The powerful new horror movie Master opens with a pair of not-so warm welcomes. During orientation day at the prestigious Ancaster College, the bright Jasmine (Zoe Renee) is paired with the blasé Amelia (Talia Ryder) as roommates in a purportedly haunted dorm room. Across campus, professor and recently-appointed master of the storied Belleville House Gail (Regina Hall) struggles to open the front door to her new quarters. More generally, the specter of witchcraft-accused Margaret Millett from centuries ago looms over the school as students make up scary stories surrounding her myth. Amidst a student body and faculty with very few women of color, both Jasmine and Gail experience both subtle and overt forms of racism while the ghosts of Ancaster’s past grow into something even more tangibly terrifying.

Marrying the chilly campus creeps of The Blackcoat’s Daughter with the socially-conscious themes of Candyman, Master is utterly engrossing as goosebump-inducing horror and salient social commentary. In her first feature, writer/director Mariama Diallo captures the desperate sense of isolation felt by women who have a deep sense of unbelonging in their present setting. Amelia and other dormmates sardonically guess that Jasmine is either Beyoncé or Lizzo, while Gail is “complimented” by a fellow tenured professor through a comparison to Barack Obama. But these aren’t simply uncouth remarks by white folks who aren’t comfortable around their black counterparts. They’re products of a campus culture that has marginalized women and minorities decade after decade, where only the strongest survive.

Unfolding across six chapters, Master tragically details the hopelessness felt by its female characters as they fight back against systemic racism and oppression organized by the founders of the school centuries ago. The solution would seem to lie in communal unity and while Jasmine and Gail attempt to support one another in a symbiotic student-teacher relationship, Diallo introduces English professor Liv (Amber Gray) to show where things can get complicated. Straight-A student Jasmine is shocked when her first writing prompt from Liv’s class is met with a dreaded F grade, one that she plans to dispute with the university. Knowing such a move would derail Liv’s upcoming bid for tenure, Gail presses Jasmine to reconsider such a plan of action. Diallo plants these seeds of mistrust and division and expertly depicts how the tangled trees choke the potential for progress.

The messaging may come across as heavy-handed by those who are simply looking for a spooky movie to get under one’s skin but Master delivers on the horror front with some exceedingly well-edited sequences. It’s never a good sign for the main character of this sort of film to admit that they’re a sleepwalker but that’s exactly what Jasmine does in an early scene during a game of Never Have I Ever. Such a confession naturally yields some chilling nightmare sequences that incorporate sleep paralysis, a noose-carrying hooded figure and larger-than-life shadows that linger just a bit too long. Gail also contends with personifications of the rot within the Ancaster history that force her out of her new home to make way for pest control fumigation.

Master is often a very somber effort but there are a few satirical jabs in the vein of Dear White People that add a bit of levity while staying on point. The most notable of these is a fake ad for Ancaster, where Gail and Liv preach the ideals towards diversity for which the university strives, while the dean proclaims “the one thing that is not Ancaster is discrimination!” Such savvy comedic moments made Get Out a touchstone of black horror several years ago and could have potentially allowed this film to reach a wider audience but Diallo is intentional about her vision. This is a fittingly serious film about serious social subjects that require their time in the cultural conversation. It’s not always an easy watch but Master represents both the powerful storytelling potential of horror and the emergence of an exciting new voice within the genre.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is The Lost City, an adventure comedy starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum about a romance novelist on a book tour with her cover model as they get swept up in a kidnapping attempt that lands them both in a cutthroat jungle adventure.
Also playing exclusively in theaters is Infinite Storm, a survival thriller starring Naomi Watts and Billy Howle about a climber who encounters a stranded stranger during a blizzard as they journey to make it down the mountain before nightfall.
Screening at Cinema Center this Friday and Saturday is Mogul Mowgli, a music drama starring Riz Ahmed and Aiysha Hart about a British-Pakistani rapper who is diagnosed with an autoimmune disease before his first world tour.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

In addition to selling millions of records and packing stadiums around the world during their 25+ year career as a band, Foo Fighters has also demonstrated a propensity towards silly music videos. The visual companion pieces to songs like “Everlong”, “Learn To Fly” and “Long Road To Ruin” are spearheaded by the goofy charisma of frontman Dave Grohl, who has no compunction about sporting a wig or fake mustache for yuks. Conjured forth from those comedic impulses comes Studio 666, a horror comedy that could have worked as a 5-minute music video but absolutely flounders as a 105-minute feature. Shot partially during lockdown in the same mansion where the band recorded their tenth album Medicine at Midnight, it’s a lazy and pointless vanity project that inexplicably crept onto 2000 screens nationwide this past weekend.

The story features fictionalized versions of the Foos, pressured by their manager Jeremy Shill (Jeff Garlin) at the outset to complete new music for their record company. Looking for inspiration, they take Shill’s advice and move into an Encino house where fictional band Dream Widow almost finished an album of their own before the project ended abruptly by grisly means. After regurgitating riffs from tunes that he’d already written before, Grohl accepts that he’s going through a bout of songwriter’s block before happening upon the reels from Dream Widow’s partial recordings in the basement. Listening to the tracks possesses Grohl, not only figuratively in terms of musical inspiration but also literally, as the music unlocks unholy spirits that turn the frontman demonic.

Lifting visually from horror classics like The Exorcist and The Omen and narratively from scores of others, Studio 666 simply doesn’t have enough of its own ideas to justify its existence. Grohl is credited with coming up with the story, obviously conceived during his time recording the real-life album, but the screenplay by Jeff Buhler and Rebecca Hughes is paper-thin and painfully puerile. When the band members aren’t exchanging naughty four-letter words with one another, they’re stuck with witless dialogue about subpar grilling technique or aversions to meditation. Comedians like Whitney Cummings and Will Forte, the latter as a delivery guy who professes Foo Fighters are his “2nd favorite band after Coldplay”, pop up to punch things up but their effort is sadly in vain.

In the aforementioned music videos and numerous TV appearances throughout the years, Grohl has exhibited an endearing charm that has served him even outside the context of Foo Fighters fans. However, the rest of the band clearly doesn’t share his affinity for a life in front of the camera. Of course the other five members are great musicians but their unnatural and unconvincing acting feels like the product of Grohl pushing these guys past their natural abilities. Drummer Taylor Hawkins, who reportedly didn’t bother to learn any of the lines from the script, ironically gives the funniest performance of the lot simply by replaying the same note of weirded-outness at the occult occurrences. The other four Fighters are relegated to reaction shots that don’t produce any laughs nor add to the impact of the would-be scares.

The one aspect that the production team seemed to put any effort behind is in the gory practical effects during the inevitable kill scenes, which are admirable in their craft if not completely novel in their execution. Director B.J. McDonnell, who headed up the third entry in the Hatchet slasher series, leans into his skill set and delivers a few sequences that pay off with over-the-top slayings that make fine use of unique props and settings. An icon of the horror genre also shows up in an all-too-brief cameo as a sound engineer, while a legend of soul music says “hello” in another scene without adding much of an impact. Studio 666 obviously doesn’t diminish the Foo Fighters’ music legacy but it should put a swift demise to any future cinematic aspirations for the group.

Score – 1.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is The Batman, the latest reincarnation of the Caped Crusader starring Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz about Batman’s second year of fighting crime as he teams up with Catwoman to take on The Riddler and The Penguin.
Streaming on Amazon Prime is Lucy and Desi, a documentary from director Amy Poehler covering the rise of comedian icon Lucille Ball, her relationship with Desi Arnaz, and how their groundbreaking sitcom I Love Lucy forever changed Hollywood.
Premiering on Hulu is Fresh, a comedy thriller starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan about a young woman who navigates the hurdles of modern dating and discovers that her new boyfriend may have sinister proclivities for sustenance.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg seek box office treasure with Uncharted, an adaptation of the popular Playstation video game series in another synergistic bit of cross-platforming from the folks at Sony. Originally slated for a 2020 release, production was halted early and often due to covid for this potential franchise starter and that’s after the years of revolving directors and shuffled-around cast. Decisions like settling on Zombieland‘s Ruben Fleischer as the director and casting Wahlberg in the mentor role instead of as the main hero feel more perfunctory than purposeful. With these problems at the forefront, it’s admirable that the result of these struggles is formally sound and occasionally thrilling, if unremarkable on the whole.

After being separated from his adventure-loving brother as a teenager, young hotshot Nathan Drake (Holland) harbors an obsession for long-lost treasure while tending bar in New York. As fate should have it, treasure hunter Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Wahlberg) engages Drake at his workplace and tells tale of a Magellan-era fortune lost to time that’s just waiting to be rediscovered. The pair jet set to an art auction in Barcelona, where they plan to steal a cross-shaped key to kick off their journey but are met by fellow gold seeker Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas) and his ruthless accomplice Jo (Tati Gabrielle). Another key turns up in the hands of Chloe Frazer (Sophia Ali), a fellow adventurer who reluctantly joins Drake and Sully in their conquest to find Magellan’s fortune before Moncada and his deadly crew get the chance.

To cut to the chase, Uncharted is two terrific action setpieces in search of a complete movie. The first such sequence is the lynchpin of the film’s advertising, which features Drake bouncing from one supply crate to another as they plummet through the sky. Add some henchmen, a tumbling Mercedes and some ripped-from-the-video-game physics and you have a fun, gravity-defying crescendo so nice, they play it twice. The second takes place in the third act and without giving too much away, it involves a pair of helicopters making some impressive aerial maneuvers while lifting precious cargo below. Apropos of the action-adventure genus, there are plenty of secret passages and mechanical doors that lead up to (“get in the way of” may be more apt) these airborne acrobatics.

As with genre classics like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Pirates of the Caribbean, whose protagonists are name-dropped during scenes that borrow heavily from the respective films, characters remain key for staying power. Sadly, Uncharted‘s trio of screenwriters don’t provide enough on the page for the actors to create memorable ones. Most of Drake and Sully’s repartee revolves around disparities in their age (Sully leaves too many apps open on his phone!) or in their masculinity (Drake orders girly drinks!) but the characterization remains thin. Gabrielle and Ali are able to add a bit more nuance to their roles, by virtue of not being saddled with clunky comedic dialogue, but their performances don’t exactly lift the material much either.

Fresh off the blockbuster that recently overtook Avatar‘s #3 spot on the list of all-time domestic earners, Holland does what he can to distance himself from the version of Peter Parker with which he’s most commonly associated. As someone who’s never played the game upon which this movie is based, I can’t say how his Drake compares to the digital counterpart but Holland brings a grifter’s charm that won me over. He’s certainly better off here than he is than in disasters like Chaos Walking and Cherry. Wahlberg may have been a better fit for Drake when he was originally tapped for the role 10 years ago but recasting him as the sidekick is about as awkward in execution as one may expect. Uncharted doesn’t go as off the map as it could’ve but it doesn’t chart enough of an original course to make it worth the journey.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Studio 666, a horror comedy starring Foo Fighters members Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins which finds the frontman tangling with supernatural forces while the band records their tenth studio album in a mansion.
Premiering on Hulu is No Exit, a snowbound thriller starring Havana Rose Liu and Dennis Haysbert about a college student stranded at an isolated highway rest stop who discovers a kidnapped child hidden in a car belonging to one of the people inside.
Streaming on Netflix is A Madea Homecoming, a family comedy starring Tyler Perry and Cassi Davis-Patton that reconvenes the feisty matriarch with her family for a celebratory dinner for her great-grandson’s graduation.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

With virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri politely invading our pockets and homes at an alarming rate, a movie that taps into their ubiquity for paranoia was about as inevitable as the fact that one of their corresponding devices is probably listening in on you right now. Enter Steven Soderbergh’s Kimi: a smart and enthralling thrill ride that takes its title from the chirpy AI built into smart speakers that pop up everywhere in this film’s version of pandemic-era Seattle. Like last year’s The Mitchells vs. the Machines, it branches off from a knee-jerk “technology bad” tack and creates a conversation between analog and digital that sees the merits of both. The fact that Kimi is optimized from the input of human programmers who fix bugs stemming from user-device miscommunication is just one example of this film’s vision of how man and machine can co-exist.

One such data analyst is Angela (Zoë Kravitz), an agoraphobic voice stream interpreter who listens to recorded interactions between people and their Kimi-equipped devices and codes corrections from the “comfort” of her apartment. She becomes alarmed listening to an audio clip plagued by loud industrial music, not because the song itself is jarring but due to the screams of a woman that she faintly hears over it. Naturally, there’s protocol for this but given that Amygdala (the corporation behind Kimi) is days away from an IPO, Angela gets the runaround from her boss (Andy Daly) and boss’ boss (Rita Wilson) in trying to do the right thing. Circumstances dictate that she face her biggest fear of leaving her loft to get to the bottom of that chilling recording that she overhears.

As tech-focused as it is, the basis of Kimi‘s tense conceit stems from 1970s thrillers like The Conversation and Three Days of the Condor; Soderbergh even sneaks in an homage to Marathon Man for good measure. Computers may have taken up the space of entire rooms back then but the notion that “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you” is just as relevant here as it was in those movies. Kravitz does an excellent job absorbing this anxiety along with her fears of the outside world and creates a protagonist that is easy to root for even in her most unpredictable moments. Most of this movie’s first half, she’s interacting with actors through Skype and FaceTime because of her character’s condition but bridges the gap with a palpable physicality around her conspicuously large apartment.

In trying to get to the truth, it’s all about having the right tool for the job. When Angela first hears the suspicious stream, she extracts the audio file and puts it through noise reduction software. It helps but doesn’t get it all the way there. That’s when she runs to the closet to find an analog chassis of equalizers that notch out the necessary frequencies and reveal the disturbing detail of the recording. This push-pull of analog and digital working in tandem is at the heart of what makes Kimi such a fun ride but also a subtle commentary on how much power technology can give and take. The system that allows a potential violent assault to be uncovered is the same system that prohibits a keycard from opening the right door at the right time during a foot chase.

As cerebral as all of this may sound, the biggest joys of Kimi are ephemeral, courtesy of a top-notch director who knows how to pack a lot into 90 minutes. With over 30 feature films to his name, Soderbergh is simply one of the most impressive filmmakers around, also handling editing and cinematography here under pseudonyms as he’s done in past projects. He knows just how much information to give us in the moment so that we can recall prior details just in time for a rich payoff. Not all of his movies are home runs but when Soderbergh connects, there’s nothing sweeter than the sound of that bat cracking. Kimi is a first-rate thriller that people everywhere should be shouting at their devices to play right away.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing exclusively in theaters is Uncharted, an video game-adapted action-adventure starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg about a pair of rebellious treasure hunters out to recover a lost fortune amassed by Ferdinand Magellan.
Also playing only in theaters is Dog, a road trip comedy starring Channing Tatum and Jane Adams about a U.S. Army Ranger tasked with bringing a military working dog to attend her handler’s funeral.
Streaming on Netflix is Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a reboot of the iconic 1974 horror film starring Sarah Yarkin and Elsie Fisher which finds Leatherface returning to terrorize a group of idealistic young friends who accidentally disrupt his carefully shielded world in a remote Texas town.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

6 months after premiering the outstanding coming-of-age tale CODA, Apple TV+ adds another title to the genre with The Sky Is Everywhere, adapted from Jandy Nelson’s 2010 young adult novel. Like CODA, this latest offering shares that film’s passion for music and also features a breakthrough performance from a young actress but doesn’t have nearly the same level of impact as a whole. This is a film that telegraphs its ending quite clearly about 15 minutes into its runtime, which isn’t unremarkable for movies about young romance but disappointing given that the director is Josephine Decker. Her 2018 breakout Madeline’s Madeline was anything but predictable, while 2020’s Shirley found new notes to play within the crowded biopic genre. Some flights of fancy aside, Decker seems content to tell a conventional story through relatively conventional means.

An opening voiceover from bright high schooler Lennie Walker (Grace Kaufman) details an inseparable relationship with her sister Bailey (Havana Rose Liu), who meets a very untimely end due to an undiagnosed heart arrhythmia. Lennie’s support system is hindered by the absence of her mother and father but bolstered instead by her grandmother Gram (Cherry Jones) and uncle Big (Jason Segel), with both of whom she lives. The presence of Bailey’s boyfriend Toby (Pico Alexander) around the house complicates things, as Lennie has guiltily held affections for him even when Bailey was still alive. At school, charismatic new kid Joe (Jacques Colimon) strikes up a music-centric relationship with Lennie and unknowingly enters a love triangle with Toby.

Most of watching The Sky Is Everywhere is in waiting for it to differentiate itself from the pack of recent John Green-inspired YA adaptations and the film does thankfully have some inspired scenes where Decker’s influence shines through. Almost all of these moments involve music in one way or another, as when Joe is introduced with papier-mâché music notes emanating from the bell of his trumpet and filling the halls with swooning girls. While listening to Bach’s “Air In G” over shared earbuds, Lennie and Joe lay next to each other in the grass as rose-covered interpretive dancers envelop them to symbolize the symbiosis of nature and music. These bits of heightened reality aren’t quite as intentionally diverting as those found in Madeline’s Madeline but rather enhance the narrative in ways that are thematically relevant and stylistically playful.

But all of these flourishes — even the bad ones, like the recurrence of cartoony “boing” sound cue during lines accompanied by sexual innuendo — feel like a cover-up for a paper-thin script, also penned by Nelson. It’s a screenplay that contrives obstacles for Lennie to traverse before arriving at a conclusion that will be easy for anyone who has seen a movie before to foresee. The love triangle between the leads is obviously the movie’s focus but the limited screen time given to Segel and Jones doesn’t yield the emotional punctuations you’d want from actors of that caliber. The platitudes about coping with grief ring especially hollow given how many films these days are about teenagers overcoming trauma. The Fallout, a high school drama that debuted on HBO Max just a couple weeks ago, tackles similar themes but with dialogue that feels much more authentic to the way that teens actually speak.

While Grace Kaufman’s performance here isn’t quite the revelation that Emilia Jones’ was in CODA, she nevertheless announces herself as a bright young talent to watch in the coming years. Jacques Colimon is another newcomer who shines in a role defined by a modest musical magnetism; if “humble swagger” is a thing, this character has it. The two of them give Lennie and Joe such palpable chemistry that Toby largely comes across as a squeaky third wheel with whom Lennie inexplicably keeps torturing herself instead of just letting go. Despite its continuation of Decker’s arts-and-crafts store aesthetic, The Sky Is Everywhere is a floral-framed painting that we’ve seen a hundred times before.

Score – 2.5/5

More movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters and streaming on Peacock is Marry Me, a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson about a pop superstar who marries a stranger in the crowd of one of her shows after discovering her partner has been unfaithful.
Coming only to theaters is Death on the Nile, a whodunnit starring Kenneth Branagh and Gal Gadot continuing the adventures of detective Hercule Poirot as he investigates the murder of a young heiress on a steamboat with dozens of suspects aboard.
Screening at Cinema Center on February 11th and 12th is The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, a documentary scrutinizing the mysterious 1992 death of the titular black gay rights activist and Stonewall veteran through interviews with Johnson’s family, friends and fellow activists.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Though the 19th century play Cyrano de Bergerac has been adapted countless times for the screen and stage since its premiere, the new prestige drama Cyrano is based most specifically on a 2018 stage musical of the same name. Conceived by theater director Erica Schmidt, presumably with her real-life husband Peter Dinklage in mind, the musical differs from the source material most notably by trading Cyrano’s trademark facial disfigurement with dwarfism as the protagonist’s primary obstacle. Despite this, the new adaptation remains true to the setting, story and spirit to the original work but mangles so many aspects of the execution that it hardly seems to matter. It’s not as much of an unmitigated disaster as Dear Evan Hansen but it’s not as far off as one may imagine.

Dinklage stars in the title role as a member of the French army in the mid-17th century who’s equal halves sharp-tongued wordsmith and sharp-tipped swordsmith. We meet Cyrano as he verbally spars with a gussied-up actor mid-performance and then physically spars with an upset audience member on-stage. Looking on from the balcony is Roxanne (Haley Bennett), a longtime friend of Cyrano for whom he has secretly carried a torch as long as they’ve been acquainted. She confides in him a love at first sight with Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a newcomer to the military in Cyrano’s regiment and when Cyrano brings Roxanne up to Christian, he confesses a requisite affection. Sadly, Christian’s good looks don’t translate to sharp wits, leading Cyrano to offer his verbosity as he pens love letters to Roxanne under Christian’s name.

The biggest tragedy of Cyrano is that the music and lyrics come courtesy of members from the excellent rock band The National, who have made some of my favorite albums of the past 15 years. Guitarist brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner composed the music while lead singer Matt Berninger penned the lyrics along with his wife Carin Besser. The Dessners are known for their technically intricate and sonically sophisticated guitar work with The National but their range in these songs is frustratingly limited. Too many of these numbers sound nearly identical to one another, while the words don’t reveal the characters’ motivations as much as they simply underline plot points that are already obvious. Dinklage mournfully belts out Roxanne’s name so often, I half-expected Sting to come in beckoning her not to “put on the red light.”

It could be that musical range is intentionally myopic to cover for the undeveloped vocal talents of Dinklage and Bennett, who reprise their roles from the stage musical. Neither are necessarily poor singers but they do rely on the kind of digital processing that has become alarmingly common in movie musicals over the past 10 years. In this recontextualized role, Dinklage does a fine job channeling Cyrano’s social shortcomings into poignant pathos but Bennett falls totally flat in trying to make Roxanne an empathetic character. After her first meeting face-to-face with Christian, she would understandably be confused in trying to reconcile his simple disposition with his poetic prose. Instead of singing a song about that, she simply bellows “I want more” repeatedly in regards to a potential suitor, making her seem more of an entitled brat than an unaware member of a bizarre love triangle.

Making Cyrano’s short stature a stumbling block for a potential partnership with Roxanne is a wise refresh of the original tale, given Dinklage’s affinity for the role, but there is one change that wasn’t quite as well thought-through. While I appreciate the colorblind casting of Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Christian, it’s not an especially great look for him to be cast as a slow-witted black man who seeks the aid of a white savior for guidance in his love letters. The staging of one major scene, in particular, robs Christian of his agency in ways that would seem hoary and tacky even when race isn’t factored in but even more cringe-inducing when it is. Cyrano may have worked better in the more intimate setting of musical theater but as a film, it comes up short of the mark.

Score – 1.5/5

More new movies to watch this weekend:
Streaming on Disney+ is The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, an animated spin-off starring Simon Pegg and Vincent Tong about a pair of possum brothers who team up with a weasel to save the Lost World from dinosaur domination.
Premiering on HBO Max is The Fallout, a teen drama starring Jenna Ortega and Maddie Ziegler about a high schooler who navigates the emotional fallout she experiences with friends and family in the wake of a school tragedy.
Screening at Cinema Center January 28th and 29th is Into The Storm, a documentary filmed over 5 years that follows the unlikely dream of a young indigenous surfer from one of the toughest barrios in Latin America as he struggles to escape the struggles of his background and become a professional surfer.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup