Tag Archives: 2026

Reel Views, Review

The Drama

Are any of us more than the worst thing we’ve ever done? The dark romantic comedy The Drama boldly posits “maybe not!” The film opens on a more mild transgression: seeing Emma (Zendaya) reading in a café, Charlie (Robert Pattinson) snaps a photo of the book she’s buried in so he can look it up and pretend he’s a fan before introducing himself. On the ensuing first date, he admits he hasn’t read the novel and manufactured the meet-cute so that he could seem interesting to her. Fortunately, it’s not a large enough deception to derail things and 2 years later, Emma and Charlie are engaged. The week of the wedding, Charlie runs the speech that he’s prepared for the reception past his best man Mike (Mamoudou Athie); “I love how you always turn my drama into comedy,” Charlie says of his bride-to-be.

A last-minute food tasting between Emma, Charlie, Mike, and Mike’s wife and Emma’s maid of honor Rachel (Alana Haim) turns into a multi-bottle wine sampling to help take the edge off all the planning. Emma and Charlie relay a moral quandary that’s come up with their DJ, prompting Rachel to tipsily bring up an infraction from Mike’s past that she ribs him about periodically. He offers to spill the details if everyone agrees to share the worst thing each of them has done and the day-drinking session immediately gets more personally revealing. Mike and Rachel offer up dirty deeds about which they deservedly feel a measure of shame but Charlie can barely muster up an anecdote about how he cyberbullied a classmate who possibly moved away as a result. Emma brings them home with a secret so dark, it makes Charlie reconsider his entire relationship with her.

The Drama isn’t as much about what Emma did specifically — an act the film’s marketing cleverly conceals — but more about how fragile the bonds between significant others can be when they matter most. Norwegian writer-director Kristoffer Borgli, whose previous film Dream Scenario found Nicolas Cage popping up in people’s nightmares, carries over a sense of dream logic and unreality to this intimate tale. After Emma’s confession, Borgli and his editor Joshua Raymond Lee intersperse scenes of the couple completing pre-wedding tasks with mordant reveries that reveal anxieties about where they stand with one another. While some are exaggerated enough to read as purely fantastical, others are more plausible and we’re forced to decide whether what we’re seeing actually happened or not.

The humor in The Drama doesn’t come from minimizing Emma’s past actions but in seeing ourselves in the way that Charlie summarily unravels after learning about them. Every little detail — be it the messaging on an old coffee mug or the way that their photographer lays out the order in which family members will line up for photos — reveals hilarious fissures in Charlie’s psyche. Borgli doesn’t treat the characters or the audience with moral absolutes about how they should feel but he delights in depicting how one’s code can shift out of desperation. This is a comedy of discomfort, to the degree that some viewers may be repulsed by its subject material and possibly find it distasteful. As someone whose paranoia and uncertainty can dictate pointless rumination for embarrassing lengths of time, I felt seen by Charlie and found comfort in watching him scramble to resolve his dilemma.

Borgli personifies this struggle with a below-the-knee shot of Charlie pacing back and forth while trying out fancy shoes and socks, following up with a close-up of Emma unable to take him seriously due to the dainty sound of his feet shuffling. It’s a brief interaction that sums up the movie nicely; some fights and problems in a relationship should rightly be taken seriously but others can get so blown out of proportion that all it takes is a small discrepancy or distraction to render them comedic. It should be easy to tell the difference between the two, but as anyone who hasn’t been on the same page as their partner can tell you, it’s not. Sharing your life completely with someone else is both the most intimidating and the most rewarding act one can participate in. The Drama honors both the reverent and the ridiculous parts of the process.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is You, Me & Tuscany, a romcom starring Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page, in which a free-spirited young cook makes a brash decision to become a squatter in an abandoned Tuscan villa and strikes up a romance with the homeowner’s cousin.
Also coming to theaters is Hunting Matthew Nichols, a found footage horror movie starring Markian Tarasiuk and Miranda MacDougall, involving a documentary filmmaker who sets out to solve her brother’s missing person’s case twenty-three years after his disappearance.
Streaming on Apple TV is Outcome, a dark comedy starring Keanu Reeves and Jonah Hill, which follows a Hollywood star as he is forced to confront his problems and atone for his past after being threatened by a bizarre video footage from his past.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Forbidden Fruits

The campy supernatural tale Forbidden Fruits is, as I’m told the kids say, a lot. Adapted from the 2019 Lily Houghton play *big breath* Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die, the big-screen treatment opts for a snappier title but maintains the verbose spirit of the source material. The snarky screenplay, co-written by Houghton with director Meredith Alloway, is littered with allusions to female-facing millennial mainstays like The Devil Wears Prada and Mean Girls. That the film’s narrative so obviously mirrors the latter at the outset seems to be by design, luring us in with a familiar story of yore to develop into something more dangerous and deadly. While it never reaches the subversiveness of titles like Heathers or The Virgin Suicides, it’s a pastiche ripe with themes about how hard it can be for young women to stick together.

Forbidden Fruits takes place almost entirely within the confines of fictional Texas shopping center Highland Place Mall, where the supercilious Apple (Lili Reinhart) and her fellow Free Eden employees Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) and Fig (Alexandra Shipp) rule the roost. When they arrive at the food court, other mall workers scurry to leave them at what now becomes the popular kids’ table. It doesn’t quite scare off Pumpkin (Lola Tung), a new hire at the Auntie Anne’s fill-in Sister Salt’s, who offers them pretzel bite samples and piques their interest in the process. Pumpkin subsequently applies to work at their Urban Outfitters-like store and when she passes the interview with flying colors, she not only joins their clique but also their secret coven, where they perform rituals in the basement of Free Eden after-hours.

It’s when things get witchy — and a word that rhymes with “witchy” — that feminist fable Forbidden Fruits feels free to let its freak flag fly. Once Pumpkin is in the group, she discovers how controlling Apple is over Cherry and Fig’s lives, blocking off their personal calendars for them and casually lobbing barbs like, “that’s another unattractive quality we need to work on.” She also learns of a hex that befell ex-employee Pickle (Emma Chamberlain), so catatonic as a result of the witch’s curse that she’s seen literally banging her head against windows of outlets in the mall. There’s obviously something rotten at the root of this supposed paradise atop Apple’s guise of sisterhood and the more time Pumpkin spends with the trio, the more resolved she feels to expose the extent of the performative friendship they have in place.

Diablo Cody, who penned high school-set comedies Juno and Jennifer’s Body, serves as executive producer here and it’s fair to say that if she had written a reboot 30 years removed from The Craft, it could’ve come out very similarly to Forbidden Fruits. Even though this movie is seemingly set in the present day, it certainly maintains the late-aughts veneer of Cody’s most notable efforts; depicting a shopping mall as bustling in 2026 is arguably more anachronistic than featuring smartphones in a film set 20 years ago. What feels fresh in this film is how it angles against Apple’s brand of false feminism, wherein she can assert poisonous control over her friends’ lives by labelling any male interloper as part of the patriarchy. She feels so threatened by the suggestion that these ladies talk through their feelings at therapy that she forces them to confess their sins to the spirit of “ultimate femme martyr” Marilyn Monroe in a designated dressing room.

It may be too much to ask Forbidden Fruits to be more of anything but I wish it had committed to the edginess of its very first scene — involving a hot latte and a lecherous man’s crotch — in its storytelling. Meredith Alloway also delays the peripheral horror trappings to the degree that the violent final 20 minutes and mid-credit scene almost feel like they belong in a different movie. But the film’s more crucial aspect is the satirical heightened reality that she and her quartet of young actresses establish before the conclusion. Everyone here is on the same page aesthetically and tonally, down to Lili Reinhart’s ostentatious amber wig that seems to have been snatched from Nicole Kidman’s character in Practical Magic. Just as fashion is never finished, films like Forbidden Fruits about women navigating the tricky territory of burgeoning bonds will always be en vogue.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Beginning in theaters on Wednesday is The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, an animated adventure starring Chris Pratt and Anya Taylor-Joy, continuing the saga of the Super Mario Bros as they team up with Yoshi and Princess Rosalina to take on Bowser’s son Bowser Jr.
Also coming to theaters is The Drama, a black comedy starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, in which a couple’s relationship is shaken days before their wedding when one partner discovers unsettling truths about the other.
Premiering on Hulu is Pizza Movie, a college comedy starring Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone, following a pair of psychoactively-inhibited students who face an unexpectedly epic journey when they must navigate two flights of stairs to retrieve their pizza delivery.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come

Though directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett collectively go by the pseudonym Radio Silence, they’ve been anything but silent in the world of horror over the past several years. Since breaking out with Ready Or Not in 2019, the pair have gone on to helm two films in the Scream franchise and even dabbled in Dracula lore with Abigail in 2024. Now the duo follow up their breakthrough with Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come, a sequel that follows the mold of upping the stakes of its predecessor while attempting to replicate the surprise factor of the original as well. This one succeeds more in the former camp than the latter but with another game cast and bloody fun setpieces, it’s another winner from two filmmakers who simply know how to have a good time within this genre.

We’re reintroduced to Grace (Samara Weaving) moments after her hellish night of hide-and-seek with the devil-worshipping Le Domas family inside their opulent mansion. When she arrives at the hospital, her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) reluctantly appears as her emergency contact and Grace does her best to explain the insane events of the prior movie. All the while, members of the uber-wealthy cabal known as the High Council are notified of the Le Domas massacre, triggering a mad scramble for power. Grace and Faith are kidnapped and awakened by an unnamed lawyer (Elijah Wood) working on behalf of the demon Le Bail, who informs them of a new “game” that Grace’s survival has now put into motion. Since the “High Seat” of the Council is now vacant, members from the four remaining families must hunt down Grace to claim the top position within the ultra-powerful committee.

On the villain side of things, we spend the most time getting to know the Danforth family, represented by twin siblings Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus (Shawn Hatosy). Though their relationship isn’t quite as complex as the one between the miserable — and miserably rich — step-siblings in the Gellar-starring lark Cruel Intentions, it’s enough to say they don’t see eye-to-eye. Among the other armed-to-the-teeth participants in the deadly play for world domination are bloodthirsty billionaires played by Néstor Carbonell and Olivia Cheng. Their attire isn’t much different from how they would dress for a day of stag hunting or skeet shooting, fashion that could be dubbed “preppy tactical”. It underscores a key difference between Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come and its predecessor, which is the more expansive setting of a vacated mountain resort compared to the confines of the Le Domas manor.

One aspect of Ready Or Not that’s not possible to replicate in this follow-up is the transition of Grace’s character from doe-eyed bride-to-be to shotgun-wielding warrior. The sequel’s stand-in for character development is her strained relationship with Faith, who’s 3 years younger than Grace and resentful of what she perceives as an abandonment years prior. At the commencement of the “game”, the two wake up handcuffed to one another and while they’re on the run from their captors, they begrudgingly make up for lost time, despite the dire circumstances. Faith calls Grace out for marrying into an affluent family just for what Faith perceives as a status bump but Grace says she’s not much better for shacking up with a “finance bro” on the west side of Manhattan. Radio Silence regulars Weaving and Newton are a perfect fit for bickering sisters who have learned to take what’s theirs in a world that hasn’t dealt either of them the best hands.

But when it comes to these two action-heavy horror comedies, the main “hands” that matter are the fisticuffs in the combat between the unwitting “hide-and-seek” participants and their hunters. Like Ready Or Not, this successor features showdowns that make entertaining use out of antiquated weapons and rich folks who aren’t as prepared in close-quarters contact as they should be. The most memorable scenes of conflict this time feature locations like the washing machine area of the resort and the dance floor of an abandoned wedding reception, the latter set to a too-familiar needle drop. Thanks to other eat-the-rich romps like The Menu and Saltburn that its predecessor spawned 7 years ago, Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come doesn’t have the same bite as a satire but still delivers on gory delights.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is They Will Kill You, an action comedy starring Zazie Beetz and Tom Felton, about a young housekeeper who takes a job in a New York City high-rise, not realizing she is entering a community that has seen a number of disappearances over the years.
Also coming to theaters is Forbidden Fruits, a horror comedy starring Lili Reinhart and Lola Tung, following a secret witch cult run in the basement of the mall store after hours as their newest member challenges their performative sisterhood.
Streaming on Hulu is Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, a sci-fi comedy starring Vince Vaughn and James Marsden, in which two friends navigate the dangerous world of organized crime, testing their loyalty and survival skills as they get deeper into the criminal underworld.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Project Hail Mary

When Ridley Scott accepted the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical Or Comedy ten years ago for his adaptation of the Andy Weir novel The Martian, he almost immediately blurted out, “Comedy?” with a quizzical hand turned upward. If directing duo Phil Lord and Christopher Miller should happen to win for Project Hail Mary, their take on another Andy Weir novel about an astronaut stranded in space, it’s unlikely they’ll be as bemused by the categorization. The protagonists of both tales certainly use smart aleck humor to deflect from their dire situations, but the newest of the two space epics has both a mirthful touch and sense of wonder in its storytelling that make it a lighter lift. The film gets off to a slow start but once it hits ignition, it’s a joyous sci-fi spectacle that counts as a high point for the cinematic year so far.

Project Hail Mary centers on Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a middle school science teacher whose PhD in molecular biology makes him uniquely qualified for a top-secret space mission. He’s visited by government higher-up Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), who needs help understanding the “astrophage” material that is slowly eating away at our sun. Initially, Grace’s work is intended to be here on Earth but when the team discovers a line near Venus filled with the nefarious particles, the decision is made to put Grace on board with Hail Mary crew members Yáo (Ken Leung) and Olesya (Milana Vayntrub). Sadly, he’s the only one to wake up on the spacecraft when it finally arrives at the destination and Grace has to do his best impression of an astronaut while attempting to save the galaxy from a solar extinction.

It sounds like as much — if not even more so — of a bummer than The Martian on its face but the secret to the levity behind Project Hail Mary is that Grace gets by with a little help from his extraterrestrial friends. The appearance and nature of the alien life is best for audiences to discover on their own, but once that element is introduced into the story, the movie moves in the direction of a cosmos-set buddy comedy. Drew Goddard’s script balances the scientific jibber-jabber with humor that stems from Grace trying to bridge the communication gap with his new interstellar cohort. Ryan Gosling is effortlessly engaging even on his own but his game is elevated by the exceptional work of James Ortiz, who voices the creature Grace encounters in his journey. Chief among their hilarious exchanges is one invoking a fist bump to celebrate a win, which I assume comes from Andy Weir’s original text but registers as an instant classic regardless.

While co-director Chris Miller stated earlier this month that Project Hail Mary doesn’t have any green screen shots, the movie obviously utilizes visual effects heavily to depict its outer space settings. But the production design of the Hail Mary ship itself is immaculate, a fully-realized interior down to every last control panel light blinking peril at the stand-in space traveller. Everything outside the windows of the spacecraft is breathtaking to behold as well, whether it’s luminous planets suspended in the vast darkness or stars whizzing past at impossible speeds. Blockbuster filmmaking doesn’t get much more exhilarating than the scene above the moon of Tau Ceti, with Grace dangling precariously by a wire to collect material for an experiment. As the title of the film suggests, this mission is humanity’s last shot to save itself from catastrophe and watching our hero lay it all out on the line is why we return to the movies.

Besides The Martian as an obvious point of reference, Project Hail Mary readily recalls exemplars of the science fiction genre like Arrival, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and 2001: A Space Odyssey, among others. It may not live quite up to the standard set by those classics but it’s certainly an improvement on Spaceman, the Netflix clunker from a couple years ago with a similar premise. Lord and Miller, perhaps best known for producing the animated Spider-Verse franchise, continue to excel at synthesizing their influences into pop confections that don’t jettison their braininess along the way. At 156 minutes, the editing isn’t as judicious as it could’ve been and the storyline has a few different spots that would’ve properly sufficed as a fitting endpoint. But this film’s canvas and candor is so optimistic and open-hearted that it’s easy for me to overlook even its most apparent flaws.

Score – 4/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, a comedy horror sequel starring Samara Weaving and Kathryn Newton, in which the sole survivor of a brutal “game” that resulted in the deaths of her husband and in-laws is forced to participate in a new deadlier game.
Also coming to theaters is The Pout-Pout Fish, an animated fantasy comedy starring Nick Offerman and Nina Oyama, which follows two aquatic misfits as they embark on an impossible journey to save their home.
Premiering on Netflix is Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, a crime drama starring Cillian Murphy and Rebecca Ferguson, continuing the story of an infamous gangster as he returns to a bombed Birmingham in 1940 and becomes involved in secret wartime missions.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

The Bride!

Writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal taps her The Lost Daughter star Jessie Buckley for The Bride!, the second classic literary adaptation from Warner Bros this season designed to turn heads. Though “Wuthering Heights” shares this monstrous reimagining’s penchant for titular punctuation, Gyllenhaal’s sophomore effort in the director’s chair is even more “extra” in its execution. As Frankenstein author Mary Shelley (played by Jessie Buckley) tells us at the outset, this story is also one of tortured romance but is dedicated to a tortuous framing conceit that sinks the whole movie. In monochromatic interludes, Shelley breaks the fourth wall and cackles as she teases unfinished business from her landmark novel. In this context, this tale isn’t a “reinvigoration” — to borrow a descriptor from the film — of 1935’s Bride Of Frankenstein but the feminist follow-up Shelley never got to write.

From beyond the grave, Shelley possesses Ida (also played by Buckley), a young harlot living in 1930s Chicago who makes herself available to mob associates like Clyde (John Magaro) before she takes a fatal fall down a flight of stairs. At the same time, the reanimated creature “Frank” (Christian Bale) beseeches mad scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening) for a female companion to ease the loneliness of his existence. They dig up Ida’s corpse and reanimate her in Euphronious’ laboratory but the memory of her past life is wiped out in the process, leaving Frank to fill in the gaps with fanciful untruths. His temper turns deadly towards a pair of agitators who attempt to assault his Bride and the couple heads east as fugitives, with Detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his assistant Myrna Malloy (Penélope Cruz) hot on their trail.

For a film that posits itself as a manifesto of female liberation, The Bride! can’t seem to decide what it’s trying to say with its titular protagonist. Buckley’s frenetic performance doesn’t help either, as her character periodically gets possessed by Shelley and spits out writerly rants in Queen’s English before reverting back to a Great Lakes dialect. I’ve no doubt she’s doing what Maggie Gyllenhaal had in mind but her volatile manner of acting doesn’t allow us a way into the interior life of this heroine. The story contrives scenarios wherein Ida can be heralded as an iconoclast but if one zooms out on the narrative, it’d be difficult to say she actually has much agency here. Frank’s actions and motivations guide the vast majority of their journey and his Bride is, literally and figuratively, along for the ride as they hit the road.

If this sounds very Bonnie And Clyde, it’s safe to assume The Bride! luxuriates in the comparison, as it gleefully forefronts its cinematic references whether in-period or anachronistic. Maggie Gyllenhaal recruits her brother Jake to play a song-and-dance star à la Fred Astaire that Frank idolizes on the silver screen. Frankly, I’ll take any opportunity to see the younger Gyllenhaal sibling croon and tap dance in fictitious black-and-white talkies with names like Heartbreak Holiday and The Dubious Detective. Astaire’s frequent cohort Ginger Rogers is name-checked and even used as an alias for a time, as Ida communes with Shelley about finding her true identity. There’s an odd Young Frankenstein musical tie-in and an even odder closing credit choice in song that doesn’t even sound like a good idea on paper but is much sillier in execution.

Buckley’s the favorite to win Best Actress this weekend and it’s hard not to see the influence that projects by two-time Oscar winner Emma Stone had on this movie. Poor Things was its own uninhibited riff on Bride Of Frankenstein but that film took the effort to put its regenerated heroine through a meaningful arc and made her tale of discovery unforgettable. The Bride! also revels in the female-fronted punk-lite provocation of Cruella, which itself borrowed heavily from the mythology recontextualization of Todd Phillips’s Joker. Perhaps it’s no surprise that Gyllenhaal called on that film’s cinematographer Lawrence Sher and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir to closely emulate that box office smash’s towering presentation. “Never was there a tale so fine as The Bride and her Frankenstein,” Shelley bellows at one point but on the basis of The Bride!, I can’t say I’m convinced.

Score – 2/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Reminders Of Him, a romantic drama starring Maika Monroe and Tyriq Withers, following a woman recently released from prison who attempts to reconnect with her young daughter and finds love while trying to escape her troubled past.
Also playing in theaters is Undertone, a supernatural horror movie starring Nina Kiri and Adam DiMarco, telling the story of a host of a popular paranormal podcast who becomes haunted by terrifying recordings mysteriously sent her way.
Streaming on Shudder is Bodycam, a horror film starring Jaime Callica and Sean Rogerson, in which two police officers attempt to cover up an accidental shooting after investigating a domestic dispute but find the cameras aren’t the only things watching them.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Hoppers

Most pop culture geeks are familiar with the 20 Year Rule, a cyclical principle in which popular trends can enjoy rejuvenated relevance roughly 20 years after their initial emergence. It’s why mid-aughts nostalgia is everywhere now, from emo stalwarts helming major music festivals to sitcoms like Scrubs and Malcolm In The Middle getting rebooted. The latest Pixar film Hoppers is mired in a mid-2000s animal-crazy animated era, when box office beasts like Madagascar, Ice Age: The Meltdown and Open Season ran rampant. It’s a throwback to when all you needed was a bevy of fuzzy creatures to make families at the cineplex happy. But the standard is higher now, chiefly because of Pixar output like Ratatouille, WALL·E and Up from the later 2000s that raised the bar for all American animation.

The hero of Hoppers is Mabel Tanaka (voiced by Piper Curda), a peppy sophomore at Beaverton University whose love of nature stems from time spent as a kid with her grandmother by a tranquil glade nearby. Ever the activist, she frequently petitions against Mayor Jerry Generazzo (voiced by Jon Hamm) and his efforts to expand the town at the expense of the local forests and their inhabitants. Jerry’s latest plan involves demolishing the very glade Mabel loved as a child to make way for Beaverton Beltway but when Mabel goes to revisit it, she discovers a particular beaver is acting strangely. It turns out that it’s actually a beaver-appearing robot that Mabel’s biology professor Dr. Sam (voiced by Kathy Najimy) has zapped her consciousness into so she can study the habitat. Against Dr. Sam’s wishes, Mabel “hops” into the robotic animal to help the glade flourish with wildlife once again before it’s too late.

Marketing for Hoppers has leaned heavily into an interaction Mabel has with Dr. Sam when she first finds out about the body-swapping tech; “Guys, this is like Avatar!” Mabel gawks, while Dr. Sam protests, “This is nothing like Avatar!” Since Disney now owns 20th Century Fox, the exchange counts not only as a cross-promotional effort but a meta way to get ahead of the film’s flimsy and derivative premise. The storyline is most reminiscent of FernGully: The Last Rainforest (which Avatar incidentally cribbed from as well), Happy Feet and other environmentally-conscious animated efforts. Messages about corporate interests poisoning the natural world remain depressingly relevant, but there have already been so many kid’s films with those themes that you have to broach the subject with more nuance than what’s on display here.

A member of Pixar’s senior creative team since 2022, Daniel Chong has his first shot here at directing a full feature for the studio and developed the story with fellow Pixar mainstay Jesse Andrews. He recruits a talented comedic ensemble of Saturday Night Live alum like Bobby Moynihan, Melissa Villaseñor and Ego Nwodim to voice cute animals that reside in the woods. Meryl Streep and Dave Franco fill out the dramatic side as an insect mother and son duo that seek to use the “hopping” technology for revenge against constantly interloping humans. Their sinister plot gives way to a third act that’s surprisingly menacing for a Pixar movie but even the darker turns don’t fully make up for a story whose stakes are largely superficial up to that point.

Between a montage set to “Working For The Weekend” where fuzzy creatures rebuild a dam and lines like “flock around and find out!” from a goose character, Hoppers feels tossed-off and regressive for a studio that knows better. Even if you’re going to populate your movie with myriad woodland dwellers, you can still write them with a sophistication that makes them memorable in addition to being adorable. With the exception of Mabel, the human characters are similarly underwritten and mainly just relied on as props to keep the action moving. The nature animation, particularly of the beaver’s Superlodge community, is predictably awe-inspiring from an animation house that is second to none when it comes to crafting intricate digital worlds. But in terms of storytelling, Hoppers feels like a hop backward in time to an era when simply compiling “wacky” animated critters was enough to win the day.

Score – 2.5/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is The Bride!, a gothic crime movie starring Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale, in which a companion is created for a reanimated creature and the pair spark up romance, police interest and radical social change.
Also playing in theaters is Dolly, a horror film starring Fabianne Therese and Seann William Scott, involving a young woman who fights for survival after being abducted by a deranged, monster-like figure who wants to raise her as their child.
Streaming on Netflix is War Machine, a sci-fi action movie starring Alan Ritchson and Dennis Quaid, which follows the final recruits of a grueling special ops boot camp who encounter a deadly force from beyond this world.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

How To Make A Killing

After his terrific feature debut Emily The Criminal, writer-director John Patton Ford returns with another desperate-times-desperate-measures thriller in How To Make A Killing. A loose adaptation of the dark comedy Kind Hearts And Coronets, the film makes another strong case for rising star Glen Powell as a leading man on the heels of Twisters and The Running Man. His devilish charisma has been put to great use in effects-heavy sequels and remakes like those, but in a comparatively smaller budget indie like this, watching Powell work his way around a stacked ensemble feels like its own special effect. The movie marries the one-percenter bloodlust of last year’s Death Of A Unicorn with the satirical roll-up-your-sleeves gumption of recent release No Other Choice, and while it doesn’t reach the transcendent heights of the latter, it’s assuredly a better time at the movies than the former.

Powell stars as Becket Redfellow, a menswear associate making his way in New Jersey after his mother was cast out of their obscenely wealthy family as a teenager for having Becket out of wedlock. His childhood crush Julia (Margaret Qualley) pops into the shop one day and as they catch up on old times, she asks him about the fantastical family fortune he routinely mentioned when they were kids that he would eventually inherit. It turns out that even though he’s estranged from the Redfellows, seven living family members are all that stand between him and billions of dollars. “Well, call me when you’ve killed them all,” Julia jokes as she leaves, but after Becket is ousted from his job to make room for the owner’s son, he hatches up a precarious plan to knock off each of the affluent obstacles one by one.

It’d be hard to tell a sympathetic story of a reluctant serial killer, even in a black comedy, if his victims were virtuous, so How To Make A Killing makes sure to play up the pomposity of the relatives on Becket’s hit list. His youngest cousin Taylor (Raff Law) is introduced almost doing Becket’s job for him, jumping out of a helicopter and miraculously not breaking his neck as he lands in a pool surrounded by partygoers. Elsewhere, cousins Noah (Zach Woods) and Steven (Topher Grace) squander their money and status with hipster photography and vainglorious preaching, respectively. But Becket’s plan hits a snag when his uncle Warren (Bill Camp) takes him under his wing and gets him a job in the banking business. His scheme gets put on hold further when he also takes a shine to Noah’s schoolteacher girlfriend Ruth (Jessica Henwick).

Where John Patton Ford’s previous effort was committed to solely being a lean-and-mean crime thriller, How To Make A Killing stretches itself thinner in terms of genre convictions. The emergence of a love triangle puts portions of the plot in romantic territory, while the dynamics of the crime storyline recall the film noir archetypes of the hard-luck everyman and femme fatale. Ford bites off a bit more than he can chew narratively as well, front-loading too many flashbacks and utilizing an ironic framing device that renders the ending preposterous. But Ford’s sharp writing finds the absurdity in Becket’s situation and even when he’s in peril, Powell makes the zingers zing. “There’s a rumor out there that money doesn’t buy happiness,” he smirks. “Money does buy happiness. We’re all adults here. Let’s move on.”

Handsome and brimming with confidence, Powell could just as easily be playing one of the WASPy schmucks that Becket targets but he plays up the character’s underdog qualities to the degree that we can root for him. Conversely, Topher Grace and a typically brilliant Zach Woods make their characters so hilariously despicable in their self-centeredness and vapidity that we simply can’t wait for them to get it. Jessica Henwick makes the most of an underwritten cypher for Becket’s morality and Margaret Qualley radiates sex appeal with a dash of danger as the unhappily married Julia. Even when the plot swerves in more directions than is advisable, this killer cast makes How To Make A Killing worth getting your hands into its risky business.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Opening in theaters is Scream 7, a slasher sequel starring Neve Campbell and Isabel May, in which a new Ghostface killer emerges in the town where Sidney Prescott has built a new life and her darkest fears are realized as her daughter becomes the next target.
Also playing in theaters is EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert, a documentary and concert film of the titular King Of Rock And Roll featuring newly restored and never-before-seen footage from long-lost 1970s Las Vegas residency footage.
Streaming on Hulu is In The Blink Of An Eye, a sci-fi drama starring Kate McKinnon and Rashida Jones, weaving together three storylines, spanning thousands of years that intersect and reflect on hope, connection and the circle of life.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

“Wuthering Heights”

English writer-director Emerald Fennell puts the “more” in Yorkshire Moors with “Wuthering Heights”, her torrid but tawdry take on the oft-adapted Emily Brontë novel. Based on Fennell’s two previous efforts, Saltburn and Promising Young Woman, one may go into this movie expecting something similarly sinful and transgressive as her other features. But the filmmaker’s penchant for empty provocation is largely eschewed for a period piece that looks every bit the classic Hollywood romance, with only flashes of racier on-screen explications of licentious longing. Even though Romeo And Juliet is discussed at length during one scene in Fennell’s film, her version of an ostensibly similar romantic tragedy isn’t a radical reinterpretation à la Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and, given how many times Brontë’s classic has already been seen on screen, is worse off for it.

In late 18th-century England, Cathy Earnshaw (Charlotte Mellington) and her father (played by Martin Clunes) take in a destitute young boy (played by Owen Cooper) without a name, whom Cathy dubs “Heathcliff”. Through the years, the two become close as Cathy teaches Heathcliff how to read and Heathcliff handles chores around the estate. As adults, Cathy (played by Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (played by Jacob Elordi) share an inseparable bond but looking to improve her situation, Cathy sets her sights on their wealthy new neighbor Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif). Soon after an arranged run-in, Cathy accepts Edgar’s proposal for marriage and a heartbroken Heathcliff flees after what he sees as a betrayal of their inextricable bond. A year later, he returns to find Cathy is with child and well cared for at Linton’s manor, but she’s still secretly yearning to make an impossible affair with Heathcliff work.

Though “Wuthering Heights” isn’t the most revelatory telling of this tale, make no mistake that this is a first-rate production, where every dollar of its $80 million budget is well-represented on-screen. The production design is consistently stunning, harkening back to Golden Age theatrical opulence when the costumes and sets worked in concert to become characters in the story. One piece of gothic set design that’s particularly striking is a fireplace surrounded by melted plaster handprints, a haunting homage to the theme of reaching out for something incendiary and ill-advised. Linus Sandgren, whose cinematography in Saltburn was one of that film’s highlights, makes an absolute meal out of lavish nature settings where every moor is perpetually fog-enveloped and every sunset is blood red.

There aren’t any performances in “Wuthering Heights” that stand out as subpar but with the exception of Alison Oliver in an eccentric supporting role, not much of the acting here feels especially adventurous either. Much has been made about how star and co-producer Margot Robbie has promoted the film by waxing poetic about her off-screen “codependent” connection with Jacob Elordi. While I don’t doubt there were some sparks, I’d mostly chalk all the talk up to a marketing stunt so auditoriums could fill up for Valentine’s Day weekend. Regardless, the pair sell the love like the pros they are and indulge the darker sides of lust and obsession as well. But in a movie rife with BDSM undertones, it’s most disappointing that Cathy and Heathcliff’s mutual kink is treating everyone outside of their relationship horribly.

“Wuthering Heights” is hardly the first romantic drama to underscore an “us vs. the world” mentality but in Fennell’s cynical translation of this material, love means never having to say you’re sorry to bystanders you’ve treated with derision and contempt. There’s a mean streak in this movie’s Cathy and Heathcliff — primarily in how they manipulate others and dispose of them afterwards — that tracks with the callousness present in Fennell’s cinematic output thus far. A negative worldview comports better if you’re making a vigilante thriller or a dark comedy but when you’re tackling classical romance, it just feels like the wrong attitude to bring. Climbing these Heights wouldn’t feel as daunting if we had better footholds for character motivation beyond the doomed lovers imposing their will, no matter who they burn along the way.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
How To Make A Killing, starring Glen Powell and Margaret Qualley, is a black comedy thriller involving a young man disowned at birth by his ultra-wealthy family who will stop at nothing to reclaim his $28 billion inheritance.
I Can Only Imagine 2, starring John Michael Finley and Milo Ventimiglia, is a faith-based sequel following the lead singer of Christian band MercyMe as he struggles with his beliefs and inner demons while seeking a path through adversity.
Playing at Cinema Center is The Voice Of Hind Rajab, a docudrama nominated for the Best International Feature Film at next month’s Academy Awards about Red Crescent volunteers responding to an emergency call from a 6-year-old girl trapped in a car.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup