Category Archives: Review

Review

Moana 2

Moana 2

Gladiator II

Gladiator II

A Real Pain

A Real Pain

Heretic

Heretic

Here

Here

Conclave

Conclave

Smile 2

Smile 2

Woman Of The Hour

Woman Of The Hour

Joker: Folie à Deux

Joker: Folie à Deux

My Old Ass

My Old Ass

The Substance

The Substance

Transformers One

Transformers One

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

The Deliverance

The Deliverance

Sing Sing

Sing Sing

Alien: Romulus

Alien: Romulus

Didi

Dìdi

Trap

Trap

Deadpool & Wolverine

Deadpool & Wolverine

Twisters

Twisters

Longlegs

Longlegs

Fly Me To The Moon

Fly Me To The Moon

The Bikeriders

The Bikeriders

Inside Out 2

Inside Out 2

The Watchers

The Watchers

In A Violent Nature

In A Violent Nature

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

I Saw The TV Glow

The Fall Guy

The Fall Guy

Challengers

Challengers

Abigail

Abigail

Civil War

Civil War

Monkey Man

Monkey Man

GodzillaxKong

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Immaculate

Immaculate

Love Lies Bleeding

Love Lies Bleeding

Imaginary

Imaginary

Dune: Part Two

Dune: Part Two

Drive Away Dolls

Drive-Away Dolls

Madame Web

Madame Web

Lisa Frankenstein

Lisa Frankenstein

Argylle

Argylle

Orion And The Dark

Orion And The Dark

I.S.S.

I.S.S.

Mean Girls

Mean Girls

The Beekeeper

The Beekeeper

Poor Things

Poor Things

Eileen

Eileen

Dream Scenario

Dream Scenario

Saltburn

Saltburn

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

Next Goal Wins

Next Goal Wins

The Holdovers

The Holdovers

Five Nights At Freddy's

Five Nights At Freddy’s

Killers of the Flower Moon

Killers Of The Flower Moon

The Royal Hotel

The Royal Hotel

The Exorcist: Believer

The Exorcist: Believer

Fair Play

Fair Play

Flora And Son

Flora And Son

Dumb Money

Dumb Money

Bottoms

Bottoms

The Equalizer 3

The Equalizer 3

Gran Turismo

Gran Turismo

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter

Theater Camp

Theater Camp

Talk To Me

Talk To Me

Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

Insidious: The Red Door

Insidious: The Red Door

Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny

Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny

Asteroid City

Asteroid City

No Hard Feelings

No Hard Feelings

The Flash

Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse

The Little Mermaid

Fast X

Fast X

Hypnotic

Hypnotic

BlackBerry

BlackBerry

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Beau Is Afraid

Beau Is Afraid

Renfield

Renfield

The Super Mario Bros. Movie

Air

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Shazam! Fury Of The Gods

Shazam! Fury Of The Gods

Boston Strangler

Boston Strangler

Creed III

Creed III

Emily

Emily

Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania

Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania

Sharper

Sharper

Knock At The Cabin

Knock At The Cabin

Infinity Pool

Infinity Pool

Missing

Missing

When You Finish Saving The World

When You Finish Saving The World

M3GAN

M3GAN

Glass Onion

Glass Onion

Bardo

Bardo, False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths

Pinocchio

Pinocchio

The Fabelmans

The Fabelmans

The Menu

The Menu

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Tár

Tár

Black Adam

Black Adam

Halloween Ends

Halloween Ends

Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Smile

Smile

Don't Worry Darling

Don’t Worry Darling

Pearl

Pearl

Emily The Criminal

Emily The Criminal

Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul.

Breaking

Breaking

Orphan: FirstKill

Orphan: First Kill

Bodies Bodies Bodies

Bodies Bodies Bodies

Official Competition

Official Competition

Marcel The Shell With Shoes On

Marcel The Shell With Shoes On

Nope

Nope

Where The Crawdads Sing

Where The Crawdads Sing

Thor: Love and Thunder

Thor: Love and Thunder

The Black Phone

Elvis

Elvis

Lightyear

Cha Cha Real Smooth

Watcher

Top Gun: Maverick

Men

Firestarter

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness

Memory

The Northman

The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent

Ambulance

Morbius

Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood

Master

Deep Water

The Batman

Studio 666

Uncharted

Kimi

The Sky Is Everywhere

Parallel Mothers

Cyrano

A Hero

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Licorice Pizza

West Side Story

Being The Ricardos

House Of Gucci

Belfast

Red Notice

Finch

Last Night In Soho

Dune

Halloween Kills

No Time To Die

The Guilty

Dear Evan Hansen

The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Malignant

Kate

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

The Night House

Annette

CODA

The Green Knight

Old

Space Jam: A New Legacy

Pig

Black Widow

Werewolves Within

False Positive

Luca

Undine

A Quiet Place Part II

Cruella

Those Who Wish Me Dead

The Mitchells vs. the Machines

Without Remorse

Mortal Kombat

Stowaway

Voyagers

Godzilla vs. Kong

Nobody

The Father

Zack Snyder’s Justice League

Cherry

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run

Minari

Nomadland

Little Fish

Malcolm & Marie

Palmer

The White Tiger

One Night In Miami

Wonder Woman 1984

Soul

Wolfwalkers

Mank

Run

The Nest

A Rainy Day in New York

Possessor

Bad Hair

On The Rocks

The Trial Of The Chicago 7

Dick Johnson Is Dead

The Devil All The Time

Antebellum

Mulan

Tenet

I’m Thinking Of Ending Things

Unhinged

Project Power

Boys State

An American Pickle

The Rental

First Cow

Greyhound

Palm Springs

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

Irresistible

Da 5 Bloods

The King of Staten Island

Shirley

The Way Back

The Invisible Man

The Hunt

Emma

Onward

The Call of the Wild

The Lodge

Birds of Prey

Gretel & Hansel

The Turning

Dolittle

Just Mercy

1917

Little Women

Uncut Gems

Richard Jewell

Frozen II

Knives Out

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

The Lighthouse

Doctor Sleep

Countdown

Zombieland: Double Tap

Gemini Man

Joker

Hustlers

Ad Astra

The Peanut Butter Falcon

It Chapter Two

Luce

Ready Or Not

Where’d You Go, Bernadette

Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

The Farewell

Once Upon a Time In Hollywood

The Lion King

Midsommar

Spider-Man: Far From Home

Yesterday

Toy Story 4

The Souvenir

Dark Phoenix

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Aladdin

Booksmart

Pokémon Detective Pikachu

High Life

Avengers: Endgame

Missing Link

Pet Sematary

Gloria Bell

Shazam!

Us

Apollo 11

Captain Marvel

Greta

At Eternity’s Gate

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

Palace

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

Serenity

Glass

If Beale Street Could Talk

Vice

The Favourite

Mary Poppins Returns

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

A Star Is Born

Creed II

Ralph Breaks the Internet

Widows

The Grinch

Bohemian Rhapsody

The Sisters Brothers

Halloween

First Man

Venom

Night School

A Simple Favor

The Predator

The Nun

Searching

The Happytime Murders

BlacKkKlansman

Eighth Grade

Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Blade Runner 2049 ****|****

Battle of the Sexes **½|****

Columbus ***|****

Mother! ***½|****

It ***|****

Good Time ***|****

Death Note **|****

Logan Lucky ****|****

The Glass Castle *½|****

Detroit ***|****

A Ghost Story **|****

Dunkirk **½|****

The Big Sick ****|****

Spider-Man: Homecoming ***½|****

Baby Driver ***|****

Menashe ***½|****

The Mummy *|****

It Comes At Night ***|****

Wonder Woman **½|****

War Machine *½|****

Alien: Covenant **|****

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ***½|****

Their Finest ***½|****

The Circle **|****

Free Fire ***½|****

Personal Shopper **½|****

Win It All ***|****

The Discovery **½|****

Life **|****

Beauty and the Beast *½|****

Kong: Skull Island **½|****

Logan ***|****

Get Out ****|****

John Wick: Chapter 2 ***|****

The Lego Batman Movie ***½|****

The Handmaiden ***½|****

Silence **½|****

Elle **|****

La La Land ****|****

Fences ***|****

Manchester by the Sea ***½|****

Rogue One ***|****

Nocturnal Animals **½|****

Moana ***½|****

Moonlight ****|****

Arrival ***½|****

Doctor Strange **|****

Ouija: Origin of Evil **½|****

The Accountant ***|****

The Girl on the Train **|****

The Magnificent Seven ***|****

Sing Street ***½|****

Green Room **½|****

Everybody Wants Some!! ***|****

Eye in the Sky ***|****

Midnight Special ****|****

Knight of Cups **|****

Snowden **|****

Sully ***|****

Hell or High Water ****|****

Don’t Breathe **½|****

Kubo and the Two Strings ***½|****

Sausage Party ***|****

Suicide Squad ***|****

Jason Bourne **|****

Star Trek Beyond **½|****

Ghostbusters **|****

De Palma **½|****

The Secret Life of Pets ***|****

Weiner ****|****

Finding Dory **½|****

Hunt for the Wilderpeople ***½|****

Love & Friendship ***½|****

The Lobster ****|****

X-Men: Apocalypse **|****

High-Rise *½|****

The Nice Guys ***|****

Born To Be Blue ***|****

Captain America: Civil War ***½|****

Keanu **½|****

Krisha ****|****

The Jungle Book **½|****

Only Yesterday ***½|****

Samurai Cop ****|****

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice *½|****

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot ***|****

10 Cloverfield Lane **|****

Zootopia ***|****

Gods of Egypt *|****

The Witch ***|****

Deadpool ***½|****

Hail, Caesar! **½|****

Anomalisa ****|****

Brooklyn **½|****

The Revenant ***½|****

The Hateful Eight **|****

Spotlight ***|****

The Big Short **|****

Star Wars: The Force Awakens ***½|****

Room ****|****

Creed ***|****

Spectre **|****

Goodnight Mommy ****|****

Sicario ***½|****

The Martian ***½|****

The Walk ***|****

The End of the Tour ***|****

The Tribe **|****

The Gift **½|****

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation ****|****

Amy ***½|****

Ant-Man/Trainwreck

Minions **|****

Terminator Genisys *½|****

Love & Mercy ***½|****

Inside Out ****|****

Jurassic World ***|****

Entourage/Spy/Insidious: Chapter 3

Tomorrowland ***|****

Mad Max: Fury Road **½|****

Ex Machina ***|****

Avengers: Age of Ultron ***|****

While We’re Young ****|****

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter **½|****

It Follows ***½|****

A Most Violent Year ***½|****

Fifty Shades of Grey *½|****

Inherent Vice ***|****

Foxcatcher ***|****

Selma ****|****

American Sniper ***|****

Force Majeure ***½|****

The Imitation Game **½|****

The Theory of Everything **½|****

The Interview ***|****

Whiplash ****|****

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies *½|****

Top Five ***|****

The Overnighters ***½|****

The Babadook ***½|****

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 **½|****

Dear White People ***|****

Birdman ***|****

Dumb and Dumber To **|****

Before I Go To Sleep **½|****

Interstellar ***|****

Nightcrawler ***½|****

The Guest ***|****

The Skeleton Twins ***½|****

Gone Girl ****|****

 

The Substance

If the body horror subgenre has a guiding principle, it’s in the terror of our infinite consciousness being inextricably tethered to malleable mortal flesh. Most films in the category find humans attempting to circumvent their natural form and being punished in gruesome ways for their transgression. The Substance, the provocative new satire from writer/director Coralie Fargeat, abides by this thesis — “you can’t escape from yourself,” as a sinister voice on the phone warns at one point — but pushes the subgenre into thrilling new territory by taking on the beauty industry and the impossible standards society places on women. In the protagonist’s quest for physical perfection, imagery is evoked that isn’t merely ugly but downright horrifying. It’s as gnarly a parable about self-acceptance as you’re likely to see this year, or any other year, for that matter.

The opening shot of The Substance makes it clear that the star of Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is fading. As the cracks of her respective Hollywood Walk of Fame emblem have manifested over the years, she too finds the passage of time difficult to take when her long-running aerobic TV show is canceled on her 50th birthday. After a car accident, she learns of a mysterious serum known as “The Substance”, which promises Elisabeth a “younger and better version” of herself. Upon first injection, a new being is birthed out of Elisabeth’s spinal column, a younger counterpart who chooses the name Sue (Margaret Qualley) and shares Elisabeth’s interest in sexualized fitness routines. Sue parlays with Elisabeth’s skeezy TV producer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) and she seems to be well on her way to stardom but there’s a catch: the regimen for The Substance dictates that Sue and Elisabeth switch bodies every week.

Inevitably, this protocol is abused and the equilibrium between Elisabeth and Sue is irrevocably thrown off. The temptation of staying in Sue’s body beyond the week-long timeframe proves too great and the results become dire in short order. It’s difficult to pick a favorite stretch of The Substance, easily one of 2024’s finest, but the initial fracturing of Elisabeth and Sue’s journeys provides the film’s most biting commentary. While Sue spends her week titillating viewers with her new show Pump It Up, Elisabeth desperately grasps for fulfillment through overindulging on junk food. She even accepts a date with a high school acquaintance who is, frankly, not nearly as good-looking as she is, but thanks to the humongous Sue-featuring billboard outside her window, Elisabeth spirals into debilitating insecurity. It’s a heartbreaking scene and Demi Moore pulls it off perfectly.

If The Substance was primarily just scenes where we’re asked to have sympathy for Elisabeth, Moore would already be doing the best work of her career but what puts this over the top is how much more is asked of her. At the outset, she has to sidestep the grotesque behavior of demeaning male executives who no longer see her as relevant and by the end, she steps into corporal grotesqueries that are best for viewers to experience for themselves. To an extent, I imagine Moore brought personal experience from aging in Hollywood to this role and it requires so much vulnerability and rawness to make the narrative cohere. It’s as compelling and committed a lead performance as I’ve seen all year and my hope is that Moore is in talks for Best Actress when Oscar season kicks in.

Following up her brutal debut Revenge, Coralie Fargeat demonstrates impeccable control over a story that could go terribly wrong in the hands of someone who wasn’t as passionately intelligent about the material. She’s making a movie that is, in large part, about the female form but the nudity is clinical and considered in the way that Jonathan Glazer was for 2013’s Under The Skin. The sexually-charged imagery is intentionally over-the-top and draws attention to the futility of pursuing physical perfection, as Margaret Qualley herself is performing with prosthetic enhancements. Fargeat also tips her hat to a handful of classics, with liminal spaces right out of The Shining and a pivotal music cue from Vertigo, another movie that involves female doppelgängers under intense male scrutiny. The Substance is a shot in the arm for those who have been bored by recent horror offerings.

Score – 4.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is The Wild Robot, an animated sci-fi film starring Lupita Nyong’o and Pedro Pascal, about an intelligent robot who is stranded on an uninhabited island after a shipwreck and subsequently bonds with the island’s animals.
Also playing only in theaters is Megalopolis, an epic science fiction movie starring Adam Driver and Giancarlo Esposito, centering around an idealist architect in a decaying city, who is granted a license by the federal government to demolish and rebuild the city as a sustainable utopia.
Streaming on Paramount+ is Apartment 7A, a psychological thriller starring Julia Garner and Dianne Wiest, involving a struggling dancer who finds herself drawn into dark forces by a peculiar couple promising her fame in 1960s New York.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Transformers One

Fittingly, the Transformers franchise has undergone several metamorphoses since the animated television series debuted 40 years ago, with the corresponding The Transformers: The Movie being released in 1986. After five Michael Bay-directed live action movies, a Bumblebee spin-off and standalone sequel last year, the alien-robot hybrids return to the big screen in animated form with Transformers One. Coming over from the world of Pixar, Toy Story 4 director Josh Cooley brings a more playful touch to this origin story that doesn’t skimp on either the fast-paced action or platitude-laden speechifying. It’s the kind of reboot that succeeds at making a case for a kid-friendly Paramount+ series based around these characters, even if it doesn’t make for the most satisfying film on its own terms.

On their home planet of Cybertron, robot friends Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry) spend their days trading wise-cracks while mining for raw material known as Energon. In hopes of working their way up from the mines, they make a showing for themselves in the Iacon 5000 race and catch the attention of their intrepid leader Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm). Desperate to locate the coveted Matrix Of Leadership so they can transform like their Prime heroes, Orion and D-16 team up with fellow robots B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key) and Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson) to venture to Cybertron’s surface. But when they arrive, they uncover secrets that will forever change the fate of their planet.

Though their screenplay follows the formulaic beats we’d expect from a scrappy superhero saga, writing trio Eric Pearson, Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari punch things up with well-dispersed beats of humor. While it’s not as consistently funny or visually inventive as 2014’s The Lego Movie, Transformers One does possess a similar sense of play that coheres nicely with both movies’ origins in the toy world. The quartet of protagonists don’t gain the ability to “transform” until about halfway through the story, so there’s a more palpable spirit of reinvention when they gain their powers. Once that moment occurs, there’s a clear delineation of motivations between the altruistic Orion Pax and absolutist D-16 that fracture their friendship and set their courses for the rest of the narrative.

Even for a theatrical animated spectacle, Transformers One has a particularly stacked ensemble voice cast that also includes veterans like Steve Buscemi and Laurence Fishburne. Brian Tyree Henry, who’s also lent terrific voicework to the ongoing Spider-Verse series, is the standout here as a character whose disillusionment is believably transformed into rage and thirst for revenge. Chris Hemsworth channels similar notes of lovable oafishness that his MCU co-star Chris Pratt played for his lead role The Lego Movie — that is, until Orion Pax completes his evolution to Platitudenus Prime in the last 20 minutes or so. Scarlett Johansson and Keegan-Michael Key bring the no-nonsense resolve and comic relief chops, respectively, that are very much in their wheelhouses.

Down the stretch, Transformers One suffers from the same symptoms that have befallen many a prequel before it, where the third act moves too quickly in order for everything to click into place for the next chapter. Formative events fly by like fighter jets zipping through the sky and voiceovers are backed by urgent crescendos from the music score to underline their importance. But the ride up to that point is colorful and exciting enough for those who don’t have much experience with the world of Transformers to feel like they joined in at just the right time. Transformers One doesn’t reinvent the wheel but given this franchise’s popularity and longevity, perhaps it doesn’t have to.

Score – 3/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Never Let Go, a survival horror film starring Halle Berry and Percy Daggs IV, concerning a family that has been haunted by an evil spirit for years, whose safety and surroundings come into question when one of the children questions if the evil is real.
Also playing in theaters is The Substance, a body horror movie starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, about a fading celebrity who decides to use a black-market drug, a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself.
Premiering on Netflix is His Three Daughters, a family drama starring Carrie Coon and Elizabeth Olsen, involving a trio of estranged sisters who come back together to care for their ailing father in his New York apartment.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Michael Keaton was one of the highlights in last year’s superhero goulash The Flash and at the tail end of this summer, he’s back reviving another character from a different 1980s Tim Burton classic after a lengthy hiatus. Fortunately, Burton has returned for directing duties as well in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, a legacy sequel that could have easily been a soulless excuse to pilfer from the bio-exorcist’s bedeviled brand but instead feels like a proper successor. Following a Dumbo remake that feels like it was workshopped within an inch of its life, it seems Burton is having real fun behind the camera again and the spirit of play is infectious. Sure, the storyline is too busy and the pacing gets away from him but when it comes to Burton movies, I’ll take amiably anarchic over anemically anonymous any day of the week.

Moving on from her goth teenage phase in Beetlejuice, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) now uses her ghost-communing powers to host a talk show about haunted houses with her television producer boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux). A death in the Deetz family brings Lydia, stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) and Lydia’s daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) back to the small town of Winter River for the funeral. All the while, Lydia is plagued with pop-up visions of Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton), who has been carrying a flame for her in the afterlife while running a call center of shrunken head pencil-pushers who help the recently deceased with their questions. Various circumstances dictate that Lydia begrudgingly utter the titular demon’s name thrice and once she does, the real world and afterlife intermingle in appropriately kooky ways.

Screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who worked with Ortega on the wildly successful Netflix series Wednesday, pack their script with enough plot threads and fun characters that in another life, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice could’ve been a Max miniseries. At feature length, it moves at a blistering pace and even though there are plenty of imaginative ideas on the page, Burton probably would’ve done well to cut out some of the excess. After a pitch-perfect introduction, Monica Bellucci wanders around the rest of the movie as an undead jilted ex-lover looking for a way into the plot but never really getting there. Willem Dafoe is another welcome presence as ghost detective Wolf Jackson, a stunt-addicted action star when he was alive, but Burton can’t really decide how to handle his character either.

Jackson’s signature catchphrase is “you gotta keep it real” and Burton seemed to retain this ethos in regards to practical effects vs. computer-generated work in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Much of the predecessor’s fun came from the demented creature design and creative use of stop-motion animation, among other peculiarities that make it one-of-a-kind. There are obviously more special effects in this sequel — after all, the entire budget for Beetlejuice‘s visual effects was $1 million — but the focus is still on tactile aspects like macabre costume design and creepy makeup as opposed to spitting everything out of a computer. There’s a musical number in the third act that kills and there’s even an extended Soul Train bit that commits fully to its goofy conceit.

What I appreciated most about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is that it doesn’t feel like it’s trying to cater to a wider audience or reinvent itself for a new generation. Just like the original was its own thing when it came out, this movie has a go-for-broke spirit that Hollywood seems to be lacking when it comes to franchise moviemaking. The returning cast also seem giddy to be returning to their characters after a long break, with Keaton especially shining once again as his uncouth undead trickster demon. Ortega is playing a little bit too deadpan as the third-generation Deetz but given that her storylines center around a neighborhood crush and trying to reunite with her deceased father, her playing things straight isn’t much of a hindrance. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice caps off a summer of surprisingly strong sequels like Inside Out 2 and Twisters that prove follow-ups don’t have to fall back on familiarity to succeed.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Speak No Evil, a psychological thriller starring James McAvoy and Mackenzie Davis, about a family who’s invited to spend a weekend in an idyllic country house, unaware that their dream vacation will soon become a nightmare.
Also playing in theaters is The Killer’s Game, an action comedy starring Dave Bautista and Sofia Boutella, involving a veteran assassin who fends off a hit he placed on himself after learning the terminal medical diagnosis he received was incorrect.
Streaming on Netflix is Uglies, a science fiction film starring Joey King and Keith Powers, set in a future post-scarcity dystopian world in which everyone is considered an “Ugly,” but then turned “Pretty” by extreme cosmetic surgery when they reach the age of 16.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

The Deliverance

If there was ever a golden age of exorcism movies, we’re certainly not in it at this present moment. The reception for The Exorcist: Believer last fall was so lackluster that Universal Pictures scrapped plans for a proposed trilogy, while the Russell Crowe-led The Exorcism barely contributed to this summer’s box office haul. Now dropping on Netflix is The Deliverance, another dud of the subgenre that tries in earnest to tackle challenging subjects like poverty and alcoholism, before succumbing to the hoariest clichés in the possession movie playbook. It comes from director Lee Daniels, who broke out 15 years ago with the Oscar-winning Precious but has since struggled to capitalize on its success. This time he teams up with his The United States Vs. Billie Holiday star Andra Day, whose performance here is one of the film’s lone bright spots, as was also the case for the duo’s previous collaboration.

Day plays Ebony Jackson, a struggling mother of three whose husband is overseas serving in Iraq and whose ailing mother Alberta (Glenn Close) has clung closer to religion after her cancer diagnosis. For the third time in a year, they’ve relocated to a new house and Ebony has found a job at a salon to support her sons Nate (Caleb McLaughlin) and Andre (Anthony B. Jenkins) along with her daughter Shante (Demi Singleton). Everyone is doing what they can to make the new arrangement work but soon, flies and strange smells begin emanating from the decrepit basement. As is common for these types of films, the children begin exhibiting strange behavior and after several disturbing incidents, Ebony and Alberta are convinced that they’re being haunted by demonic forces. They reach out to the reverend of their church (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) to intervene and save their family from the clutches of the devil.

The Deliverance is based loosely on the true story of Latoya Ammons and her family, who claimed paranormal activity occurred in their Gary, Indiana residence in 2011. Because Indiana lacks the tax incentives and financial breaks that other states have in place for filming — the reason why even films that take place in our state often aren’t shot here — the adaptation was filmed in and takes place in Pittsburgh instead. As a storyteller, Lee Daniels seems to be most in his element when he’s covering the hardships and personal demons of Ebony, a protagonist as prickly as Precious was in the 2009 movie that shares her name. Andra Day gives a powerful performance as a mom who turns to the bottle when her back is up against the well, finding the humanity in a character who can be difficult to like, to say the least.

If The Deliverance only functioned as a family drama, it would still have issues overcoming the on-the-nose and tin-eared dialogue in the subpar script from David Coggeshall and Elijah Bynum. But around the halfway mark, the movie crossfades into a full-blown horror movie and the proceedings go downhill fast from then on. The tell-tale signs of demonic possession are belabored and the special effects rendered to demonstrate physical impossibilities are extremely unconvincing. It all leads to an inevitable climax where Ebony and the church pastor must confront the devil through an immured loved one. It’s a common occurrence in exorcism films that in these heightened moments, possessed characters will say offensive things to throw the religious interveners off-kilter. The Deliverance contains a line read that’s an all-timer of what I assume is unintentional comedy.

Besides Andra Day, no one else in the qualified cast can seem to find their footing. Omar Epps pops up as a chemotherapist who has the hots for Alberta and Mo’Nique portrays a comically evil social worker — “I got you now, Ebony Jackson,” she snickers in her first line, stopping short of twirling a proverbial mustache. But no one is more lost here than Glenn Close, who has been nominated for an Academy Award on 8 different occasions but has yet to secure one; she was a lock for Best Actress in 2019, until Olivia Colman came out of nowhere to pull out the upset. Since that time, she’s turned in some ponderous performances but she’s never looked as completely out of place in a movie as she is here. We can only pray that in the future, Netflix and other studios will deliver us from disoriented dreck like The Deliverance.

Score – 1.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, a horror comedy sequel starring Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder, which reunites the infamous bio-exorcist with the Deetz family after a portal to the afterlife is accidentally opened once again.
Also playing in theaters is The Front Room, a psychological horror film starring Brandy and Kathryn Hunter, telling the story of a newly pregnant couple who are forced to take in an ailing, estranged stepmother.
Premiering on Netflix is Rebel Ridge, an action thriller starring Aaron Pierre and Don Johnson, centering around an ex-Marine who grapples his way through a web of small-town corruption when an attempt to post bail for his cousin escalates into a violent standoff with the local police chief.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Sing Sing

Now playing at Cinema Center, the new prison drama Sing Sing stars Academy Award nominee Colman Domingo as John “Divine G” Whitfield, an inmate at the titular New York jail. He’s on the steering committee for the prison’s Rehabilitation Through The Arts (RTA, for short) program, a real-life initiative that sponsors a theatre group for the incarcerated. After completing A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Divine G and the rest of the group set their sights on their next project, which they decide should be more comedic and modern after just finishing Shakespeare. The volunteer director Brent (also Oscar-nominated Paul Raci) decides to take a pass at a script, which the group agrees should implement disparate themes from time travel to Egyptian pharaohs and a couple monologues for good measure.

Joining the group is Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin (playing himself), who auditions for the role of Hamlet — albeit, a variation on the typical Shakespeare version. Divine G, who just finished playing Lysander and is typically the lead in the plays they put on, is surprised when the committee chooses Divine Eye for the central role. Watching the relationship between the “Divines” develop is one of Sing Sing‘s inimitable treasures, beginning as a reluctant tutor-pupil narrative but slowly morphing into something richer and more meaningful. Divine G has been around for a while and written several of the scripts the theatre group has used for its productions, so he has trouble hiding his jealousy when Divine Eye comes onto the scene. Their conversations start with consternation, segue to reconciliation and eventually blossom with mutual admiration.

Like Divine Eye, most of the characters in Sing Sing are played by men who were formerly imprisoned and some of whom were members of the real-life RTA. Naturally, this gives the stellar ensemble cast an organic sense of collective purpose and effortless believability. Together with cinematographer Pat Scola, director and co-writer Greg Kwedar often frames the inmate characters in close-up, reclaiming the humanity and individuality that the prison system has taken from them. Film is a format of faces and seeing Sing Sing in a theater is to meet face-to-face with people we don’t always get to see on screen. Two characters I was drawn to most are Dino and Carmine, the former a quietly wise colossus and the latter a somewhat neurotic type who sports a nervous tic of wiping his brow, even when there’s no sweat present.

Sing Sing does indulge in dramatic clichés here and there, most notably through a handful of montages that showcase the actors running lines and sets being assembled for Breakin’ The Mummy’s Code, the production they’re putting together. Fortunately, they’re scored by Bryce Dessner, one of the guitarists in the rock band The National, who has also written music for quite a few independent movies over the past several years. I’ve generally enjoyed some of his film music so far but his work here stands as his most transcendent and life-affirming yet, enough to make one’s eyes swell even when it’s not accompanied by moving images. The themes tend to coalesce around Divine G’s mindset at any given point in the story, often hopeful and tender but tense and choleric in the wake of an unexpected tragedy with one of the RTA players.

Understandably, the emotional lynchpin of Sing Sing is Kwedar tapping into what makes programs like the Rehabilitation Through The Arts so vital to quality of life for those in prison. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the recently-released Netflix doc Daughters, which also centers around incarcerated men but involves a different program that allows them to reunite with their daughters for a special “daddy daughter dance” event. Both films beam with undeniable empathy and hard-fought optimism, showcasing a segment of society that is too often portrayed with preachiness and artifice when present in the movies. Sing Sing is a quietly moving reminder of the power that creativity and expressivity have in even the most dispiriting of settings.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is AfrAId, a sci-fi horror film starring John Cho and Katherine Waterston, involving a family who is selected to test a new home digital assistant device that develops self-awareness and interferes with their lives in disturbing ways.
Also playing in theaters is City Of Dreams, a thriller starring Ari Lopez and Renata Vaca, which chronicles the true story of a Mexican boy whose dreams of becoming a soccer star are shattered when he’s smuggled across the border and sold to a sweatshop in the United States.
Streaming on Netflix is The Deliverance, a supernatural horror movie starring Andra Day and Glenn Close, concerning a family living in an Indiana home who discover strange, demonic occurrences that convince them and the community that the house is a portal to hell.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Alien: Romulus

One would be forgiven for having trouble connecting the narrative dots between the Alien films, which make up a franchise that has now spanned across six decades. To keep things relatively simple: the latest entry, Alien: Romulus, takes place chronologically between 1979’s Alien and 1986’s Aliens, the two movies that still stand as undisputed twin peaks of the series. Despite this, director and co-writer Fede Álvarez peppers in references to plenty of other chapters in the series, including an iconic face-off shot from Alien³ and creature design callbacks to the Engineers from Prometheus. After two Ridley Scott-helmed tales that bent more towards hard sci-fi, Álvarez has seemingly been brought on to bring these movies back to their horror roots and has mild success doing so.

Our story begins on the desolate mining colony Jackson’s Star, where Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her surrogate android brother Andy (David Jonsson) brave the planet’s perpetual absence of daylight. Dreaming of a way out of their squalor, Rain reconnects with ex-boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux) and his sister Kay (Isabela Merced), who have access to a scrappy spacecraft from their mining jobs. They come up with a plan to fly up to decommissioned space station Romulus and gather the necessary cryopods and fuel cells for their years-long exodus to the distant planet Yvaga. Their mission is complicated, inevitably, by the presence of the deadly xenomorph creatures onboard, who were recovered from the wreckage of Nostromo spaceship from the inaugural Alien film.

Opening with a dynamic and propulsive prologue that juxtaposes the silence of space with the beeps and boops of an awakening spaceship, Álvarez transitions to a strong introduction of characters and their circumstances. Even though Jackson’s Star is a gloomy locale, there’s some brilliant storytelling at hand as Rain’s work contract is unexpectedly extended by the barbaric Weyland-Yutani corporation. Even though Andy is a robot — he prefers the term “synthetic human” — it’s clear that he has a strong bond with Rain and his programming by their dad has allowed for a sweeter demeanor and pun-laden jokes. Later in their journey, the plot necessitates that Andy get an “upgrade” to his processing system and David Jonsson does a terrific job modulating his performance to accommodate the drastic shift in personality.

If Jonsson’s work represents the most well-rendered android character in the franchise since Ash (portrayed by Ian Holm) in Alien, then it’s a shame that Alien: Romulus doesn’t do much new with any of its other characters, human or otherwise. Filling out the cast are Spike Fearn and Aileen Wu, the latter portraying the pilot of their Corbelan vessel, but in a space slasher like this, it’s pretty obvious that not every character is going to be with us the whole runtime. Isabela Merced is a talented young actress on the rise — she’ll appear as Hawkgirl in Superman next year — and while she’s certainly served better by the material here than she was in Madame Web earlier this year, there’s similarly not much interesting about her Kay either.

Where the rote characters and familiar story beats as the narrative progresses count against the final product, Álvarez does everything he can to make up the deficit on the directing side. As he’s proven with his 2013 Evil Dead reboot and 2016’s Don’t Breathe, he certainly knows how to build up tension and pay it off with some genuinely squirm-inducing punctuation marks. The most effective setpiece overall involves a zero gravity effect out of the fizzy lifting drink scene in Willy Wonka and an elevator shaft, even if the sequence ends with a bit of eye roll-inducing fan service. Hot off a musical score for Twisters that is among the year’s best so far, composer Benjamin Wallfisch infuses homages to Jerry Goldsmith’s Alien compositions, with fluttering flute flourishes that imply the majesty of outer space and trumpet blasts remind us of its danger. Alien: Romulus doesn’t do much to move the mythology of the Alien saga forward but it’s a serviceably suspenseful journey back to the place where no one can hear you scream.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is The Crow, a superhero remake starring Bill Skarsgård and FKA Twigs, following a murdered musician who is resurrected to avenge the deaths of himself and his fiancée.
Also playing in theaters is Blink Twice, a psychological thriller starring Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum, involving a cocktail waitress who travels with a billionaire tech mogul to his private island for a luxurious party, where things begin to go wrong after her friend vanishes.
Streaming on Peacock is The Killer, an action remake starring Nathalie Emmanuel and Omar Sy, reimagining John Woo’s classic about an assassin who tries to make amends in an effort to restore the sight of a beautiful young singer.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Dìdi

The outstanding new coming-of-age tale Dìdi is one that, at the outset, draws easy comparisons to other recent films in its subgenre like mid90s, Eighth Grade and several other titles in A24’s library. But the more time spent with writer-director Sean Wang’s directorial feature, the more it reveals its own unique notes of compassion and humor to distinguish itself from its ilk. It’s difficult to know how much this period piece will play for those who weren’t teenagers in the mid-aughts but since I was born in 1989, many of the cultural footholds from the era landed effortlessly for me. Folks in my generation don’t want to hear it but 2004 was 20 years ago, which has historically been the average nostalgia cycle for pop culture fixtures to come back around. If Dìdi is trying to pander to millennials, well, all I can say is that it does so as artfully and authentically as possible.

Our story takes place in the summer of 2008, centering around the 13-year-old Chris Wang (Izaac Wang) and his Taiwanese American family living in the suburbs of the Bay Area. His father continues to work in Taiwan so that his mother Chungsing (Joan Chen) and sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) can afford to live in America. Though he feels different from the majority of his schoolmates due to his ethnicity, he’s very much a “normal” teenage boy in many ways. He has close friends but finds himself drawn to hanging out with other groups. He’s interested in girls but doesn’t know how to talk to them. He loves his family but also feels embarrassed by them as well. All of these messy contradictions swirl around in a hormonal whirlwind as Chris’s first year of high school looms in the fall.

Also living in the Wang household is Nǎi Nai (Chang Li Hua), Chris’s grandma and Chungsing’s mother-in-law, a dynamic which echoes another account of Asian immigration to the United States from 2021’s Minari. Nǎi Nai is both naive to how actually modern teens pass their time — she doesn’t understand why Chris can’t “play with crickets by the creek” like when she was little — and critical of Chungsing’s parenting. It’s a perspective that gives Dìdi a more mature reprieve from Chris’s antics and depicts the hardships that other generations go through so that their kids can have it easier. Joan Chen is particularly excellent at conveying the balance of affection (the film’s title is taken from the pet name she has for her son) and distance mothers struggle to give their rambunctious teenage offspring.

Most of the events in Dìdi are seen through Chris’s eyes and like the best films about growing up, we’re brought back to times in our lives when we felt how our protagonist feels. The emotional ups and downs, where life either feels like it couldn’t be any better or couldn’t be any worse with hardly any room in the middle, are captured expertly by Sean Wang throughout. The joy of skateboarding with your friends, the embarrassment of saying the wrong thing to a crush, the bittersweet sentiment around seeing an older sibling going off to college; we feel it all with Chris. Films like Lady Bird and The Edge Of Seventeen have done a terrific job capturing the female side of this age and conversely, parts of Dìdi feel specific to how young boys interact. They blow things up, they call each other names and even get into the occasional dust-up.

While teenage boys being violent and vulgar isn’t a phenomenon specific to 2008, the movie does a terrific job capturing the details that pertain to this specific time and place. For instance, teenagers had moved on from MySpace to Facebook at that time but were still using AOL Instant Messenger to keep in touch since Facebook Messenger hadn’t been rolled out yet. YouTube was in its infancy and was still about regular people uploading what are essentially home movies as opposed to being the massive video platform that it’s since become. Text messaging was certainly around but still novel as a form of synchronous communication, where one numerical keypad typo sent to a pretty girl could send things into a tailspin. We come back to these movies, in part, to feel young again and with Dìdi, Sean Wang has crafted a small gem of teenage angst and splendor that will undoubtedly be treasured for years to come.

Score – 4.5/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Alien: Romulus, a sci-fi sequel starring Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson, involving a group of young space colonists who, while scavenging a derelict space station, come face to face with the most terrifying life form in space.
Streaming on Amazon Prime is Jackpot!, an action comedy starring Awkwafina and John Cena, is set in the near future where a “Grand Lottery” has been newly established in California where the “winner” can be killed for a multi-billion dollar prize.
Premiering on Netflix is Daughters, an award-winning documentary centering around four young girls who prepare for a special Daddy Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers as part of a unique fatherhood program in a Washington, D.C. jail.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Trap

After an excellent turn in last year’s phenomenal Oppenheimer, Josh Hartnett returns to the screen with more compelling work in Trap, a ludicrous thriller that’s lucky to have him at its center. The surprisingly unclever cat-and-mouse saga comes courtesy of inescapable auteur M. Night Shyamalan, whose bleak Knock At The Cabin last year sported a similarly strong lead performance by Dave Bautista. By comparison, this latest effort is unmistakably pulpier and not tied down by Knock‘s apocalyptic glumness but also doesn’t seem to be tied to any kind of reality that resembles our own. Suspension of disbelief can be crucial to making certain convoluted movies work but Trap is playing in a different arena altogether. If it were competing in the Contrivance Olympics, it would easily win a gold medal.

Hartnett stars as Cooper Adams, a seemingly earnest father to teenage Riley (Ariel Donoghue) who scores big points by winning tickets to a sold out concert fronted by pop megastar Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan). As he and his daughter make their way to the floor seats, Cooper becomes curious about the increased police presence inside the venue and when buying a T-shirt for Riley, a merch vendor fills him in. It turns out the show was actually planned by the FBI so they could nab a notorious serial killer known as The Butcher, who is expected to be somewhere in the audience. It’s at this point we learn that Cooper himself is actually The Butcher, a fact that is obviously kept from Riley and everyone else in his life. We see the majority of the preceding events through his eyes, as he desperately tries to evade security while trying to find a way out of the arena without arousing suspicion.

At least at the outset, Trap inadvertently mirrors In A Violent Nature, another recent film that follows the perspective of a serial killer, albeit with different motivations for each of the twisted protagonists. But the horrifying beauty of that movie lies in its simplicity in terms of narrative structure and visual storytelling. Shyamalan’s is obviously the more commercially friendly of the two, and arguably has an even more tantalizing elevator pitch than Nature, but as has become an issue in Shyamalan’s more recent work, it can’t pay off its setup in an equally satisfying way. All of the promotional material for Trap lets us in on what would seem to be the movie’s biggest twist, which naturally causes the audience to ask “okay, so what else is there?” The answer, sadly, is not much else.

Trap is at its best when we’re in lockstep with Cooper’s thinking and we’re forced to empathize with the manic plight of a killer. Naturally, this is where Hartnett shines the most too, vacillating between cold-blooded psychopathy and dorky dad energy around his daughter and a clingy parent who keeps engaging with him. Shyamalan has a way of not only writing but directing an uncanny way of speaking that can ring hollow in his more serious efforts but here, Hartnett indulges this idiosyncratic delivery style and makes a meal of it. It works because Cooper himself is putting on a show for everyone in his life, which Shyamalan extenuates with close-ups that depict Cooper desperately trying to bury anxiety with a chipper veneer.

But there’s only so much that Hartnett can do and Trap simply doesn’t have enough tricks up its sleeve to make Cooper’s attempted exile worthwhile. Without giving too much away, the film shift’s narrative subjectivity away from Cooper around the hour mark and suffice it to say that the quality of acting from the rest of the ensemble isn’t at Hartnett’s level. I don’t inherently have an issue with Shyamalan casting his daughter Saleka as a pop star who comes off like an amalgam of Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo but let’s say her musical ability outstrips her acting talents and leave it at that. M. Night’s other daughter Ishana made her directorial debut earlier this year with The Watchers, which certainly had its issues but showcased a promise of growth. With Trap, M. Night Shyamalan reminds us that he may be imprisoned in his own mindset of enticing storytelling that can’t stick the landing.

Score – 2/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming only to theaters is Borderlands, an action comedy starring Cate Blanchett and Kevin Hart, adapting the popular video game for the big screen with a ragtag team of misfits on a mission to save a missing girl who holds the key to unimaginable power.
Also playing in theaters is It Ends With Us, a romantic drama starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, involving a young woman who begins a relationship with a charming neurosurgeon, who soon reveals a darker side that reminds her of her own parents’ fraught relationship.
Streaming on Apple TV+ is The Instigators, a heist comedy starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, centering around a botched robbery that causes two thieves to go on the run, dragging along one of their therapists in the process.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Deadpool & Wolverine

It’s been 6 years since the last Deadpool movie but quite a bit has happened in that time gap, perhaps most consequentially for the franchise: the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney. For those unaware: Fox owned the film rights to Fantastic Four and X-Men characters like Deadpool, while Sony technically still retains the rights to Spider-Man and his affiliated characters. Moving past the mergers and acquisitions business talk, the effect on the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that it now has its first R-rated movie of the series in the fitfully amusing and mercilessly metatextual Deadpool & Wolverine. It’s a team-up that comic book fans will no doubt be giddy about, given the history between the characters on the page, but one that could leave casual superhero movie fans confused with how convoluted the plot has to get to finally bring them together.

6 years after Deadpool 2, Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) has retired his mercenary cowl and works as a used car salesman with his equally checked-out friend Peter (Rob Delaney). In the middle of a surprise birthday party, Wilson is abducted by agents of the Time Variance Authority and is brought to Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), a bureaucrat character similar to Mobius from the Disney+ series Loki. Paradox tells Wade that their universe is collapsing due to the death of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) in another timeline, which prompts Wade to suit up once again and nab a Wolverine variant from the multiverse to save his world. During their mission, they run up against the powerful mutant Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), who seeks the power to destroy other universes at will.

In terms of plot mechanics, Deadpool & Wolverine is most akin to DC’s The Flash from last year, which expected viewers to not only know everything that’s happening in the DCEU but also have background knowledge of both completed and uncompleted projects involving the characters. Without spoiling anything, it’s enough to say that audiences going into this movie who don’t have a firm grasp on both the MCU and the Fox run of superhero films over the last 25 years will face challenges keeping up with this storyline. The amount of prerequisites for Marvel movies has been steadily rising since Nick Fury uttered those famous final words after the end credits of Iron Man in 2008 and the now collegiate-level requirements border on farce.

But behind the fourth-wall breaks and the winks to the camera — I mean those both literally, as self-referential humor is a big part of Deadpool’s schtick — there are fundamental story issues with Deadpool & Wolverine that the movie would prefer we laugh and shrug off. I doubt I caught every single Easter egg that director Shawn Levy and company threw my way but I never felt out of the loop with the multi-layered jokes that come at a machine gun pace. What I struggled with were fundamental questions like “why are the heroes doing what they’re doing right now?” or “what does this villain actually want?” I think Levy wants us to forget about pesky things like character motivation and narrative inertia but most MCU movies have excelled at prioritizing these basic filmmaking aspects while still including some laughs along the way.

Having said all of this, I laughed numerous times during Deadpool & Wolverine, which is packed with cameos that mostly don’t just last for a few seconds but actually figure into the plot in more consequential ways. There are plenty of profane one-liners that few in the business can rattle off with as much cheeky aplomb as Ryan Reynolds. Even some of the ironic needle drops worked for me, although some felt like they were straining too hard for laughs. It could be argued that the whole film strives too hard to get a reaction from the audience and borders on desperation at times. If this were a pure send-up of the superhero movie genre that wasn’t beholden to the obligations of being one itself, it could’ve worked as a pure comedy but as an entry in the MCU, Deadpool & Wolverine feels too shallow to leave an impact.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Trap, a psychological thriller starring Josh Hartnett and Ariel Donoghue, which involves a father and his teen daughter who attend a pop concert, only to realize they’ve entered the center of a dark and sinister event.
Also coming to theaters is Harold And The Purple Crayon, a fantasy comedy starring Zachary Levi and Lil Rel Howery, adapting the classic children’s picture book about an imaginative boy who is able to conjure up anything that he is able to draw with his magical drawing utensil.
Streaming on Netflix is Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie, an animated adventure starring Carolyn Lawrence and Tom Kenny, which further spins off the SpongeBob SquarePants series to give the subtitular Texas-based squirrel her own time to shine in the spotlight.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Twisters

Released in the summer of 1996, the hokey blockbuster Twister is best remembered for its larger-than-life marketing and its (at the time) cutting-edge visual effects but not much else beyond that. As that’s the case, it likely wasn’t up next on many legacy sequel bingo cards but 28 years later, we have Twisters. Helmed by Lee Isaac Chung, the director of 2020’s superb indie Minari, it’s a disaster movie that wouldn’t need to be as good as it is to grab some cash from the cyclonic summer box office and dissipate as mysterious as it appeared. But against all odds, this is the rare belated sequel that not only justifies its existence but actually bests its predecessor in most every way. With help from Amblin Entertainment heads Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall and a story from Top Gun: Maverick‘s Joseph Kosinski, the film marries an old-fashioned storytelling sensibility with outstanding CG effects.

Following a stunning prologue that reminds us of nature’s devastating and overwhelming power, we center in on Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a brilliant meteorologist who has seemingly put her storm chasing days behind her. Out of her past comes Javi (Anthony Ramos), a former colleague who now runs a mobile radar company whose aim it is to 3D model tornadoes for research. After some convincing, Kate joins Javi on the road again and swiftly gets sucked back into the wild subculture of tornado chasing. Now at the center of this cyclonic coterie is YouTuber Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), the self-appointed “Tornado Wrangler” whose mile-wide, cud-eating smile has riled up over a million subscribers. Gusts of romance slowly swirl between Kate and Tyler as they track twisters across rural Oklahoma and try to get close —but not too close— to the action.

It would be generous to say that the character development in Twister isn’t terribly sophisticated and while Twisters doesn’t have exquisitely-rendered types by comparison, they’re an improvement nevertheless. The central conflicts between the two leads in each film harken back to old Hollywood, with Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt giving big His Girl Friday energy in their Twister, while Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell in Twisters conjure up a love-hate tussle out of The Shop Around The Corner. A big reason the bickering between the protagonists works better here has loads to do with the terrific chemistry between Edgar-Jones and Powell, the latter of whom is working hard to secure his Next Big Thing status in Hollywood. Between Kate’s measured approach and Tyler’s roguish impulses, we know the pair will find an overlap and it’s good fun watching them get there.

Twisters doesn’t quite have as deep a bench of supporting characters as its forerunner, which boasted memorable turns from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Lois Smith, amid a bevy of recognizable character actors of the era. But like Twister, there’s delight here in the colorful cast of characters that the movie is able to wrangle up for this slightly less ridiculous story. Tyler’s caravan includes wild-eyed turns from up-and-coming actresses Sasha Lane and Katy O’Brian, while Kate’s crew features future Superman actor David Corenswet and an irresistible performance by Maura Tierney as Kate’s charmingly pushy mom. While the two films don’t technically have any characters that overlap, the personalities that pack the cars zooming across the perilous plains are cut from the same cloth.

It may seem strange to talk this long about Twisters and not focus on the visual effects, which have always been the lynchpin of the disaster movie genre. While it’s hard to know how well they’ll hold up 28 years from now, the combination of CGI and practical effects certainly look convincing by current standards. The sound design is equally convincing, each gale whipping around terrifyingly in surround sound that is even more punctuated in IMAX screenings. Many films in the genre seem to delight in the damage and the scope of the spectacle but embedded in this film is a reverence for the human toll that dangerous weather can take. Those looking to leave their homes to escape for a couple hours will find a satisfying shelter in Twisters.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming only to theaters is Deadpool & Wolverine, a superhero sequel starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, which finds vulgar sword-wielding Deadpool teaming up with an alternate version of X-man lead Wolverine as they square off against a common enemy.
Also playing in theaters is The Fabulous Four, a road comedy starring Susan Sarandon and Bette Midler, following three friends as they travel to Key West to be bridesmaids at a surprise wedding of their friend’s from college.
Streaming on Amazon Prime is Cirque Du Soleil: Without A Net, a documentary about the titular contemporary circus act which depicts their struggle to reopen their flagship production more than a year after an abrupt global shutdown.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup