Based on a 1981 film of the same name, the espionage tale The Amateur is a movie filled with smart characters who are trapped in a movie that isn’t as smart as they are. Our protagonist Charlie Heller (Rami Malek) is said to have an IQ of 170 and we believe it. He works five levels below the ground floor of the CIA headquarters in Decryption And Analysis, scrolling through endless lines of code and finding connections that no one else would see. He chats with an anonymous source he believes is in Eastern Europe, with whom he exchanges eyes-only files; if the premise of the hit show Severance was real, Charlie would be a prime candidate for the titular procedure. Throughout the film, he is consistently multiple steps ahead of those pursuing them, so much so that he outpaces director James Hawes and his screenwriters Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli in the process.

The opening of The Amateur has Charlie seeing his wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan) off as she heads to London for a conference. The next day, Charlie’s boss Director Moore (Holt McCallany) shares horrible news with him: Sarah has been killed after being held hostage by terrorists. Moore swears those responsible for her death will be held to account but Charlie doesn’t trust that the agency will avenge Sarah’s death the way he feels she deserves. In a bold move, to say the least, he threatens to leak classified material unless the CIA trains him as a field operative so he can carry out his revenge. With his back against the wall, Moore tasks Colonel Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) with turning the cerebral and diffident Charlie into a cold-blooded killer.

Because of the nature of the premise, The Amateur asks us to believe that one man — albeit a highly intelligent one — could evade a manhunt from one of the most formidable government agencies in the world. As Charlie’s rogue mission finds him traveling from numerous European countries, it becomes more unlikely that he would actually be able to continue his pursuit unabated. Along the way, a couple characters reappear to coerce Charlie to give up his dangerous undertaking but this feels like a much more kid-gloves approach than the CIA would take in actuality. These tactics spur on subsequent plot holes and leaps in logic that begin to add up, especially in the movie’s last 15 minutes; a character moment towards the very end actually made me cock my head to the side like a dog hearing a strange noise.

All of the performances in The Amateur are convincing but at the same time, none of the actors are being asked to do much outside of their current capabilities. Malek is doing a slight variation on his lead character in the tech thriller series Mr. Robot, although he has to dial up a bit more emotion into the flashback scenes between Charlie and Sarah. Oddly, Brosnahan is relegated to a stock “dead wife” role, even though she’s going to appear as the much more pivotal Lois Lane in Superman this summer. Talented supporting players like Julianne Nicholson and Jon Bernthal, the latter of whom is only in two scenes, are only given sketches of actual characters. More prominently, Fishburne has some fun zingers in his training sequences with Malek; “at point blank range, you might have a 50/50 shot at hitting something,” he smirks in front of a shooting target at a gun range.

The Amateur isn’t a bad movie from a technical perspective. Despite some misjudged shaky cam, it’s well-shot and edited in a way that makes its 2-hour runtime move along briskly. It’s just not a film that distinguishes itself enough from other revenge or spy films we’ve seen already. Its release comes just a few weeks after Black Bag, already one of the year’s best, which also follows spies chasing spies but does so with much more panache and thematic heft. This movie feels like it never expands on its initial hook of taking a lab rat out of his environment and placing him in a more menacing setting where his technological skills don’t mean nearly as much as killer instinct. The Amateur is professional enough on its surface but could use some training in developing a more robust storyline.

Score – 2.5/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Drop, a mystery thriller starring Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar, in which a widowed mother’s first date in years takes a terrifying turn when she’s bombarded with anonymous threatening text messages on her phone during their upscale dinner.
Also coming to theaters is Warfare, an action film starring D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai and Will Poulter, which follows a platoon of Navy SEALs in real-time as they embark on a mission through insurgent Iraqi territory in 2006.
Premiering on Amazon Prime is G20, an action thriller starring Viola Davis and Anthony Anderson, which finds the U.S. President defending her family and fellow world leaders when terrorists take over the G20 summit in South Africa.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Both a satire with not quite enough bite and a creature feature without much of a proverbial bark, Death Of A Unicorn has promising aspects on paper but can’t translate them to movie magic. Alex Scharfman’s directorial debut is being marketed by A24 as an offbeat horror comedy, which isn’t totally misleading as much as it’s overpromising something that’s scarier or funnier than it actually is. Although there are some kills that could satisfy horror nuts and humor that could kill with the “eat the rich” demographic, the movie never fully commits to what it wants to be. To its credit, it puts forth better computer-generated effects than I would expect for a film with a $15 million budget, especially given that it also boasts a stacked cast too. It’s just too bad that all these people and unicorns weren’t brought together for something more impactful.

Death Of A Unicorn finds pharmaceutical lawyer Elliot (Paul Rudd) and his teenage daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) en route to a business retreat when they accidentally hit what turns out to be a unicorn with their car. Unsure how to handle the situation, Elliot stashes the mythical creature in the car and doesn’t mention it to their hosts when they arrive at their estate. Elliot’s cancer-stricken boss Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant) is considering moving him up to a VP position but wants the second opinion of his wife Belinda (Téa Leoni) and their son Shepard (Will Poulter) first. The still-alive unicorn makes a calamitous escape from the automobile and the group accidentally discovers the healing properties from the creature’s blood. The revelation puts Elliot at odds with the Leopolds’ desire to turn the magic substance for profit and Ridley’s conviction to restoring nature’s balance by returning the unicorn to its family.

Paul Rudd is an immensely amiable screen presence and has been an enduring talent for decades now but Death Of A Unicorn doesn’t make good use of either his comedic or dramatic sensibilities. He’s allegedly playing the movie’s protagonist but we can tell from the way he handles the initial car accident with the unicorn that he’s hardly the paragon of nobility. Elliot has a strained relationship with Ridley and he has numerous opportunities to do right by her that he eschews for career ambition. Not every lead character has to be likable in every sense but Rudd can’t make Elliot’s cowardly impulses come across as character flaws that we want to see him overcome; he simply comes across as a jerk who should get what’s coming to him.

With themes of parent-teenager strife and science meddling with nature, Death Of A Unicorn seems to take cues from Spielberg fables like War Of The Worlds and Jurassic Park. While it obviously doesn’t have the budget of effects-heavy projects like that, Scharfman’s script also isn’t as sharp as it needs to be from a character perspective to make up for the deficit. Fortunately, the actors playing the Leopolds — Will Poulter and Téa Leoni, in particular — make the most out of satirizing the greedy corporatists who are blinded to the obvious by the dollar signs in their eyes. They’re playing similar types to ones Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette took on for Mickey 17 recently but Poulter and Leoni wisely don’t go as over-the-top in their portrayals. Even when Shepard grinds a portion of a unicorn horn into powder that he proceeds to snort, Poulter finds some real laughs in the sheer enormity of his character’s arrogance.

The film’s trajectory is clearly leading to a showdown between the mansion-dwellers and the unicorn family angered by the capture of one of their own. The take-no-prisoners attitude of the unicorn clan is meant to fly in the face of the majestic image we tend to associate with the mythical creature, but it’s a one-note joke that’s not particularly bright in the first place. The rendering of the CGI is admittedly punching above its weight class and the kills at the hands — horns and hooves may be more fitting — of the unicorns generate some fun gore-soaked scenes; one character’s undoing atop a billiard table is perhaps the most inspired. Death Of A Unicorn just isn’t able to find a way to weave its tapestry of conflicting genres and tones together into one enchanting concoction.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is A Minecraft Movie, a fantasy adventure starring Jason Momoa and Jack Black, following four misfits who are pulled through a portal into a cubic world that thrives on imagination, having no choice but to master the world while embarking on a quest.
Also coming to theaters is Hell Of A Summer, a horror comedy starring Fred Hechinger and Abby Quinn, about a masked killer who begins picking off a group of camp counselors the night before their campers are set to arrive for the summer.
Premiering on Shudder is 825 Forest Road, a supernatural horror movie starring Joe Falcone and Elizabeth Vermilyea, involving a man who hopes to start a new life with his wife and sister after a family tragedy, but discovers the town he has moved to has a dark secret.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Dying is easy but comedy is hard in The Monkey, Osgood Perkins’ morbid, but not particularly mordant, follow-up to last year’s outstanding serial killer thriller Longlegs. That film had such an icy solemness to it that even morsels of humor felt like a filling meal but the balance is simply off in the recipe Perkins serves up this time. Liberally adapted from the Stephen King short story of the same name, The Monkey hammers home a monotonous drum beat of gallows humor absent from the source material. The movie certainly doesn’t skimp on any of the gory details — rather, it revels in them — but it barely maintains an air of suspense in between the string of over-the-top death sequences. It’s a horror movie devoid of true scares and a comedy whose best gags were already given away in the superb red-band trailer.

The Monkey centers around the Shelburn family circa 1999, with pilot Petey (Adam Scott) deserting his wife Lois (Tatiana Maslany) and twin sons Hal & Bill (both played by Christian Convery) one day. When rifling through their dad’s left-behinds, the boys find a wind-up toy monkey that seems to cause a random person to die horribly every time its key is turned. After several ill-advised turns and subsequent drum rolls, Hal & Bill attempt to destroy, and eventually bury, the simian souvenir before it can do any more damage. 25 years later, Hal & Bill (both played as adults by Theo James) are estranged from one another but when their aunt Ida (Sarah Levy) dies near where they trapped the monkey, they must reckon with the malevolent force for good.

Much of The Monkey delights in what kind of violent scenarios this evil device can supernaturally conjure from seemingly innocuous circumstances, similarly to how Death works in the Final Destination series. While not all the killings are fashioned with Rube Goldberg-like synergy, some involve multiple elements conspiring together for sudden carnage, like the one in the gut-spinning prologue set in a pawn shop. Others are such comic overkill, as when 67 horses trample on top of a camper in a sleeping bag, that we’re not meant to be terrified by the circumstances as much as amused that such random tragedy could even take place. To this end, Osgood Perkins does come up with creative enough demises to make The Monkey almost work as a tongue-in-cheek splatter film.

But Perkins wants to have his blood-battered cake and eat it too and there’s not enough else here to keep one’s stomach full. Much of the drama hinges on the fraught relationship between Hal and his son Petey (played by Colin O’Brien) but their story isn’t nearly interesting enough to hold as the centerpiece of the plot. The acting between Theo James and O’Brien is stilted and unconvincing, even given that they’re playing two characters who aren’t on good terms with one another. There are well-known actors who only pop up for one scene each, while there are others lesser known who stick around for much longer but aren’t exactly a welcome addition. Heading up the movie’s best running joke, Nicco Del Rio hits the sweet spot as a beleaguered young priest tasked with leading increasingly bizarre funerals on behalf of the small town.

The inevitability of death is certainly a weighty central theme for a horror film to tackle but the issue is that The Monkey really doesn’t bother exploring it in an especially nuanced manner. “Everybody dies and that’s life,” Lois laments — the phrasing in the film’s official tagline is decidedly more colorful — but the sentiment isn’t really unpacked beyond that in the text. It’s more intriguing to infer what Osgood Perkins, whose parents both had tragically notable ends to their lives, feels about the chaotic cruelty of the universe assigning each person an inescapable demise. Now that Oz got The Monkey off his back, here’s hoping he can return to the staid supernatural scares that seem to better speak to his sensibilities as a storyteller.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Last Breath, a survival thriller starring Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu, which tells the true story of seasoned deep-sea divers as they battle the raging elements to rescue their crew mate trapped hundreds of feet below the ocean’s surface.
Also coming to theaters is My Dead Friend Zoe, a dramedy starring Sonequa Martin-Green and Natalie Morales, about a female Afghanistan Army vet who comes head to head with her Vietnam vet grandfather at the family’s ancestral lake house.
Premiering on Netflix is Demon City, an action movie starring Tomu Ikuta and Masahiro Higashide, telling the story of an ex-hitman out for revenge after he’s framed for his family’s murder and left for dead by masked “demons” who have taken over the city.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Between his collaborations with Guy Ritchie and last year’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Hugh Grant has seemingly had a ball playing villains recently. The trend continues with the new A24 chiller Heretic, in which Grant plays the deferential and droll Mr. Reed, who may not be as kindly as he initially appears. After reaching out to the LDS Church for more information about their cause, Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) are summoned to his house one rainy evening. While Mr. Reed says his wife is just in the kitchen making pie, the Sisters begin professing their faith in an attempt to convert but are met with prickly retorts about the nature of religion and belief. As the conversation between the three continues, Barnes and Paxton get the creeping feeling that they were invited into Reed’s home under false pretenses.

The writing and directing team of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who were behind last year’s Adam Driver-fronted sci-fi stinker 65, at least start off with much better footing for Heretic. We spend a little time with Barnes and Paxton before arriving at Reed’s home, their candid conversations serving as a nice contrast to the professional front they have to put up when their duty begins. As we slowly learn, Reed is also putting up a front that gradually deteriorates and the three performers are terrific at guiding their characters believably through the transition. Grant, of course, rose to prominence playing coiffed charming leads in romance movies but here, he uses his charisma as bait for an elaborate trap that doesn’t fully reveal itself until late in the runtime.

Without giving too much away, the gist of Reed’s plan involves trying to get the missionaries to question their fundamental beliefs, which he does with Reddit-ready rhetoric about organized religion and philosophy. It’s perfectly okay that Grant’s character isn’t as clever as he thinks he is but the main problem with Heretic is that the movie itself isn’t as clever as it thinks it is. Some of the dialogue and the exchanges are thought-provoking and illuminating but when the talking stops and the time for action arrives, Beck and Woods can’t see the forest for the trees. The more convoluted the situation gets and the more plot elements that are introduced, the less interesting the initial gambit becomes. This feels like a story that Beck and Woods developed without having a conclusion in mind at the outset.

Faithful to its raison d’être, Heretic has an immediately alluring look courtesy of cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon. Once the Sisters spend a little time at the house, Reed informs them that his house has timed lights which can click off mid-conversation without warning. Despite the sudden changes in brightness, the faces of the three performers are always lit with just the right levels to exude dread and insecurity. The set design also aids in the illusion of a cozy living room that becomes more worldly and sophisticated as Reed’s machinations arise. While most of the editing works well, there are several cuts involving violence that seem oddly clipped and obscure their narrative impact. It’s possible Beck and Woods were at one point trying to skirt an R-rating but the confusing cutting during a few key scenes feels like it was left over from a PG-13 iteration.

For at least the first half, Heretic is watchable due to the trio of terrific performances that are ever-shifting to reveal new details about who these people are and what makes them tick. As Reed keeps making excuses as to why the two girls must stay in his house, Barnes becomes more suspicious of his motives than Paxton does. Where Paxton also tends to sidestep Reed’s barbs about the folly of religious practices, Barnes is more game to return the volleys and refute his points. As it turns out, Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East were both raised Mormon, although neither of the actresses are currently members of the church. Perhaps the film was developed with their shared past in mind but Heretic could’ve used more time in the oven before sharing it with the masses.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Red One, a Christmas adventure starring Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans, following the North Pole’s Head Of Security and the world’s most infamous bounty hunter on an action-packed mission to rescue Santa after he’s been kidnapped.
Also coming to theaters is A Real Pain, a family dramedy starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin, involving a pair of mismatched cousins who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother.
Streaming on Netflix is Emilia Pérez, a French musical starring Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez, telling the story of a feared cartel leader who enlists a lawyer to help her disappear and achieve her dream of transitioning into a woman.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

In the spring of 2020, popular YouTube comedian Julie Nolke started a sketch series called “Explaining The Pandemic To My Past Self”, in which a version of herself a few months in the future checks in with herself in the past. Being a tumultuous pocket of time, there’s a lot to go over and the comedic conceit is centered around just how much can change in a short period. The new coming-of-age dramedy My Old Ass from writer/director Megan Park, expands this premise out to feature length and in the process, stretches out the amount of time between the two versions of the same person. In doing so, it speaks more broadly to the desire everyone has to use fantastical foresight to have more control over the future of their personal lives. The potential poignancy of the scenario seems like it would be easy to mine for pathos, so it’s strange that this movie fumbles the weightier aspects of its story.

On her 18th birthday, Elliott (Maisy Stella) takes a boat with her friends Ro (Kerrice Brooks) and Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) to a nearby island, where they plan on celebrating with psychedelic mushrooms. After drinking the spiked tea, Elliott’s friends go off on their own “typical” trips and while Elliott waits for the effects to kick in for her, a future version of herself (played by Aubrey Plaza) appears out of nowhere. Though initially skeptical, teenage Elliott soon feels convinced that she’s not just hallucinating but is actually being reached across time by her future self. After imparting some bits of wisdom about their family and their future career, the 39-year-old version of Elliott gives a vague but stern warning before she disappears to avoid anyone named Chad. Sure enough, a boy named Chad (Percy Hynes White) starts working at Elliott’s family’s cranberry farm and she has to decide whether to ignore her own advice or pursue a relationship with him.

One of My Old Ass‘s major miscalculations is in sidelining Aubrey Plaza for the majority of the movie, as younger and older Elliott primarily spend the story communicating via phone by voice or text. Even though they don’t look especially similar to one another, Plaza and Maisy Stella have a fun rapport with one another and I’m not sure why Megan Park doesn’t feature them on-screen together much. Oddly, Maddie Ziegler’s character isn’t present much in the film either, a shame since Park directed her and Jenna Ortega to great effect — drastically different subject material aside — in her previous feature The Fallout. Stella and Percy Hynes White certainly have enough chemistry to make the romantic thrust of the narrative work but there isn’t much about watching their mutual crush develop that feels unique to this movie.

Outside of the relationship between Elliott and Chad, Park also spends time fleshing out Elliott’s relationship with her family, particularly her mom and her younger brother (played by Maria Dizzia and Seth Isaac Johnson, respectively). While the screenplay does its best to imbue these bonding moments with heartfelt meaning, the sentiment just doesn’t land as well as it does in other coming-of-age tales like Dìdi from just a couple months ago. Where that film had a distinct sense of time and place that directs the protagonist’s evolution, My Old Ass grasps at millennial touchstones with era-specific music cues and a flashback sequence evoking a mid-aughts pop music heartthrob. It’s a cute scene but it doesn’t ultimately tell us much about the character or why this particular memory is important to her.

Despite this, My Old Ass is amiable enough and with a runtime under 90 minutes, it certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome. There are nuggets of wisdom to be found about the passage of time and how Gen Z is dealing with growing up. My favorite scene involves Elliott confessing to Ro that she has a crush on Chad, when she’s previously only seemed to be interested in pursuing relationships with girls. The pacing of the conversation is considered but comedically compelling all the same; Ro reminds her that she told her to use labels when they’re useful but to ditch them when they no longer feel useful. I wish Megan Park was able to string more scenes like this one together to give the kick My Old Ass in the pants it needed to make a bigger impact.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Joker: Folie à Deux, a musical thriller starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, which finds the protagonist of Joker institutionalized while awaiting trial for his crimes and falling crazy in love with a fellow inmate.
Also playing in theaters is White Bird, a coming-of-age period drama starring Ariella Glaser and Orlando Schwerdt, about a troubled young student who is struggling to fit in at his new school after being expelled for his treatment of a disfigured student at his previous school.
Streaming on Netflix is It’s What’s Inside, a horror comedy starring Brittany O’Grady and James Morosini, following a group of friends who gather for a pre-wedding party that descends into an existential nightmare when an estranged friend arrives with a mysterious game that awakens long-hidden secrets, desires, and grudges.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

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

This summer, one Shyamalan simply isn’t sufficient. While M. Night Shyamalan has the concert-set thriller Trap due out this August, his daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan has struck first blood with The Watchers, a supernatural horror offering based on A.M. Shine’s breakthrough novel. Though she’s worked as second unit director on her father’s recent films Old and Knock At The Cabin, while also writing and directing a handful of episodes for the Apple TV+ series Servant, this is Ishana’s first time writing and directing for the big screen. Her directorial debut displays promise from the outset with a tantalizing hook and properly spooky atmosphere but eventually comes undone with inconsistent pacing and telegraphed third-act developments.

The Watchers centers around Mina (Dakota Fanning), a young American stuck in the haze of her troubled past while working at a pet shop in Ireland. Tasked with delivering a prized parrot to a customer hours away from the store, Mina finds herself lost in the deep Irish forest with a broken down car. Soon night falls and worrisome noises draw her to the only building in the area and a woman called Madeline (Olwen Fouéré), who is standing by the open door offering Mina shelter. The situation doesn’t get any less strange when Madeline demands that Mina stand with her, along with two other lost forest dwellers Ciara (Georgina Campbell) and Daniel (Oliver Finnegan), in front of a one way mirror so the quartet can be observed by an unseen entity. Can the four of them find their way out of the woods before the creatures they call “The Watchers” penetrate their bunker?

Like her father’s most memorable movies, Ishana Night Shyamalan’s The Watchers has a high-concept premise perfect for an enticing teaser trailer, which fittingly debuted before fellow Warner Bros release Dune: Part Two earlier this year. From a marketing perspective, it’s fortunate that the clip features the most accomplished stretch of filmmaking front-and-center. The four members of “The Coop”, the characters’ name for the enclosure they find themselves in, kill time playing records and DVDs until the sun goes down and ritual dictates that they gather in front of the glass to be “watched”. It’s a juxtaposition between mundane domesticity and paranormal ceremony previously employed by similarly grabby entertainments like Lost and 10 Cloverfield Lane.

It’s never an easy thing to follow up on such a persuasive pitch with a narrative that cleverly unpacks the opening gambit and that’s where The Watchers predictably falters. The more we learn about the titular observers, the less interesting the story at large becomes. Instead of focusing on the troublesome and tense aspects of sharing a confined living space with three other strangers, Shyamalan decides to press forward with the more generic horror elements of her tale instead. It’s not necessarily that the reveal of who The Watchers are is disappointing but as a director, Shyamalan can’t exactly figure out where she wants to take things from there. Once the bird flies the proverbial coop, it doesn’t land in territory we haven’t seen dozens of times before.

That’s not to say that the film doesn’t have appealing aspects. It’s exceptionally well shot by cinematographer Eli Arenson, who beautifully captures both the haunting beauty of the Irish countryside and the chilly interiority of The Coop. The shots of Mina and the others interacting with the one way mirror are aided by gorgeous computer-generated effects that gorgeously render reflections that point to the movie’s theme of doubles and competing halves of one’s identity. It’s also nice to see Dakota Fanning in a starring role again after a smaller part in last year’s The Equalizer 3. Even if her character’s personal journey isn’t quite as interesting as the supernatural elements at play, Fanning makes Mina a protagonist with whom it’s easy to sympathize. The Watchers isn’t the strongest start for Ishana Night Shyamalan but there are still seeds of a promising storyteller to watch for.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing exclusively in theaters is Inside Out 2, an animated sequel starring Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith following the personified emotions of a teenage girl as new feelings like Anxiety and Envy enter the mix.
Screening at Cinema Center is Tuesday, a fantasy drama starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Lola Petticrew about a mother and her terminally ill daughter as they’re visited by a size-altering macaw that’s the personification of death.
Streaming on Hulu is Brats, a documentary about the Brat Pack, a group of young actors who frequently appeared together in coming-of-age films in the 1980s, and the impact on their lives and careers.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

In divisive times, it’s heartening to know that even the most gargantuan of monsters can put their differences aside and come together for the greater good. Case in point: after 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, we now have Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, a MonsterVerse entry whose title promises a team-up as opposed to a conflict between the two mythical brawlers. Indeed, the collaboration does happen and manifests itself in another memorable CGI smackdown but the road to get there is still more cumbersome than it needs to be. Returning from Godzilla vs. Kong, director Adam Wingard has the requisite sense of play when it comes to the battle sequences but he doesn’t have the knack for weaving in plausible pathos for the human characters. The cast is streamlined a bit more this time, and they’re certainly capable of carrying a convincing narrative, but the writing is far too bland to care about nearly anything happening in the story.

With the events of Godzilla vs. Kong behind them, Godzilla and Kong have established a truce of sorts, with the former remaining on the surface and the latter residing in the subterranean space known as Hollow Earth. While continuing to raise Jia (Kaylee Hottle), Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) is tasked with monitoring the activity of the two creatures and keeping them separated. The peace is disrupted by a distress signal emanating from Hollow Earth, which causes Godzilla to go on the move for more nuclear energy to gobble up and Kong to venture further into uncharted regions of his new home. Andrews recruits podcaster Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry) and veterinarian to the monsters Trapper (Dan Stevens) to travel down to Hollow Earth to suss out what is making the titular titans act so unpredictably.

Various characters and actors have come and gone in the MonsterVerse franchise — the overqualified cast of Godzilla: King of the Monsters surely wasn’t going to stick around forever — and at this point, most of the humans in Godzilla x Kong are carryovers from Godzilla vs. Kong. The notable exception is Dan Stevens as Trapper, described by Dr. Andrews as “the weirdest vet in the world” and clothed in Hawaiian shirts to presumably give off Ace Ventura vibes. Reuniting with Adam Wingard ten years after tongue-in-cheek thriller The Guest, Stevens makes the most of his goofy character and is easily the most watchable of the human characters. The mother-adopted daughter dynamic between Dr. Andrews and Jia was one of the human highlights of Godzilla vs. Kong but the dialogue between them this time is very one-note and even the comic relief from Bernie wears out its welcome here.

The storytelling in Godzilla x Kong is basically separated into thirds and above the portions involving the humans and Godzilla, the most compelling section is the one that finds Kong venturing deeper into Hollow Earth. There are a menagerie of simian creatures, including a cute sidekick named Suko and an insidious tyrant named Skar King, who make up what is essentially its own Planet Of The Apes narrative squished between two other storylines. As one would hope, the visual effects are top-notch throughout and especially during the battle scenes but I also appreciated how expressive the ape characters were during the Hollow Earth scenes. Whether it was achieved through motion-capture or entirely through special effects, the faces and body language of the apes tell the most interesting story to be found in Godzilla x Kong.

Is it too much to ask, then, that Wingard finds something more worthwhile for the other characters to do while Kong moves the story along? Recent Oscar winner Godzilla Minus One is obviously going for a different sort of kaiju movie than what the MonsterVerse is trying to achieve but even still, it’s tough to see the big guy being treated like such an afterthought this time around. Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla: King of the Monsters made a case for standalone narratives for these iconic monsters but in his two outings, Wingard has yet to make the case that he’s the guy who can balance the spectacle and sentimentality in these stories. These MonsterVerse movies continue to be a dominating force at the box office and while they deliver on foundational terms, it’s also not wrong to expect more from them.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Opening in theaters is The First Omen, a supernatural horror film starring Nell Tiger Free and Sônia Braga following a young American woman who is sent to Rome to begin a life of service to the church but encounters a darkness that causes her to question her faith.
Also playing only in theaters is Monkey Man, an action thriller starring Dev Patel and Sharlto Copley about an anonymous young man who unleashes a campaign of brutal vengeance against the corrupt leaders who murdered his mother.
Premiering on Apple TV+ is Girls State, a companion documentary to 2020’s Boys State which follows teenage girls from Missouri navigating a week-long democratic experiment learning how to build a government from the ground up.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

An adaptation of a Broadway musical which was based on a movie that was adapted from a book, the 2024 version of Mean Girls can’t help but feel intrinsically derivative. When Rosalind Wiseman penned the parent’s guide Queen Bees and Wannabes (the basis for the 2004 comedy classic) in the early 2000s, I doubt she suspected the cultural cache that her work would eventually generate. But several reworkings later, we now have what could’ve been a worthwhile Gen Z remake of the original film but is instead something more frustratingly myopic. It’s both a beat-for-beat redo of the story from 2004’s Mean Girls and a full-fledged musical, the former of which is bound to generate disappointed déjà vu and the latter of which has been side-stepped in the marketing as it was for Wonka last month.

Once again, our way into the cutthroat high school setting of Mean Girls is through Cady Heron (Angourie Rice), a bright teen who has been homeschooled her whole life until she moves to the States from Africa. She is befriended right away by social outcasts Janis (Auliʻi Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey), who give her the skinny on the cliques and hierarchies that rule their school. Cady inadvertently catches the attention of fiercely popular Regina (Reneé Rapp) and is taken into her group of similarly materialistic girls known as The Plastics. But things get complicated when Cady falls for the handsome Aaron (Christopher Briney), who recently ended a relationship with Regina. When Cady decides to pursue Aaron, even though fellow Plastics Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and Karen (Avantika) advise against it, a rift occurs in the coveted clique.

Whether the movie likes it or not, Mean Girls will lead to inevitable comparisons to its predecessor, likely beginning with the fresh lineup of new actors. The 2004 comedy is impeccably cast, with a career-best performance by Lindsay Lohan and breakout roles for now-bonafide movie stars Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried. As Cady, Angourie Rice invokes a similar naiveté as Lohan and while she doesn’t quite nail the transformation into loathsome sociopath, she nonetheless renders an immensely likable protagonist at the outset. On the flip side, Reneé Rapp is mostly a bore as the villainous “queen bee”, which is ironic since she played the role in the stage musical for 2 years. When it comes to the singing and dancing, the talent is there but her performance lacks the alluring deviousness that McAdams used to make Regina George an iconic character.

While directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. do what they can to make the musical numbers pop visually, the songs in Mean Girls don’t add much depth to the plot and don’t musically stand out much from one another either. Penned by Tina Fey, the 2004 film is bolstered by an endless string of memorable quips but the lyrics in these musical interludes just aren’t up to the level of that original screenplay. Auliʻi Cravalho, still probably most famous for playing the title character in Moana, leads the movie’s best number “I’d Rather Be Me” and comes closest to justifying why this movie should have song breaks embedded in it. Her soaring vocals do call to mind an interesting paradox: how can a character like Regina, who obviously sees herself as superior to the theater kids, belt out Broadway-ready numbers?

If you try to ignore the show tune elements — which audience members who go into this movie not knowing it’s a musical will no doubt be doing — there are some lateral moves from the first film that are hit-and-miss. Fey returns not only as the screenwriter but as math teacher Ms. Norbury, who gets some additional zingers this time around; when she finds out Cady is homeschooled, she sarcastically remarks “that’s a fun way to take jobs from my union.” Bebe Wood is uncanny at capturing the timbre and cadence of Lacey Chabert’s work as Gretchen in the 2004 movie but at the end of the day, it’s merely imitation. Avantika brings more unique obliviousness to her Karen but it still feels like it’s leaning on the work Seyfried initially created. Mean Girls is a so-so update on an excellent comedy that never really needed a makeover in the first place.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this week:
Playing only in theaters is I.S.S., a sci-fi thriller starring Ariana DeBose and Chris Messina involving US and Russian crews of astronauts aboard the International Space Station who begin to turn on one another when conflict breaks out on Earth.
Also coming to theaters is Freud’s Last Session, a psychological drama starring Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode which depicts the fictional meeting of the minds between psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and literary scholar C. S. Lewis as they debate the existence of God.
Streaming on Netflix is The Kitchen, a science fiction drama starring Kane Robinson and Jedaiah Bannerman set in a dystopian future London in which all social housing has been eliminated but a community known as The Kitchen refuses to abandon their home.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

There’s no mistaking the goofy sports biopic Next Goal Wins for anything other than the latest brainchild of filmmaker Taika Waititi. Ten years ago, few outside of the New Zealand film community knew his name but two Thor movies and multiple Oscar nominations later, Waititi has built up his own brand of idiosyncratic comedy that has seemed to resonate with audiences. He’s the first face that graces the screen in his newest film, doing double duty as both a hippie priest character and the occasional narrator for the story we’re about to see. With silly facial hair in unison with a silly accent, Waititi lays out the plight of the underdogs that we’ll be expected to cheer on for the next hour and a half. Though Waititi the actor sets up the groundwork, Waititi the director and co-writer doesn’t follow through with committed and focused storytelling.

Based on a 2014 documentary of the same name, Next Goal Wins centers around struggling soccer coach Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender), who hasn’t been the same since the divorce from his ex-wife Gail (Elisabeth Moss). At the risk of being fired by his boss Alex (Will Arnett), he reluctantly accepts a position head coaching the woeful American Samoa soccer team, notable for being on the losing end of a brutal 31–0 defeat during a World Cup qualifier. Upon landing in the island territory, Rongen is greeted by the ever-jaunty club manager Tavita (Oscar Kightley) and introduced to the flailing players that make up their national team. The goal for the season, which is to score a single goal during a game, is sent down from the Football Federation American Samoa and Rongen sets about getting the squad up to snuff.

Throughout Next Goal Wins, Waititi demonstrates that he wants to have it both ways; he wants to lampoon underdog sports comedy tropes but embrace them when the story calls for it. Perhaps that’s why some of the humor fitfully works during the story but by the film’s conclusion, it doesn’t feel all that significant. Waititi fills his film with a colorful cast of characters that he doesn’t feel the inclination to develop much, outside of transgender player Jaiyah Saelua. Played by newcomer Kaimana, Saelua has bonding scenes with Rongen that predictably break down his prejudices around gender identity while building up his ardor for coaching the pitiable group. I understand why Waititi chose to focus solely on Saelua but unfortunately, it’s at the expense of almost all of the supporting cast.

Fassbender, who also stars in recently-released Netflix thriller The Killer, is simply better suited to play a stoic assassin in that movie as opposed to playing the hot-headed soccer coach that he portrays in Next Goal Wins. He’s an immensely talented actor and I appreciate him trying to stretch his acting chops into more comedic terrain but he’s just not a good fit for this role. In addition to his scenes with Saelua, there are sparks in the brief moments between Fassbender and Moss but they don’t get nearly enough screen time to develop their relationship. There’s also a teased-out bit about Rongen’s past that is supposed to play like a big character revelation towards the ending but it all feels too obvious. Kightley fares much better as the perpetually optimistic manager, who also has to wear different hats around the sparsely-populated island as the cameraman for a show and waiter for a beachside restaurant.

It probably helps that Kightley is channeling the same kind of goofball energy that Waititi infuses in his films both as a performer and a director. Fans of the filmmaker’s earlier work like What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople will no doubt find bits that work within Next Goal Wins. The movie’s finest occurs early on when Rongen is in the process of being fired; in an attempt to console him, an ex-colleague played by Rhys Darby tries to guide him through the 5 stages of grief with the help of an overhead projector and transparency slides. Rongen also demonstrates a streak of unintentionally parroting big speeches from movies like Any Given Sunday and Taken. There’s plenty of Waititi’s signature quirk in Next Goal Wins but not enough genuine pathos to balance out the field.

Score – 2.5/5

More movies coming to theaters this weekend:
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, starring Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler, is a prequel to 2012’s The Hunger Games which focuses on future Panem president Coriolanus Snow as he mentors a tribute for the 10th annual Hunger Games.
Trolls Band Together, starring Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake, is the third installment in the Trolls franchise centering around Poppy and Branch as they work to rescue one of Branch’s brothers after he is kidnapped by a band of pop star siblings.
Thanksgiving, starring Patrick Dempsey and Addison Rae, is a seasonal slasher following a mysterious serial killer, known only as “John Carver”, who comes to Plymouth, MA with the intention of creating a carving board out of the town’s inhabitants.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup