Monthly Archives: August 2025

Reel Views, Review

Honey Don’t!

Following last year’s road caper Drive-Away Dolls, writer/director Ethan Coen continues his creative collaboration with wife Tricia Cooke in what is purportedly the middle chapter of a “lesbian B-movie trilogy”. Though the characters and story don’t overlap from its predecessor, Honey Don’t! once again stars Margaret Qualley, this time playing pertinacious private investigator Honey O’Donahue. She exchanges tips with dim-witted detective Marty Metakawich (Charlie Day), who informs her that one of her recent clients just died in a cliffside car accident. Working with police officer MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza), Honey traces the client’s last whereabouts to the emergent Four-Way Temple, led by the charismatic Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans).

Too often, Honey Don’t! feels like a B-side to a B-movie — incidentally, the Carl Perkins song that gives the film its title was also a B-side — but more in the sense that it feels like leftover parts as opposed to a companion piece. Like many Coen Brothers movies, Drive-Away Dolls featured a labyrinthine mystery with colorful characters but the case here isn’t as satisfying in its resolution and the parts don’t feel as fleshed out. Talented supporting players like Billy Eichner and Talia Ryder pop in for a few scenes but their presence doesn’t end up affecting the plot in a meaningful way. Chris Evans certainly makes a meal of his pseudo-cult leader role but there’s not much on the page to his hypocritical holy man schtick that’s unique from what we’ve seen before. And even in a comedy, it’s hard to take Charlie Day seriously as an officer of the law.

The primary way Honey Don’t! distinguishes itself from Drive-Away Dolls is in how it treats the sapphic storyline between its primary protagonists. The relationship that develops between Honey and MG has a thornier (and a word that rhymes with “thornier”) dynamic to it than the more wholesome one shared by Jamie and Marian in Dolls. The film is comparatively even more sex-forward than the already unchaste previous entry and Qualley and Plaza certainly put all of themselves into these characters. In addition to the physicality of the acting, the pair get the lion’s share of the script’s pithy pitter-patter dialogue, as when Honey and MG discuss the differences between crochet and knitting over drinks and more at the local watering hole.

Individual scenes in Honey Don’t! have passable pleasures on their own terms but they just don’t add up to much when it comes to contributing to a cohesive and cogent story. Shuffling through tropes like hasty kidnappings and drug deals gone wrong, the crime aspects of the film play like a Coen kineograph of reliable plot elements rather than thought out narrative. Through lines about quirky behavior and running jokes are basically the closest thing resembling character development that the film has. The undercooked script falls apart most in the third act, which tries to stitch everything together with a would-be payoff that neither feels earned nor makes much sense.

As underwritten as it is, Honey Don’t! never drags and is rarely dull, mostly due to Coen’s snappy direction that, like Drive-Away Dolls, completes its mission in under 90 minutes. The movie is set in present-day California but there are loads of retro flourishes, from the sepia-toned set design in Honey’s office to the throwback costume design, that give off 70s flair. No word yet on what Go, Beavers!, the proposed trilogy-capper, will be about but my hope is that no matter what, Margaret Qualley will, as she does in the first two entries, get to drive a cool vintage car in it. Honey Don’t! has style and swagger for days but its titular PI needed a more worthwhile case to crack for her first time out.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Caught Stealing, a comedy crime thriller starring Austin Butler and Regina King, centered around a burned-out ex-baseball player who unexpectedly finds himself embroiled in a dangerous struggle for survival amidst the criminal underbelly of 1990s New York City.
Also coming to theaters is The Roses, a dark comedy starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman, updating The War Of The Roses as a tinderbox of competition and resentments underneath the façade of a picture-perfect couple is ignited when the husband’s professional dreams come crashing down.
Premiering on Netflix is The Thursday Murder Club, a crime comedy starring Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan, following four irrepressible retirees who spend their time solving cold case murders for fun and find themselves in the middle of a whodunit.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Relay

A corporate espionage thriller that stays sharp until its final act, Relay stars Riz Ahmed as Ash, a shrewd New York-based fixer who’s found a rather brilliant way to stay anonymous when brokering deals between clients. Communicating via the New York Relay Service, he sends messages electronically to relay operators and they read them to the third party on the line. They reply back, the operator types their response and Ash is able to read what they say. Of course it’s more cumbersome than a 1-on-1 phone call but has the crucial benefits of concealing Ash’s identity and being completely untraceable, thanks to protection from ADA laws. Whether he’s making demands of corporate goons or giving detailed instructions to the whistleblowers they’re trying to silence, Ash is able to type it all out from anywhere in the city with his portable teletypewriter and the person on the other end can’t even hear his real voice.

His newest contact is Sarah (Lily James), a research scientist who gets fired from biotech firm Cybo Sementis for asking too many questions about a disturbing report linking their insect-resistant crops to human side effects. While Ash’s clientele would typically request protection after the proverbial whistle is blown, Sarah instead wants his help to return the documents she stole after leaving the company. She says she’s followed everywhere she goes, she doesn’t feel safe in her apartment and she just wants her life back. To paraphrase Joseph Heller, it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you, and the company has indeed hired thugs, led by Dawson (Sam Worthington) and Rosetti (Willa Fitzgerald), to make Sarah’s life hell until she coughs up what she knows. Through his unique communication method, Ash parlays between Sarah and the henchmen while working diligently to operate as a ghost during the process.

Relay gets off to a bit of a slow start — spending too much time on the tail end of Ash’s previous case with not enough of a narrative justification for doing so — but it’s certainly gripping once it gets going. I was reminded frequently of two movies that incidentally both star George Clooney, the first being legal thriller Michael Clayton and the assassin slow-burn The American secondarily. While his manner of cajoling conglomerates and counselors in the former is face-to-face and his character barely says five words in the latter, both films follow protagonists living life in the shadows. Riz Ahmed obviously isn’t at Clooney’s level of fame but he certainly has the acting chops to pull off a captivating lead like this. In one scene, Ash communicates in ASL with a deaf document forger, recalling his spellbinding work in 2020’s criminally underseen Sound Of Metal.

The film works best when it’s operating as a streamlined cat-and-mouse and less so when it’s trying to work other dramatic angles. Hell Or High Water director David Mackenzie and his writer Justin Piasecki relish the opportunities to explore how Ash uses procedural loopholes to stay a step ahead but falter when they foist a romantic subplot on the two leads. It feels particularly inorganic in context and was clearly added to make the later scenes of peril hit harder given the burgeoning connection between Ash and Sarah. Relay‘s worst offenses come in the third act, which tries too hard to outdo itself with out-of-left-field plot developments that threaten to derail the good will that was built up before them. Without saying too much, there’s a poorly-edited climactic foot chase that makes little sense geographically and even less sense narratively.

Up to that point, the movie finds the most success in keeping its worlds small and stealthy: the interior of a crowded surveillance van, a dimmed shoebox apartment, the back of a bustling bodega. New York City is a perfect place for Ash to stay hidden in plain sight and as with a myriad of conspiracy nail-biters before it, this film gets the most out of an urban setting where unexpected distractions are plentiful. Relay‘s raison d’être revolving around segmented conversation also fits in nicely with the tenuous lines of communication that exist between passersby in an overcrowded metropolis. Though Mackenzie and his team sacrifice intelligence in favor of simpler storytelling down the stretch, this is a mostly taut thriller with a memorable hook and an engaging central performance.

Score – 3/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Eden, a survival thriller starring Jude Law and Ana de Armas, telling the true story of a group of outsiders who settle on a remote island only to discover their greatest threat isn’t the brutal climate or deadly wildlife but each other.
Also playing only in theaters is Trust, a horror thriller starring Sophie Turner and Rhys Coiro, following a Hollywood actress who hides in a remote cabin after a scandal, only to find herself betrayed and fighting for survival against someone she once trusted.
Streaming on Hulu is Eenie Meanie, a heist thriller starring Samara Weaving and Karl Glusman, centered around a former teenage getaway driver who is dragged back into her unsavory past when a former employer offers her a chance to save the life of her chronically unreliable ex-boyfriend.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Weapons

The chilling mystery Weapons, writer-director Zach Cregger’s follow-up to 2022’s out-of-nowhere camp hit Barbarian, finds the The Whitest Kids U’ Know alum following the sketch comedy-to-horror filmmaking path paved by Jordan Peele. It’s a formally and narratively more ambitious movie than his previous effort, telling its twisty-turny tale through the eyes of six different characters, each contributing their own fragments to the master narrative. At times, the chronology overlaps and we see the same scene from a different perspective but Cregger mostly uses the technique to parse out bits of information until the entire picture is filled in. While it falls victim to the logic gaps and plot holes that have plagued multi-layered stories before it, the film is a freaky fun puzzle box to unlock and contains some of the year’s best scares to boot.

Set in the fictitious small town of Maybrook, Weapons opens with elementary school teacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) arriving at her classroom with only one of her 18 students, Alex (Cary Christopher), in attendance. The ensuing police investigation reveals that the other 17 kids all woke up at 2:17 AM the previous night and ran out of the respective houses, vanishing into the dark. As days and weeks go by with no further understanding of what caused this tragically bizarre event, the parents of the missing children like Archer Graff (Josh Brolin) gradually turn on Justine and press the school principal Marcus Miller (Benedict Wong) for answers. Also feeling the pressure from desperate townspeople are police captain Ed Locke (Toby Huss) and his son-in-law officer Paul Morgan (Alden Ehrenreich), the latter of whom is looking to rekindle a flame with Justine.

Through creepy bookend voiceovers, the first of which sets up a story in which “a lot of people die in a lot of weird ways”, Weapons percolates with the unease we feel collectively when faced with the unimaginable. In the wake of tragedy, we can’t accept that there is no solution and no way to prevent its future occurrence. The fractured narrative underscores the social fissures that the disappearance creates between the people of Maybrook, who have a much more difficult time working the problem separately than if they had done so together from the start. As the storyteller, Cregger delights in patiently putting the pieces together while simultaneously including numerous terrifying moments designed to make us jump out of our seats. A night-set scene, in which Justine is asleep in her car, is a masterclass in how lighting, sound design and a petrifying performance can lend themselves to a perfect horror setpiece.

Like many horror outings, Weapons‘ spookiest scenes are set in the wee small hours of the morning, while the whole town should be asleep but its citizens are burdened by somnambulance and unshakeable nightmares. But even during the daytime moments, cinematographer Larkin Seiple is able to carry over a half-awake nerviness to the shot composition that makes everything feel that much more unpredictable. Much like DP Roger Deakins accomplished in 2013’s Prisoners — another small-town thriller centered around missing kids — Seiple drenches each frame with a visualized version of the dread and dreariness that fill our characters. If you can see this film in IMAX, it’s worth the upgrade to get a better glimpse into the shadows and darkness on the edge of town.

Given its story structure, Weapons doesn’t have quite as much time as I’d prefer to more deeply develop its characters but the talented ensemble does a great job imbuing their roles with ardor and unexpected bits of humor too. Josh Brolin and Julia Garner turn in reliably great work crashing up against one another as types they’ve played before, the former as a gruff everyman looking for justice and the latter as a troubled young woman looking for solace. Besides another actor whose presence is best left to be discovered, the movie’s secret weapon may be Austin Abrams as a drug addict who’s more credible than the rest of the community seems to think. Weapons doesn’t quite hit all the ambitious targets it’s shooting for but it shows that Cregger is anything but a one-hit wonder after Barbarian and has the chops to go the distance as a filmmaker.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Nobody 2, an action comedy starring Bob Odenkirk and Connie Nielsen, following a former lethal assassin whose violent past catches up with him once again, this time on summer vacation with his family.
Also playing only in theaters is Witchboard, a horror remake starring Madison Iseman and Aaron Dominguez, involving a cursed spirit board which awakens dark forces and drags a young couple into a deadly game of possession and deception.
Streaming on Netflix is Night Always Comes, a crime thriller starring Vanessa Kirby and Jennifer Jason Leigh, telling the story of a desperate woman who sets out on a dangerous odyssey, confronting her own dark past over the course of one propulsive night.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

The Naked Gun

In some ways, a reboot/legacy sequel of the Naked Gun films makes sense. With humble beginnings as the short-lived ABC series Police Squad!, the franchise took off with the release of The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! in 1988 and generated two sequels that also hit big at the box office. To say that the movies don’t follow a strict narrative chronology or cohesion goes without saying, so you can basically go with just about any story upon which screenwriters can throw the most jokes. But since the complete original comic trio of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker and star Leslie Nielsen are no longer with us, it seemed unlikely that a remake could actually recapture the magic of the spoof comedy dynasty. So it’s quite surprising that not only is The Naked Gun as good as the 1988 original but it may even supersede it.

The film stars a fantastic Liam Neeson as Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr., son of Leslie Nielsen’s bumbling badge from the original trilogy. Kneeling before a plaque of his dad in the Police Squad station, Drebin Jr. remarks “I want to be just like you but, at the same time, completely different and original.” His investigation into a fatal car crash in Malibu brings the deceased driver’s sister Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson) to his office, claiming that her brother’s death was no accident. The investigation leads Frank to tech billionaire Richard Cane (Danny Huston), whose electric car model is the same as the one found at the crash site. But Drebin uncovers an even more nefarious plot in the process, one involving a device that can beam an audio signal through cell phones that turns bystanders into barbarians with the hit of a button.

Where The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear and Naked Gun 33 ⅓: The Final Insult were partially undone by plotlines that were needlessly complicated, The Naked Gun opts for a more straightforward storyline that even those under the age of the PG-13 rating could follow. These movies aren’t about developing compelling characters or generating thought-provoking themes; they’re about generating as many laughs as possible. This new entry not only succeeds at that goal but also does so at a laudably brisk pace. The 85-minute runtime is padded by a fourth wall-breaking mid-credit gag and end credits that pepper in phony acknowledgements e.g. Set Dressing as Ranch, Italian, French, Russian. There’s an under-appreciated craft to editing a comedy like this, keeping the pacing fast while still firing off more than enough comedic beats to keep the audience from feeling like they were cheated out of a longer production.

Director Akiva Schaffer, who also helmed more conceptual parodies like Hot Rod and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, doesn’t just get the timing right with The Naked Gun but he also nails the spirit and tone of the best ZAZ collaborations. There’s a vaudevillian energy not just in the pace of the comedy but the variety of comedic styles that Schaffer and his co-scribes Dan Gregor and Doug Mand employ throughout the film. While it mainly riffs on police procedurals and the tropes therein, the mechanics of getting those jokes to land travel through the gamut of comedy genres from the absurd to prop work along the way. Not only is the movie not afraid of potty humor but the best quote from the whole thing even has the word “toilet” in it.

As threadbare as the plot is, The Naked Gun doesn’t work unless you cast correctly for Drebin, given how inextricably linked Leslie Nielsen is with the original films. In fact, the project actually flailed for years when a direct-to-TV sequel starring Nielsen fell through and a re-work starring Ed Helms (thankfully) never manifested. Fortunately, co-producer Seth MacFarlane saw the potential of Liam Neeson after directing him back-to-back in comedies A Million Ways to Die in the West and Ted 2. Neeson is simply sensational in this role, his grizzled gravitas and presence in innumerable actioners over the years lending itself perfectly to deadpan deliveries and tough guy pratfalls. In a time when most straight-ahead comedies have been relegated to streaming services, it’s a joy to watch an uproarious comedy like The Naked Gun in the theater, laughing with strangers in the shared darkness.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Weapons, starring Josh Brolin and Julia Garner, is a horror mystery involving a community sent reeling when all but one child from the same classroom in town mysteriously vanishes on the same night at exactly the same time.
Freakier Friday, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, is a comedy sequel reuniting a mother and daughter who inadvertently switch places once again but this time, a daughter and stepdaughter are now mixed up in the body swap madness.
Sketch, starring Tony Hale and D’Arcy Carden, is a fantasy comedy about a young girl coming to terms with the death of her mother whose sketchbook falls into a strange pond and brings her drawings of strange creatures to life.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup