Mann as the protagonist becomes grating and one-note after a while. There are also some inspired tertiary voice casting choices, like Cate Blanchett as a mostly non-verbal monkey and Tom Kenny (known as the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants) as Benito Mussolini The stop-motion figures and set designs are immaculate and filled with rich detail but some of the CG, especially the animation of children’s faces, pales in comparison to the traditionally rendered effects

Now that we’re towards the end of the year, it’s worth reflecting on how strong a year this has been for stop-motion animated features, even without a new film from Laika Studios. This is a strong foray into the genre by Guillermo del Toro and in addition to Pinocchio, Netflix alone has released two other stop-motion movies — The House way back in January and Wendell & Wild, more recently — that are excellent exemplifiers for the genre. When you include Marcel the Shell with Shoes On and Mad God, two films that couldn’t be more different in terms of subject matter and tone, you get a sense of just how varied of films this style of animation can produce. Stop motion is obviously a labor-intensive and meticulous breed of filmmaking but banner years like this one prove how vital the work can be to the world of cinema.

Score – 3.5/5

More movies coming this weekend:
Coming back to theaters is Father Stu: Reborn, a PG-13 cut of the titular drama released earlier this year starring Mark Wahlberg and Mel Gibson about a boxer-turned-Catholic priest who lives with a progressive muscle disorder.
Also playing only in theaters is The Mean One, a Christmas horror movie starring David Howard Thornton and Krystle Martin about a woman who witnesses her parents’ murder at the hands of a green monster as a child and seeks to avenge their deaths 20 years later.
Streaming on Apple TV+ is Emancipation, a historical action film starring Will Smith and Ben Foster about a runaway slave who forges through the swamps of Louisiana on a tortuous journey to escape plantation owners that nearly killed him.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Comedian Patton Oswalt has a hilarious bit titled “Great Food Is Cooked By Psychos”, in which he equates his past love for out-there authors and musicians to his recent adoration with worryingly eccentric chefs. It’s a notion that HBO’s Succession director Mark Mylod and The Onion alums Seth Reiss and Will Tracy must have had in mind when crafting the razor-sharp black comedy The Menu. As one would hope, the jokes in the film cut a bit deeper than “hey, isn’t it funny how tiny the portions are at fancy restaurants?” and get into why this kind of snobby subculture continues to thrive. When the movie starts to infuse more thriller and horror elements, it can sometimes get a bit out of its depth but overall, this is a devilishly fun dish.

We meet Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) as they board a boat with 10 others who are also traveling to Hawthorne, a luxury restaurant situated on a private island. Each couple is paying $2500 to savor a meal made by idiosyncratic celebrity chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) and his slavishly devoted kitchen staff. When the group arrives, they’re given a tour of the grounds by austere maître d’ Elsa (Hong Chau) before heading inside the lavishly designed restaurant. Chef Slowik’s introduction and the amuse-bouche seem normal enough but with each subsequent course, his preambles get stranger and the mood in the dining room gets more tense. Even though fanboy Tyler is still enraptured by the experience, Margot’s unwillingness to eat any of the prepared food draws Slowik’s ire and curiosity.

Pretentious foodies and the ultra-rich may make for soft targets in a satire but The Menu serves them their just desserts just the same. When the guests first arrive, the mood is not dissimilar from an Agatha Christie whodunnit but as the night goes on, the film turns into more of a playful dark comedy about the kinds of people who would pay this much for food. There’s the Anton Ego-esque food critic and her obsequious editor, a trio of techbros, a washed up actor with his assistant and a businessman and his wife, who converse as if they’re enjoying soup and breadsticks at Olive Garden. Even before Slowik sardonically dispenses with moral judgements about who these people are and why he suspects they’ve come, it’s clear none of them actually care about Slowik’s cooking in the first place.

But Margot wasn’t Tyler’s originally intended guest, which seems to concern Elsa right away and is brought to Slowik’s attention shortly after, so she is immediately seen as being outside of this typically sealed system. Fiennes and Taylor-Joy are outstanding scene partners as the chef calls Margot back to the kitchen for a series of terse conversations where they poke and prod at one another to gain understanding of their respective mindsets. Editor Christopher Tellefsen cuts these jagged-edge exchanges with a serrated knife but when the night gets more twisted, he moves to a butcher’s knife — punctuated by Slowik’s loud claps to introduce courses — to savor the intensity of the moment. Obviously, there are tantalizing (and occasionally ludicrous) plot developments you’ll want to avoid knowing specifics about going into the movie but suffice it to say, there are some delectable turns peppered throughout the film.

As much as this is a cheeky parable about the 1% and the people who serve them, The Menu is obviously a movie about the art of preparing food and all the emotions that come along with it. There is a scene of catharsis in this movie that recalls last year’s transcendent Pig, a film which is also set in the high-end restaurant scene but uses it as a way to gain understanding into how the characters live their lives once the meal is over. For most of its runtime, The Menu isn’t nearly that earnest and its primary aim is to skewer its band of obscenely rich patrons. As such, it’s a more superficial effort and not as satisfying as a movie that has more interest in its characters. But like a plate of burger and fries from your favorite fast food spot, The Menu will fill you up and put a smile on your face.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
The Fabelmans, starring Michelle Williams and Paul Dano, is a coming-of-age drama from Steven Spielberg about a teenager growing up in post-World War II era Arizona who aspires to become a filmmaker soon after discovering a shattering family secret.
Strange World, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Dennis Quaid, is an animated sci-fi adventure following a family of explorers whose differences threaten to topple their latest and most crucial mission in the uncharted and treacherous land of Avalonia.
Devotion, starring Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell, is a biographical war drama which tells the true story of a pair of elite fighter pilots who became the U.S. Navy’s most celebrated wingmen during the Korean War.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

When Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story was released 15 years ago, it skewered music biopics like Walk The Line and Ray so thoroughly that the subgenre was in danger of ever recovering. The comedy went on to inspire a fake trailer for a real music icon a few years later, a three-minute clip for a movie dubbed Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. But as the straight-faced music biopic came back with commercial hits like Bohemian Rhapsody and Elvis, so has the satire of the same subgenre. 12 years after the Funny or Die clip that teased a tongue-in-cheek look at “Weird Al” Yankovic’s life and career, we now have a full-length feature to match. Expanding from his original comedy short, director and co-writer Eric Appel throws a bushel of comedy concepts into his directorial debut with predominantly ripe results.

After an uneasy childhood with his father and mother (played by Toby Huss and Julianne Nicholson, respectively), Al Yankovic (Daniel Radcliffe) moves away from home and tries to make it on his own as a musician. Making bologna sandwiches for his roommates one day while “My Sharona” plays on the radio, inspiration strikes and he replaces the original words with silly lyrics of his own. His newfound proclivity for parody songwriting catches the ear of Dr. Demento (Rainn Wilson), an eccentric radio broadcaster who offers to manage “Weird Al” (a stage name he comes up with for his new client) in his burgeoning career. The duo find that when Al spoofs a song, the original artists benefit from an increase in record sales and when Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood) notices this “Yankovic Bump” phenomenon, she decides she wants in.

Where Walk Hard covered a fictional music icon in Dewey Cox, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story involves an artist who’s not only still alive but is still making music — a reminder: stay through all the end credits for some extra yuks. While the ludicrous exaggerations and hilarious falsehoods about how the real-life Al rose to fame are naturally the funniest aspects of the film, separating them from the nuggets of truth is good fun too. Some of the movie’s events, from a young Al becoming inspired to pick up the accordion from a door-to-door salesman to his first recording being done in a public bathroom, are actually true to life. On the other hand, one can assume a pool party Al attends with all manner of personal idols from drag queen Divine to surrealist artist Salvador Dalí didn’t quite occur as portrayed on-screen.

As ridiculous a scene as this seems, music biopics still stretch artistic license and try to get away with a milder version of these “fortuitous meetup” moments in their films. Weird also goofs on the “eureka!” beat to which we’ve become accustomed, a bit of dramatic irony where we in the audience know even more than our protagonist just how impactful a moment of inspiration will be for their journey. Not only does Al stare at a packet of bologna with growing intensity but the title words of “My Sharona” repeat over and over as he does, reminding us just how ham-fisted these “made-for-movie” moments can be. Some of the more broad comedy, like a subplot involving Al rescuing Madonna from the clutches of Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel, recalls the antics of real-life Al’s foray into movies with his 1989 cult classic UHF.

Adapting a fake trailer into a 100-minute movie comes with expected obstacles and there are points where Weird makes a better case for itself as an hour-long comedy special as opposed to a full-fledged film. Even though he’s thumbing his nose at the fall from grace and subsequent redemption arc we see in these narratives, Appel runs low on steam in the third act before landing things nicely with a final scene that sums things up in suitably outlandish fashion. When people watch comedies, they may note while watching the points at which the story gets in the way of the laughs but in retrospect, what matters most is the sequences where the humor truly clicks. Those who like their biopics to stick close to the facts will wince throughout Weird: The Al Yankovic Story but those who jive with “Weird Al” Yankovic’s playfully irreverent spirit will eat it up.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming only to theaters is Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, a Marvel superhero movie starring Letitia Wright and Lupita Nyong’o about the leaders of Wakanda fighting to protect their nation against invading forces from a hidden undersea city after King T’Challa’s death.
Streaming on Netflix is My Father’s Dragon, an animated fantasy starring Jacob Tremblay and Gaten Matarazzo about a young runaway who searches for a captive dragon on Wild Island and finds much more than he could ever have anticipated.
Continuing at Cinema Center is Moonage Daydream, a documentary about rock iconoclast David Bowie compiled of live concert footage and previously unreleased footage from Bowie’s personal archives.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Capping off an uncommonly strong month for cinematic horror, the frightfest Smile stars Sosie Bacon as Dr. Rose Cotter, a psychologist who’s been putting too many hours into her job at a New Jersey-based psychiatric ward. Right before ending her shift one day, she meets with disturbed PhD student Laura (Caitlin Stasey), who says she is being stalked by an evil grinning figure that takes the appearance of other people she knows. The appointment turns even more tragic and leaves Rose irrevocably shaken, to the growing concern of her fiancé Trevor (Jessie T. Usher) and her boss Dr. Desai (Kal Penn). Rose begins seeing the malevolent entity that Laura described, prompting her to go to her policeman ex-boyfriend Joel (Kyle Gallner) to find a chain connecting these “smiling” sightings that are now plaguing her.

Smile effectively combines two horror reliable subgenres: transmissible curse films like It Follows or The Ring — going further back, it most resembles the supernatural cop thriller Fallen — and personified trauma movies like Hereditary and The Night House. It also leans on a rich history of creepy cinematic smiles for chills, the most haunting of which still belongs to Conrad Veidt’s character from the silent picture The Man Who Laughs. Adapting from his short film Laura Hasn’t Slept, writer/director Parker Finn takes the material seriously but does have some fun playing with the audience’s expectations. This is a movie that shamelessly includes jump scares but, naturally, Finn’s hope is that their placement may still surprise you. When the camera stays on Cotter as she opens her refrigerator, will there be someone behind the door when she closes it?

As an overworked doctor already at her wit’s end before the film’s inciting event, Bacon is terrific at putting us in the mindset of someone whose grip on reality is slowly becoming more tenuous. Her screen presence and nervy resolve while being terrorized by a distorted-faced bogeyman remind me of Neve Campbell, who returned to the Scream franchise again earlier this year in the series’s fifth installment. As compared to the Scream films, the terror in Smile is more psychological in nature, since the characters around Cotter can’t see the horrifying creature that impersonates her friends and family. She reaches out to people she thinks she can trust, like her sister Holly (Gillian Zinser) and her therapist Dr. Northcott (Robin Weigert), but there’s no telling when the shapeshifting smirker could rear its smiling head.

Mental health is a subject that horror films have addressed responsibly and not-so-responsibly over the years — more recently, I would put 2022’s Abandoned in the latter category — but Smile builds it into the narrative sensitively and intelligently. As a child, Cotter witnessed her wayward mother overdose on unnamed prescription pills, leaving an indelible mark on her even as she treats patients going through the same sort of mental illnesses that afflicted her mom. The way that the film personifies the cyclical nature of traumatic events is disturbing and shocking at times but doesn’t feel exploitative of these characters or their issues. The people around Rose who know about her relationship with her mother assume that she’s succumbing to genetically-passed psychosis and Finn leaves the door open enough to suspect that they could be right.

Shot by DP Charlie Sarroff largely in shallow focus and with colors that look like they’ve had the life drained out of them, Smile is a admirably bleak affair that nevertheless finds purpose in its protagonist’s quest for vindication. Finn also sprinkles in typically innocuous smiles, like those found on families from vintage print ads or found on the lower end of the Wong-Baker pain scale, to perpetually unnerving effect. Being Finn’s full-length feature debut, the film could have benefitted from more judicious editing but in general, the pacing felt just right for a movie with a sadistically patient antagonist that waits for the right moment to strike. Beaming with a strong central performance and a potent concept, Smile is an elemental chiller that sinks its teeth in and never lets go.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Opening in theaters is Amsterdam, a mystery comedy starring Christian Bale and Margot Robbie involving three friends—a doctor, a nurse, and a lawyer—who become the prime suspects in the murder of a US Senator in the 1930s.
Also playing in theaters is Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, a musical comedy starring Shawn Mendes and Javier Bardem adapted from the popular children’s book about a family moving into a new home, where they find a singing saltwater crocodile living in the attic.
Premiering on Hulu is Hellraiser, a supernatural horror remake starring Odessa A’zion and Jamie Clayton about a young woman struggling with addiction who comes into possession of an ancient puzzle box, unaware that its purpose is to summon evil extradimensional beings.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup