Reel Views, Review

One Night Only

If one watches the opening minute of One Night Only without audio, it would be easy to wildly misconstrue its tone and intentions. Atop an aerial shot of the New York City skyline comes an overlay of exposition text: “Three years ago, premarital sex was outlawed in the United States, except for one night a year.” It’s only after the follow-up (“It’s been a lot.”) that one could surmise this sets up something other than a bleakly dystopian thriller, and unmuting to hear a bubbly music score transition to a “Love Is In The Air” cover clarifies things further. Somehow, this is a romantic comedy, the latest from Friends With Benefits and Anyone But You director Will Gluck. Every romcom needs a hook, whether it’s no-strings-attached partners falling in love or a modern Much Ado About Nothing riff, as with Gluck’s previous features in the genre. But his latest effort simply can’t outrun the dire ripple effect behind its disturbing setup.

A couple hours before the annual 12-hour “chastity mandate” is lifted, we meet pizza shop owner Owen (Callum Turner) and jingle singer Allie (Monica Barbaro) as they finish up their days’ work before the big night begins. They each have their own plans in place: Owen to spend the evening with his girlfriend Malika (Maya Hawke) and Allie to try her luck at the bars with bestie Jacinta (King Princess). Their best laid schemes go awry and the pair of strangers bump into each other on the street, their meet-cute foiled by tempestuous sushi recently eaten by Owen that finds its way onto the sidewalk. Spontaneous vomiting certainly isn’t a great first impression but, wouldn’t you know it, these two keep running into one another as they scurry around New York all night trying to find flings before the morning sun rises.

Gluck knows he’s got some ‘splainin’ to do in regards to how the unsettling world of One Night Only came to be and the way he effectively “tee-hee”s totalitarianism teeters on psychopathic. News broadcasts inform us (and remind the characters) that the authoritarian resolution was passed as an effort to “reserve sex for the sanctity of marriage”. If this alternate universe wasn’t off-putting enough, it’s also outlandish enough to envision a Congress that actually passes laws. The mandate is enforced by biosensors that measure neurochemicals triggered during intercourse; somehow, every American was okay being outfitted with them on their wrists. If you’re single, your insignia stays red all year and the cops are called if you try to do the deed any time except for the big night, during which the embedded symbol turns green.

Given the film’s high-concept eeriness, it would be wise of Gluck and his screenwriter Travis Braun to desperately move past the facets of this puritanically petrifying premise and get on with the romance. But One Night Only goes through some effort to steep us further into this setting as Owen and Allie journey on through the night. Consider a setpiece at a bodega, which finds the storekeeper nonchalantly charging $200 in cash for a single condom encased in an anti-theft display container. Even in a fundamentalist fascist nanny state, there’s still room for good old-fashioned toxic capitalism. If surge pricing wasn’t enough, we’re also treated to companies casually kowtowing to the government decree, evidenced by signage like “the night you’ve been training for all year” in the window of an Equinox gym. “It’s a literal nightmare,” Allie laments in a dimly-lit bar, and if you’re self-aware enough to have your character describe the universe of your supposed “comedy” in such terms, why would you trap them in it?

Monica Barbaro, who broke out as Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown two years ago, is One Night Only‘s lone bright spot, calling upon her singing chops once again to pitch pharmaceutical copy to the tune of pop hits like “Brave” and “A Thousand Miles”. It’s a hard-fought gag that counts as one of the few that actually lands, although it’s rich of the movie to take swipes at medication ads when it’s lit and shot like one. Callum Turner, who was decent in last year’s in-all-ways superior romcom Eternity, comparatively seems to be putting in much less effort than his co-lead. Barbaro imbues Allie with a level of charm that makes rooting for her on this chaotic night easy, so much so that Owen actually feels like an afterthought as opposed to a crucial part of the narrative. If you’re relegated to one date night this year, please don’t spend it going out to see One Night Only.

Score – 1.5/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
The End Of Oak Street, starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, finds a family of four banding together for survival when a mysterious cosmic event uproots their street from suburbia and transports their neighborhood to a location with prehistoric creatures.
Nimrods, starring Mason Thames and Mckenna Grace, is a road movie that finds three teenagers travelling to Los Angeles under the false pretense that their band Analog Dogs is opening for legendary punk group Green Day on New Year’s Eve.
Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie, starring Carter Young and Hayden Chamberlain, finds the titular crew of search and rescue dogs landing on a mysterious dinosaur island after a storm, where the team faces its biggest rescue mission yet to save the island from a volcano.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

In the ten years that Spider-Man has officially been a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Disney has certainly made the most of its agreement to share the rights for the seminal superhero with Sony. Not only did they create a trio of standalone features between 2017 and 2021 but the webslinger also featured heavily in already teeming Avengers: Infinity War. Picking up directly after the gambit of No Way Home‘s conclusion 5 years ago, Spider-Man: Brand New Day finds Peter Parker (Tom Holland) reckoning with the magic spell that wiped his existence from everyone’s minds. Holed up in his apartment, he watches helplessly through social media as his best friends MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) go off to MIT after he’s removed from their lives. Desperate for meaning, he buries himself in work as Spider-Man and works overtime to rid the city of its cyclical villains.

The film’s subtitle connotes a turning of the page for this series, a way to recontextualize Peter Parker’s relationship to Spider-Man after he commits such a staggering sacrifice to protect the ones he loves most. Taking over from Jon Watts, who directed the first three Tom Holland-starring Spider-Man adventures, Destin Daniel Cretton spends the first 15 minutes of Brand New Day setting the table for a very different kind of MCU tale before it’s back to business as usual. A new superpowered threat emerges, wreaking havoc downtown at the superhuman-policing Department Of Damage Control, led by Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman). Unable to handle it alone, Spider-Man calls in favors from vigilante Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) and fellow Avenger Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), who’s been teaching quantum mechanics at a local university while keeping “the green guy” within him at bay.

Like the still series-best Spider-Man: Homecoming, Brand New Day shines most when it sets its focus on the entangled relationships in young Peter Parker’s life. In past cinematic chapters with this character and other superheroes, a chief conflict has been concealing one’s alter ego from friends and family. Like the Tillman-starring Apple TV series Severance, it’s an extreme example of maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Since the events of No Way Home (to put it mildly) put Peter’s personal life in shambles, it makes sense that Spider-Man would become a workaholic escape for someone petrified of starting over with best friends. We see how painful that process can be when Peter invites himself to a packed party at Ned’s place. Not only does Peter have to reintroduce himself to his best friend but he’s also unrecognized by the love of his life as she smooches with a new boyfriend.

Being the marketing juggernaut that it is, Disney does a terrific job pitching the “this one will be different” message for every new entry in the MCU. Like Doctor Strange, they cast a well-financed spell on us where we forget how surefire their formula is and how unlikely it is, no matter what figurehead creative forces are brought in, that they’ll stray from it. The context varies for each property but in the instance of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the implication is that we’ll get a more “back-to-basics” iteration of Spider-Man who’s picking up the pieces and trying to figure out who he is in this new paradigm shift. When Peter visits another familiar face from other MCU fare, she deems his personal problems as “small potatoes” that don’t require Avenger-level intervention. Frankly, that’s fine by me. I’d prefer to see Peter deal with his issues himself but franchise obligations necessitate appearances from The Punisher, The Hulk and perhaps newly-acquired characters from the larger universe of Marvel comics.

Even though the movie has far too much going on from a plot perspective, given that it has to tie in storylines from Disney+ shows of the past several years, Brand New Day remains reliably entertaining output from the most reliable entertainment film franchise around. Holland remains outstanding in the lead role and his real-life marriage to Zendaya gives their scenes of lost love a metatextual poignancy and gut-punch for our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Being pulled in from the Punisher series, Bernthal is a terrific addition as a gruff, bull-in-a-china-shop foil to our still doe-eyed and altruistic protagonist. I wish there was more time dedicated to the conversations between Peter and the people he wants to remember him but I’ll have to wait another day for the truly character-forward stories the MCU so often promises.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
One Night Only, starring Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner, is a romantic comedy in which two strangers in New York try to find love on the one night of the year when pre-marital sex is legal.
Super Troopers 3, starring Jay Chandrasekhar and Kevin Heffernan, is a comedy sequel reuniting the titular goofballs as they work to bring down a pernicious new drug ring against the backdrop of an upcoming wedding between one of the Troopers and the sister of another Trooper.
Ice Cream Man, starring Ari Millen and Charlie Zeltzer, is a slasher set in an idyllic suburban town that descends into madness when a mysterious ice cream man serves sweet treats that turn children into homicidal maniacs.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Her Private Hell

Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival two months ago, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell represents the Danish filmmaker’s return to the big screen after a ten-year detour developing streaming series for Amazon Prime and Netflix. Fortunately or unfortunately, he picks up right where he left off. His latest cinematic provocation plays like a woozy mashup of his Muay Thai saga Only God Forgives from 2013 and haute couture horror vision The Neon Demon from 2016. While those two movies weren’t the masterpieces Refn likely thinks they are, they at least had coherent storylines and tangible motivations to rise above their pretentious trappings. Even though it runs shy of two hours, Her Private Hell will test the patience of many going into the theater unacquainted with Refn’s lugubrious pacing and laconic characters.

The film opens on an impossibly foggy cityscape, settling at the street level of the neon-spined Tower Hotel, as the young actress Elle (Sophie Thatcher) enters its decadent lobby. There she meets Hunter (Kristine Froseth), a showbiz hopeful who says she lost her luggage upon arriving to the mist-muddled metropolis. Elle takes her in and introduces Hunter to Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), the seductive stepmom who’s slithered her way into the heart of Elle’s dad Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott). Elsewhere in the dystopian cityscape is the soigné soldier Private K (Charles Melton), traveling storefronts and pounding the pavement to look for his recently missing daughter. Tenuously uniting their stories is the presence of a serial killer known as “Leatherman”, a shadowy figure who’s been dispatching young women in gratuitously violent fashion ever since the supernatural haze engulfed their town.

While Refn’s works are far from narratively complex, Her Private Hell is his most intentionally bifurcated, split unevenly between psychosexual giallo fairytale and Yakuza revenge thriller. If he had committed to one of those two disparate genre fascinations, it’s possible the film could’ve worked, as the two distinct partitions have glimmers of hope in scenes that work on their own terms. A Rear Window-esque sequence, where Elle and Hunter watch helplessly from across the street as Leatherman claims a victim in her hotel room, tracks the same bead of tension Brian De Palma learned studying Alfred Hitchcock. Further cementing the connection is ravishing corresponding music from longtime De Palma collaborator Pino Donaggio, who delivers a riveting Bernard Herrmann-inspired score that’s one of the year’s finest.

The moments we spent with Private K, as he makes his way pursuing leads through the criminal underworld, tend to get redundant but happen upon their own moments of brilliance. Her Private Hell‘s best scene is a bravura fight setpiece that starts with K in an antique store surrounded by henchmen, gradually working its way out through an alley and finishing on the city streets. But when it comes time to intertwine Elle and K’s stories in a meaningful way, Refn comes up woefully short. The screenplay from Refn and co-writer Esti Giordani can’t justify why these characters would even meet in the first place, much less dedicate so much time to K without developing his character. The tense relationship between Elle and Dominique is the closest thing the movie has in terms of emotional connection, but their scenes of histrionic conflict don’t bring out the best in the performances by Sophie Thatcher and Havana Rose Liu.

In addition to Refn’s obsession with garish lighting — fittingly, this film is being distributed by NEON — and tight leather, Her Private Hell is also preoccupied with the mommy issues and bruised masculinity that Refn has more productively investigated before. More specifically, he returns to psychoanalytical symbolism regarding hands, foreshadowed by a glass sculpture in establishing shots of the city and paid off during the gauzy climax. 15 years after the release of his breathtaking breakout Drive, that thriller’s stylishly stellar interplay of film noir and car-centric action now registers as more of a happy accident than an announcement of Nicolas Winding Refn as a top-tier talent. At this point, it barely feels like he’s making movies for anyone besides himself, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he has difficulty finding funding for whatever private hells he comes up with in the future.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Premiering in theaters is Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a superhero sequel starring Tom Holland and Zendaya, which picks up after the events of No Way Home where the world has forgotten Peter Parker exists, finding him anonymously protecting New York City as the hero Spider-Man.
Also playing in theaters is I Want Your Sex, a comedic erotic thriller starring Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman, which follows a naïve young man who becomes the new assistant and muse for a renowned and provocative artist.
Streaming on Amazon Prime is The Devil’s Mouth, a survival thriller starring Kathryn Newton and Lana Condor, concerning a group of college friends’ Thailand adventure that turns deadly when they become trapped in submerged caves with a dangerous predator.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

The Odyssey

“Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this, he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.” So reads the chilling opening text of Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s masterful biopic surrounding the father of the atomic bomb. In his latest theatrical excursion, Nolan gets even more literal with myth deconstruction by adapting Homer’s The Odyssey, the ancient text that launched a thousand hero’s journeys. Despite being one of the few modern directors who can claim to be a household name, Nolan confesses he didn’t quite feel he had the “blank check” he wanted for his monomyth but when his first outing with Universal Pictures scored 7 Oscars, the ask became more realistic. As a result, The Odyssey is the auteur’s grandest spectacle, one that feels both state-of-the-art and a work that could endure as long as the epic poem that inspired it.

Following his victory in the Trojan War, Ithaca’s king Odysseus (Matt Damon) parts with Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) and Menelaus (Jon Bernthal) as he sets course for he and his men to go home. On their way, they encounter numerous grueling obstacles, including a skirmish with Poseidon’s one-eyed son Polyphemus (Bill Irwin) and a battle with the giant Laestrygonians of Aeaea. The years-long trek creates a power struggle in Ithaca, as Odysseus’s wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) is pursued by slimy suitors like Antinous (Robert Pattinson) in the king’s absence. Desperate to find his father and aid him in his voyage home, Odysseus’s son Telemachus (Tom Holland) works with faithful farmer Eumaeus (John Leguizamo) to get Odysseus back to an Ithaca that becomes more dangerous to his return with each passing day.

Characteristic of almost every Christopher Nolan movie that’s come before it, The Odyssey is told in a non-linear fashion, weaving in glimpses of past and future that give the narrative both context and resonance. While I’m sure brushing up on Greek mythology before seeing the film wouldn’t hurt, you don’t need to call up your high school English teacher for a refresher on Homer’s tale before walking into the theater. The screenplay uses vernacular that may sound a touch too modern in a few places but, on the whole, does an outstanding job setting the table and defining the stakes. In juggling myriad characters, both human and magical, Nolan never loses the thread of how all of the story elements weave into a timeless tapestry about honor and justice. He also imbues his take on the legend with somber reflections on the nature of memory and the toll of combat on the warrior’s psyche.

Even by Nolan standards, the ensemble cast of The Odyssey, which also includes Charlize Theron and Zendaya in mystical roles, is especially sprawling and full to the gunwales with talent. Every actor makes the most of their, in some cases, minutes-long appearance but the commanding performance at the center of this fantastical adventure remains the film’s finest. As ubiquitous a movie star as Matt Damon is now, his work here is so electrifying and layered that it reminds us why his stature in Hollywood has remained so strong for the past 30 years. Though this Odysseus calls back to defining characters from Damon’s filmography, be they the amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne or his abandoned voyager The Martian, the stalwart actor plays notes of regret and yearning that you feel in your chest.

A question lingering over The Odyssey prior to its release is how Nolan, infamous for his insistence on practical effects over CGI, would translate the fantasy portions of Homer’s text to the screen. While monsters like Charybdis and Scylla are computer-generated, the majority of the events are captured in the most tangible terms possible. The sequence involving Odysseus’s men trapped in a cave with a Cyclops is terrifying in no small part due to the practicality and “realism” of the creature design and sound design. Another arduous affair on Aeaea seamlessly blurs the line between the origin of the visual effects for the movie’s most horrifyingly effective setpiece. Every piece of Ruth De Jong’s world-class production design makes this universe feel impossibly expansive, one that audiences will undoubtedly be rewarded for revisiting multiple times on the largest screen possible. The word “epic” gets thrown around plenty these days but if The Odyssey doesn’t warrant the superlative, nothing else does.

Score – 4.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Her Private Hell, a sci-fi thriller starring Sophie Thatcher and Charles Melton, following a troubled young woman who searches for her father after a mysterious mist engulfs their futuristic city and unleashes a deadly, elusive entity.
Also playing only in theaters is Hadestown: The Musical, a live stage recording of the Broadway production that retells the Greek mythology legends of Orpheus & Eurydice and Hades & Persephone.
Premiering on Apple TV is The Dink, a sports comedy starring Jake Johnson and Ben Stiller, telling the tale of an aging tennis pro who must go against his instincts and play pickleball to save a local club.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Gail Daughtry And The Celebrity Sex Pass

It’s been too long since we last saw a theatrical release from comedic dynamo David Wain. Since the 2014 romcom-spoofing They Came Together, the writer/director has worked with Netflix to create a Doug Kenney biopic, two Wet Hot American Summer spin-off shows and the hospital drama send-up series Medical Police. Now he’s back to the cineplex with the abundantly silly Gail Daughtry And The Celebrity Sex Pass and while it’s not the strongest effort in Wain’s canon, it features enough moments of absurd comedy that concisely epitomize his singular brand of humor. Existing somewhere between the high-concept yuks of Role Models and the go-for-broke sketch pacing of The Ten, Wain’s latest work doesn’t feel as structurally sound as his output from the aughts but delivers its fair share of laughs from his most impressive cast yet.

We meet bubbly hairdresser Gail Daughtry (played by Zoey Deutch) two weeks before she’s set to marry her fiancé Tom (Michael Cassidy) in their quaint suburban town of Willowbrook, Kansas. Inspired by a conversation with her friend and Bluebird Salon co-worker Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley), Gail asks Tom about a “celebrity sex pass”, effectively a get-out-of-jail-free card for one consequence-free hookup with someone famous. Gobsmacked by how quickly Tom is able to cash in on his pick, Gail travels with Otto to Los Angeles for a stylist convention so she can bed her choice before her wedding day. After an accidental briefcase swap upon her arrival in the LAX terminal, Gail unwittingly puts herself in the crosshairs of Ludovica (Sabrina Impacciatore), a criminal mastermind looking to disrupt the global economy with confidential intel.

Joining Gail on her now-perilous journey to make things even with her fiancé are an aspiring movie agent, played by Ben Wang, and a paparazzo looking for redemption, played by the film’s co-writer and Wain regular Ken Marino. Fans of Reno 911! will also be happy to see alums like Thomas Lennon and Kerri Kenney-Silver, who both collaborated with Wain previously in The Ten, pop up as memorably goofy characters. There are a few blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cameos from even bigger stars going back to the Wet Hot American Summer days. Though the film hinges on the presence of a couple well-known actors playing themselves — given that one of them is the target for the titular tryst — Gail Daughtry And The Celebrity Sex Pass doesn’t do all that much to either play into or subvert their existing personas. Had the film been able to conceal Gail’s choice from its marketing or selected a celebrity not already known for comedy chops, it could’ve made for a fun surprise.

All of the performers commit fully to the movie’s screwy version of Hollywood and as the doe-eyed lead on an outlandish adventure, Zoey Deutch holds the center beautifully. Her ability to tap into Gail’s “aw shucks” naiveté, while being able to switch into bloodthirsty or lascivious gears on a dime, evinces Deutch’s comic versatility. She has a similar kind of magnetic effervescence that Kristen Bell had in her breakout role for Forgetting Sarah Marshall back in 2008. Deutch has fine foils in Sabrina Impacciatore’s Italian villainess and her pair of henchmen, played by Wain mainstays Joe Lo Truglio and Mather Zickel. As the hapless Sergio and Niccolo, they spend an embarrassing amount of screen time searching the dark web for leads, when much more obvious clues are readily available.

As with his previous endeavors, Wain makes a meal of whatever dramatically familiar beat or trope strikes his fancy in any given moment, pulverizing it beyond recognition with an exaggerated repetition that’s become his trademark. But at a macro level, whatever genre he seems to be poking fun at this time never feels fully realized. I gather the closest type of film he seems to be satirizing is one in the romantic self-discovery category à la Eat, Pray, Love but the movie doesn’t feel specific enough in its parody to land on that front. There are also numerous The Wizard Of Oz allusions — I take “Gail Daughtry” to be a play on Dorothy Gale — but the inverted parallels to that classic tale never fully materialize into meaningful pastiche. Even though Gail Daughtry And The Celebrity Sex Pass isn’t as conceptually well-realized as Wain’s other outings, there are still plenty of hilarious gags sprinkled throughout to give it a pass.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is The Odyssey, an epic fantasy starring Matt Damon and Tom Holland, adapting Homer’s ancient Greek tale about the king of Ithaca’s long and perilous journey home, in which he encounters several mythical beings, after the Trojan War.
Streaming on Hulu is They Fight, a coming-of-age sports drama starring André Holland and Wendell Pierce, following a reformed ex-con who finds redemption by coaching a motley crew of teenage boxers at a local youth facility in Washington, D.C.
Premiering on Disney+ is Descendants: Wicked Wonderland, a fantasy sequel starring Kylie Cantrall and Malia Baker, continuing the adventures of the daughters of the Queen Of Hearts and of Cinderella as they play host to the Kingdom Cup Games.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Supergirl

She may have stumbled (literally) into a cameo late in last year’s excellent Superman but now, Supergirl is ready to soar into a feature of her own. Milly Alcock returns in Supergirl as Kal-El’s younger cousin Kara Zor-El, with whom we catch up during the week of her 23rd birthday. With superdog Krypto as her companion, Supergirl jets off to planets with corresponding red suns, which weaken her powers enough that she can actually get inebriated. Trying to catch her between hangovers, Superman (played again by David Corenswet) places numerous video calls from Earth and worries that Supergirl’s hard partying has caused her to lose her way. It’s enough to say his previous attempts to help her assimilate to Metropolis and find kinship with the humans who live there didn’t land with Kara.

One of Supergirl’s pub crawls is interrupted by a young girl named Ruthye (played by Eve Ridley), who announces to a saloon full of ne’er-do-wells that she aims to avenge the murder of her parents and brother. Even with one of her father’s custom-made swords as a reward, the patrons become reticent when they learn the target is Krem (played by Matthias Schoenaerts), the ruthless leader of a clan of space pirates called the Brigands. Ruthye’s plight shakes Kara from her drunken stupor, leading the pair to travel to the seedier parts of the galaxy to find Krem’s criminal crew. On their bar-busting brigade, Supergirl and Ruthye cross paths with Lobo (played by Jason Momoa), a cigar-chomping, motorcycle-riding bounty hunter who has a Brigand score of his own to settle.

Sporting a duster jacket and oversized sunglasses, the titular superheroine of Supergirl advertises to the world that she’s too cool to care about anything or anyone. Throughout Kara’s adventure, director Craig Gillespie and screenwriter Ana Nogueira flesh out this iteration of the character, showing how her seeming immaturity masks an inner pain. While Superman was able to leave their home planet Krypton years before its destruction, Supergirl had to stay by her parents’ side as Kryptonite radiation slowly eroded their bodies and the land around them. She’s jealous of her older cousin’s status on Earth and constantly feels like she’s living under his shadow. After a terse exchange, Ruthye asks Supergirl if Superman is as rude as she is; “he sees the good in everyone; I see the truth,” Kara hisses back.

Milly Alcock is outstanding in the intimidating lead role, taking what could be considered a generally unlikable character on the page and making her feel like an essential part of this new DC Universe. There’s a raucousness and scrappiness to her portrayal that’s welcome in a superhero movie landscape where characters typically seem impervious and overpowered. In the way she charges through intergalactic taverns and roughs up any guy foolish enough to get in her way, Alcock’s Supergirl more closely resembles a cowboy in an old Western than a cape-donning Kryptonian. There’s even a scene where she arm wrestles with a few tough guy aliens who, at their own peril, severely underestimate her strength. As good as Alcock is with a mischievous wry smile, she’s just as good conveying the hurt in Kara’s eyes during the flashbacks to her final days on the eroding Krypton.

As with fellow female-forward projects I, Tonya and Cruella, Supergirl continues director Craig Gillespie’s proclivity towards stories with brash women at their center. He carries the feminist streak through with a soundtrack that includes music from great girl-led acts like Wet Leg, Wolf Alice and Rilo Kiley. Gillespie’s known as a filmmaker who relies on needle drops to establish an often rebellious tone and, thanks to Krypto, Supergirl literally starts with a needle dropping onto a spinning record. Unfortunately, the biggest head-scratching, record-scratch of a song selection comes during the final fight scene, which also features overly precious slow-motion and special effects that get less convincing the longer you linger on them. It’s fair to say that Gillespie doesn’t stick the landing in the film’s final third but there’s plenty, especially in the middle, to recommend.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this holiday weekend:
Arriving in theaters on Wednesday is Minions & Monsters, an animated prequel starring Allison Janney and Christoph Waltz, taking place around 40 years before the events of 2015’s Minions, where the gibberish-talking yellow creatures aim to make a monster movie of their own in Old Hollywood.
Coming to theaters on Friday is Young Washington, a historical war epic starring William Franklyn-Miller and Mary-Louise Parker, following George Washington before his days as President, focusing specifically on his experiences and command as a soldier in the French And Indian War.
Premiering on Netflix is Enola Holmes 3, a mystery sequel starring Millie Bobby Brown and Louis Partridge, continuing the journey of the titular Victorian-era detective as her impending wedding is put in jeopardy when her brother Sherlock is kidnapped.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Toy Story 5

Ahead of Inside Out 2‘s release in 2024, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced, “We had gone through a period where our original films in animation, both Disney and Pixar, were dominating. We’re now swinging back a bit to lean on sequels.” Given the surprisingly high quality of the 3 direct-to-Disney+ Pixar releases, it was dispiriting news. But here we are 2 years later and it turns out, follow-ups in the Inside Out and Toy Story series represent the studio’s strongest work since their return to theaters in 2022 with Lightyear. While Toy Story 4 at the time felt like an unnecessary way to prolong what most considered a perfect trilogy, Toy Story 5 feels like an argument that this franchise could conceivably continue forever. With an ever-expanding voice cast and continually state-of-the-art animation, this latest installment finds the saga that started with the 1996 ground-breaking original in tip-top shape.

The movie reintroduces us to the now-eight-year-old Bonnie (voiced by Scarlett Spears) and her stable of toys led by Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Tim Allen) and Jessie (voiced by Joan Cusack). She still loves using her imagination and creating magical worlds with her playthings, which sets her apart from her increasingly tech-reliant peers. Not wanting to feel left out, Bonnie asks her parents for a device of her own and soon, a frog-themed Lilypad tablet named “Lily” (voiced by Greta Lee) enters the picture. It doesn’t take long for the glowy allure of Lily’s display to draw Bonnie’s attention away from her most cherished toys. In order to save Bonnie from the flattening effect that Lily’s had on her imagination, Jessie calls in the calvary in the form of Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) and Bo Peep (Annie Potts) to curb Bonnie’s screen time and help her make friends in the real world.

Andrew Stanton, who’s directed Pixar all-timers from Finding Nemo to WALL·E, wastes no time in Toy Story 5 catching us up from events of previous chapters, instead diving right in with an exciting cold open featuring a island-marooned bevy of Buzz Lightyears. From there, the story weaves breathlessly between their mission to find Star Command, the primary plot involving Lily’s influence on Bonnie and Jessie’s adventure endeavoring to win her back. Jessie’s journey takes her to the home of Blaze (voiced by Mykal-Michelle Harris), a girl Bonnie’s age who values face time with farm animals over the hypnotic spell of electronics. Her parents have a drawer of abandoned tech toys, like potty-trainer Smarty Pants (voiced by Conan O’Brien) and GPS Atlas (voiced by Craig Robinson), that are now relics of a pre-technological convergence era.

It would be easy for Stanton and his co-writer Kenna Harris to adopt a “technology bad” posture for their tale of the prevalence of touchscreens in children’s day-to-day but their script is more nuanced and less preachy than that. When a different futuristic green toy first entered Andy’s room over 30 years ago, it was also met with initial resistance from the “analog” toys who were worried about its impact on their playtime. But Buzz is, of course, fully integrated into the cadre of dolls and stuffies by now and Toy Story 5 gives indications how Lily could similarly find a spot in the lineup. Greta Lee does a terrific job balancing the intelligence, menace and resourcefulness that could be expected from a sentient smart device who’s determined to make its owner’s life better.

Being the franchise’s two main protagonists, Woody and Buzz have typically been featured more than any of the other characters but this time, Jessie is given the spotlight more than any Toy Story since the 2nd, in which she was first introduced. Joan Cusack rises to the occasion, imbuing Jessie with a determination and ebullience that makes her impossible not to root for. Aside from Lee, the best new addition to the incredible voice cast is Conan O’Brien, who steals scene after scene with an endless stream of potty-pertinent puns. From an animation perspective, the biggest up-level in this entry comes from the immaculately-rendered sequences where we see the stories Bonnie and Blaze conjure from their imaginations. From lavish weddings to defusing bombs in ballrooms, these toys are capable of anything in the minds of kids who never stop dreaming.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Supergirl, a superhero movie starring Milly Alcock and Jason Momoa, expanding from last year’s Superman as Kara Zor-El joins forces with an unlikely companion on an interstellar journey of vengeance and justice when an unexpected adversary strikes too close to home.
Also coming to theaters is Jackass: Best And Last, a slapstick sequel starring Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O, featuring a final compilation of stunts, skits, and pranks, intercut with on-set talking heads with its aging daredevil cast.
Streaming on Netflix is Little Brother, a buddy comedy starring John Cena and Eric André, in which the orderly life of a famous real estate agent is disrupted by an eccentric man who participated in the same “Big Brother-Little Brother” program.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Disclosure Day

In a time when the concepts of both “household names” and “event movies” are almost extinct, Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day represents something of a unicorn in popular culture. The olds may not be hip enough to know about Obsession or Backrooms but even the young folks (should, anyway) know about Spielberg and his career-long fascination with alien life. If the legendary filmmaker’s latest extraterrestrial spectacle belies the evaporation of monoculture and fracturing of our shared cultural touchstones, it’s fitting that the cache behind the film itself attempts to bridge the gaps. Attention being the most precious commodity a storyteller can yield, you’d better have something worthwhile to say when you have it. Alas, Spielberg and his scribe-in-arms David Koepp, who helped pen screenplays for Jurassic Park and 2005’s War Of The Worlds, simply do not this time around.

Disclosure Day opens on Dr. Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a brilliant mathematician and cybersecurity analyst under the employ of shadowy contractor WARDEX (Waived Reporting, Development and Extraction). He’s in possession of confidential footage depicting the existence of UFO crash sites over the decades, information that he maintains the world needs to see and is endeavoring to get in front of as many eyes as possible. Out to stop him in his whistleblowing mission is WARDEX CEO Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), bolstered by a bevy of federal agents and their seemingly endless supply of black Dodge Chargers. During the search for Kellner, Scanlon is alerted to meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) unknowingly speaking an alien language during a live broadcast. Tying their stories together is Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), a former WARDEX employee who now shares Kellner’s goal of disclosing the top-secret extraterrestrial intelligence to the public.

Within alien-enamored works earlier in Spielberg’s career like Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, there’s a sense of wonder and astonishment present that feels curiously absent in Disclosure Day. The possibility of life on other planets was integral to those classic tales but here, it’s treated as a plot point upon which to pivot these scurrying characters across state lines. It’s as if someone replaced the bold letters of that “I WANT TO BELIEVE” UFO poster with “I guess so…” Especially suspect for a Spielberg movie is clumsy storytelling, reliant on artifacts and gadgets whose capabilities are explained only in rudimentary fashion. This is the first time I’ve ever had the thought, “Did I miss a prerequisite TV series that set this up?” while watching one of his films, and he’s about the last director I would expect to generate those problems.

It’s one thing to have muddled mythology but the more troubling aspect of Disclosure Day is a reliance on tropes and types that Spielberg knows better than to recycle at this point. The characters and their motivations are often derivative of superior projects he’s completed within this genre and outside of it, whether it’s the man-on-the-run feel of Minority Report or truth-to-power conviction of The Post. On a foundational level, it was a poor decision to hinge the majority of the narrative on a manhunt when the company chasing after Kellner and his girlfriend Jane (played by Eve Hewson) has infinite tactical and technological resources. It’s presumably an excuse to have several car chases, including one that makes fair use of an oncoming train, but the action doesn’t comport with the heady sci-fi style that’s more in line with what fits the story.

Despite the futuristic set design and tech-focused dialogue, too much of Disclosure Day feels stuck in the past from a sentiment perspective. Perhaps in the 70s and 80s, a film about one man out to un-shutter the eyes of the American people from what the government is keeping from them could work. But we live in more cynical and jaded times, ones where it’s generally accepted that we’re being lied to constantly by people in power we’re supposed to trust. Spielberg making a film about whether or not finding out aliens existed would move the needle for humanity in the age of social media and AI is a more intriguing proposition. If that were the case, Discourse Day would be a more apt title. But the fact that the movie barely acknowledges the internet and, without spoiling too much, sets its climax within a TV production studio makes one wonder when Spielberg wrote the story Koepp used to adapt this script.

Score – 2/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Toy Story 5, starring Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, reunites Pixar’s secretly sentient set of playthings as they contend with their eight-year-old owner’s newest fixation: Lilypad, a smart tablet that threatens to jeopardize playtime forever.
The Death Of Robin Hood, starring Hugh Jackman and Jodie Comer, finds the titular heroic outlaw grappling with his past life of crime and murder while in the hands of a mysterious woman after being critically injured.
Leviticus, starring Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen, follows a teenager as he moves to a religious town and strikes up a forbidden, secret romance with a classmate, until the pair is subsequently stalked by a shapeshifting entity.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

My thoughts on the movies