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

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

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

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

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

Score – 4/5

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

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

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

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

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

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

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

Score – 4/5

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

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

The second Safdie brother sports drama coming out this quarter — following the release of Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine a couple months ago — Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme takes the gold among the two efforts. It’s the one that most mirrors jittery character studies like Uncut Gems and Good Time that the brothers crafted together before forging separate paths for themselves. While both Machine and Supreme are technically both based on true stories, the former is much more slavishly devoted to an accurate depiction of events than the latter. Loosely inspired by the life and career of table tennis champion Marty “The Needle” Reisman, the propulsive and brash tale is one of American exceptionalism post-World War II through a very specific prism of ping pong competition. Happy Gilmore meets Once Upon A Time In America certainly isn’t a concoction that should work but through sheer force of will, it does.

Set in early 1950s New York City, Marty Supreme focuses on young shoe salesman Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet), whose life moves at such a relentlessly ramshackle pace, it’s like a high-wire act on a taut shoestring above the abyss. In line to move up to a manager position, the path for ordinary schnookdom is lain clearly before him, but Marty has no shortage of confidence that he’s in line for much greater things. In his downtime, he’s become something of a ping pong prodigy, so talented that he’s been invited to compete in table tennis on America’s behalf at the international level. After putting together the cash through characteristically underhanded tactics, he books a ticket to London, where the International Table Tennis Federation is holding the championships for the up-and-coming sport.

While being interviewed in the lobby of his hotel, Marty’s eye catches movie star Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), who is there traveling with her pen magnate husband Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary). Her marital status does little to deter Marty’s freight-train guile, barely wasting any time to rush back up to his room so he can call her and invite the both of them to watch him play ping pong. Oblivious to Marty’s interest in his wife, Rockwell offers an all-expenses-paid opportunity to face off against Japanese champion Endo (Koto Kawaguchi) in an exhibition match before the next tournament. But when Marty discovers he’s to throw the match in the interest of entertainment and spectacle, he refuses the offer with colorful enough remarks to draw Rockwell’s permanent ire. Unwavering in his desire to go after what he wants, Marty pursues an affair with Kay, despite his girlfriend Rachel (Odessa A’zion) being pregnant back home.

Bookended by two fantastic Tears For Fears cuts and supported by a sublime, synth-heavy music score by Daniel Lopatin, Marty Supreme may start in 1952 but its ears and grindset are more reminiscent of 1987. It’s a stout 149 minutes but it flies by like a ping pong ball whizzing from an ace serve; this movie has more happening in the first 5 minutes before the title card hits than some have in their whole runtime. Like Uncut Gems, which found Adam Sandler hocking diamonds and hustling breathlessly, this film is similarly built around the magnetic determination of both its central character and respective performer. With the way Timothée Chalamet has been promoting Marty Supreme the past couple months, it’s hard to tell exactly where he ends and where Marty begins, but I suspect that’s the point. Whether he’s a real genius or not, Chalamet is crucial to making this epic fly and if you still don’t “get” the actor’s appeal, this film would be the one to potentially win over the unconverted.

The Oscars are introducing a new Academy Award for Achievement In Casting next March and absent a clear frontrunner, members should absolutely consider Marty Supreme as a top choice. In addition to selecting a Shark Tank judge for a main role, Josh Safdie and casting director Jennifer Venditti make a myriad of calculated bets in terms of actor selection that pay off big time across the board. Controversial director Abel Ferrara creeps in as a shady figure whose path crosses with Marty and rapper Tyler The Creator appears as Marty’s partner-in-crime, helping him hustle chumps in the darkened ping pong clubs. Even Ted Williams, whose radio-friendly voice caused him to go viral as The Man With The Golden Voice years ago, pops up as a pool hall doorman. Safdie and his cinematographer Darius Khondji shoot them often in urgent close-up, reminding us that movie theaters were purpose-built to show us gigantic faces illuminated in the darkness.

Score – 4/5

More new movies coming to theaters this holiday season:
Avatar: Fire And Ash, starring Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña, continues the epic sci-fi saga of the Na’vi on Pandora as they encounter a new, aggressive tribe headed up by a fiery leader.
The Housemaid, starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried, is a psychological thriller which finds a young woman with a troubled past as she becomes the live-in housemaid for a wealthy family.
Anaconda, starring Paul Rudd and Jack Black, tells the tale of a background actor and wedding videographer as they travel to the Amazon to film an amateur remake of the 1997 film Anaconda.
Song Sung Blue, starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, adapts the 2008 documentary of the same name about a married Milwaukee couple who performed as the Neil Diamond tribute band Lightning And Thunder.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Joan is in a tricky place. To begin with: she’s dead. When she wakes up in the afterlife, she’s on a train headed for a terminal where recently departed souls choose where to spend their eternity. This cinematic version of limbo, called the Junction, is like Grand Central Station crossed with a packed convention center atop of a milquetoast 3-star hotel. New arrivals walk around disoriented by their new state of being, while Afterlife Coordinators (ACs, for short) assist them underneath an enormous “departures” board. It’s explained that the appearance of the newly deceased is dictated by the time in their lives when they were happiest, so old Joan (played by Betty Buckley) now reverts to her younger self (played by Elizabeth Olsen). Her husband of 65 years Larry (played by Barry Primus) died a week earlier and his mid-30s manifestation (played by Miles Teller) almost doesn’t recognize Joan as she passes on an escalator.

As they reunite and marvel at their mutual recaptured youth, the honeymoon phase doesn’t last long as Joan’s first husband Luke (Callum Turner), who died in the Korean War, appears. He’s been waiting for her in the liminal Junction for 67 years, tending bar and delaying eternity until he can see his “girl back home” once again. Glossy-eyed and mouth agape, Joan whispers, “I never dreamt you this clearly,” as she and Larry stare at the reanimated Luke with decidedly different emotional reactions. The awkward reunion/meeting is exacerbated by a pair of ACs (played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph and John Early) who tell Joan she has a week to decide where, and with whom, she wants to spend the rest of her afterlife. Women in romcoms have been put in high pressure love triangles before but given the stakes, the one in which Joan finds herself here feels particularly nerve-racking.

Despite its existential themes, Eternity is a resolutely good-natured and utterly charming cross-generational crowd-pleaser, a cinematic cornucopia perfect for families on the hunt for Thanksgiving viewing. The risible screenplay, co-written by Pat Cunnane and director David Freyne, finds plenty of opportunities to quip about the absurdity of the setting while still taking Joan’s dilemma seriously. The hall of the Junction is packed with representatives from eternities like Beach World and Mountain World clamoring to pitch the perks of their realms to prospective clientele. As the ACs explain: once you pick your place, you’re stuck there forever, so it’s not a decision to be taken lightly. Anyone caught trying to escape from their eternity is tracked down by security and sent to “the void”, as a fugitive from Museum World, who tires from looking at paintings all the time, finds out firsthand.

Freyne’s direction doesn’t get too hung up on the fantastical details within each of these otherworldly domains and instead focuses on the romantic conundrum that ensnares the love-locked trio. Larry immediately figures he’s the obvious choice for Joan but the more time she spends making up for lost time with Luke, the more Larry justifiably becomes nervous. Because so much time has passed since Luke died, he’s keenly aware that Joan’s crystallized memory of him is a more idealized version of who he actually is. The three play off each other terrifically, especially Teller and Turner as rivals Larry and Luke, who snipe at each other both in front of Joan and behind her back. A performance detail I enjoyed was how Olsen and Teller, whose characters on Earth were in their 90s, bring an old timer timbre to their line deliveries.

As funny and sweet as the main three are, Eternity‘s secret weapons are Da’Vine Joy Randolph and John Early as Anna and John, the ACs for Larry and Joan, respectively. In a sense, they’re akin to audience surrogates, cheerleaders for each of the beaus that Joan will potentially pick for her great beyond. As they represent “Team Larry” and “Team Luke”, they get some of the script’s snappiest lines supporting their assigned suitors; “there’s nothing more powerful than emotional blackmail,” Anna cheekily advises Larry. Even though the film has plenty of moments to make us laugh, it has just as many that make us reflect on the eternal wonder of love, and assuredly has moments that will have certain audience members grabbing for tissues. If it feels like forever since a good romantic comedy came out, don’t wait too long to see Eternity.

Score – 4/5

More new movies coming this week:
Opening in theaters is Zootopia 2, an animated comedy sequel starring Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman, reuniting rabbit cop Judy Hopps with wily fox Nick Wilde as they team up to crack a new case against the mysterious pit viper Gary De’Snake.
Streaming on Netflix is Left-Handed Girl, a family drama starring Janel Tsai and Shih-Yuan Ma, following a single mother and her two daughters as they relocate to Taipei to open a night market stall, each navigating the challenges of adapting to their new environment.
Also premiering on Netflix is Jingle Bell Heist, a Christmas romcom starring Olivia Holt and Connor Swindells, involving two thieves who realize they both have designs on robbing the same department store at the height of the holiday season in London.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

There may not be a filmmaker working today who understands monsters better than Guillermo del Toro. Yes, many of his films feature otherworldly creatures, but his fascination with them implies a deeper sympathy he has for the rejected and misunderstood. A perpetual through line of his oeuvre is that the figures society reveres can often act more monstrously than the outcasts they reject. Naturally, he’s a perfect fit to adapt Frankenstein, a movie that so perfectly emulsifies the storyteller’s affinities that it’s surprising it took this late into his career to come into being. Alas, it’s alive, and even though Mary Shelley’s source material has been adapted countless times for screens big and small, this is a terrific telling of the classic tale that immediately joins the ranks as an unmissable iteration.

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein begins at the North Pole in 1857, where Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen) and the crew of his ship are startled by an explosion in the distance while attempting to dislodge their vessel from ice. Frantically running from the detonation is a maimed Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), who is brought aboard before a colossal Creature (Jacob Elordi) follows closely behind from the darkness. Desperate to resolve the skirmish with words instead of violence, the Captain listens to both Frankenstein and the Creature tell their composite story of how their bond initially came to be and quickly deteriorated. We discover that Frankenstein created the Creature as part of a resurrection experiment funded by the wealthy Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz), whose niece Elizabeth (Mia Goth) has captured Victor’s affection.

The most invigorating narrative decision Guillermo del Toro makes in his transformation of the 1818 novel Frankenstein is in how intentional he is about portraying the Creature as the hero and Victor Frankenstein as the villain. The depiction of Frankenstein’s Monster in the landmark 1931 Universal picture as a grunting and lumbering behemoth solidified both how the character would be portrayed and how he would be culturally perceived for decades on. What Jacob Elordi and del Toro have done with the role here is nothing less than a complete cinematic reinterpretation and long-due restitution for the misunderstood monster. Elordi’s portrayal begins with the brutish behavior to which we’ve become accustomed, but it doesn’t take long for layers of benevolence and eloquence to be revealed. It’s a physically and emotionally commanding performance that stands out as the young actor’s best so far.

The tendency for storytellers has been to represent Victor Frankenstein as a “mad scientist” type, so single-minded in his focus to give life to his creation that he ignores everything else happening in his own life. Oscar Isaac certainly portrays the titular physician in Frankenstein as an eccentric genius but also as unfailingly arrogant and fiercely cold-hearted. He’s also short-tempered and quick to choose violence over kindness, traits passed down to him by his stern father, played with palpable vileness by Charles Dance. As Victor tells his side of the story, he paints himself as the wounded protagonist and Isaac has played the part so many times that it’s easy to believe him. “I fail to see why modesty should be a virtue at all,” he blithely remarks upon his arrival at Henrich’s manor, and Isaac’s delivery signals that this guy isn’t playfully mischievous as much as outright repugnant.

As we’ve come to expect from Guillermo del Toro through the years, Frankenstein is another exquisite production from every technical angle. Recalling the set design from 2015’s Crimson Peak, Frankenstein’s laboratory is a Gothic wonderland of unfurled shadows against pockets of natural splendor. The cinematography from repeat del Toro collaborator Dan Laustsen gorgeously captures the singular beauty and tragedy of this tale; there’s a shot of a figure against the background of a sunset horizon that is so breathtaking that it demands to be received inside a darkened auditorium. Laustsen makes magic with grandiose moments like that but does similarly stellar work in smaller spaces, as with a brilliant shot of Elizabeth studying Victor’s experiment while Victor studies her, both struggling to understand what they’re observing. Frankenstein is filled with many such moments of haunting wisdom, allowing us to partake in the curiosities of its creator.

Score – 4/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Bugonia, a dark comedy starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, following two conspiracy-obsessed young men who kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.
Also coming to theaters is Stitch Head, an animated horror comedy starring Asa Butterfield and Joel Fry, which tells the story of a small creature awoken by a mad professor in a castle to protect the professor’s other creations from the nearby townspeople.
Premiering on Netflix is Ballad Of A Small Player, a psychological thriller starring Colin Farrell and Tilda Swinton, in which a high-stakes gambler laying low in Macau encounters a kindred spirit who might just hold the key to his salvation.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Like fellow relationship comedy Oh, Hi! from earlier this summer, the outstanding screwball farce Splitsville opens on a car-confined couple belting out lyrics of soft rock duets to one another. The former features the Parton-Rogers classic “Islands In The Stream” and the latter opts for the Loggins-Nicks hit “Whenever I Call You ‘Friend'” but in both scenes, life seems to be perfect. You’re en route to a weekend getaway and you’re singing cheesy pop songs with your partner; what could go wrong? Oh, Hi! takes a bit longer to unpack that question but Splitsville answers it early and often, with a car wreck and accidental public indecency being just the first of many misfortunes. 14 months into their marriage, Ashley (Adria Arjona) has considered divorce so thoroughly that she’s handwritten a letter she’s finally built up the nerve to read to Carey (Kyle Marvin). Pulled over on the side of the highway, Carey decides to run away as she starts reading it. After all, if he can’t hear her message, then they can’t be over.

After trekking on-foot for some time, Carey finds his way to the beach house of his best friend Paul (Michael Angelo Covino) and his wife Julie (Dakota Johnson). They’re happily married with a son, so surely they must have the answer for how he can keep things going with Ashley. Carey finds the supposed secret of their success is that Paul and Julie are in an open marriage, an agreement with which the two seem comfortable as long as they don’t have to hear details about the other partners or the trysts. Paul gets exponentially less comfortable with the arrangement when Julie chooses to sleep with Carey while he’s at their place trying to forget about Ashley. All the while, Ashley has taken Carey’s running away as tacit permission to take on other lovers and as luck would have it, Carey expresses his desire for their relationship to be open past monogamy.

Written by Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin, and solo-directed by Covino, Splitsville is a hilarious highwire act that feels like it could spiral out of control at any moment but never does. The script is a thing of beauty, packed with consistently clever and sneakily insightful exchanges about the trickiest dynamics of romantic relationships. As Ashley’s suitors stack up, they begin hanging around the house, even after she seems to have lost interest in them. Carey unwittingly ends up befriending some of them, playing video games and listening to records with some of the gentlemen in an increasingly crowded apartment more akin to a himbo harem. He even lends an ear to their romantic woes with his wife, as a clueless chiropractic hopeful laments “it feels like the universe is out of alignment and I’m not able to adjust it.”

Covino corrals an impressive amount of comedic performances from the sprawling cast while concocting bravura sequences you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a swinging indie comedy. A visually dense montage of Carey and Ashley’s home life once the latter takes on the company of other men employs a head-spinning but steadily-paced 360 degree camera motion. A slow-motion dolly shot — one that would feel right at home in Rushmore — across the front of a private school takes its time showing Julie and Carey canoodling in the carpool drop-off before eventually settling on Paul’s dejected face. There’s even a knock-down drag-out fight between Paul and Carey set within the sun-dappled opulence of a Hamptons home that is both sidesplitting in its comical escalation and accomplished in its choreography.

All four members of this quartet, along with single-scene-stealers like Nicholas Braun and Tyrone Benskin, make this material sing but I was particularly impressed with the performances from Kyle Marvin and Adria Arjona. Marvin is a new face to me and following Splitsville, I thought to myself “where’s this guy been?” He has the sadsack puerility of John C. Reilly’s goofier characters and understated sensitivity found in Will Ferrell’s dramatic roles, so perhaps it’s no surprise that we just became best friends. Arjona certainly made her mark with leading roles in three releases last year but this is the best work that I’ve seen from her so far. Playing a young woman contorting her personality manically in an attempt to find herself within the arms of other men, she mines wicked humor from her character’s desperation. In a year alongside other terrific comedies like Friendship and The Naked Gun, Splitsville may be the finest yet.

Score – 4/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is The Conjuring: Last Rites, a supernatural horror sequel starring Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, concluding the saga of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren as they take on one last terrifying case involving mysterious entities they must confront.
Being re-released in theaters is Hamilton, the filmed version of the Broadway smash biographical musical about one of America’s foremost founding fathers and first Secretary of the Treasury.
Streaming on Apple TV+ is Highest 2 Lowest, a crime thriller starring Denzel Washington and Jeffrey Wright, remaking Akira Kurosawa’s High And Low as a titan music mogul is targeted with a ransom plot and conflicted by a life-or-death moral dilemma.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

In some ways, a reboot/legacy sequel of the Naked Gun films makes sense. With humble beginnings as the short-lived ABC series Police Squad!, the franchise took off with the release of The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! in 1988 and generated two sequels that also hit big at the box office. To say that the movies don’t follow a strict narrative chronology or cohesion goes without saying, so you can basically go with just about any story upon which screenwriters can throw the most jokes. But since the complete original comic trio of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker and star Leslie Nielsen are no longer with us, it seemed unlikely that a remake could actually recapture the magic of the spoof comedy dynasty. So it’s quite surprising that not only is The Naked Gun as good as the 1988 original but it may even supersede it.

The film stars a fantastic Liam Neeson as Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr., son of Leslie Nielsen’s bumbling badge from the original trilogy. Kneeling before a plaque of his dad in the Police Squad station, Drebin Jr. remarks “I want to be just like you but, at the same time, completely different and original.” His investigation into a fatal car crash in Malibu brings the deceased driver’s sister Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson) to his office, claiming that her brother’s death was no accident. The investigation leads Frank to tech billionaire Richard Cane (Danny Huston), whose electric car model is the same as the one found at the crash site. But Drebin uncovers an even more nefarious plot in the process, one involving a device that can beam an audio signal through cell phones that turns bystanders into barbarians with the hit of a button.

Where The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear and Naked Gun 33 ⅓: The Final Insult were partially undone by plotlines that were needlessly complicated, The Naked Gun opts for a more straightforward storyline that even those under the age of the PG-13 rating could follow. These movies aren’t about developing compelling characters or generating thought-provoking themes; they’re about generating as many laughs as possible. This new entry not only succeeds at that goal but also does so at a laudably brisk pace. The 85-minute runtime is padded by a fourth wall-breaking mid-credit gag and end credits that pepper in phony acknowledgements e.g. Set Dressing as Ranch, Italian, French, Russian. There’s an under-appreciated craft to editing a comedy like this, keeping the pacing fast while still firing off more than enough comedic beats to keep the audience from feeling like they were cheated out of a longer production.

Director Akiva Schaffer, who also helmed more conceptual parodies like Hot Rod and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, doesn’t just get the timing right with The Naked Gun but he also nails the spirit and tone of the best ZAZ collaborations. There’s a vaudevillian energy not just in the pace of the comedy but the variety of comedic styles that Schaffer and his co-scribes Dan Gregor and Doug Mand employ throughout the film. While it mainly riffs on police procedurals and the tropes therein, the mechanics of getting those jokes to land travel through the gamut of comedy genres from the absurd to prop work along the way. Not only is the movie not afraid of potty humor but the best quote from the whole thing even has the word “toilet” in it.

As threadbare as the plot is, The Naked Gun doesn’t work unless you cast correctly for Drebin, given how inextricably linked Leslie Nielsen is with the original films. In fact, the project actually flailed for years when a direct-to-TV sequel starring Nielsen fell through and a re-work starring Ed Helms (thankfully) never manifested. Fortunately, co-producer Seth MacFarlane saw the potential of Liam Neeson after directing him back-to-back in comedies A Million Ways to Die in the West and Ted 2. Neeson is simply sensational in this role, his grizzled gravitas and presence in innumerable actioners over the years lending itself perfectly to deadpan deliveries and tough guy pratfalls. In a time when most straight-ahead comedies have been relegated to streaming services, it’s a joy to watch an uproarious comedy like The Naked Gun in the theater, laughing with strangers in the shared darkness.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Weapons, starring Josh Brolin and Julia Garner, is a horror mystery involving a community sent reeling when all but one child from the same classroom in town mysteriously vanishes on the same night at exactly the same time.
Freakier Friday, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, is a comedy sequel reuniting a mother and daughter who inadvertently switch places once again but this time, a daughter and stepdaughter are now mixed up in the body swap madness.
Sketch, starring Tony Hale and D’Arcy Carden, is a fantasy comedy about a young girl coming to terms with the death of her mother whose sketchbook falls into a strange pond and brings her drawings of strange creatures to life.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Now playing at Cinema Center, the new comedy Friendship isn’t technically an adaptation of the sketch show I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson but it’s about as close an approximation as we’re likely to get. Across three seasons, the Netflix series has found a considerable audience since debuting in 2019, filled with bizarre and profane vignettes that creator and star Tim Robinson may have first dreamed up during his three-season writing stint at SNL. It’s a show that leans heavily into the awkward and absurd, often featuring characters who are unable to navigate social situations and whose trepidation typically triggers outlandish consequences. If you don’t like this brand of humor, this film will be an unpleasant experience. If you delight in “cringe comedy”, then this movie is likely to be your new best friend.

Robinson plays Craig Waterman, a marketing exec “living the dream” in suburbia with his wife Tami (Kate Mara) and their teenage son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer). A piece of misdelivered mail leads Craig to meet Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd), a meteorologist living down the street with whom Craig develops a strong bond upon meeting. Where Craig is more cloistered and spends most of his evenings sitting in his La-Z-Boy, Austin is comparatively more free-spirited and gigs out with a local rock band after his night shift as weatherman. The two hang out in a group of Austin’s friends but a handful of vibe-killing faux pas from Craig cause Austin to scale the relationship back considerably. Predictably, Craig doesn’t get the message and commits a series of increasingly poor decisions in an attempt to rekindle the spark with Austin.

Much like Adam Sandler comedies of the 1990s, the success of Friendship for viewers will depend on how heavily one buys into the schtick of the intentionally abrasive protagonist. Tim Robinson’s persona is effectively a deconstruction of the everyman type, someone who can converse appropriately with friends or co-workers up to a point until they hit an obstacle. Where more emotionally enlightened folks may try to delicately traverse or politely withdraw, this guy digs in with temerity and crashes through the metaphorical road block. It’s a comically exaggerated form of what we all do in our brains when we butt up against social conventions that elude us; we can’t do this in real life but it sure is fun watching someone else try. Naturally, the scenario of one friend “breaking up” with another is a perfect premise upon which to implement this character.

What makes Friendship work so well at feature length is how director and writer Andrew DeYoung keeps finding new avenues to send Craig down without betraying the central dilemma. Much like the hidden tunnel system that Craig and Austin tread through during one of their initial hangs, there are many places this story could go and still arrive at a fitting and earned conclusion. Whether it’s a misjudged pitch to the town’s mayor for a PR refresh or a psychedelic trip with hilariously banal results, DeYoung sees the comic potential for this put-upon putz within innumerable crannies in the storyline. There are also moments centered around male bonding that don’t have to do with Craig’s incompetence and are just funny on their own terms. Men don’t usually sing Ghost Town DJ’s tunes spontaneously a capella in the round but, come to think of it, maybe they should.

Robinson also has support from reliable players who aren’t typically known for comedy — this style of comedy, anyway — but plug into the narrative nicely. Paul Rudd starts off with the cocksure poise of his field reporter character from Anchorman before revealing shades of darkness and doubt. Kate Mara is similarly playing things straight off Robinson in what could be considered a thankless role but she keeps finding surprising ways to make it her own. I Think You Should Leave regular Conner O’Malley pops up for a brief but memorable scene; the way he chooses to finish up an impromptu toast at a party is the hardest I’ve laughed in a theater all year. Those who are already put off by Tim Robinson’s specific comedic styling will not be won over by Friendship but those who already beat the drum for him will find even more here to love.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Ballerina, an action thriller starring Ana de Armas and Anjelica Huston, spinning off from the John Wick series to tell the story of a specific “Ballerina” assassin who sets out to seek revenge after her father’s death.
Also coming only to theaters is The Phoenician Scheme, a spy comedy starring Benicio del Toro and Mia Threapleton, following a wealthy businessman as he appoints his only daughter as sole heir to his estate before becoming the target of scheming tycoons.
Premiering on Hulu is Predator: Killer Of Killers, an animated sci-fi action film starring Lindsay LaVanchy and Louis Ozawa Changchien, involving three of the fiercest warriors in human history as they become prey to the extraterrestrial hunters known as Predators.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Up to this point, director and writer Ryan Coogler has made a name for himself working within frameworks like the Rocky and Black Panther franchises but his latest, Sinners, takes things to — to borrow a phrase — a whole ‘nother level. It’s a staggeringly ambitious blockbuster, an epic Southern Gothic equally inspired by the feverishly sensuous artwork of Ernie Barnes and the devil-may-care, us-against-the-world actioners of John Carpenter. Understandably, it’s been marketed most prevalently as a vampire movie, which it assuredly embraces eventually but decidedly takes a bit of time to show its fangs. But genre-blending and influences aside, this is Coogler’s most lived-in film so far, with such an evocative sense of character and conflict that its slight sins of cinematic coherency can easily be forgiven.

Taking place over a 24-hour period in October 1932, Sinners introduces us to a pair of brothers known as the Smokestack Twins, comprised of Elijah “Smoke” and Elias “Stack” Moore (both played by Michael B. Jordan). After working for years in Chicago under Al Capone, they’ve decided to return to the Jim Crow South — the Mississippi Delta in particular — to open a barrelhouse called Club Juke. We watch the Twins recruit proficient blues players like Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) and Sammie Moore (Miles Caton) for their opening night, hoping to start things off with a bang. Along the way, Smoke reunites with his estranged wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), while Stack crosses paths with his lascivious ex Mary (Hailee Steinfeld).

They all convene at the Club as the sun gets low, with singer Pearline (Jayme Lawson) belting out tunes and Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) acting as bouncer at the entrance. The music and atmosphere attract many, including Irish immigrant Remmick (Jack O’Connell), a musician who is particularly taken with Sammie’s transcendental blues guitar chops. Despite offering money well over the cover price to gain entry, Remmick is turned away at the door but develops a following of his own outside the juke joint. After a patron is assaulted by Remmick and his crew after stepping outside for a moment, it becomes clear that the gang outside is composed of vampires bent on trying to gain access to the club to turn the partygoers into bloodsuckers. Using the limited resources they have available, the Smokestack twins and the Club Juke staff aim to defend their establishment by any means necessary.

Sinners is an interesting beast because those going in expecting a straight-ahead vampire tale could be put off by how long it takes for horror aspects to lock into place, but those going in without expectations could be put off by what’s effectively a period drama turning into a monster movie. Coogler is at his most “yes, and” here as a filmmaker, embracing both the high-minded films and schlocky cinema that contribute to his voice as a storyteller. It’s the kind of exquisite gumbo that you can only cook up with this kind of budget once you’ve already proven yourself on the big stage, which, these days, essentially means within the superhero milieu. My hope is that other studios like Warner Bros. continue to see the value in putting their money where their mouth is by backing visionary directors with stout budgets.

The money, as they say, is on the screen with Sinners. Shooting on 65mm film for a superlative IMAX presentation, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw delivers a sumptuous, supersized silver screen experience. Also reteaming with Coogler on the crew is composer Ludwig Göransson, who continues to push himself stylistically with a dobro-led score that’s completely different from the other film music he’s put out thus far. In addition to the original score, the movie is packed wall-to-wall with existing tunes from various cultural backgrounds that deepen the aural canvas. In a film with almost too many great music moments to count, a sequence set to “Pale, Pale Moon” is perhaps the most luminous. Missing out on Sinners while it’s in theaters would be a sin.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is The Accountant 2, an action thriller starring Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal, reuniting the titular auditor/hitman with his equally lethal brother as the two track down a group of assassins responsible for a Treasury chief’s murder.
Also playing only in theaters is Until Dawn, a supernatural horror film starring Ella Rubin and Michael Cimino, following a group of friends trapped in a time loop, where mysterious foes are chasing and killing them in gruesome ways, must survive until dawn to escape it.
Premiering on Netflix ix Havoc, an action thriller starring Tom Hardy and Jessie Mei Li, about a detective must fight his way through the criminal underworld to rescue a politician’s estranged son, unraveling a deep web of corruption and conspiracy that ensnares his entire city.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

A marriage story disguised as a spy caper, Steven Soderbergh’s latest Black Bag stars Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as the partners at the center of this outstanding potboiler. They play George and Kathryn, respectively, both intelligence officers working for the same British organization, who use the phrase “black bag” like a safe word when skirting around confidential intel with one another. George’s boss Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård) asks him to investigate the leak of a dangerous software program named Severus and gives him a list of potential suspects within their agency. They include satellite imagery specialist Clarissa (Marisa Abela), her boyfriend Freddie (Tom Burke), psychiatrist Zoe (Naomie Harris), and her boyfriend James (Regé-Jean Page). The fifth name on the list, as it should happen, is Kathryn.

Like NEON did with Soderbergh’s Presence a couple months ago, Focus Features is pitching Black Bag as something a bit different than what it actually turns out to be. The ads make it seem like more of an action-packed affair along the lines of a James Bond movie; incidentally, two alumni from that franchise (Harris and Pierce Brosnan in a small role) also appear here. Instead, its story is driven not just on dialogue but the tone and inflection of how the characters, all trained in espionage, carefully deliver their words. Serving as screenwriter for a third time with Soderbergh after Kimi and Presence, David Koepp loads his script with tense exchanges and spy lingo, along with bits of droll humor, to make this tricky, duplicitous world seem plausible.

Even the most adroit script could fall flat with pedestrian storytelling but with Soderbergh working, as he’s often done, as director, cinematographer and editor, Black Bag is quietly riveting. A dinner scene with six guests could absolutely be a ho-hum volley of shot-reverse shot interactions but without getting too ostentatious, Soderbergh finds perfect angles around the corners of the table to pique our interest. George suggests they play a game where each person effectively speaks on behalf of the person sitting to their right and the pacing and composition of the shots turns this normal-seeming party game into something much higher stakes. As with many of his projects, Soderbergh uses natural room lighting here and the globe lights on the table provide enough coverage on each of the characters’ faces but also emit a gauzy halo that smears the frame the way these suspects fudge their facts.

While George is undoubtedly Black Bag‘s central character as the paranoid interrogator, the film gives ample time for each of the main players in the exceptional ensemble cast to shine. The standout for me is Marisa Abela, playing an analyst who is still trying to prove herself early in her career but who also demonstrates she’s more than capable in the art of deception. Following up his role as a war-ready tanker driver in last year’s Furiosa, Tom Burke is back to playing the more conniving and cunning roles that helped him break out in The Souvenir and Mank. Regé-Jean Page and Naomie Harris play things cool and sharp-tongued while still allowing for spots of vulnerability to shine through. Every one of them is impeccably dressed and, yes, everyone in this movie is, to quote Zoolander, “ridiculously good looking”.

Black Bag is certainly a riveting whodunit within this cloak-and-dagger world but I especially appreciated the level of domestic drama Soderbergh and Koepp infuse in this movie. Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender also flesh out their characters beautifully, both coming across as unreadable and enigmatic at the outset but slowly revealing the emotional concentric circles that would cause the two to fall for one another. It also helps that the two actors, some of the best we have, possess dynamite chemistry with one another. With almost 40 films under his belt at this point in his incredible career, Steven Soderbergh is simply one of the most exciting filmmakers around and Black Bag is yet another example of how there’s no genre he can’t enliven.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Snow White, a live-action Disney remake starring Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot, retells the story of a princess who joins forces with seven dwarves to liberate her kingdom from her cruel stepmother The Evil Queen.
The Alto Knights, a biopic starring Robert De Niro and Debra Messing, involves a pair of legendary mob bosses — Vito Genovese and Frank Costello — who were rivals for control of a major crime family in the mid-20th century.
Ash, a sci-fi horror thriller starring Eiza González and Aaron Paul, follows an astronaut as she wakes up to find that the entire crew of her space station has been killed and sets course for a nearby planet to find answers.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup