In two months, Disney will release Lilo & Stitch, a live-action remake of an animated counterpart that’s barely 20 years old at this point. Next up is Moana, whose original version will not even be 10 years old upon the release of the “reimagining” in July of 2026. It remains to be seen how much — or how little — these redos will stray from the animated iterations but if the 2019 remakes of 90s classics Aladdin and The Lion King are any indication, they’ll stick to the lucrative “if it ain’t broke” formula. I’ve yet to read a compelling artistic rationale behind “refreshing” properties that don’t need to be modernized, which makes Snow White a welcome exception. Made in 1937, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs was Disney’s first full-length feature and an adaptation of Brothers Grimm fairy tale that was already over 100 years old upon the film’s release. At last, we have a Disney remake that actually justifies its own existence.

The setup here remains faithful to the traditional tale: an unnamed queen gives birth to a daughter named Snow White (Rachel Zegler) before falling ill and passing away. The king remarries and when he disappears in battle, the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot) takes the throne. Threatened by the presence of a potential heir, the Queen confines Snow White to the scullery and after the vainglorious Queen’s Magic Mirror deems Snow White as “fairest in the land”, the Queen tasks a Huntsman (Ansu Kabia) with Snow White’s execution. She flees the attempt on her life and finds refuge in a forest cottage, occupied by seven dwarfs who work in the nearby mines. Desperate to return to the kingdom and expose the treacherous Queen, she teams up with her septet of new friends and a charming young rebel named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap) to end the Queen’s nefarious reign.

Unlike Beauty And The Beast and The Little Mermaid, two masterworks which have also received “updates” in the past 10 years, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs doesn’t have a bevy of Menken-penned songs. The familiar and friendly tunes “Heigh-Ho” and “Whistle While You Work” have been dusted off for Snow White but the majority of the music comes courtesy of The Greatest Showman songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. They craft a compelling “all skate” opening number in “Good Things Grow” and a juicy villain treatise “All Is Fair” but Pasek and Paul’s finest contributions here are the tête-à-tête duets between Snow White and Jonathan. The thorny and clever “Princess Problems” gives way to the sweeping and gorgeous “A Hand Meets A Hand”, co-written by the talented young singer-songwriter Lizzy McAlpine.

These new songs soar thanks to the harmonious blend between Rachel Zegler and Andrew Burnap but Snow White is primarily Zegler’s show and she does an outstanding job bringing the iconic Disney character to life. The seven dwarf characters are all computer-generated, so she doesn’t have flesh-and-blood screen companions for long stretches of the story, but she remains a magnetic screen presence all the same. Saddled with wardrobe and hair styling that’s perhaps too reverent to the original movie, Zegler nonetheless finds her own way into the character without trying to shake things up beyond recognition. On the reverse side, Gal Gadot benefits from more exquisite costume design but can’t find her way under the skin of this slippery sorceress; I still have yet to see her excel in a role outside of Wonder Woman.

Snow White suffers from some of the same issues that have plagued Disney’s recent live-action “reimaginings”: the lighting is flat due to the abundance of green screens, the blend of live and CG characters is often unconvincing and the vocal tracks are overly-processed. Frankly, I don’t see Disney changing any of these aspects for future endeavors. But in terms of straight-ahead Disney remakes —not counting spinoffs or sequels like Cruella or Mufasa — Snow White is one of their best since 2015’s Cinderella. If they insist on continuing to revisit their catalog as opposed to making originals, they’d be better served looking back to their output from the 1940s and 1950s rather than to films that have been released this century. Snow White may not be the fairest of them all but it certainly dwarfs most of the retreaded material coming out of the House Of Mouse.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is A Working Man, an action thriller starring Jason Statham and Michael Peña, about a construction worker whose experience as an ex-Royal Marines commando becomes useful when his boss’s teenage daughter is kidnapped by human traffickers.
Also coming to theaters is The Woman In The Yard, a psychological horror film starring Danielle Deadwyler and Okwui Okpokwasili, involving a mysterious woman who repeatedly appears in a family’s front yard, often delivering chilling warnings and unsettling messages.
Streaming on Amazon Prime is Holland, a mystery starring Nicole Kidman and Matthew Macfadyen, following a teacher in a small midwestern town who suspects her husband of living a double life but things may be worse than she initially imagined.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Warner Bros. bets big on Parasite auteur Bong Joon-ho with Mickey 17, the director’s first film since that historic Oscar night over 5 years ago. However, those going into his follow-up expecting the meticulously-crafted thrills of that Best Picture winner may do well to recalibrate tonal expectations closer to Joon-ho’s other English-language features Snowpiercer and Okja. Though the budget and scale are the largest that he’s worked with so far, the film tracks thematically with Joon-ho’s previous output, exploring subjects like class imbalance and mankind’s impact on the environment. This time around, he leans into other themes like the rise of authoritarianism and finding one’s humanity within a broken system, speaking more directly to our current political moment. When it’s all said and done, the movie is a maximalist mess that still ends up working, despite itself.

Our protagonist in this near-future madcap journey is Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), a hapless entrepreneur who signs up for a space expedition to get off the planet where ruthless loan sharks are hot on his trail. His business partner Timo (Steven Yeun) joins him on the mission to the ice planet Niflheim but since Mickey lack’s Timo’s pilot skills, he has to sign up as an “Expendable”. This means that he’s treated like a human guinea pig, tasked with the most dangerous jobs onboard and in the event of his death, the crew simply prints up a new version of Mickey with his memories intact. After the 17th iteration of Mickey takes a nasty fall while researching cave-dwelling critters, he’s left for dead but when he ends up making it back to base, he finds that he’s already been replaced by a new clone.

This creates a conundrum that serves as Mickey 17‘s primary conflict, as the instance of multiple versions of the same individual is strictly against protocol and if 17 and 18 are discovered, both will be killed and their backed-up memories will be erased. The cloning technology has been outlawed on Earth and before politician and mission leader Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) take off for Niflheim, they agree to terminate any “multiples” that may crop up. Shortly after 17 and 18 meet, they both appear to Mickey’s on-board girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie) but are soon after discovered by cadet Kai (Anamaria Vartolomei), who isn’t nearly as willing as Nasha is to keep the Mickeys’ secret.

So obviously Mickey 17 has plenty going on and it’s hard not to feel like Bong Joon-ho simply has too many plates spinning during this story. Subplots take over the entire narrative for stretches and then aren’t addressed again, while potentially intriguing avenues generated by the high concept premise are never explored. As he did with Okja, Joon-ho dedicates too much screen time to actors luxuriating in their characters’ quirks, without generating much insight or humor in the process. Collette is a talented actress but she could play this sort of generically manipulative type in her sleep and Ylfa’s odd fixation with sauces is, for some reason, given precedence late in the film. Ruffalo is playing things way too broad, taking a megalomaniacal role that may have been written with some finesse on the page, but loses any of its nuance in his scenery-chewing performance.

The engine that makes Mickey 17 run, despite its preoccupations and obstructions, is the work of Robert Pattinson in a demanding dual role. Even though 17 and 18 have the same genetic makeup, Pattinson finds ways to delineate the personalities between the two so we’re never confused who is who. While 17 has subservient and beleaguered demeanor, 18 is more stern and prone to act decisively — in some cases, violently. 17 remains the kind of hard-luck good guy it’s easy to root for in a tale like this but 18 represents the darker impulses that can reside in that same man. Also narrating the movie’s voiceover, Pattinson is all over Mickey 17 and with a lesser actor at the helm, the project wouldn’t work nearly as well. He makes it an intergalactic trip worth taking.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Novocaine, an action comedy starring Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder, involving a mild-mannered bank manager with a rare disorder that prevents him from feeling physical pain who fights to rescue the girl of his dreams after she’s taken hostage in a robbery.
Also coming to theaters is Opus, a music-based mystery starring Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich, following a young writer as she’s invited to the remote compound of a legendary pop star, who mysteriously disappeared thirty years ago.
Premiering on Netflix is The Electric State, a sci-fi adventure starring Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt, about an orphaned teen who hits the road to find her long-lost brother, teaming up with a mysterious robot, a smuggler and his wisecracking sidekick.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Billed as “a new kind of love story from the creators of Barbarian“, the tongue-in-cheek thriller Companion finds young couple Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) arriving at a lake house for the weekend. There they meet Josh’s catty friend Kat (Megan Suri), her boyfriend and owner of the house Sergey (Rupert Friend), along with a third couple in Patrick (Lukas Gage) and Eli (Harvey Guillén). After swapping meet-cute stories over dinner and dancing to Book Of Love, things seem to be off to a good start but the next day brings with it a shocking incident of fatal violence. As the group scrambles to reconcile with the horrific event, revelations are made about the relationships between the houseguests that affect how they move forward.

If you haven’t seen the full trailer for Companion and don’t know anything else about the film, you will almost certainly enjoy the movie more if you don’t know any more going into it. However, the marketing from Warner Bros. has already let audiences in on the Companion‘s biggest twist: that Iris isn’t human but is actually a lifelike companion robot. After that reveal, which occurs around the 20-minute mark, the pace of the movie increases considerably and centers around Iris trying to make sense of her new reality. When she discovers that her settings can be adjusted by an app on Josh’s phone, she swipes it and runs into the woods to see everything that her programming allows, with Josh and company close behind her.

In his debut as both writer and director for the same project, Drew Hancock peppers his “robot on the run” tale with biting commentary about how we as a society treat (and mistreat) artificial intelligence. Specifically, Hancock focuses on lonely young men who view women as objects to the degree that they’d rather fashion objects around to resemble women than adjust their viewpoint. More broadly, Companion also wrestles with the classic sci-fi conundrum of the kinds of rights that should be afforded to AI mechanisms, particularly when they behave more humanely than the humans around them. Despite these heady themes, the movie makes room for pithy one-liners, as when Josh stifles a smirk after remarking “I know this must be a lot to process” to Iris during their conversation about her identity.

Though the script has some fun surprises in addition to the central development, Companion suffers from uneven plotting that could’ve been ironed out with another pass or two through the screenplay. The film isn’t exactly a horror movie — at least in a traditional sense — but it suffers from the logic questions we come to expect from entries in the genre. It’s one thing to think “why doesn’t this character do this instead?” when everyone is human but when supposedly super-intelligent beings are in play, it seems fair to expect them to make smarter choices. There’s also a subplot surrounding a large sum of money that feels like it’s out of a different movie about criminals getting in over their heads. Without giving away much about the ending, once Iris comes into focus as the protagonist, it becomes apparent there’s really only one way this story can conclude.

With starring roles in chillers like The Boogeyman and last year’s Heretic, Sophie Thatcher gives her most fleshed-out performance yet as the movie’s titular counterpart. She imbues Iris with obsequious mannerisms that gradually morph into crafty calculations as her deference to Josh dissipates. Following up on a bongo-banging supporting turn in Oppenheimer, Jack Quaid carries over his easy charm here for something decidedly less laid-back and more desperately controlling. Lukas Gage had a small but not insignificant role in Smile 2 and he brings just the right level of camp here as his character evolves during the storyline. It’s not the best version of itself that it could be but as is, Companion is a cheeky companion to hard sci-fi like Ex Machina and Blade Runner that examines relationships between humans and robots.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Opening in theaters is Heart Eyes, a romcom slasher starring Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding, following a pair of co-workers working late on Valentine’s Day, who are mistaken for a couple and sent running for their lives by the infamous Heart Eyes Killer.
Also playing only in theaters is Love Hurts, an action comedy starring Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose, telling the story of a successful realtor whose past as a violent hitman comes back to haunt him when his former partner reveals that his brother is hunting him.
Streaming on Netflix is Kinda Pregnant, a comedy starring Amy Schumer and Jillian Bell, about a woman who becomes jealous of her friend’s pregnancy and begins to wear a false pregnant belly, a ruse that’s complicated after she meets the man of her dreams.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Set during a particularly harsh winter in the Westfjords of Iceland, the new psychological horror film The Damned may not be the most comforting to watch this time of year but it might make you hug your space heater a little tighter tonight. Percolating with an icy dread at every turn, it’s a sparse and chilly evocation of how harsh conditions in nature can cause the humans braving them to create monsters that may not even be there. As the maxim from Game Of Thrones forebodes, “winter is coming” and at times, Thordur Palsson’s feature directorial debut almost plays like a spooky subplot from that series. Though the storyline sometimes moves at a glacial pace, even with a sub-90 minute runtime, The Damned is punctuated with a haunting conclusion that will be burned into my memory for some time.

Settled in a Arctic bay fishing outpost during the 1800s, the movie stars Odessa Young as Eva, who has led the crew since her husband Magnus passed several months prior. As her team of fishermen ready their longboat one morning, they see a large boat shipwreck on a set of jagged rocks in the distance. The group is split on what action to take, as Eva and helmsman Ragnar (Game Of Thrones‘ Rory McCann) deem that intervention could be dangerous, while other crew members feel it necessary to aid potential survivors. When a barrel of food washes up to their shore, Eva decides it’s worth the risk to venture out with the hopes that other capsized resources could be collected. The expedition yields unsettling results and the superstitious charwoman Helga (Siobhan Finneran) fears their actions may have caused evil spirits to travel back to their settlement.

Just as Eva has a large responsibility taking care of her people, Odessa Young is taking on quite a bit with this role and she does an excellent job holding the center during this dreary tale. We learned that Magnus died the previous winter while going out into unsettled waters, so decisions like the one Eva has to make about the capsized ship weigh heavily on her. Young displays an engaging combination of inherited resiliency and taciturn vulnerability, helping us get into her character’s headspace when the edges of her reality begin to blur. I don’t believe I’ve seen her in another film since the 2020 biopic Shirley, in which she plays a character about as different as Eva as is possible. Here, she proves she can handle a leading role with quiet command and I hope other directors will take notice.

Director Thordur Palsson, who also conceived of the story for The Damned before passing screenwriting duties to Jamie Hannigan, certainly knows how to set the mood for his frigid fable. But too often during its midsection, it feels like a film with a strong setup and an effective ending with too much blubber in the middle. Once a supernatural angle is introduced into the story, Palsson becomes a broken record with scares that don’t feel cheap but do feel redundant. There just isn’t quite enough incident here to fill a feature and I wish he had worked with Hannigan more to establish a story that takes advantage of the whole ensemble cast. The movie necessarily becomes more insular when it moves into a more subjective perspective through Eva but it suffers from succumbing to more familiar genre beats from then on.

What I appreciated most about The Damned in the final stretch is how it doesn’t get too esoteric for its own good and lets the narrative arrive at a chilling but still satisfying conclusion. Too often, I see “artsy” horror movies that don’t bother to resolve their otherworldly plot elements and simply scapegoat the protagonist’s disturbed psyche. In other words, this is not a film that falls back on an “it was all in her head the whole time” alibi. Yes, it’s still a horror movie and yes, there are scenes where the characters’ minds may be working against them, but the brutal conditions to which they’re being subjected certainly explain why things may not be quite as they seem. The Damned doesn’t completely reach its potential but it marks a solid start from a director with a knack for bone-chilling storytelling.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Better Man, starring Jonno Davies and Steve Pemberton, is a music biopic about the life of British pop singer Robbie Williams, who is portrayed as a CGI-animated chimpanzee because he’s always felt “less evolved than other people.”
Den Of Thieves 2: Pantera, starring Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr., is a heist sequel following two thieves from the original, who are now embroiled in the treacherous world of diamond burglary.
The Last Showgirl, starring Pamela Anderson and Dave Bautista, is an indie drama about a seasoned showgirl who must plan her future after the burlesque show she’s starred in for 30 years closes abruptly.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

During his 9-season tenure at Saturday Night Live, actor Kyle Mooney often exuded a goofy and amiable charm in his sketch roles, so it stands to reason that his directorial debut would possess those same qualities. To say that the disaster comedy Y2K doesn’t take itself too seriously would be quite the understatement, which will be a bug for some and a feature for others. As its title implies, millennials are squarely in the film’s key demographic; even if other age groups understand the barrage of late 90s references Mooney and his co-writer Evan Winter throw into their screenplay, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll appreciate them. But if you’re looking for a throwback that plays like a blend of 1998 movies Small Soldiers and Can’t Hardly Wait, then Y2K is here to dial up the nostalgic fun.

Set on the final day of 1999, the movie follows teen buddies Eli (Jaeden Martell) and Danny (Julian Dennison) as they try to find a New Year’s Eve party they can get into at the last minute. After getting bullied by stoner skaters Ash (Lachlan Watson) and Farkas (Eduardo Franco) outside a convenience store, the pair run into the smart and popular Laura (Rachel Zegler) inside and she lets them know about a party at the house of Soccer Chris (The Kid Laroi) that night. Eli’s attempt that evening to turn his crush on Laura into something more is thwarted by The Millennium Bug, which causes all manner of technology from appliances to computers to become violently sentient. While most of the kids at the party die at the hands of the now-conscious electronics, Eli and Laura form a group with several others to venture out and try to unplug the superintelligence trying to end humanity.

In terms of alternate history pitches, “what if Y2K really happened?” is a tantalizing one but not exactly one that Mooney and his team look to explore too deeply. To a certain degree, it seems to parody the kind of tech paranoia popular in mid-90s sci-fi thrillers like The Net and Virtuosity in the way it ups the stakes to outlandish proportions. But it’s all backdrop for what’s primarily one of those teen comedies about how going to one cool kid’s party can change the trajectory of your whole life. The characters here are all easy enough to hang out with for 90 minutes but I wish that Mooney and Winter had fleshed them out a bit more; Laura is the most developed one here and even she basically becomes Angelina Jolie’s character from Hackers by the third act. Compared to another period coming-of-age story like Dìdi from earlier this year, the writing here is laughably thin.

Mooney may not have the most sophisticated film on his hands but he certainly packs it to the brim with as many turn of the century touchstones as possible. There are needle drops from pop rock acts like Edwin McCain and Semisonic, with plenty of other zeitgeist zingers invoking all manner of pop culture fixtures from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time to Billy Blanks. And should you still carry a torch for stylings of nu metal act Limp Bizkit, Y2K should immediately leap to the top of your must-watch list. There’s a running bit of clever commentary courtesy of a rap enthusiast character played by Daniel Zolghadri, who chastised his friends Ash and Farkas for foregoing thoughtful hip-hop for what he deems as “corporate music”. He freestyles as Prophets Of Intelligence and gets on his high horse about posers selling out but when it comes down to it, his taste and talent isn’t as “elevated” as he thinks it is.

There really isn’t much tension in Y2K as to whether or not the ragtag band of high schoolers will somehow overcome the evil robots, though there are some unexpected casualties along the way. The violence bestowed upon the teens is as impractical as it is ridiculous, with blenders lunging at crotches and Barbie Jeeps arming themselves with power tools. Midway through the movie, Laura pulls up a video that conveniently explains the supercomputer’s evil plot in lengthy detail with visual aids. Does it actually make sense that machines heading towards technological singularity would divulge their plan as carelessly as a James Bond villain would? Of course not. Y2K is a diverting enough initial outing from Kyle Mooney as a director, who I hope will keep honing his storytelling chops from here on.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Kraven The Hunter, a Sony’s Spider-Man Universe entry starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ariana DeBose, following a primeval assassin who starts down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences.
Also playing in theaters is The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim, an animated fantasy starring Brian Cox and Gaia Wise, set almost 200 years before Peter Jackson’s trilogy, when the king of Rohan and his family defend their kingdom against a powerful army.
Streaming on Netflix is Carry-On, an action thriller starring Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman, following a mysterious traveler who blackmails a young TSA officer to let a dangerous package slip through security and onto a Christmas Day flight.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Ever the maximalist and never one to simply let a good thing be, director Ridley Scott was destined to reenter the world of Maximus someday. Alas, that time has come and Gladiator II has made its way into theaters across the world. In typical sequel fashion, this follow-up has more of everything: twice the Colosseum-set battle sequences, three times the amount of hushed, lamp-lit conversations about family and fate; heck, there are even two emperors this time around. If Scott and scribe David Scarpa had applied this ethos to the story itself, we’d have quite the swords and sandals epic on our hands but the actual premise here — said another way: a justification for its existence in the first place — never develops much past its initial paces. But like an equipped gladiator, this film does have a couple potent weapons in store and knows how to use them.

Gladiator II finds Rome in a state of unease, under the rule of the corrupt twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) 16 years after the death of Marcus Aurelius. Desperate for new leadership, the Roman people champion fearless general Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), who has just returned from a conquest over the city of Numidia. During the battle, Numidian warrior Hanno (Paul Mescal) loses his wife and is captured by the Roman army. After being transported to Rome, the enslaved Hanno makes quite the showing in fierce gladiatorial combat and catches the attention of gladiator trainer Macrinus (Denzel Washington). With vengeance on his mind, Hanno plans to rise up the ranks and topple both Acacius and the emperor brothers to return the city to its former glory.

The most immediate challenge Gladiator II faces as a sequel to a universally loved film that won 5 Academy Awards and grossed almost $500 million is in carrying on without the two leads from the original. The towering performances of both Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator are understandably difficult to top and try as they might, Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal simply don’t leave the indelible impression of their predecessors. Mescal’s wheelhouse is more in low-key work of indies like All Of Us Strangers and Aftersun but as a brooding fighter, he feels miscast and out of his element. Pascal fares some better in his role as a stoic leader but the character isn’t written with nearly the same depth or feeling as Maximus or Commodus from the previous tale.

While Connie Nielsen and Derek Jacobi reprise the roles from the first film, the strongest performances in Gladiator II come courtesy of players entering the arena for the first time. Joseph Quinn brings a more familiar but still palpable menace to his Geta but Fred Hechinger brings an unhinged impudence to Caracalla that makes him the more dynamic spectacle. Speaking of his vision for Rome, he announces, “there will be games…and mass executions!” so flippantly that its casual cruelty is almost endearing. As for the aforementioned games, the fight scenes are enjoyable staged but often marred by CG effects that seem almost instantly dated, particularly in a sequence meant to mirror the Battle Of Salamis. The digitally inserted sharks don’t look great but when two ships collide with one another, the resulting havoc is especially unconvincing.

For a movie about brawny brawlers, it’s apt that one man would carry this film on his back and that man is Denzel Washington. Put bluntly, he is the reason to see Gladiator II and if he was replaced by another actor to play his role as an advisor with aspirations of authority, it would sink the whole project. Introduced shuffling his many-ringed fingers while overseeing combat, Washington is simply having a magnificent time luxuriating in Scott’s larger-than-life version of Rome. You’ve never heard someone enunciate the word “politics” quite the way that Washington does in a memorable moment from the third act. It’s no coincidence that when the narrative shifts its focus towards Macrinus and his ambitions, the movie becomes infinitely more enjoyable. Gladiator II doesn’t quite best its forerunner in the ring but still has enough spectacular to keep us entertained.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Moana 2, an animated musical sequel starring Auliʻi Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson, following the titular adventurer as she receives an unexpected call from her wayfinding ancestors and must journey to the far seas of Oceania once more.
Streaming on Paramount+ is Dear Santa, a Christmas comedy starring Jack Black and Keegan-Michael Key, about a young boy accidentally mixes up his spelling and sends his Christmas list to Satan instead of Santa.
Premiering on Max is Sweethearts, a romantic comedy starring Kiernan Shipka and Nico Hiraga, involving a pair of college freshmen who try to break up with their high school sweethearts on the same night before Thanksgiving.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Narrowly avoiding a straight-to-streaming release two years ago, the surprise hit Smile opened wide to over $200 million at the box office. Inevitably, the series continues this fall with Smile 2, a satisfactory sequel that picks up both atmospherically and chronologically right where its predecessor left off. After a bravura cold open paralleling a high watermark sequence in the True Detective episode “Who Goes There”, returning writer-director Parker Finn begins setting the table for a similar story in a very different setting. More than most sequels, this follow-up is particularly burdened with recreating the element of surprise from which the original benefited. While it doesn’t outdo Smile in the scare department, it provides another spooky tale set in this demented universe and makes a case for itself as an ongoing franchise.

Smile 2 centers around international pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), who’s about to kick off a worldwide comeback tour a year after a car crash that took the life of her actor boyfriend Paul Hudson (Ray Nicholson). Left with residual pain from the accident, Skye has secretly been scoring painkillers from high school acquaintance Lewis (Lukas Gage), who commits an act of violence against himself similar to the brutal event that kicked things off in Smile. In the days following, Riley begins experiencing horrifying hallucinations that she’s unable to explain to her mom and manager Elizabeth (Rosemarie DeWitt) or her close friend Gemma (Dylan Gelula). With her first show just days away, Skye has to race against the clock to figure out what’s behind the grinning visions that are haunting her day and night.

Much of Smile‘s success as an effective horror outing came from Sosie Bacon’s terrific lead performance and Smile 2 similarly strikes a chord with a female lead bolstered by outstanding acting. Naomi Scott is asked to do quite a bit here, convincingly singing and dancing to several original songs in a way that falls in line with how megastars like Billie Eilish and Lady Gaga likely prep for their elaborate shows. Her Skye is not always the most likable character either and that’s even before the “smile curse” is passed on to her, often impatient and demanding with those on her crew while still saving face with her fans. But Scott roots these imperfections in her character’s unresolved trauma stemming from the fatal car crash that forever altered the trajectory of her life and career. Mental health details, like the depiction of trichotillomania and self-soothing practices, give her performance layers of authenticity that make it easier to get lost in the story.

As can be the case with horror sequels, Smile 2 tries a bit too hard to dissect its conceit and the mechanics of the “Smile Entity” and its curse are fuzzier this time around. Psychologically, it’s scarier when the malevolent force affects relatively smaller occurrences to make the protagonist question their sanity. Compared to its predecessor, this movie opts for more elaborate scenes and subplots of unreality that make it more frustrating for us in the audience to track what’s happening. There are several swaths where we have to subconsciously backtrack and figure out what actually happened to Skye versus what she experienced. Certainly some of this is expected and warranted for a psychological horror film but Parker Finn plays a little too fast-and-loose with some of his storytelling this time.

While both Smile films exceed the two-hour mark (atypical of lower budget horror fare), the pacing continues to be crucial in allowing the psychological dread to build. This time around, it also accommodates a subplot with Peter Jacobson as a nurse with a cock-eyed plan right out of Flatliners; his Taub character from the long-running medical show House would be proud. Like the first entry, Smile 2 is handsomely shot and features an unnerving detuned music score from composer Cristobal Tapia De Veer, in addition to the aforementioned pop tunes. Depending on how Smile 2 does at the box office, we may find this series bearing its teeth in theaters for years to come. As long as Finn has strong ideas for how to keep the franchise fresh, I’m all smiles.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Venom: The Last Dance, a superhero sequel starring Tom Hardy and Chiwetel Ejiofor, which finds reporter Eddie Brock and his symbiote alter ego on the run from both humans and alien members of Venom’s home planet.
Also coming to theaters is Conclave, a religious drama starring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci, following a cardinal tasked with organizing the election of the successor to the deceased Pope, who discovers the former Pope had a secret that must be uncovered.
Streaming on Netflix is Don’t Move, a horror-thriller starring Kelsey Asbille and Finn Wittrock, depicting a seasoned killer who injects a paralytic agent into a grieving woman, who must run, fight, and hide before her body completely shuts down.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

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

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

Lifting off in time for the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, the crowd-pleaser Fly Me To The Moon deliberately fudges the facts of the Space Race to spin an alternate history yarn that plays like a cheeky counterpart to For All Mankind. That Apple TV+ series, in addition to recent films First Man and Apollo 11, have approached the subject of the moon landing under more understandably serious terms but in his latest feature, director Greg Berlanti seems more concerned with the central romance than the outcome of the momentous spaceflight. Even if the sparks between the two leads can’t quite compete with the fire from space shuttle ignitors, the playful story has just enough gas in the boosters to get things off the ground.

It’s 1969 and NASA launch director Cole Davis (Channing Tatum) is running out of money and time to make good on JFK’s promise to the nation at the beginning of the decade to land man on the moon. Enter Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson), a Don Draper-styled ad exec who is brought in to pitch both Congress and the American people on why the underfunded space agency deserves their attention. Though Davis and Jones routinely butt heads after an enkindled meet-cute — the former as straight-laced as they come, with the latter having no compunction about stretching the truth — a mutual admiration between the two emerges. A third party enters their orbit in the form of Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson), a Nixon-backed government official in charge of overseeing a “backup” production of the moon landing to save face for the Russians, should the cameras on the spacecraft malfunction.

While part of Fly Me To The Moon does invoke a faked version of the lunar landing, Greg Berlanti and his screenwriter Rose Gilroy don’t delve deep into the decades-old conspiracy theory and instead treat the subplot with a waggish “what if?” curiosity. Tasked with creating a realistic set that could pass for the moon, Jones recruits a perpetually flustered director — the self-proclaimed “Kubrick of commercials”, a nod to Kubrick’s purported role in the “staging” of the moon landing — played by Jim Rash. A little of his “I can’t work like this!” schtick goes a long way but the mechanics behind how the production crew attempts to disguise a sound stage as the moon are right in line with the film’s chipper energy. Think Argo by way of Green Book (with even fewer gravitas-bludgeoned pitstops) and you’d be on track with the kind of peppy timbre Berlanti is working to cook up.

Johansson and Tatum certainly lay on the charm as thick as they can but their characters tend to work better on their own terms as opposed to when they’re meant to come together. Johansson’s Jones is a fun gender-swapped take on a “Mad Men” Manhattanite, maneuvering the misogynistic marketing world of the era with wiles and wit to spare. Tatum’s Davis is a beleaguered straight arrow whose earnestness and traditional work ethic aren’t treated as punchlines but rather as obstacles for a mission with a dwindling deadline. Thematically, they’re believable as both foils and flirts for each other but the actors don’t quite have the out-of-this-world chemistry you’d hope for. Originally Chris Evans was slated to take up the Tatum role and based on his previous work with Johansson, that pair would have played excellently off one another.

Similarly, Berlanti was a substitute in the director’s chair for Jason Bateman, who left the project a few months in, reportedly due to creative differences. Based on Bateman’s recent directorial output for series like Ozark and The Outsider, it’s not hard to imagine he’d want to take this story in a darker and more caustic direction. Instead, we get a much more lighthearted tale that opens with a montage catching us up with Space Race headlines, concludes with a shot of a pesky feline that endlessly eludes escape and countless Motown needle drops in between. There have been so many accounts of the Apollo 11 mission which treat it with befitting reverence that it doesn’t hurt to have it as a backdrop for a more mushy iteration and those who prefer their movies to have more minimal stakes may even prefer Fly Me To The Moon.

Score – 3/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Longlegs, a horror thriller starring Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage following an FBI agent as she uncovers a series of occult clues that she must solve to end the terrifying murder spree of a serial killer.
Streaming on Amazon Prime is Divorce In The Black, a romantic thriller starring Meagan Good and Cory Hardrict about a young woman who is left devastated when her husband abandons their marriage and concerned about his actions when she tries to move on.
Premiering on Disney+ is Descendants: The Rise Of Red, a fantasy musical starring Kylie Cantrall and Malia Baker about the daughters of the Queen Of Hearts and Cinderella as they team up to stop an event that would cause grave consequences.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup