Reel Views, Review

Sinners

Up to this point, director and writer Ryan Coogler has made a name for himself working within frameworks like the Rocky and Black Panther franchises but his latest, Sinners, takes things to — to borrow a phrase — a whole ‘nother level. It’s a staggeringly ambitious blockbuster, an epic Southern Gothic equally inspired by the feverishly sensuous artwork of Ernie Barnes and the devil-may-care, us-against-the-world actioners of John Carpenter. Understandably, it’s been marketed most prevalently as a vampire movie, which it assuredly embraces eventually but decidedly takes a bit of time to show its fangs. But genre-blending and influences aside, this is Coogler’s most lived-in film so far, with such an evocative sense of character and conflict that its slight sins of cinematic coherency can easily be forgiven.

Taking place over a 24-hour period in October 1932, Sinners introduces us to a pair of brothers known as the Smokestack Twins, comprised of Elijah “Smoke” and Elias “Stack” Moore (both played by Michael B. Jordan). After working for years in Chicago under Al Capone, they’ve decided to return to the Jim Crow South — the Mississippi Delta in particular — to open a barrelhouse called Club Juke. We watch the Twins recruit proficient blues players like Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) and Sammie Moore (Miles Caton) for their opening night, hoping to start things off with a bang. Along the way, Smoke reunites with his estranged wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), while Stack crosses paths with his lascivious ex Mary (Hailee Steinfeld).

They all convene at the Club as the sun gets low, with singer Pearline (Jayme Lawson) belting out tunes and Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) acting as bouncer at the entrance. The music and atmosphere attract many, including Irish immigrant Remmick (Jack O’Connell), a musician who is particularly taken with Sammie’s transcendental blues guitar chops. Despite offering money well over the cover price to gain entry, Remmick is turned away at the door but develops a following of his own outside the juke joint. After a patron is assaulted by Remmick and his crew after stepping outside for a moment, it becomes clear that the gang outside is composed of vampires bent on trying to gain access to the club to turn the partygoers into bloodsuckers. Using the limited resources they have available, the Smokestack twins and the Club Juke staff aim to defend their establishment by any means necessary.

Sinners is an interesting beast because those going in expecting a straight-ahead vampire tale could be put off by how long it takes for horror aspects to lock into place, but those going in without expectations could be put off by what’s effectively a period drama turning into a monster movie. Coogler is at his most “yes, and” here as a filmmaker, embracing both the high-minded films and schlocky cinema that contribute to his voice as a storyteller. It’s the kind of exquisite gumbo that you can only cook up with this kind of budget once you’ve already proven yourself on the big stage, which, these days, essentially means within the superhero milieu. My hope is that other studios like Warner Bros. continue to see the value in putting their money where their mouth is by backing visionary directors with stout budgets.

The money, as they say, is on the screen with Sinners. Shooting on 65mm film for a superlative IMAX presentation, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw delivers a sumptuous, supersized silver screen experience. Also reteaming with Coogler on the crew is composer Ludwig Göransson, who continues to push himself stylistically with a dobro-led score that’s completely different from the other film music he’s put out thus far. In addition to the original score, the movie is packed wall-to-wall with existing tunes from various cultural backgrounds that deepen the aural canvas. In a film with almost too many great music moments to count, a sequence set to “Pale, Pale Moon” is perhaps the most luminous. Missing out on Sinners while it’s in theaters would be a sin.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is The Accountant 2, an action thriller starring Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal, reuniting the titular auditor/hitman with his equally lethal brother as the two track down a group of assassins responsible for a Treasury chief’s murder.
Also playing only in theaters is Until Dawn, a supernatural horror film starring Ella Rubin and Michael Cimino, following a group of friends trapped in a time loop, where mysterious foes are chasing and killing them in gruesome ways, must survive until dawn to escape it.
Premiering on Netflix ix Havoc, an action thriller starring Tom Hardy and Jessie Mei Li, about a detective must fight his way through the criminal underworld to rescue a politician’s estranged son, unraveling a deep web of corruption and conspiracy that ensnares his entire city.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Drop

Anchored around a single location like Phone Booth and Red Eye before it, the gripping new thriller Drop chooses a high-rise restaurant in downtown Chicago as its locale du jour. 38 stories above the hustle and bustle, single mother and therapist Violet (Meghann Fahy) grabs a drink at the bar while waiting for her photographer date Henry (Brandon Sklenar) to arrive. It’s Violet’s first night out with a potential suitor in four years, the wounds from the traumatic death of her abusive husband still lingering, while also bearing the responsibility of raising son Toby (Jacob Robinson) by herself. Thankfully, her younger sister Jen (Violett Beane) has stepped up and agreed to babysit Toby for Violet’s special night out and mom can even check in virtually with a video feed from her phone. Henry arrives, apologetic for his absence, and the two get seated but it doesn’t take long for their evening to take a turn for the terrifying.

Violet asks if she can keep her phone on their table so she can receive updates from Jen, to which Henry agrees, but her phone instead keeps pinging with messages sent anonymously from someone in their midst. The Digi-Drops — a facsimile of Apple’s AirDrop technology, so as to not clash with their “no villain clause” — start as obnoxious memes but quickly become more personal. The sender soon reveals their intent and instructions: Violet must kill Henry before the end of their date or the masked hitman in her house will murder Toby and Jen. The disguised “dropper” seems to have eyes in the sky and ears on the table, informing Violet that they’ll also make good on their threat if she tips anyone off or tries to leave the restaurant. Most of us have been on bad first dates but the one at the center of Drop is about as dire as it gets.

Just last Christmas, Netflix had a holiday hit with the nail-biter Carry-On, which also involved a high-wire act of coercion from a criminal communicating covertly with our protagonist. While the identity of the caller in that cat-and-mouse game is revealed about halfway through, Drop makes us sweat out the source of the messages, and their motives, to the very end. Along with screenwriters Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach, director Christopher Landon knows the fun of this tale is in us trying to figure out which of the restaurant patrons is responsible for terrorizing Violet. She’s waiting for Henry at the bar long enough to meet several potential suspects but once the Digi-Drops come flooding in, Violet’s bandwidth for sleuthing is strained between heeding the commands from her phone and keeping her date unaware of her predicament.

While Brandon Sklenar is a bit of a drip as the well-meaning but mostly bland date, Meghann Fahy is outstanding in her first big lead role on-screen after breaking out in The White Lotus two years ago. Given the baggage that Violet brings to the table, this evening out would be difficult enough for her as is but as the plot necessitates, it becomes exponentially more demanding. As a survivor of domestic abuse, she unfortunately understands all too well how to put on a brave face and conceal her anxiety under horrific circumstances. Violet knows her son and sisters’ lives are also in jeopardy if Henry decides to ditch the date, so she somehow has to be good company while also constantly monitoring her phone for updates. Fahy is brilliant in the way she balances these conflicting tasks as an actress and her work alone makes the film stand apart from similarly-plotted thrillers.

Naturally, Drop isn’t immune to the plot contrivances that keep thrill rides like this ticking along and some may argue it commits more than its fair share of narrative faux pas. It’s not a plot that necessarily holds up well under scrutiny and there’s one particular story beat that makes absolutely zero sense in hindsight. But Landon and his team certainly do everything they can to keep us on our toes at all times and do so while getting us fully immersed in this gorgeous setting. The restaurant where the majority of the film takes place is an immaculately-rendered and beautifully-lit set that encourages us to look around with our protagonist to suss out the situation. Ironically, Drop is an ideal date night movie choice for those adventurous enough to take the ride.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Sinners, a supernatural horror film starring Michael B. Jordan and Hailee Steinfeld, about twin brothers who return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.
Also coming to theaters is Sneaks, an animated comedy starring Anthony Mackie and Martin Lawrence, involving a sentient sneaker who unwittingly finds himself lost in New York City and has to rescue his sister with the help of other talking shoes.
Streaming on Shudder is Dead Mail, a period thriller starring Sterling Macer Jr. and John Fleck, in which an ominous help note finds its way to a 1980s post office, connecting a dead letter investigator to a kidnapped keyboard technician.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Column, Midwest Film Journal

Deep Downey: Zodiac

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

The poster reads “There’s more than one way to lose your life to a killer” above a fog-obscured shot of the Golden Gate Bridge, the illuminated suspension cables resembling mournful eyes weeping over the Bay Area. This haunting one-sheet sets the stage perfectly for David Fincher’s quietly devastating Zodiac, a thorough and thoughtful retelling of one of the most infamous unsolved cases in United States history. Having spent his childhood in a small town 20 miles north of San Francisco, Fincher had a personal connection to the material, hearing terrifying stories about the elusive Zodiac Killer at an impressionable age. But the film also follows a theme that can be found in many of the other works throughout his career: monomaniacal focus in one’s professional life at the expense of one’s personal life.

After depicting a brutal 4th Of July shooting at a Vallejo highway lookout point, Zodiac introduces us to the main players involved in trying to track down the titular slayer. The San Francisco Chronicle is one of several news outlets to receive encoded letters from the killer who calls himself “Zodiac”, striking immediate and intense curiosity in the paper’s political cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal). The Chronicle’s head crime reporter, Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), is skeptical at first, but when Graysmith makes a correct prediction before the first letter is deciphered, Avery becomes the Bernstein to Graysmith’s Woodward. More killings and more letters follow, causing police inspectors Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) to head up the case but as years go by, promising leads turn to dead ends.

Though it’s a movie about a well-known, real-life serial killer, Zodiac doesn’t follow in the footsteps of other mystery thrillers, where we’re shown evil deeds but can feel better having witnessed them knowing justice is served in the end. Fincher and his screenwriter James Vanderbilt did copious amounts of research investigating the true identity of the Zodiac Killer but they don’t present one theory here as absolute truth. It’s as much of a police procedural and news journalism movie as a thriller, given that the search for the killer is the actual story as opposed to their unveiling. How can we reconcile that the details of unspeakable acts can remain forever unknowable to everyone except those involved? How do we collectively move on from cases that are ultimately deemed unsolvable? Zodiac follows two central characters who believe in their bones that we can’t and we don’t.

On the morning the Chronicle receives the first letter, Avery blithely offers 20 bucks to whoever decodes the killer’s name before heading to the nearby watering hole Morti’s for an early drink. Though he acts indifferent initially, Avery’s intrigued after the letter is deciphered that Graysmith correctly predicted the killer wouldn’t reveal their name. He introduces himself to Graysmith — even though they’d already been working together for 9 months — and asks “how does one do that?” with inquisitive snark when Graysmith works to figure out the “leftover symbols” from the Zodiac’s first note. Thus commences the beginning of an unlikely professional partnership, where earnest curiosity and cynical scrutiny produce a nexus of all-encompassing fixation. Gyllenhaal and Downey Jr. play off each other brilliantly as these opposite personalities collide with one another.

Look no further than the sequence following the Chronicle getting their second Zodiac letter, when Avery invites Graysmith to Morti’s intent on pressing him why he’s been going through his trash but instead getting hung up on his drink order. The bartender slides a distractingly blue cocktail Graysmith’s way and after a minute of labored conversation, Avery quips “alright, this can no longer be ignored: what is that you’re drinking?” Graysmith defends his Aqua Velva and after Avery takes a long sip following a short pause, Fincher smash cuts to Downey Jr. with his head resting on a booth table with six empties in front of his face. With an ace song choice of “Crystal Blue Persuasion” playing in the background, Avery drunkenly asks Graysmith what he wants out of all of this sleuthing, explaining “it’s good business for everyone but you.”

Downey Jr.’s sardonic wit is the highlight of these early interactions — and remains one of his most indispensable assets all these years later — but Avery’s self-destructive streak created a pathway for a more tragic performance. After Avery receives a Halloween card from the Zodiac, ominously portending “you are doomed”, crime reporters begin sporting “I Am Not Paul Avery” pins, cheekily signaling they don’t want to be targeted next. Though Paul himself clips it to his lapel and says of the Killer “he wishes to remain anonymous; I wish to remain infamous”, the stresses of the unwanted attention take their toll. Avery buys a gun, smokes like a chimney and takes enough day trips to Morti’s to put his position at the Chronicle in jeopardy. A third act scene set on Avery’s houseboat hammers home how his involvement in the case led to a heartbreaking downward spiral.

Downey Jr. has made it clear through several interviews that his time shooting Zodiac was not especially pleasant. Fincher is well-known to be an exacting filmmaker, sometimes demanding dozens of takes for even seemingly simple scenes. Needless to say, Downey Jr. didn’t have any room for looser line readings or improvisation and Fincher’s penchant for perfectionism inevitably led to long days of shooting. Downey Jr. found his own way of protest by, according to Fincher, leaving mason jars of urine on-set in lieu of loo breaks. Years later, Downey Jr. would work with Christopher Nolan on — and ultimately win an Oscar for —Oppenheimer and the experience working with another similarly precise director seemed to give him a renewed appreciation for the process. Speaking in 2023 with co-star Mark Ruffalo, Downey Jr. admits “I called Fincher recently because, in retrospect, everything changes. 15 years later, you have such a different perspective on stuff, you know?”

Reel Views, Review

The Amateur

Based on a 1981 film of the same name, the espionage tale The Amateur is a movie filled with smart characters who are trapped in a movie that isn’t as smart as they are. Our protagonist Charlie Heller (Rami Malek) is said to have an IQ of 170 and we believe it. He works five levels below the ground floor of the CIA headquarters in Decryption And Analysis, scrolling through endless lines of code and finding connections that no one else would see. He chats with an anonymous source he believes is in Eastern Europe, with whom he exchanges eyes-only files; if the premise of the hit show Severance was real, Charlie would be a prime candidate for the titular procedure. Throughout the film, he is consistently multiple steps ahead of those pursuing them, so much so that he outpaces director James Hawes and his screenwriters Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli in the process.

The opening of The Amateur has Charlie seeing his wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan) off as she heads to London for a conference. The next day, Charlie’s boss Director Moore (Holt McCallany) shares horrible news with him: Sarah has been killed after being held hostage by terrorists. Moore swears those responsible for her death will be held to account but Charlie doesn’t trust that the agency will avenge Sarah’s death the way he feels she deserves. In a bold move, to say the least, he threatens to leak classified material unless the CIA trains him as a field operative so he can carry out his revenge. With his back against the wall, Moore tasks Colonel Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) with turning the cerebral and diffident Charlie into a cold-blooded killer.

Because of the nature of the premise, The Amateur asks us to believe that one man — albeit a highly intelligent one — could evade a manhunt from one of the most formidable government agencies in the world. As Charlie’s rogue mission finds him traveling from numerous European countries, it becomes more unlikely that he would actually be able to continue his pursuit unabated. Along the way, a couple characters reappear to coerce Charlie to give up his dangerous undertaking but this feels like a much more kid-gloves approach than the CIA would take in actuality. These tactics spur on subsequent plot holes and leaps in logic that begin to add up, especially in the movie’s last 15 minutes; a character moment towards the very end actually made me cock my head to the side like a dog hearing a strange noise.

All of the performances in The Amateur are convincing but at the same time, none of the actors are being asked to do much outside of their current capabilities. Malek is doing a slight variation on his lead character in the tech thriller series Mr. Robot, although he has to dial up a bit more emotion into the flashback scenes between Charlie and Sarah. Oddly, Brosnahan is relegated to a stock “dead wife” role, even though she’s going to appear as the much more pivotal Lois Lane in Superman this summer. Talented supporting players like Julianne Nicholson and Jon Bernthal, the latter of whom is only in two scenes, are only given sketches of actual characters. More prominently, Fishburne has some fun zingers in his training sequences with Malek; “at point blank range, you might have a 50/50 shot at hitting something,” he smirks in front of a shooting target at a gun range.

The Amateur isn’t a bad movie from a technical perspective. Despite some misjudged shaky cam, it’s well-shot and edited in a way that makes its 2-hour runtime move along briskly. It’s just not a film that distinguishes itself enough from other revenge or spy films we’ve seen already. Its release comes just a few weeks after Black Bag, already one of the year’s best, which also follows spies chasing spies but does so with much more panache and thematic heft. This movie feels like it never expands on its initial hook of taking a lab rat out of his environment and placing him in a more menacing setting where his technological skills don’t mean nearly as much as killer instinct. The Amateur is professional enough on its surface but could use some training in developing a more robust storyline.

Score – 2.5/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Drop, a mystery thriller starring Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar, in which a widowed mother’s first date in years takes a terrifying turn when she’s bombarded with anonymous threatening text messages on her phone during their upscale dinner.
Also coming to theaters is Warfare, an action film starring D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai and Will Poulter, which follows a platoon of Navy SEALs in real-time as they embark on a mission through insurgent Iraqi territory in 2006.
Premiering on Amazon Prime is G20, an action thriller starring Viola Davis and Anthony Anderson, which finds the U.S. President defending her family and fellow world leaders when terrorists take over the G20 summit in South Africa.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Death Of A Unicorn

Both a satire with not quite enough bite and a creature feature without much of a proverbial bark, Death Of A Unicorn has promising aspects on paper but can’t translate them to movie magic. Alex Scharfman’s directorial debut is being marketed by A24 as an offbeat horror comedy, which isn’t totally misleading as much as it’s overpromising something that’s scarier or funnier than it actually is. Although there are some kills that could satisfy horror nuts and humor that could kill with the “eat the rich” demographic, the movie never fully commits to what it wants to be. To its credit, it puts forth better computer-generated effects than I would expect for a film with a $15 million budget, especially given that it also boasts a stacked cast too. It’s just too bad that all these people and unicorns weren’t brought together for something more impactful.

Death Of A Unicorn finds pharmaceutical lawyer Elliot (Paul Rudd) and his teenage daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) en route to a business retreat when they accidentally hit what turns out to be a unicorn with their car. Unsure how to handle the situation, Elliot stashes the mythical creature in the car and doesn’t mention it to their hosts when they arrive at their estate. Elliot’s cancer-stricken boss Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant) is considering moving him up to a VP position but wants the second opinion of his wife Belinda (Téa Leoni) and their son Shepard (Will Poulter) first. The still-alive unicorn makes a calamitous escape from the automobile and the group accidentally discovers the healing properties from the creature’s blood. The revelation puts Elliot at odds with the Leopolds’ desire to turn the magic substance for profit and Ridley’s conviction to restoring nature’s balance by returning the unicorn to its family.

Paul Rudd is an immensely amiable screen presence and has been an enduring talent for decades now but Death Of A Unicorn doesn’t make good use of either his comedic or dramatic sensibilities. He’s allegedly playing the movie’s protagonist but we can tell from the way he handles the initial car accident with the unicorn that he’s hardly the paragon of nobility. Elliot has a strained relationship with Ridley and he has numerous opportunities to do right by her that he eschews for career ambition. Not every lead character has to be likable in every sense but Rudd can’t make Elliot’s cowardly impulses come across as character flaws that we want to see him overcome; he simply comes across as a jerk who should get what’s coming to him.

With themes of parent-teenager strife and science meddling with nature, Death Of A Unicorn seems to take cues from Spielberg fables like War Of The Worlds and Jurassic Park. While it obviously doesn’t have the budget of effects-heavy projects like that, Scharfman’s script also isn’t as sharp as it needs to be from a character perspective to make up for the deficit. Fortunately, the actors playing the Leopolds — Will Poulter and Téa Leoni, in particular — make the most out of satirizing the greedy corporatists who are blinded to the obvious by the dollar signs in their eyes. They’re playing similar types to ones Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette took on for Mickey 17 recently but Poulter and Leoni wisely don’t go as over-the-top in their portrayals. Even when Shepard grinds a portion of a unicorn horn into powder that he proceeds to snort, Poulter finds some real laughs in the sheer enormity of his character’s arrogance.

The film’s trajectory is clearly leading to a showdown between the mansion-dwellers and the unicorn family angered by the capture of one of their own. The take-no-prisoners attitude of the unicorn clan is meant to fly in the face of the majestic image we tend to associate with the mythical creature, but it’s a one-note joke that’s not particularly bright in the first place. The rendering of the CGI is admittedly punching above its weight class and the kills at the hands — horns and hooves may be more fitting — of the unicorns generate some fun gore-soaked scenes; one character’s undoing atop a billiard table is perhaps the most inspired. Death Of A Unicorn just isn’t able to find a way to weave its tapestry of conflicting genres and tones together into one enchanting concoction.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is A Minecraft Movie, a fantasy adventure starring Jason Momoa and Jack Black, following four misfits who are pulled through a portal into a cubic world that thrives on imagination, having no choice but to master the world while embarking on a quest.
Also coming to theaters is Hell Of A Summer, a horror comedy starring Fred Hechinger and Abby Quinn, about a masked killer who begins picking off a group of camp counselors the night before their campers are set to arrive for the summer.
Premiering on Shudder is 825 Forest Road, a supernatural horror movie starring Joe Falcone and Elizabeth Vermilyea, involving a man who hopes to start a new life with his wife and sister after a family tragedy, but discovers the town he has moved to has a dark secret.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Snow White

In two months, Disney will release Lilo & Stitch, a live-action remake of an animated counterpart that’s barely 20 years old at this point. Next up is Moana, whose original version will not even be 10 years old upon the release of the “reimagining” in July of 2026. It remains to be seen how much — or how little — these redos will stray from the animated iterations but if the 2019 remakes of 90s classics Aladdin and The Lion King are any indication, they’ll stick to the lucrative “if it ain’t broke” formula. I’ve yet to read a compelling artistic rationale behind “refreshing” properties that don’t need to be modernized, which makes Snow White a welcome exception. Made in 1937, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs was Disney’s first full-length feature and an adaptation of Brothers Grimm fairy tale that was already over 100 years old upon the film’s release. At last, we have a Disney remake that actually justifies its own existence.

The setup here remains faithful to the traditional tale: an unnamed queen gives birth to a daughter named Snow White (Rachel Zegler) before falling ill and passing away. The king remarries and when he disappears in battle, the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot) takes the throne. Threatened by the presence of a potential heir, the Queen confines Snow White to the scullery and after the vainglorious Queen’s Magic Mirror deems Snow White as “fairest in the land”, the Queen tasks a Huntsman (Ansu Kabia) with Snow White’s execution. She flees the attempt on her life and finds refuge in a forest cottage, occupied by seven dwarfs who work in the nearby mines. Desperate to return to the kingdom and expose the treacherous Queen, she teams up with her septet of new friends and a charming young rebel named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap) to end the Queen’s nefarious reign.

Unlike Beauty And The Beast and The Little Mermaid, two masterworks which have also received “updates” in the past 10 years, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs doesn’t have a bevy of Menken-penned songs. The familiar and friendly tunes “Heigh-Ho” and “Whistle While You Work” have been dusted off for Snow White but the majority of the music comes courtesy of The Greatest Showman songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. They craft a compelling “all skate” opening number in “Good Things Grow” and a juicy villain treatise “All Is Fair” but Pasek and Paul’s finest contributions here are the tête-à-tête duets between Snow White and Jonathan. The thorny and clever “Princess Problems” gives way to the sweeping and gorgeous “A Hand Meets A Hand”, co-written by the talented young singer-songwriter Lizzy McAlpine.

These new songs soar thanks to the harmonious blend between Rachel Zegler and Andrew Burnap but Snow White is primarily Zegler’s show and she does an outstanding job bringing the iconic Disney character to life. The seven dwarf characters are all computer-generated, so she doesn’t have flesh-and-blood screen companions for long stretches of the story, but she remains a magnetic screen presence all the same. Saddled with wardrobe and hair styling that’s perhaps too reverent to the original movie, Zegler nonetheless finds her own way into the character without trying to shake things up beyond recognition. On the reverse side, Gal Gadot benefits from more exquisite costume design but can’t find her way under the skin of this slippery sorceress; I still have yet to see her excel in a role outside of Wonder Woman.

Snow White suffers from some of the same issues that have plagued Disney’s recent live-action “reimaginings”: the lighting is flat due to the abundance of green screens, the blend of live and CG characters is often unconvincing and the vocal tracks are overly-processed. Frankly, I don’t see Disney changing any of these aspects for future endeavors. But in terms of straight-ahead Disney remakes —not counting spinoffs or sequels like Cruella or Mufasa — Snow White is one of their best since 2015’s Cinderella. If they insist on continuing to revisit their catalog as opposed to making originals, they’d be better served looking back to their output from the 1940s and 1950s rather than to films that have been released this century. Snow White may not be the fairest of them all but it certainly dwarfs most of the retreaded material coming out of the House Of Mouse.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is A Working Man, an action thriller starring Jason Statham and Michael Peña, about a construction worker whose experience as an ex-Royal Marines commando becomes useful when his boss’s teenage daughter is kidnapped by human traffickers.
Also coming to theaters is The Woman In The Yard, a psychological horror film starring Danielle Deadwyler and Okwui Okpokwasili, involving a mysterious woman who repeatedly appears in a family’s front yard, often delivering chilling warnings and unsettling messages.
Streaming on Amazon Prime is Holland, a mystery starring Nicole Kidman and Matthew Macfadyen, following a teacher in a small midwestern town who suspects her husband of living a double life but things may be worse than she initially imagined.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Black Bag

A marriage story disguised as a spy caper, Steven Soderbergh’s latest Black Bag stars Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as the partners at the center of this outstanding potboiler. They play George and Kathryn, respectively, both intelligence officers working for the same British organization, who use the phrase “black bag” like a safe word when skirting around confidential intel with one another. George’s boss Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård) asks him to investigate the leak of a dangerous software program named Severus and gives him a list of potential suspects within their agency. They include satellite imagery specialist Clarissa (Marisa Abela), her boyfriend Freddie (Tom Burke), psychiatrist Zoe (Naomie Harris), and her boyfriend James (Regé-Jean Page). The fifth name on the list, as it should happen, is Kathryn.

Like NEON did with Soderbergh’s Presence a couple months ago, Focus Features is pitching Black Bag as something a bit different than what it actually turns out to be. The ads make it seem like more of an action-packed affair along the lines of a James Bond movie; incidentally, two alumni from that franchise (Harris and Pierce Brosnan in a small role) also appear here. Instead, its story is driven not just on dialogue but the tone and inflection of how the characters, all trained in espionage, carefully deliver their words. Serving as screenwriter for a third time with Soderbergh after Kimi and Presence, David Koepp loads his script with tense exchanges and spy lingo, along with bits of droll humor, to make this tricky, duplicitous world seem plausible.

Even the most adroit script could fall flat with pedestrian storytelling but with Soderbergh working, as he’s often done, as director, cinematographer and editor, Black Bag is quietly riveting. A dinner scene with six guests could absolutely be a ho-hum volley of shot-reverse shot interactions but without getting too ostentatious, Soderbergh finds perfect angles around the corners of the table to pique our interest. George suggests they play a game where each person effectively speaks on behalf of the person sitting to their right and the pacing and composition of the shots turns this normal-seeming party game into something much higher stakes. As with many of his projects, Soderbergh uses natural room lighting here and the globe lights on the table provide enough coverage on each of the characters’ faces but also emit a gauzy halo that smears the frame the way these suspects fudge their facts.

While George is undoubtedly Black Bag‘s central character as the paranoid interrogator, the film gives ample time for each of the main players in the exceptional ensemble cast to shine. The standout for me is Marisa Abela, playing an analyst who is still trying to prove herself early in her career but who also demonstrates she’s more than capable in the art of deception. Following up his role as a war-ready tanker driver in last year’s Furiosa, Tom Burke is back to playing the more conniving and cunning roles that helped him break out in The Souvenir and Mank. Regé-Jean Page and Naomie Harris play things cool and sharp-tongued while still allowing for spots of vulnerability to shine through. Every one of them is impeccably dressed and, yes, everyone in this movie is, to quote Zoolander, “ridiculously good looking”.

Black Bag is certainly a riveting whodunit within this cloak-and-dagger world but I especially appreciated the level of domestic drama Soderbergh and Koepp infuse in this movie. Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender also flesh out their characters beautifully, both coming across as unreadable and enigmatic at the outset but slowly revealing the emotional concentric circles that would cause the two to fall for one another. It also helps that the two actors, some of the best we have, possess dynamite chemistry with one another. With almost 40 films under his belt at this point in his incredible career, Steven Soderbergh is simply one of the most exciting filmmakers around and Black Bag is yet another example of how there’s no genre he can’t enliven.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Snow White, a live-action Disney remake starring Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot, retells the story of a princess who joins forces with seven dwarves to liberate her kingdom from her cruel stepmother The Evil Queen.
The Alto Knights, a biopic starring Robert De Niro and Debra Messing, involves a pair of legendary mob bosses — Vito Genovese and Frank Costello — who were rivals for control of a major crime family in the mid-20th century.
Ash, a sci-fi horror thriller starring Eiza González and Aaron Paul, follows an astronaut as she wakes up to find that the entire crew of her space station has been killed and sets course for a nearby planet to find answers.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

My thoughts on the movies