Few films receive a marketing bump quite as staggering as the one behind The Hunt. Originally scheduled for release last October, with its controversial trailer premiering two months prior, the movie was shelved indefinitely amid the social unrest following a pair of mass shootings. The politically-charged promotional footage, which depicted liberals hunting conservatives for sport, predictably drew the ire of many given the cultural climate. Several news cycles later, Universal dropped a new trailer, touting their release as “the most talked about movie of the year that no one’s actually seen.” Given the current coronavirus scare, it’s ironic that the movie will likely remain unseen by many for reasons entirely removed from its political provocations.

After a text thread between unseen friends depicts them discussing a “hunt” for “deplorables”, we meet a group of 12 strangers who wake up in the middle of the woods a-la The Hunger Games. One brave soul opens up a large crate in the middle of the field, which houses a tiny clothed pig and an impressive array of weaponry. After they each grab their firearm of choice, the group is immediately fired upon by unknown assailants and the hunt appears to be on. A series of spectacularly bloody deaths occur and after some time is spent with some of the other survivors, the story settles upon Crystal (Betty Gilpin), the most fearless of the bunch who is determined to beat the hunters at their own game.

A relentlessly cheeky take on The Most Dangerous Game that gleefully skewers both sides of the political spectrum, The Hunt has enough satirical surprises up its sleeve to make its predictable premise palatable. Sure, personifying the current cultural war as a literal bloodthirsty battle royale between liberals and conservatives is not the most subtle of artistic choices but director Craig Zobel knows this. Instead, he saves a more precise aim when he goes for specific targets ranging from conspiratorial podcasters who are primed to out crisis actors to NPR addicts who blanch at the sight of cultural appropriation. Screenwriters Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof revel in being an equal opportunity offenders, although it could be argued that the holier-than-thou liberal captors get put on blast even more than their conservative captive counterparts.

Even though the film is loaded with charged language and incendiary laugh lines, its influences and aspirations lie more in the genre of female-centric gory thrillers like Kill Bill or last year’s Ready or Not. It’s the kind of movie that delights in picking off characters with bits of brutality that get more ridiculous as the story progresses. Within that context, Gilpin’s Crystal is formidable “final girl” who doggedly assesses each threat with a droll, matter-of-fact sense of humor about the circumstances. Armed with a measured Mississippi drawl and dead-eyed stare, she turns in a fun and commanding performance with some appropriately over-the-top affectations and crazed mannerisms.

Just like their work on ABC’s Lost, Cuse and Lindelof start with a familiar “desert island” premise before introducing myriad twists and turns that will have audiences questioning characters’ motivations and where their allegiances lie. Unfortunately, problems with storytelling come about when these plot wrinkles generate logic issues within the narrative. Even at a taut 90 minutes, the film sags a bit too much in the middle as we impatiently wait for the admittedly outstanding final showdown. As a brazen sendup of America’s current political divide, The Hunt is surprisingly solid satire.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming to video on demand:

With the closing of cinemas worldwide, NBCUniversal made the unprecedented move to release new movies to streaming services the same day as their theatrical releases. Look for The Hunt, The Invisible Man, and Emma to be released for $19.99 rental from services such as iTunes and Amazon Video as early as Friday, March 20.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

“Long ago, the world was full of wonder.” So goes the opening line of Disney Pixar’s Onward, a fantasy adventure film about rediscovering magic in a world that seems to have largely forgotten it. It’s not a stretch to think that the conceit is emblematic of Pixar’s current status in the world of animation, trying the recreate the effortless charm and whimsy behind some of their strongest achievements. After all, 4 of their past 5 films have been sequels, which might suggest a lack of fresh ideas. While Onward does rely on some of the formulaic factors that bolster most of Pixar’s other efforts, it still retains enough liveliness and lightheartedness to make it a mystical quest worth taking.

Set in a fantasy world inhabited by different types of mythical creatures, our story centers on the elven Lightfoot family led by the widowed Laurel (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Her sons, the meek Ian (Tom Holland) and rambunctious Barley (Chris Pratt), have very little memory of their late father. When Laurel gifts Ian with a wizard staff for his 16th birthday, they jump at the chance to resurrect their father temporarily to make up for lost time. Ian attempts to cast the spell, only to bring back their father’s lower half. With only 24 hours to complete the rest of the spell, Ian and Barley hit the road to find the rare Phoenix Stone that will allow for their father’s complete reincarnation.

Director Dan Scanlon, who previously helmed Monsters University back in 2013, doesn’t stray far from the plot elements of other Pixar classics. The attempt to communicate with the deceased recalls the plot of Coco while the ticking-clock feel that surrounds the road trip narrative calls to mind the adventures found within the Toy Story films. What feels fresh this time around is the connection between the two brothers, who start out as polar opposites in terms of personality but are drawn closer together in the quest to bring their father back. A big reason their relationship comes through is due to the stellar voice work from Holland and especially Pratt, who have a chemistry that makes their bond as brothers completely believable.

A complaint that I almost never have with Pixar films is in the quality of animation and while Onward doesn’t necessarily look poor per-se, it has a certain blandness to its color palette that I wasn’t expecting. Even though its story is set in a magical land that has become more mundane as time has gone on, the settings are more dull and drab than they really need to be to get that point across. Even lackluster efforts like The Good Dinosaur and Finding Dory still benefited from top-tier animation and comparatively, Onward feels like a bit of a step back. Despite this, there are some visual gags that land beautifully, particularly in the Weekend At Bernie’s-esque way the Lightfoot brothers find ways to disguise the fact that their father is missing from the waist up.

The conceit that this world is inhabited by mythical beings who have traded their magical powers for the comforts of commercialism and consumerism is an inspired one but the movie doesn’t dig into this theme as much as it could. Instead, it focuses on the inevitable obstacles that the two brothers encounter on the road, which makes for an amiable if unadventurous movie. Onward is more sturdy and reliable entertainment from the best in the business, even if it leaves a bit too much on the table.

Score – 3/5

Also coming to theaters this weekend:
The Way Back, starring Ben Affleck and Al Madrigal, follows a former basketball star turned alcoholic who looks for a path to redemption as he’s offered a coaching job at his alma mater.
Emma, starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Johnny Flynn, puts a twist on the classic Jane Austen novel about a young woman who can’t stop meddling in the love lives of those around her.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

The Brothers Grimm tale Hansel and Gretel has been adapted for the screen countless times, most recently and regrettably in Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, and now we have yet another take. Gretel & Hansel, the latest from The Blackcoat’s Daughter director Oz Perkins, primarily sticks to the narrative beats that will be familiar to anyone who has even a passing knowledge of the story. We have the titular sister and brother, played respectively by Sophia Lillis and Sam Leakey, who stumble upon a mysterious house in the middle of the dark woods. The homeowner, played by Alice Krige, accommodates them with a table full of endless feasts but the longer they stay, the more nefarious her intentions become.

Perkins uses this setup as a jumping off point to tell a more personalized coming-of-age tale centered around Gretel, whose prominence in the story is suggested by the film’s title. This time around, she’s twice as old as Hansel and is unquestionably the one in charge. She’s also been gifted with magical abilities, which are recognized and further developed by the witch who resides at that ever-tempting house. The focus on a female protagonist struggling with the temptation of witchcraft in a bleak setting is strikingly similar to 2016’s The Witch, even though the results here aren’t as compelling as they are in that excellent period horror piece.

Gretel & Hansel also resembles The Witch in its keen attention to production design and cinematography, which are often first-rate and enough to make it worth recommending. The film is more interested in accumulating dread than slapping audiences in the face with overt scares and much of this done with the atmosphere that creeps at the edges of the frame. Cinematographer Galo Olivarez uses unconventional lighting schemes to capture the beauty and terror of this world, sometimes even within the same shot. One such image, in which Gretel’s face is lit both by the blue of the moonlight and the orange of a flickering flame, is hauntingly lovely and of a caliber that one might not expect from a horror movie unceremoniously released over Super Bowl weekend.

The main trouble in Gretel & Hansel comes from the underdeveloped screenplay by Perkins and co-writer Rob Hayes, which doesn’t do quite enough to expand on the original fairy tale. Besides Gretel’s aforementioned personal journey, nearly everything else in the script feels like a distraction and filler to pad the already lean 87 minute runtime. Save a few scenes in the film’s opening with characters that are never seen nor heard from again, we spend the entirety of the movie with the trio of Gretel, Hansel and the Witch. That’s not inherently an issue but there isn’t enough character development between the trio to justify hanging the whole story on their shoulders.

In an attempt to patch up some of the shallow character work, Perkins includes an intermittent voiceover from Gretel, in which she ponders rhetorical questions like “is it wise to trust someone who appears when you need them?” These philosophical musings along with the lush landscapes give viewers an idea of what Terrence Malick may come up with if he were tasked to adapt a Grimm tale. Even though this voiceover rumination grows more pretentious as the movie goes on, I appreciate the artsy ambition in a genre that is often sorely in need of it. Gretel & Hansel is a classic case of style over substance but when the style is this superb, it’s a worthwhile trade-off.

Score – 3/5

Coming to theaters this weekend:
Birds of Prey, starring Margot Robbie and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, gives the DC Comics baddie Harley Quinn her own spin-off in which she recruits other female vigilante to take down a crime lord.
The Lodge, starring Riley Keough and Jaeden Martell, is a psychological chiller about a soon-to-be stepmom who gets snowed in with her fiancé’s two children at a remote cabin.
Playing at Cinema Center this weekend are all of the Academy Award-nominated shorts for the Animated, Live Action and Documentary categories, which you can catch before Oscar Night on Sunday, February 9th.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

In the heart of Oscar season, two popular genres tend to dominate the multiplex: hard-hitting legal dramas and issues movies meant to provoke discussion about a hot-button topic. Destin Daniel Cretton’s Just Mercy happens to fall narrowly in the middle of both of those categories. As this is the case, it tends to be doubly as familiar in some ways but also doubly as admirable in its successes, given the baggage of expectations that it carries on its shoulders. The issue at the center of the movie, the ethical ramifications of the death penalty and its staggering rate of error, has been examined on film previously but Cretton pursues slightly different avenues to shed new light on the subject.

Our story starts in 1987 Alabama, where Walter “Johnny D” McMillian (Jamie Foxx) is hastily tried and convicted for the murder of an 18-year-old girl with almost no evidence. Catching wind of the case, Harvard-educated lawyer Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) travels south to establish the Equal Justice Initiative with social worker Eva Ansley (Brie Larson). The EJI’s aim is to overturn wrongful convictions, specifically for those on death row, and McMillian’s case becomes the focal point of Stevenson’s efforts. His investigation draws the ire of many in the community who firmly believe in McMillian’s guilt, like the hot-headed district attorney Tommy Chapman (Rafe Spall), but Stevenson persists among the multitude of obstacles thrown his way.

Just Mercy plays out about how one might imagine. There’s the terse initial meeting between McMillian and Stevenson, in which an incredulous McMillian turns Stevenson away, even though we know the plot will of course hinge on the two working together. There are the multiple run-ins with sweaty bigoted members of Alabama’s law enforcement, desperate to take Stevenson and his team down at any costs. We have the procedural feel throughout the investigation, in which pages of law books are shuffled through in order to clear McMillian’s name in court. Yet, these recognizable story beats still resonate because of the conviction of the performances on-screen and the direction off-screen.

Where Cretton finds new direction in this harrowing true tale is in the relationships between McMillian and his fellow inmates. Often in capital punishment movies, the injustice of the system is the sole focus and while this film certainly accentuates that aspect, it also focuses on the human interactions and brotherhood behind the bars. Hope and inspiration are precious commodities on death row and the modicum that can be found are uplifting to behold, even in fleeting moments. As good as Foxx and Jordan are, supporting players like O’Shea Jackson and Rob Morgan are even better in roles that allow them to deeply humanize prisoners who know they may not get a second chance themselves.

At a stout 136 minutes, the movie does suffer from pacing issues and may overstay its welcome even for those who are interested in the material. Despite her real-life significance, I’m not certain that Brie Larson’s character even needed to be included in the film, much less given as much screen time as she is since her role in the case is relatively minimal. It’s reasonable to believe that Larson, who worked with Cretton previously in the excellent Short Term 12 and terrible The Glass Castle, was recruited post-Captain Marvel success to add another familiar face to the cast list. Despite its shortcomings, Just Mercy is a sobering and earnest examination of a broken system and the victims left in its wake.

Score – 3/5

Coming to theaters this weekend:
Bad Boys For Life, starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, caps off the buddy cop trilogy about two reckless police detectives who reunite once again to take down a Romanian mob boss.
Dolittle, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jessie Buckley, retells the story of a renown doctor who surrounds himself with a myriad of wondrous creatures with whom he can communicate.
Playing at Cinema Center is Parasite, the current Oscar front-runner for Best International Feature Film about a lower-middle class family who slowly insinuate themselves into the lives of a wealthy family.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Six years after the box office smash and cultural phenomenon that is Frozen comes its follow-up Frozen II, a fine and safe sequel that mimics the features of its predecessor to mostly positive results. Marrying state-of-the-art animation with catchy musical numbers and a storyline packed with mythology, the film should delight the legions of fans who made the original the highest-grossing animated movie of all time, even if it doesn’t convert many non-believers in the process. According to my five-year-old niece Daphne, it isn’t quite as good as the first film and given her affinity for all things Frozen, I’m inclined to respect her opinion on the matter.

We revisit the kingdom of Arendelle, where the recently coronated Queen Elsa (Idina Menzel) celebrates the changing of seasons with her beloved sister Anna (Kristen Bell). Playing charades with Anna and her boyfriend Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) one evening, Elsa is drawn to a distant siren call that seems to be the product of ancient elemental spirits and sets out to find its source. All three, along with their peppy snowman friend Olaf (Josh Gad) and Kristoff’s amiable reindeer Sven, journey along and find themselves at the Enchanted Forest, whose magical fog bank has not only kept others out for many years but also trapped forest dwellers in its grasp.

The opening ensemble song “Some Things Never Change” both reintroduces us to our main characters and also serves as a bit of a mission statement for the film as a whole. The sentiment of finding comfort in the familiar seems to be the filmmakers giving themselves license to retread numerous narrative tricks from the first Frozen. Though they’re working with tried and true tropes like a magical forest and a heroine’s quest into the unknown, directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee make a hash of the already murky mythology. I tracked with the broad strokes of the story but there were quite a few moments that I struggled to make sense of the movie’s needlessly complicated plotline.

The music, written by returning team Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, doesn’t feature a powerhouse hit as potent as “Let It Go,” even though “Into the Unknown” is certainly trying its hardest. Having said that, there are still some gems in this batch of new tunes. Olaf giddily offers up “When I Am Older”, a charming ode to impending maturity, while Kristoff belts out the cheekily self-aware power ballad “Lost in the Woods” with a trio of harmonizing reindeer. But it’s Anna’s feature “The Next Right Thing”, an immensely moving statement on overcoming hardship and grief, that may be the best song in the Frozen franchise.

While the tone and themes are decidedly darker this time around, there is still time afforded for moments of lightheartedness and self-referential humor. While witnessing flashbacks from her life, Elsa winces as she sees herself belting out her signature tune, indicating that she’s about as fed up with “Let It Go” as we are after hearing it ad nauseam. The film’s funniest scene finds Olaf catching new characters up with a zippy summary of the events of the first film, skewering its expositional heft in the process. When it’s all said and done, I probably would have preferred Olaf’s retelling of this film to the experience of watching the whole thing but as is, Frozen II is a serviceable holiday treat.

Score – 3/5

Coming to theaters this weekend:
Dark Waters, starring Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway, finds a corporate defense attorney taking on an environmental lawsuit against a chemical company that exposes a lengthy history of pollution.
Playmobil: The Movie, starring Daniel Radcliffe and Anya Taylor-Joy, follows in the footsteps of the popular Lego Movie franchise as a secret agent goes on a mission to recover citizens from a shadowy organization.
Opening at Cinema Center is In Fabric, starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Hayley Squires, which is a horror comedy set in a department store as a cursed dress makes its rounds from one person to another.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

It’s exotic dancers vs. Wall Street sharks in Hustlers, a flashy crime drama with a great ensemble cast but a somewhat predictable story that could have dug a bit deeper. Inspired heavily by crime capers like Goodfellas and Ocean’s Eleven, it delights in showing us the intricacies of the scam at the heart of the story while also hanging some bittersweet personal notes on the main players’ relationships. Writer/director Lorene Scafaria funnels her Scorsese and Soderbergh influences into something that might feel a bit too familiar to fans of the genre but should be a breezy diversion for those looking for a fun girls’ night out.

Based on a 2015 New York magazine article, Hustlers stars Constance Wu as Destiny, a Queens native who cycles through a variety of odd jobs until she lands a spot at the popular strip club Moves. It is there that she meets veteran stripper Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), who quickly takes her under her wing and shows her the ropes (perhaps “poles” is more apt.) Things are going well at Moves, until the 2008 financial crisis quickly puts the brakes on the money train and Destiny finds herself unable to support her newborn daughter. Desperate to stay afloat in the brutal economy, Ramona hatches a scheme with a pair of other protégées to drug wealthy Wall Street executives, drag them to the club and run up their credit cards against their knowledge.

As Janet Jackson tells us in song during the film’s opening line, “this is a story about control” and the film’s Robin Hood-esque tale of the disenfranchised stealing from one-percenters resonates even a decade after the markets crashed. It may be difficult for some to empathize with these criminals, even given how greedy and vile their victims are portrayed to be, but what is more disappointing is that Scafaria doesn’t seem to imbue the film with much moral ambiguity. We follow the scammers each step of the way, confident that they’re in the right because of their downtrodden circumstances, but it’s more difficult to square when they begin showering each other with expensive gifts from their ill-gotten gains.

The biggest reason it’s easy to track with these women, despite their dirty deeds, is that the performances are honest and open-hearted across the board. Wu has loads of charisma as a character who starts from an innocent enough place but is slowly seduced by the extravagant possibilities of Ramona’s machinations. Lopez is even better as the cool and confident culprit who asserts her dominance early on with a jaw-dropping dance set to Fiona Apple’s 90s hit “Criminal” and never lets up.

Scafaria leans on a framing device that ping-pongs the narrative back and forth between 2008 and 2014, which tends to spell things out a bit too much and doesn’t raise the stakes as much as it should. Besides that, the editing by Kayla Emter is first-rate and gives the film flair and style between every cut. One edit, marrying a scene from 2008 in which Destiny hopes her newborn is male with a smash cut to 2011 showcasing her newborn daughter, is both hilarious and devastating at the same time. Hustlers is a whirlwind of a heist movie that likely won’t linger long in the mind afterwards but is nevertheless enjoyable in the fleeting moment.

Score – 3/5

Coming to theaters this weekend:
Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Robert De Niro, tells a new origin story for the Batman supervillain as a failed stand-up comedian who turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City.
Lucy in the Sky, starring Natalie Portman and Jon Hamm, is a sci-fi drama based partially on a true story about an astronaut who begins to lose her connection with reality after returning from a length space mission.
Pain & Glory, starring Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz, is the latest project from Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar about a fictional film director who reflects on the choices that he’s made in his life.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

When Andy Muschietti’s film adaptation of Stephen King’s sprawling novel It was released in 2017, it scared up box office numbers that not even the most optimistic figures could have predicted. Two years later, Muschietti and crew are back with some new cast additions to tell the second half of King’s 1000+ page story. Like its predecessor, It Chapter Two is surprisingly thorough in the translation of its source material but more importantly, it’s true to the darkly nostalgic spirit of the book. On the whole, the follow-up isn’t as successful as the first film but its go-for-broke attitude among a sea of uninspired blockbusters is admirable if nothing else.

27 years after the Losers’ Club made a pact to stop the evil clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) if he should ever re-emerge in Derry, the evil entity rises up from the sewers once again. Now all in their early 40s and spread out in various parts of the country, each of the members gets a call from Mike (Isaiah Mustafa), the one Loser who never left Derry, with the bad news. With trepidation, the gang returns to their old haunts, with Bill (James McAvoy) returning in his de facto leader role. The bickering between jokester Richie (Bill Hader) and the panicky Eddie (James Ransone) resumes right where it left off while the long lost romance between Bev (Jessica Chastain) and Ben (Jay Ryan) is also re-kindled.

Flaunting a 170-minute runtime, the most glaring issue with It Chapter Two is its length. There’s a reason most horror films tend not to break the two-hour mark: it’s difficult to keep an audience in suspense for that amount of time, no matter how good the premise is. That would also explain why it doesn’t take much time for the bevy of CG-based scares to get redundant, despite some worthwhile setups. The most terrifying scene, in which Bev returns to her childhood apartment with a precarious new tenant, was thoroughly spoiled in the theatrical trailer. Thankfully, the film doesn’t rely on its horror elements as much as its predecessor and the dramatic and comedic beats often trump the creepy creature effects.

It certainly had some humor to it but there’s no mistaking its intentions as a horror movie above all. What surprised me most about its sequel is how often and how hard at laughed while watching it, likely more than I did for most straight-ahead comedies released this summer. The biggest contributing factor for this is Hader, who continues to put together an impressive post-SNL resume with roles that play to his comedic strengths while deepening his dramatic chops as well. His Richie is a fun audience surrogate as someone who takes the terrors of the story seriously but often responds with humor as a way of combating his fear.

Another strength of the original was its stellar casting and the adult counterparts for the young actors are exceedingly well-realized. The resemblance between Eddie actors James Ransone and Jack Dylan Grazer is particularly uncanny, evidenced by a shot that overlays both actors’ faces on top of one another to eerie effect. Similar looks aid continuity but more importantly, the performances by the adult actors mirror the respective work by the younger actors to great effect. As a blockbuster horror entry with plenty of ambition, It Chapter Two floats more often than it sinks.

Score – 3/5

Coming to theaters this weekend:
The Goldfinch, starring Ansel Elgort and Nicole Kidman, tells the story of a boy who is taken in by a wealthy Upper East Side family after his mother is killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Hustlers, starring Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu, follows a crew of savvy former strip club employees who band together to turn the tables on their Wall Street clients during the late-2000s financial crisis.
Opening at Cinema Center is Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, a documentary about the Grammy Award-winning singer who broke out in the folk music scene of the 1960s and solidified herself as the “queen of country rock” in the ensuing decades.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Adapted from the creepy children’s series that has haunted book fairs for decades, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark stars Zoe Colleti as Stella, a teenaged horror fanatic who also fancies herself a writer. It’s Halloween 1968 and Stella’s friends Auggie (Gabriel Rush) and Chuck (Austin Zajur) convince her to come out and help them get back at the school bully Tommy (Austin Abrams) with a prank. While being chased by Tommy and his gang, the trio meet the new kid in town Ramón (Michael Garza) and they hide together in a haunted house until the coast is clear. It’s there that they discover a creepy book that pens spooky tales on its own, which soon manifest themselves into real-life events.

Even those who haven’t read the books from Alvin Schwartz’s series are likely familiar with the corresponding illustrations by Stephen Gammell and the film wisely uses his unsettling imagery as a starting point. At the center of each of the six twisted tales that come to life before our eyes in real time is a terrifying creature (or series of creatures) plucked straight out of a disturbing nightmare. The influence of executive producer Guillermo del Toro, the mind behind The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, is seen clearly in the stellar creature design that beautifully integrates costumes and computer-generated effects.

Norwegian director André Øvredal is at his best when he is gleefully crafting the chilling setpieces that feature the monsters lurching slowly towards our protagonists. All of the scares conjured up from these spooky scenes are all about evenly matched in terms of quality but one story, entitled The Dream, stands out among the rest. Trapped in a hospital corridor drenched in red light, one of our main characters peers down a series of endless hallways looking for an exit, only to find the same figure, which readers will recognize as the Pale Lady from the books, creeping towards him from every direction. This sequence alone should give horror fans enough nightmare fuel to hold them over until It: Chapter Two opens next month.

As much time and effort was put into bringing the horrific artwork of the books to the big screen, I wish more work had been put into the overarching narrative that surrounds each of these scary stories. The screenplay by Dan and Kevin Hageman leans on stock characters (The Nerdy Protagonist, The Prankster, The Bully, etc.) that we’ve seen plenty of times before. The young cast of mostly unknown actors do their best with the material but there really isn’t enough on the page to develop their characters past their shallow foundations. Once the kids get to the bottom of what makes the book produce these horrifying incidents, the plot revelations are unsurprising and hardly satisfying.

Fortunately, the film frequently succeeds at its primary objective, which, naturally, is to scare its audience and hopefully haunt them a bit after they leave the theater. It’s likely that audience will skew a bit younger as well, thanks to the PG-13 rating that allows for teens to get their share of frights. Too often in the horror genre, movies include enough gore and violence to merit an R rating but they settle for cheap jump scares instead of genuine suspense (last year’s The Nun is a prime example.) Kudos to Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark for proving that you don’t need blood and guts to get under people’s skin.

Score – 3/5

Coming to theaters this weekend:
The Angry Birds Movie 2, starring Jason Sudeikis and Josh Gad, follows up the hit animated movie based on the popular video game about a group of feathered friends fueding with their foes, the Bad Piggies.
Good Boys, starring Jacob Tremblay and Keith L. Williams, follows a trio of pre-teens as they skip school to set out on a debaucherous adventure that culminates with an epic high school party.
Blinded By the Light, starring Viveik Kalra and Hayley Atwell, tells the true story of a British-Pakistani teenager who finds refuge in the music of Bruce Springsteen amid the political unrest in 1980s England.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

The Marvel Cinematic Universe closes out its 3rd “Phase” with Spider-Man: Far From Home, which follows up the universe-altering events of Avengers: Endgame. It’s back to school for Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and a two-week field trip to Europe prompts him to leave his Spidey suit at home to make time for his crush MJ (Zendaya). Things seem to be back to normal, until a creature called an Elemental turns the group’s stop in Venice into a water-soaked catastrophe. Parker defeats the new threat with help from Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal), a dimension-hopping superhero who vows to destroy the rest of the Elementals that lurk under the Earth’s surface.

Like its superior predecessor Homecoming, Far From Home excels most when it leans into what makes it unique in the MCU, namely its high school setting and teenaged characters. Literally dozens of other superhero movies can show us high-stakes action that leaves half of a city in ruin but very few go small enough to show our heroes struggling with how to talk a love interest. Holland and Zendaya have plenty of chemistry and vulnerability in their scenes together as they navigate the tangled web of teen romance. I was even more taken with the hilariously saccharine relationship between Peter’s friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and his girlfriend Betty (Angourie Rice).

Returning from Homecoming, director Jon Watts manages the high school comedy aspects better than CGI-laden action sequences, which are especially chaotic this time around. The setpieces revolving around the Elementals feel especially clumsy and uninspired, recalling the messy battles with Sandman from the overstuffed Spider-Man 3. A final showdown in London features the larger-than-life scale that we’ve come to expect from the MCU but it loses more than a little of the protagonist’s personality in the process. Undoubtedly, the highlight from an action perspective is a hypnotic skirmish that brings in allusions to the mythology of Spider-Man and other Marvel superheroes.

Screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers do their best to negotiate the franchise mandates of post-Endgame cleanup and plot exposition while also trying to forward Parker’s story as well. They pack their script with plenty of twists that may keep some viewers guessing but these turns rarely felt as fresh or fleet-footed as the plot revelations from Homecoming. One narrative-altering, bar-set scene will be gallingly transparent to comic book fans but even for a more casual superhero follower like myself, it seemed to hinge on an uncharacteristically foolish decision just to push the story forward.

Despite its on-paper flaws, the film coasts along on an abundance of charm and swings briskly through its 129 minute runtime. Returning characters like Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) add some laughs as they impart instruction to Parker, while Gyllenhaal serves as a fine newcomer to a Universe that hasn’t seen a character quite like his before. The pair of post-credit stingers vary drastically in terms of quality but both are extremely consequential to both this film and future Spider-Man films, so be sure to stay until the very last frame. Spider-Man: Far From Home is a serviceable Spidey flick that should keep most moviegoers entertained but with some narrative enhancements, it could have been something to write home about.

Score – 3/5

Coming to theaters this weekend:
Crawl, starring Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper, follows a father and daughter who are trapped in a crawl space during a Category 5 hurricane whilst trying to fend off marauding alligators.
Stuber, starring Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista, pairs a mild-mannered Uber driver with a grizzled detective who is hot on the trail of a sadistic terrorist.
Opening at Cinema Center is Pavarotti, a documentary from Ron Howard about the life and career of famed opera tenor Luciano Pavarotti.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Julianne Moore sings and dances her way through another memorable role in Gloria Bell, a English-language remake of the 2013 Chilean film Gloria that successfully recreates the free-spirited gusto of its predecessor. While it may not build to any kind of profound conclusions or reinvent the conventions of the romance genre, the movie tracks the perspective of its middle-aged protagonist with empathy and lightness. In a season that has been particularly dominated by one blockbuster after another, this serves as a pleasant detour that should resonate with people looking for movies based in something that more closely resembles everyday life.

We first meet the title character, played by a perfectly-cast Moore, as she confidently makes her way onto the dance floor of a neon-tinged nightclub with a martini in hand. After a meeting in a singles bar one night, she soon begins a fling with Arnold (John Turturro), a fellow divorcee with grown children who is also hoping to start a new chapter in his life. The film follows Gloria and Arnold through the ups and downs of their burgeoning relationship, as well as the often strained interactions that Gloria has with her son Peter (Michael Cera) and her ex-husband Dustin (Brad Garrett).

As one may expect from her stellar track record, Moore’s winning performance as the fun-loving and often impulsive Gloria is the strongest thing that the film has going for it. Whether she’s singing along to Olivia Newton-John in the car or dancing her heart out to disco tunes at the club, her joie de vivre is the emotional center point upon which this heartfelt tale finds its pulse. Of course life isn’t always upbeat and neither is Gloria’s story but Moore is more than capable of making the melancholic moments matter just as much as the lighter points in the narrative.

For having a character at its center that isn’t afraid to take chances, it’s somewhat disappointing that writer-director Sebastián Lelio seemed to hedge his bets a bit when it comes to the film’s storytelling. Gloria Bell is so slavishly dedicated to each story beat of Lelio’s previous work Gloria that it makes one wonder why he found it necessary to recreate it in the first place if the final products would be so similar. The story of self-discovery works about as well as it did in the original but I wish he had found a way to give new life to this material in the process of translating it for American audiences.

The screenplay by Lelio and Alice Johnson Boher has plenty of perceptive and poignant dialogue that clues us into where each character stands without belaboring the point. In an effort to break up an increasingly awkward political conversation between her friends at a dinner party, Gloria chimes in with, “when the world blows up, I hope I go down dancing.” With a buoyant and life-affirming tone that should resonate with people regardless of the stage in life they find themselves in, Gloria Bell rings true with impassioned wisdom and a central performance that captivates from start to finish.

Score – 3/5

Coming to theaters this weekend:
Hellboy, starring David Harbour and Milla Jovovich, is a reboot of the comic book series about a demonic superhero who battles supernatural creatures from the underworld.
Missing Link, starring Hugh Jackman and Zoe Saldana, is the latest stop-motion animation offering from Laika Studios about an adventurer’s quest to find a Bigfoot-like creature.
Little, starring Regina Hall and Issa Rae, is a new body swap comedy in which a demanding tech mogul is transformed into a teenaged version of herself.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup