In the opening shot of the new thriller Watcher, Julia (Maika Monroe) looks out a taxi window with a glimmer of excitement at the Bucharest buildings that surround her new residence. She and her husband Francis (Karl Glusman) have just moved from the US to Romania for work, even though Julia doesn’t know the Romanian language nearly as well as her hubby. She spends her first days there working to remedy the linguistic barrier, listening to foreign language courses while discovering the city on-foot. But bumming around Bucharest gets much more tense by the presence of Daniel (Burn Gorman), an across-the-way neighbor who too frequently looks into the married couple’s apartment window and who Julia suspects may be following her around as well.

Watcher is the first feature from writer/director Chloe Okuno and while it may not be the most auspicious debut, there are some signs of promise in the way she brings the audience into this tale. Visually, she captures rainy Bucharest in its paradoxically opulent griminess as the high-concept story vacillates between stately and seedy. All the angles to suggest a shadowy figure is stalking Julia are there, from the negative space of the most tense frames to the shallow focus on Julia’s worried face. Like Monroe’s 2014 breakthrough It Follows, it’s all about putting us in the mindset that the protagonist could be in danger and under pursuit at any moment. Up until the final 15 minutes, the pace and rhythm is in line with a slow-burn thriller, although it can feel more like it’s spinning its wheels rather than calculatedly creaking them for effect.

Where Watcher flats flat is in the scant screenplay, adapted by Okuno from a script written originally by Zack Ford. There is shockingly little character development amid the limited ensemble; a next-door neighbor character played by Madalina Anea may be the most well-rendered person in the whole film and she’s only really in a few scenes. Okuno does a fine job setting up the scenario of whether or not Julia is actually in danger and considering what she should do about it but the conflicts therein too often become redundant. I understand that Okuno is more concerned with establishing a mood of unease rather than writing scenes of lengthy dialogue but nevertheless, there has to be a compelling narrative first to make the atmospheric scenes resonate.

From a story perspective, Watcher plays like a Eurotrash mash-up of two classics, one from a very similar genre and another from a different genre entirely. Polanski’s horror film Repulsion, which also follows a young woman’s descent into paranoia through her perceived encounters with menacing men, seems to have been a touchstone for Okuno while making this film. While existential dramedy Lost in Translation isn’t scary, I was often reminded of Scarlett Johansson’s Charlotte when watching Monroe’s Julia try to find herself in an intimidating new city. Glusman’s Francis also shares similarities with Giovanni Ribisi’s Translation character, both blasé workaholics whose disinterest in their wive’s satisfaction (and well-being, in Watcher’s case) should land them in hot water more than it actually does.

Glusman hasn’t made much of an impact on me in his filmography thus far and he’s a total bore as a character who needs sharper definition to make the relationship angle of this movie work. It doesn’t help that he and Monroe have little to no chemistry, although it’s possible that was somewhat intentional. Monroe is a talented young actress and this should theoretically be as much a showcase for her abilities as It Follows was 8 years ago but this project just isn’t up to her level. It’s hard to tell what on the page drew her to this role but I hope she’s able to find better scripts in the future, if for no other reason than to firmly retain her scream queen status. Watcher wears the guise of better voyeuristic thrillers but it’s ultimately not much more than window dressing.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Opening only in theaters is Jurassic World Dominion, the conclusion to the Jurassic World trilogy starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, which finds dinosaurs now living alongside humans all over the world as the fight to determine the true apex predator comes to an end.
Streaming on Netflix is Hustle, a sports drama starring Adam Sandler and Queen Latifah about a former basketball scout who tries to revive his career by recruiting a player with a checkered past from overseas to play in the NBA.
Debuting on HBO Max is The Janes, a documentary highlighting a group of activists who built an underground network that provided safe and free abortions prior to the passing of Roe v. Wade.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Just because Hollywood’s propensity for producing legacy sequels seems to currently be flying at an all-time high doesn’t mean the subgenre is limited to this century. Take 1986’s The Color Of Money. Martin Scorsese’s follow-up to 1961’s The Hustler saw veteran Paul Newman handing the reins to hotshot Tom Cruise across the billiards table. 36 years after Top Gun, another Cruise vehicle released 1986, it’s now the hotshot’s turn to pass the torch to another generation once more. While Top Gun: Maverick follows maneuvers popularized by lucrative “legacyquels” like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Creed, it carves out its own airspace with jaw-dropping stunt work and a world-wise story that enriches the characters set up by its predecessor.

Cruise returns as Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, to whom we’re reintroduced as he suits up to push a hypersonic jet further than anyone ever has before. It turns out the test run wasn’t exactly “authorized” by Maverick’s commanding officer and as a result, he’s transferred to the Naval TOPGUN program once again, now as an instructor instead of a student. His mission, should he choose to accept it, is to train a dozen new recruits with precision flying skills that will allow them to covertly take out a developing uranium plant before it becomes operational. Among the new class is Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Maverick’s deceased flying partner “Goose” and Jake “Hangman” Seresin (Glen Powell), a cocksure flyboy whose prickly demeanor is as cold as ice.

Five minutes into Top Gun: Maverick, I was worried we were in danger. The Harold Faltermeyer music score, the intertitle setting up the backstory of the Fighter Weapons School and the shot choices in the opening credits are identical to those from the original Top Gun. But Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski assure us soon after that this is merely a taking off point for a follow-up that actually has its own story to tell and its own unique moments to etch into action movie history. The Darkstar scene, which finds Maverick going Mach 10 in a Lockheed Martin SR-72, is a thrilling sequence that reintroduces the character brilliantly while visually recalling the “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” segment from Cruise favorite 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But Top Gun: Maverick has dramatic moments that may pin you to the back of your seat just as much as the full-throttle setpieces. Ed Harris appears early as the superior responsible for chewing Maverick out after he carries out impressive but insubordinate acts, citing drones as writing on the wall for old-timers like them. “The end is inevitable,” he laments to Maverick, who retorts “maybe so, but not today.” The screenplay, co-written by Cruise’s Mission Impossible wingman Christopher McQuarrie, finds opportunities to flesh out these characters and their motivations amid the technical aircraft jargon and mission detailing. Cruise is also better equipped at volleying his cheeky one-liners and stern exchanges this time around too. Re-watching Top Gun recently, it needs to be noted how far he’s come as an actor since his earlier roles; he always had the star power but now he has the dramatic chops to back it up.

With due respect to the original, the aerial photography and commitment to realism is also on an entirely different level in this sequel. Not only are the actors actually flying those planes but they’re actually helping to run the cameras while in the cockpits too, giving close-up access that takes the intensity into the next stratosphere. Obviously special effects are helping with the illusion that these pilots are truly completing these runs in the air but the execution and editing makes the movie magic pop like never before. If the predecessor does retain a clear advantage, it’s in the soundtrack; the new Lady Gaga song featured throughout the film simply can’t reach the heights of classics like “Danger Zone” or “Take My Breath Away”. Other than that, Top Gun: Maverick is a high-flying success and a crash course on how to do a legacy sequel right.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Watcher, a thriller starring Maika Monroe and Karl Glusman which follows a young couple as they move from America to Bucharest and are seemingly stalked by a sinister neighbor near their new apartment.
Streaming on Hulu is Fire Island, a romantic comedy starring Joel Kim Booster and Bowen Yang centering around two best friends as they embark on a week-long vacation to the titular hot spot off the southern shore of Long Island.
Premiering on Disney+ is Hollywood Stargirl, a follow-up to 2020’s Stargirl starring Grace VanderWaal and Elijah Richardson about a teenage girl and her mother, the latter of whom is hired as the costume designer on a movie, as they relocate to Los Angeles and meet new friends.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

She’s startled by the sound of acoustic guitar strings on the soundtrack. Bathed in orange-tinted light through the curtains of her flat, the bloody-nosed Harper (Jessie Buckley) moves towards the windows as her husband James (Paapa Essiedu) fatally falls in slow motion outside. While the circumstances of his death aren’t entirely clear, what is clear is that Harper needs time away to recover from the loss, so she rents a seemingly lovely house in the English countryside for two weeks. Upon her arrival, she exchanges exceedingly British pleasantries with the homeowner Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear) and checks in via FaceTime with her friend Riley (Gayle Rankin). While enjoying a nature walk one day, Harper gets the feeling that she’s being followed by a mysterious presence and soon learns that all is not right in this quaint village.

Men is the third directorial effort from writer/director Alex Garland, who has gone full horror this time around after flirting with the genre in the mind-bending Annihilation. His latest effort may be the simplest in terms of pure story but also his most provocative in terms of how the film is being marketed and how it tries to make good on those promises. Those triggered by the trailer (which gives away a casting choice I wish I hadn’t known beforehand) may be relieved to know that the mischievous distributor A24 is playing up the gender politics more than the film actually does. Sure, concepts of the patriarchy and toxic masculinity are brought forth in the subtext but like many other horror films before it, Men comes back to the fascinating and unique ways we process grief and trauma.

Another staple of the horror genre is the inclusion of religious allusions and even if you’re not looking too closely for Biblical references, Garland sets up an easy one for us at the outset. When Harper first arrives at the rental home, she observes a large apple tree on the grounds and without thinking, grabs one of the abundant fruits and takes a bite as Geoffrey looks on from the window. “Mustn’t do that,” he jokingly chides minutes later when they meet, claiming the apple is “forbidden fruit” before rushing to say he’s kidding after a quick beat. Outside of the more obvious Genesis nods to the Garden of Eden and the fall of man, there are mythical and literary quotes from Agamemnon odes and Yeats poems as well but when it comes to the larger allegory at play, religion seems to be on Men‘s mind more than anything else.

Visually, Garland and cinematographer Rob Hardy earmark the three chronological acts with their own distinguishable hue. Everything prior to Harper’s stay in the rural village is overlaid with a soft orange, while the the chapters involving the early parts of her sabbatical are punctuated by the lush natural greenery that surrounds her. It isn’t until the trip really starts to unravel that the color red starts to permeate the frame, not unlike Vertigo or Suspiria. Garland lingers on certain shots, like a many-branched tree or a long echoey tunnel, for so long, it becomes difficult not to look for symbolism and a greater meaning in the images. Some movies invite and reward analysis and interpretation over multiple views; this one demands one.

But crucially, the experience of watching Men is as viscerally exciting in the moment as it is intellectually engaging afterwards. Garland doesn’t forget he’s making a horror movie and he knows how to play with our expectations and emotions. Aiding the effort is the brilliantly effective score by Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow, which centers around a four-note melody that Harper chirps down a tunnel and forms a leitmotif that grows uglier as time goes on, like an apple rotting after its skin is exposed. In intensely demanding roles, Buckley and Kinnear offer some of the very best work of their respective careers and contribute perfectly to the film’s persistently unnerving tone. Fearless and fervent, Men is Garland’s most accomplished brain-bender yet.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Opening only in theaters is Top Gun: Maverick, a belated follow-up to the 1986 classic starring Tom Cruise and Jennifer Connelly which follows one of the Navy’s top aviators as he trains a new class of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission.
Also playing exclusively in theaters is The Bob’s Burgers Movie, an animated musical comedy starring H. Jon Benjamin and Dan Mintz involving the beleaguered Belcher family as they try to save their restaurant from closing as a sinkhole forms in front of it.
Streaming on Amazon Prime is Emergency, a satirical thriller starring RJ Cyler and Donald Elise Watkins about a trio of college students who must weigh the pros and cons of calling the police when faced with an unexpected situation en route to a party.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Since his iconic tough guy role in 2008’s Taken, Liam Neeson has been on a mission with his specific set of skills: to star in as many similarly budgeted and crafted action movies as humanly possible. From anonymous thrillers like Unknown to Blacklight from just earlier this year, the almost-70-year-old performer doesn’t seem to turn his nose up at any script, provided his character growls some threatening lines and he gets to punch a few people along the way. His latest endeavor along these lines is Memory, an English-language remake of early-aughts Belgian thriller The Alzheimer Case, itself adapted from a novel of the same name. With an accomplished director like Martin Campbell at the helm, this movie had the potential to be a memorable entry in Neeson’s unofficial “Old Guy With A Gun” franchise but instead, it falls far short of that mark.

Neeson is Alex Lewis, a veteran assassin whose brutal precision is skillfully depicted in the film’s opening minutes when he ambushes a target in front of his hospital bed-ridden mother. The latest task from Alex’s handler calls him to El Paso, where he’s expected to eliminate an underage girl holding information that could be passed to the FBI. In addition to the job conflicting with his principled stand to never kill children, Alex is also struggling to keep his advanced Alzheimer’s diagnosis from interfering with his work. When someone gets to Alex’s mark before he does, FBI agents Vincent (Guy Pearce) and Linda (Taj Atwal) begin to follow the trail of mistakes that the ailing Alex leaves behind, eventually leading to hedge fund CEO Davana Sealman (Monica Bellucci) and a band of child traffickers under her employ.

It may be enough to say that no one seems like they want to be in Memory but more specifically, no one feels like they belong in the world that Memory attempts to create. Everything feels like it doesn’t fit together and naturally, the actors seem uncomfortable as a result. It would be easy to take Neeson’s awkward performance and pin its stilted nature on the condition from which his character suffers but there are more fundamental problems here. It’s not that he can’t be bothered to give a compelling performance in one of these on-brand actioners anymore; it’s that this outing seems like this is his first time appearing in one when the complete opposite is true. Elsewhere, Pearce engages in dialect rodeo with a Texas accent that barely hangs on at times but otherwise wavers violently from line to line.

This sort of cops and robbers — perhaps agents and assassins is a better fit — story isn’t particularly novel anyway but scribe Dario Scardapane peppers in a plethora of character details that add up to nothing. Much of the film boils down to Vincent and Linda meeting with witnesses or suspects but these parlays go round and round with virtually no benefit to the story. I’m all for character refinement but when we’re an hour in and learning about a tertiary character’s former Olympic swimming career as opposed to what Alex is going to do next, something has gone awry. Campbell, also responsible for directing two all-time great James Bond entries, seems to lose interest in Alex’s dementia for most of the runtime, just to exploit it later on for an eye roll-inducing last act reveal.

It would be reasonable to expect that Neeson is about ready to hang up his “action star” hat and that Memory would be his last time fronting this type of action thriller but he’s reportedly in the middle of filming another one right now. He’s obviously a talented performer and even during this gun-heavy period of his career, he’s given terrific performances in films like Ordinary Love and Widows. I can’t say I understand what is driving Neeson to keep doing these films — he even joked about the dubious existence of a second Taken sequel, only to eventually appear in it anyway — but if they allow him to appear in smaller movies without having to sweat a paycheck, then I suppose they may be worth continuing to endure. We can only hope that the next one isn’t as bad as Memory.

Score – 1.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the newest MCU superhero film starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Elizabeth Olsen following the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home as Strange looks to mend the Multiverse with the help of Scarlet Witch and other mystical allies.
Streaming on Netflix is Marmaduke, an animated adaptation of the titular comic strip starring Pete Davidson and J. K. Simmons about a legendary dog trainer who believes he can help Marmaduke become the first Great Dane in history to win the Westminster Champions trophy.
Premiering on HBO Max is Navalny, a documentary that follows the months-long recovery of a Russian opposition leader who survived an assassination attempt by poisoning with a lethal nerve agent in August 2020.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Three films into his career, writer/director Robert Eggers has carved out a niche for himself with period pieces that stick closely to the language used during their respective eras. Much of the script for his debut The Witch was translated directly from 17th century Puritan texts, while the dialogue from The Lighthouse leans heavily into the dialects of late 19th century sailors. His latest effort, The Northman, is another piece of historical fiction — this time in 9th century Iceland — but everything just feels a bit too hollow in this outing. The music of the characters’ words somehow doesn’t ring as true this time and it doesn’t help that this is the most straightforward narrative that Eggers has told thus far. There are wrinkles of weirdness and wonder left in this tale but like the film’s hulking protagonist, it prefers bold print over footnotes and action over contemplation.

We meet the Viking warrior Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) as a young boy, excited to greet his father King Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke) on the way home from his most recent pillaging. It turns out the most treacherous battle awaits him in his kingdom, where Aurvandill’s brother Fjölnir (Claes Bang) murders him in front of Amleth and takes the throne for himself. The young prince narrowly escapes Fjölnir’s forces, is taken in by a separate band of Vikings and vows vengeance on Fjölnir, while also swearing to rescue his mother Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman) as well. Factoring into his conquest for revenge is Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy), a slave who comes to have a growing affection for the fearless Amleth and whose knowledge and practice of dark magic proves useful to their shared goal of overthrowing Fjölnir.

The ubiquity of the Scandinavian legend of Amleth is due in no small part to the direct influence it had on William Shakespeare while writing Hamlet, a tale that has itself been adapted countless times in various mediums. Like just about any other movie, The Northman is less about the “what” and more about the “how”; it’s less important what it’s about than how it’s about it. This is where the film is chiefly a disappointment: its story doesn’t do quite enough to distinguish itself from myriad other fictional accounts of a son swearing revenge of his murderous uncle. Too much of the film is blunt in its execution of its core mission; Amleth literally repeats it in voiceover over and over like a mantra. There are details in the journey that evoke the time period in interesting ways but they don’t often add much to the way that we’re supposed to feel about these characters.

Eggers is working with a budget that’s roughly 8 times the size of each of his two previous features and he certainly makes good use of the extra cash when it comes to presentation and overall cinematic experience. A bravura attack sequence set in the land of the Rus feels like a follow-up to the opening salvo Iñárritu put together for The Revenant. It begins with Amleth grabbing a thrown spear mid-air and chucking it back at the opposing forces and doesn’t end until his battle axe has spilled more than its fair share of blood. Willem Dafoe makes the most of his limited screen time as an overseer of a spiritual ceremony, talking directly to camera while ominously describing fates being sealed and tears of sadness that can no longer be shed. The reclusive Icelandic artist Björk also pops up as a sorceress with foreboding news and an outfit that is exactly as ornate as one would expect from the fashion iconoclast.

It’s window dressing and exquisitely-rendered window dressing but the more I sat with The Northman, the more it felt like a distraction rather than a supplement to the storyline. The Witch and The Lighthouse simply carried much more weight subtextually and psychologically than this film and put bluntly (as Amleth may respect), there just doesn’t seem to be enough brains to this story. There is a scene between the grown-up Amleth and Gudrún that challenges our conception of what their relationship may be but there are too few moments of character insight like this in the rest of the movie. From a narrative perspective, I didn’t feel challenged or moved very often but perhaps more importantly, I wasn’t in suspense as I watched this revenge tale play out. Perhaps it’s my fault for expecting something different from Eggers based on his previous work but The Northman is a let-down nevertheless.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Memory, an action thriller starring Liam Neeson and Guy Pearce about an assassin-for-hire who finds he’s become a target after he refuses to complete a job for a dangerous criminal organization.
Streaming on HBO Max is The Survivor, a historical drama starring Ben Foster and Vicky Krieps that tells the story of a real-life survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp who boxed fellow inmates to survive.
Available to rent on demand is Hatching, a Finnish horror movie starring Jani Volanen and Reino Nordin involving a young gymnast who discovers a strange egg and hides it from her family until something wholly unexpected emerges.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup