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

Based on an evocative photobook of motorcycle club members from the 1960s, The Bikeriders works best as a mood movie if nothing else. Writer-director Jeff Nichols conceived of a story around the images from Danny Lyon’s photojournalist chronicle but the narrative mainly serves to weave together punctuated character beats. It’s a film fixated on faces, how they move and how they linger from moment to moment. We often talk about blockbusters or big action movies as those that demand to be seen on the big screen but this is an instance where a “smaller” production benefits from the larger format. The gorgeous cinematography from Adam Stone allows images from a specific subculture and setting to wash over us with a power uniquely tailored for the theatrical experience.

Set between 1965 and 1973 in Chicago and the surrounding areas, The Bikeriders centers around three central figures involved with the motorcycle gang known as the Vandals MC. The outlaw group is led by Johnny (Tom Hardy), a wild card who rarely speaks without a cigarette tucked between his lips. Johnny treats younger member Benny (Austin Butler), who puts up a tough front but hides a sensitive side, like a younger brother and a protégé who can keep the club roaring forward once he bows out. When Kathy (Jodie Comer) sets foot inside their bar one evening, everyone sets eyes on her but it’s Benny who takes her home on his bike at the end of the night. Things in the Vandals are good for a time, until unwieldy expansion and culture clashes threaten to tear the group apart for good.

Using a framing device in which Danny Lyon is actually a character in the movie (played by Mike Faist) documenting the events, The Bikeriders shares DNA with the more modern crime saga Hustlers. Both feature a similar structure, where an interview chronologically after the events of the movie sets the scene, even if the criminals they’re depicting have entirely different backgrounds and motivations. As much as Hustlers was influenced by Scorsese’s seminal Goodfellas, The Bikeriders similarly bears the master’s mark and also draws inspiration from Casino as well, with its focus on a trio of two men and a woman witnessing the slow decline of a criminal enterprise. If you’ve seen any of these films already, you’ll likely be ahead of Nichols as he tells his years-long story but the foibles of these characters keep things relatively fresh.

Though the roles they’re playing aren’t always the most three-dimensional, each of the actors bring an entrancing and even endearing quality to their ne’er-do-wells. Jodie Comer is best known for playing characters who also sport her native British tongue but she pulls off a rapturously authentic Chicago accent here and has all the trophy wife mannerisms down pat too. Never one to shy away from a dialectical challenge, Tom Hardy carries over the accent he learned to play midwest-based gangster Al Capone and also brings his unpredictable propensity for violence. Reprising the animal magnetism he culls from playing Elvis Presley a couple years ago, Austin Butler is effortlessly cool as a wayward scamp who needs more guidance than he knows.

A charge has been brought against both movies and TV shows of the past several years that dialogue has gotten more unintelligible, forcing many to opt for subtitles when available. There are several potentially guilty culprits for this concerning trend: poor sound mixing or stylized sound mixing that favors effects over dialogue, more understated performances or smaller speakers in the case of home viewing. Regardless, I need to give kudos to the sound team on this project for working hard to capture dialogue on-set — or after the fact with lines that weren’t obviously voiced over — that was never difficult to understand. Butler and Hardy are two actors who certainly aren’t known to project or enunciate in a good amount of their roles but it was a relief to hear them loud and clear. The engines may roar in The Bikeriders but thankfully, they don’t drown anything out.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is A Quiet Place: Day One, a horror prequel starring Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn rewinding back to events before the first Quiet Place when bloodthirsty alien creatures with ultrasonic hearing first invade New York City.
Also playing in theaters is Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, an epic Western starring Kevin Costner and Sienna Miller which chronicles a multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American west.
Streaming on Netflix is A Family Affair, a romantic comedy starring Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron about a young woman, working as the personal assistant to a self-absorbed Hollywood star, who discovers that her boss is having a secret romantic relationship with her widowed mother.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

A couple months ago, Justice Smith starred in The American Society Of Magical Negroes, a story of a meek young man dealing with identity issues in a world he feels is indifferent to his existence. He now leads the new A24 experimental horror film I Saw The TV Glow, which also tackles the thorny but evergreen theme of trying to find one’s place in their surroundings. While the former movie does so with a combination of racial satire and romantic fantasy, the latter is much more atmospheric and esoteric in its exploration by comparison. It comes courtesy of trans filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun, whose 2021 effort We’re All Going To The World’s Fair garnered them widespread praise for its transportive aesthetic and wholly unique take on a coming-of-age tale. While TV Glow casts something of a similar spell, its unconventional storytelling makes it trickier to grasp, at least on first viewing.

Smith plays the withdrawn and soft-spoken Owen, whom we meet as a seventh grader in the mid-90s. While waiting for his mom to vote at his school that’s serving as a polling place, Owen meets ninth grader Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) as she studiously reads an episode guide for a show called The Pink Opaque. Upon watching the show for the first time, Owen is transfixed by it and a friendship develops between himself and Maddy, who hosts him for sleepovers so they can watch the show together. Their ritual continues for years until Maddy mysteriously disappears one day, leaving him without his only friend and what quickly becomes evident is one of his only tethers to the real world. In her absence, Owen ruminates on the connection and begins to believe that events from The Pink Opaque may not have been contained to the realm of the fictional.

As the lines between reality and fantasy blur for Owen, the passage of time in I Saw The TV Glow mirrors that of mind-benders Synecdoche, New York and last year’s Beau Is Afraid. Similarly, what is actually happening versus what is happening in the head of the protagonist gets more difficult to sort out, which can make the story frustrating at points. Outside of 90s shows like Are You Afraid Of The Dark? and Buffy The Vamprie Slayer, which are clear influences for the in-movie young adult series The Pink Opaque, Schoenbrun seems to be most inspired by David Lynch’s work in Twin Peaks. There’s a transcendent musical performance in a dive bar called Double Lunch with cameos from Haley Dahl and Phoebe Bridgers which calls to mind scenes from Lynch’s series that take place in the Roadhouse bar.

While an otherworldly mood permeates every moment of I Saw The TV Glow, Schoenbrun renders an half-remembered atmosphere that should resonate even more with those of us who were coming of age in the 90s. The first encounter between Owen and Maddy is partially lit by the beacon of a Fruitopia vending machine that’s wallflowering with the couple in a multi-purpose room. The hypnagogic vibe recalls a generation hypnotized by the flickering lights emitted by the cathode-ray tubes of now-massive television sets. If we fall asleep in front of our TVs, how can we be fully convinced of what’s been broadcast when our eyes are closed? Last year’s similarly challenging Skinamarink evoked this lucid-lit state even more directly but was marred by a stubbornly opaque storyline. Schoenbrun does have a narrative in mind with TV Glow, although it’s difficult to suss out what exactly is allegory and what is literal most of the time.

The film is co-produced by married couple Emma Stone and Dave McCary, the latter of whom directed Brigsby Bear in 2017 before moving on to produce several other A24 projects. His lone film has quite a bit of overlap with TV Glow, in that it’s also about an obsession over a children’s television program that spills into the protagonist’s life. The Sun-Stealer character from that movie closely resembles the Pink Opaque villain Mr. Melancholy, although both are clearly influenced from early silent classic A Trip To The Moon. But McCary has an infectious way of channeling his characters’ exuberance of their fandom that Schoenbrun forgoes for anxiety and dread. It makes I Saw The TV Glow a moody but maddening affair that succeeds on the strength of its world-building above all else.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, an action epic starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth which serves as a prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road centering around the titular mechanical-armed heroine.
Also coming to theaters is The Garfield Movie, an animated comedy starring Chris Pratt and Samuel L. Jackson in which the lasagna-loving comic-based canine is reunited with his long-lost street cat father and is forced into joining him on a high-stakes adventure.
Streaming on Netflix is Atlas, a sci-fi thriller starring Jennifer Lopez and Simu Liu that finds a data analyst with a deep distrust of artificial intelligence as she joins a mission to capture a renegade robot with whom she shares a mysterious past.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

After an outstanding turn in 2021’s The Green Knight, Dev Patel makes his directorial debut with the visceral action vehicle Monkey Man, in which he also stars and co-write the screenplay. Though his level of involvement suggests that this seems to be a personal story for Patel, he seems stretched too thin through most of the film and could’ve benefited from limiting his role in the production somehow. If directing this story was the most important aspect to him, perhaps he could have focused on that and cast someone else in the grueling lead part. Having said that, Patel clearly got in great shape for this role and plays an action star convincingly, so he could’ve instead handed the directing reins over to a like-minded collaborator to focus solely on the acting. As is, it’s a compromised but competently-made actioner with a handful of moments that really pop.

Patel plays an unnamed protagonist, who goes by the alias “Bobby”, as we’re introduced to him competing in Mumbai’s brutal bareknuckle boxing circuit. As Bobby makes scratch from fight promoter Tiger (Sharlto Copley), we’re shown flashbacks that imply Bobby has more on his mind than simply taking blows in the ring for a “bleed bonus” incentive from Tiger. We learn that Bobby aims to take out the ruthless chief of police Rana (Sikandar Kher), who murdered his mother years ago, and the leader Baba (Makarand Deshpande), who gave Rana the order. To carry out his vengeance, Bobby works his way up the criminal underworld, starting as a dishwasher for mob boss and restaurant owner Queenie (Ashwini Kalsekar) and eventually getting help from political refugee Alpha (Vipin Sharma).

In early scenes of Bobby’s childhood, his mother reads from the Hindu text Ramayana and gives special attention to the half-monkey god character Hanuman, which seems to be the inspiration behind Bobby’s Monkey Man boxing persona. The cultural touches in Monkey Man are what set it apart from similar action fare like Nobody and John Wick — the latter of which is name-checked specifically as the 800-pound gorilla in the action film world — that it’s aping. One of the best sequences finds Bobby later in his odyssey, at Alpha’s compound training with a heavy bag as a virtuosic tabla player riffs off his fierce movements. Another terrific scene finds Queenie’s stolen purse trading hands through the busy city streets, recalling the kinetic verve of City Of God or some of Danny Boyle’s early work.

Where Monkey Man gets bogged down is in trying to tie these inspired scenes together but instead coming up short with lugubrious storytelling that doesn’t adequately sell the hero’s journey. The movie’s runtime is just over two hours, not especially long for an action epic, but too much of the actual narrative feels like padding as opposed to worthwhile development. It doesn’t help that the cinematography and editing in some of the more lively sections, particularly the car chases, come across as shoddy and haphazard. There were a couple scenes with several moving parts that were borderline visually incomprehensible, which is disappointing for a film that has clearly been marketed as an in-your-face action experience.

Fortunately, when Bobby gets to the “final boss” portion of his quest, Patel and his crew put everything they have into making the combat stand alongside its peers. Clearly he was studying the Indonesian martial art filmographies of Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto when researching the fight choreography and the homework paid off. The ferocious last 20 minutes of Monkey Man alone will likely be worth the price of admission for those hoping for stellar, bone-crunching brawling. Along the way, there is a confused political message that reportedly scared Netflix off releasing it internationally on its streaming platform. While it could’ve played well alongside The Night Comes For Us and the Extraction movies on the streamer, Monkey Man playing in theaters will hopefully give Patel the resources that he needs to make his next feature even better.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Civil War, a dystopian action movie starring Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny which follows a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House.
Also playing in theaters is Sting, a horror film starring Alyla Browne and Penelope Mitchell involving a 12-year-old girl’s pet spider that rapidly transforms into a giant flesh-eating monster and forces its family to fight for their lives as a result.
Streaming on Hulu is The Greatest Hits, a romantic fantasy starring Lucy Boynton and David Corenswet about a young woman who is grieving the loss of her boyfriend when she discovers that listening to certain songs can literally transport her back in time.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

The story of Frankenstein has been reanimated so many times before that it was perhaps inevitable that we would eventually get a 1980s-tinged variation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. Fittingly, Lisa Frankenstein is a movie that feels mashed together not just from other monster tales but also from specific macabre 80s classics like Beetlejuice and Heathers. Screenwriter Diablo Cody, who won an Oscar for her sharp-tongued script for Juno, renders the sardonic patois from the misunderstood teen protagonists in those late-80s films and gives this update a spark of moody verbosity. While the story itself seems to lose its way the longer it lumbers along, it has enough period flourishes and well-earned eccentricities to make it worth recommending to those who gravitate towards horror comedies.

In Lisa Frankenstein, Kathryn Newton plays Lisa Swallows, a lonesome teenager who is finding it difficult to adjust to life after her mother is murdered in their home. Her dad Dale (Joe Chrest) is doing his best to move on, marrying yuppy nurse Janet (Carla Gugino) and acquiring step-daughter Taffy (Liza Soberano) in the process. Janet and Taffy do what they can to welcome the Swallows into their home but Lisa feels more comfortable spending time at the local cemetery, swooning over the grave of a young man (Cole Sprouse) who died long ago. Her pining is soon reciprocated when a bolt of otherworldly lightning strikes the headstone and brings the Victorian fellow back to life as a zombie who only has eyeballs for Lisa. Things take a dark turn when the pair realize they’ll need to steal body parts from the living to fill out the missing pieces of the reanimated corpse.

Lisa Frankenstein is the feature-length directorial debut of Zelda Williams — the daughter of late comic genius Robin Williams — and it can’t be said that she simply made the movie the studio wanted her to make. The film has loads of little touches, from its penchant for silent classics like A Trip To The Moon to its pitch-perfect goth rock needle drops, that allow Williams’ personality to shine through. She’s certainly taking a page or two from early Tim Burton projects — Edward Scissorhands in particular — carrying over the arc of a picture-perfect neighborhood getting flipped upside-down by the presence of a ghoulish creature. In the spirit of Beetlejuice and Scissorhands, Williams has a ball adorning her sets with props and textures that brilliantly evoke the artificial sheen of 1980s suburbia.

The aesthetic carries through in the costume design as well, which starts Lisa off in frumpy mismatched outfits and gradually transitions her to the goth chic look that Winona Ryder pioneered in her youth. Newton has good fun tailoring her performance around the wardrobe upgrades, allowing Lisa to become more confident as her adoration for her undead suitor grows. Sprouse has a more thankless role as the mute monster who finds himself drawn to Lisa; his body language and choreography are the main tools he has to tell her character’s story and he does an admirable job. Elsewhere, Gugino and Soberano are squandered in roles that the movie treats like it can’t wait to cut away from. While that’s more understandable for Janet being the “evil stepmother”, Taffy is kind to Lisa even past the point where it makes sense for her character to be.

If Williams and Cody don’t know what they want to do with these characters, it’s evident in how the storyline peters out as it staggers towards the neon-lit finish line. This is one of those horror comedies that doesn’t know how seriously it wants to take itself when it comes to doling out the consequences for its protagonist’s actions. Without giving away too much, it’s enough to say that the lovestruck couple get off way too easy when it comes to the moral and legal ramifications for what they get up to in this cheekily morbid tale. I’m not expecting the movie to turn into a just-the-facts crime drama in the third act but even a small helping of realism would have helped tie things up much better. As is, Lisa Frankenstein should still act as a lovesick siren song for weirdos past, present, and future.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this week:
Coming to theaters is Madame Web, a superhero movie starring Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney about a paramedic in Manhattan who develops superpowers along with three other young women and creates a deadly adversary in the process.
Also playing only in theaters is Bob Marley: One Love, a music biopic starring Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch which follows the life and career of Jamaican singer-songwriter Bob Marley as he overcomes adversity to become the most famous reggae musician in the world.
Streaming on Netflix is Players, a romantic comedy starring Gina Rodriguez and Damon Wayans Jr. about a sportswriter who spends her time creating hook up schemes but unexpectedly falls for one of her targets.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup