It’s difficult to imagine the first two feature films in a director’s filmography being as diverse as the initial pair from Oklahoma-based writer-director Andrew Patterson. His debut, The Vast Of Night, is a small-town sci-fi mystery that plays like a 90-minute Twilight Zone episode, marked by audacious oners, a minimalist story and its cast of lesser-known actors. His follow-up, the crackling country-fried caper The Rivals Of Amziah King, blows out the story of a beekeeper and his stolen hives into a 2+ hour crime saga, buzzing with crisply-cut storytelling and the ineffable star power of Matthew McConaughey. Why his first live-action leading role for a theatrical release in six and a half years hasn’t elicited more fanfare (and more robust distribution) is both puzzling and disappointing. This is some of the finest work of his career, on par with his stellar “McConaissance” run in the 2010s.

McConaughey plays the titular rascally business mind behind King Honey, which gets its product from hives and equipment that Amziah owns and operates in rural Oklahoma. King also moonlights as a mandolin player, recruiting bluegrass musicians to fill venues from drive-up food joints to potluck-hosting ballrooms with their dulcet tones. Grabbing coffee at a diner one morning, King’s served by his former foster daughter Kateri (Angelina LookingGlass), whose mother recently passed away. A born-again Christian, Amziah sees their meeting as a chance to right the wrongs of his past and takes Kateri under his wing as he teaches her the ways of beekeeping and farming. When King’s hives are stolen out from under him, shady magnate Dob McCoy (Kurt Russell) is pinpointed as the primary suspect and a plan for retribution is hatched.

Metaphors about colony order for a tight-knit Southern community may seem obvious for a movie ostensibly about bees but The Rivals Of Amziah King gets it honest. Explaining the roles of the three primary players of a beehive — the drones, the worker bees, the queen — apiarist Amziah aptly sums up their way of life: “Everybody lookin’ out for each other. That’s a healthy hive.” It’s a core value to the storytelling here, which makes excellent use of an ensemble cast, including Tony Revolori and Rob Morgan, who step up when the “honey” hits the fan. Whether it’s pushing a barrel off an overpass at just the right time or lending a pickup truck hearty enough to power through a stream, the characters all do their part to retrieve the pilfered hives. Even in a far-fetched fable like this one, it’s heartening to watch folks coming together for the greater good and if it’s also to share the occasional music performance, all the better.

Befitting its wily protagonist, The Rivals Of Amziah King gets charmingly sidetracked from its primary plotline but even the tangents add their own sweetness and flavor to the cinematic meal. As an example, there’s a detour at a bee-infested elementary school that doesn’t advance the story but shows us a different side of Amziah outside of his apiary. He and Kateri are called on during an emergency when a swarm of bees in a classroom has made its way through the ventilation system, leading to panic and an evacuation by students and teachers. Arriving in his beekeeping veil and smock, Amziah assures the petrified principal, “this whole scenario is way more melodramatic than it needs to be,” and gets right to work. McConaughey, if no one else, has been the on-screen embodiment of “cool, calm, and collected” for decades now but his specific brand of confidence makes that setpiece sing.

I’m not sure how much mandolin McConaughey learned for The Rivals Of Amziah King — I’ve only heard tell of his eccentric bongo playing — but he certainly pulls off the band scenes (like the one over the opening credits) convincingly. King’s apprenticeship of Kateri doesn’t stop at beekeeping, as he prods her to join in with group harmonies during impromptu music performances with company over in his living room. I’m not sure exactly which parts are technically music score and original songs written for the film but in any event, the music throughout Patterson’s rollicking sophomore effort is infectious as all get out. If you consider yourself a fan of the Soggy Bottom Boys from O Brother, Where Art Thou?, you need to make a beeline for the soundtrack on your music streaming platform of choice. As for the film, if you can’t catch it in theater, it’ll be available to rent starting September 15th.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Onslaught, starring Adria Arjona and Dan Stevens, follows an army sniper as she struggles to protect her young daughter from an army of genetically engineered super soldiers who escaped from a secret military facility.
By Any Means, starring Mark Wahlberg and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, sees a notorious mafia hitman and a young Black FBI agent teaming up to investigate the murders of civil rights leaders in 1966 Mississippi.
Fall 2: Deadpoint, starring Harriet Slater and Arsema Thomas, centers around a pair of rock climbers who plan to conquer a treacherous plank walk in Thailand but a sudden rockslide leaves them trapped at a terrifying height of 3,000 feet.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Ahead of Inside Out 2‘s release in 2024, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced, “We had gone through a period where our original films in animation, both Disney and Pixar, were dominating. We’re now swinging back a bit to lean on sequels.” Given the surprisingly high quality of the 3 direct-to-Disney+ Pixar releases, it was dispiriting news. But here we are 2 years later and it turns out, follow-ups in the Inside Out and Toy Story series represent the studio’s strongest work since their return to theaters in 2022 with Lightyear. While Toy Story 4 at the time felt like an unnecessary way to prolong what most considered a perfect trilogy, Toy Story 5 feels like an argument that this franchise could conceivably continue forever. With an ever-expanding voice cast and continually state-of-the-art animation, this latest installment finds the saga that started with the 1996 ground-breaking original in tip-top shape.

The movie reintroduces us to the now-eight-year-old Bonnie (voiced by Scarlett Spears) and her stable of toys led by Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Tim Allen) and Jessie (voiced by Joan Cusack). She still loves using her imagination and creating magical worlds with her playthings, which sets her apart from her increasingly tech-reliant peers. Not wanting to feel left out, Bonnie asks her parents for a device of her own and soon, a frog-themed Lilypad tablet named “Lily” (voiced by Greta Lee) enters the picture. It doesn’t take long for the glowy allure of Lily’s display to draw Bonnie’s attention away from her most cherished toys. In order to save Bonnie from the flattening effect that Lily’s had on her imagination, Jessie calls in the calvary in the form of Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) and Bo Peep (Annie Potts) to curb Bonnie’s screen time and help her make friends in the real world.

Andrew Stanton, who’s directed Pixar all-timers from Finding Nemo to WALL·E, wastes no time in Toy Story 5 catching us up from events of previous chapters, instead diving right in with an exciting cold open featuring a island-marooned bevy of Buzz Lightyears. From there, the story weaves breathlessly between their mission to find Star Command, the primary plot involving Lily’s influence on Bonnie and Jessie’s adventure endeavoring to win her back. Jessie’s journey takes her to the home of Blaze (voiced by Mykal-Michelle Harris), a girl Bonnie’s age who values face time with farm animals over the hypnotic spell of electronics. Her parents have a drawer of abandoned tech toys, like potty-trainer Smarty Pants (voiced by Conan O’Brien) and GPS Atlas (voiced by Craig Robinson), that are now relics of a pre-technological convergence era.

It would be easy for Stanton and his co-writer Kenna Harris to adopt a “technology bad” posture for their tale of the prevalence of touchscreens in children’s day-to-day but their script is more nuanced and less preachy than that. When a different futuristic green toy first entered Andy’s room over 30 years ago, it was also met with initial resistance from the “analog” toys who were worried about its impact on their playtime. But Buzz is, of course, fully integrated into the cadre of dolls and stuffies by now and Toy Story 5 gives indications how Lily could similarly find a spot in the lineup. Greta Lee does a terrific job balancing the intelligence, menace and resourcefulness that could be expected from a sentient smart device who’s determined to make its owner’s life better.

Being the franchise’s two main protagonists, Woody and Buzz have typically been featured more than any of the other characters but this time, Jessie is given the spotlight more than any Toy Story since the 2nd, in which she was first introduced. Joan Cusack rises to the occasion, imbuing Jessie with a determination and ebullience that makes her impossible not to root for. Aside from Lee, the best new addition to the incredible voice cast is Conan O’Brien, who steals scene after scene with an endless stream of potty-pertinent puns. From an animation perspective, the biggest up-level in this entry comes from the immaculately-rendered sequences where we see the stories Bonnie and Blaze conjure from their imaginations. From lavish weddings to defusing bombs in ballrooms, these toys are capable of anything in the minds of kids who never stop dreaming.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Supergirl, a superhero movie starring Milly Alcock and Jason Momoa, expanding from last year’s Superman as Kara Zor-El joins forces with an unlikely companion on an interstellar journey of vengeance and justice when an unexpected adversary strikes too close to home.
Also coming to theaters is Jackass: Best And Last, a slapstick sequel starring Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O, featuring a final compilation of stunts, skits, and pranks, intercut with on-set talking heads with its aging daredevil cast.
Streaming on Netflix is Little Brother, a buddy comedy starring John Cena and Eric André, in which the orderly life of a famous real estate agent is disrupted by an eccentric man who participated in the same “Big Brother-Little Brother” program.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

After premiering in the Midnight Madness lineup of the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, the dazzling martial arts symposium The Furious is ready to blow the minds of the masses. Thanks to the John Wick series, which is also distributed by Lionsgate, general audiences have become acclimated to intricate and sophisticated fight scenes directly inspired by Hong Kong and Indonesian action cinema. It’s perhaps unfair to regard the Keanu Reeves vehicles as a “good start”, as they’re strong entries in their own right, but if the Wicks are the warm-up, The Furious is the full workout. Not only does the film feature the year’s finest combat choreography but unless you’ve been lucky enough to catch anniversary screenings of Ong-Bak or The Raid, it features what may be the most relentless hand-to-hand you’ve ever seen in a theater.

After a blistering cold open marked by spectacular splits and scorpion kicks, The Furious settles on single father Wang Wei (Xie Miao) and his daughter Rainy (Yang Enyou) living together in modern-day Bangkok. While at the barber one day, the two get into an argument and when Rainy storms out to the street, she’s lured away and kidnapped by criminals posing as garbagemen. The local police offer no help when Wang Wei seeks assistance, forcing him to take matters into his own hands (and feet) as he chases down his daughter’s captors. Teaming up with Navin (Joe Taslim), an undercover journalist investigating the same trafficking ring that claimed his wife, Wang Wei will stop at nothing to infiltrate the powerful network of lethal gangsters responsible for snatching Rainy.

From the perspective of story and dialogue, the latter of which is primarily in English, The Furious has very little you haven’t seen before in action movies either from the United States or originating outside the US. The actors all do what they need to do to establish the stakes: in the case of Xie Miao and Yang Enyou, selling the early moments of bonding and in the case of Joey Iwanaga, who plays big baddie Pak Lung, selling his villain’s despicableness. Despite the lack of character depth, director Kenji Tanigaki manages to conjure up memorable quirks to disperse among the stock combatants. Fans of martial arts films will likely recognize genre mainstays Yayan Ruhian and Brian Le, the former of whom sports a maroon tracksuit while wielding a bow and arrow and the latter of whom rocks overalls while refusing to die. When his unconscious thug wakes up after taking a sledgehammer hit to the head and wanders through the woods, I half-expected to hear a “ki-ki-ki, ma-ma-ma” to indicate a Jason Voorhees-brand of immortality.

Despite the generic title, The Furious appropriately sports a relentless, fast-and-furious pace, commencing with Wang blazing down Bangkok streets barefoot, chasing down a garbage truck with Rainy and her abductors onboard. Most modern martial arts outings would be lucky to have 1 or 2 sequences as thrilling and unforgettable as just about all the setpieces gathered here. One such scene, set at an ice factory where one of the villains freezes insubordinates in large blocks of ice, hammers out a dizzying array of hits and blows with jaw-dropping ferocity. Even in settings familiar, like a furtive nightclub where dirty deals go down, there’s a supplemental element like an octagonal MMA enclosure upon which Kenji Tanigaki and his team can stage acrobatic and elaborate action. By the time Wang and Navin make it to the crime syndicate’s packed headquarters, fittingly called the Snake Pit, the comparisons to The Raid feel both inevitable and earned.

The entire pan-Asian cast of The Furious is eminently gifted when it comes to delivering bone-crunching realism in their hand-to-hand conflicts but Xie Miao is a particular standout in his most prominent role yet. Co-starring in productions with legends like Jet Li and Chow Yun-fat in the mid-90s, he hasn’t had a lead performance capable of catapulting him to that next level until now. There’s an inertia to his fighting style that’s riveting and infectious but even more thrilling may be the split-second interruptions in his rhythm by way of pump fakes with either fists or feet. Whether he has more starring roles in the tank or not, this movie is an outstanding showcase for his tenacious physicality and will no doubt inspire on-screen martial artists down the road.

Score – 4/5

More new movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Disclosure Day, starring Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor, follows a targeted whistleblower as she unravels a massive government conspiracy and races against time to bring about an extraordinary event that will change human history forever.
Stop! That! Train!, starring Ginger Minj and Jujubee, involves two train stewardesses who must work with the snooty first-class crew of the new luxury passenger train upon which they’re working to prevent a disaster in the midst of a massive storm.
Jinsei, starring Ayumu Nakajima and Eri Kamataki, is an anime feature about a man who becomes a J-pop idol, an outcast, a leader and an oracle in a 100-year chronicle spanning the past, present and future.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Based on the international bestseller Three Bags Full by German crime writer Leonie Swann, The Sheep Detectives counts as one of the year’s biggest surprises thus far. When I go into a theater, I do what I can to give myself the best shot to enjoy what I’m about to watch. I typically avoid clips and trailers when I can; I inevitably see footage for upcoming releases either in theatrical pre-roll or scrolling through social media but I don’t seek out promos. If I can go into a movie knowing only a brief synopsis of what I’m about to see, that’s the ideal scenario. Going into this film, I knew it was a live-action murder mystery with CGI talking animals. Right, wrong, or otherwise, that sets my expectation bar relatively low, even given the fact that I don’t consume many G and PG-rated offerings. This is a rich family entertainment, packed with genuine intrigue, warm humor and wisdom around worthy themes.

The Sheep Detectives opens with voiceover from George Hardy (Hugh Jackman), a staid shepherd who prefers the company of his flock over the complications of human interaction. Though he tends to dozens of sheep, he has names for all of them and while he’d rather not pick favorites, he nevertheless has two: Lily (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Sebastian (voiced by Bryan Cranston). Every night after the day’s chores are done, George sits outside his mobile home in the meadow and reads whodunnit novels to a captive ovine audience. Little does he know, the smartest of the sheep have been taking mental notes and Lily especially seems to know the endings before they’re even read. Unfortunately, their collective knowledge of murder mysteries becomes useful when George is discovered dead by fellow herder Caleb (Tosin Cole) one day.

Dim-witted officer Tim (Nicholas Braun) arrives shortly on the scene and it’s clear to Lily and company that he needs all the help he can get in solving the crime at hand. With the help of the world-weary Mopple (voiced by Chris O’Dowd), Lily and Sebastian make the trek outside their field to listen in on George’s will reading in the nearby English town of Denbrook. Gathered with George’s attorney Lydia (Emma Thompson) are George’s daughter Rebecca (Molly Gordon) —traveling across the pond from America— along with local townspeople like persnickety innkeeper Beth (Hong Chau) and priest Reverend Hillcoate (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith). Putting their hooves and horns together, the sheep must follow the clues to untangle the mystery of which of these seemingly innocuous interlopers know what happened to their departed leader.

The quaint English setting and computer-generated animal cast may quickly call to mind the George Miller Babe films from 1990s and while those still certainly hold up, The Sheep Detectives features special effects that show how far we’ve come. The rendering for each of the creatures —be they Icelandic Leadersheep or North Country Cheviot sheep— is exquisitely detailed and charming in its flourishes. I got a kick out of how expressive each of the sheep’s ears were, flickering and twitching in ways that mirror how they’re feeling at a given moment. Of course the voice cast does an exceptional job bringing these CG creations to life, led by beautifully affecting work from Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the lead role. As the foil to Lily’s lively determination, fellow Seinfeld alum Bryan Cranston provides a gruff, cynical cadence to Sebastian’s timbre.

In the cinematic world, screenwriter Craig Mazin has hung his hat on entries from raunch comedy franchises Scary Movie and The Hangover but in the television realm, he’s spearheaded critically-acclaimed fare like Chernobyl and The Last Of Us. Being rated PG, The Sheep Detectives obviously steers clear of the four-letter words from the sophomoric comedies but doesn’t get as dramatically heavy as his TV output either. The humor is often droll and calls attention to the differences between how these talking sheep see the world compared to the humans bickering around them. But by the film’s conclusion, Mazin and director Kyle Balda weave together powerful themes about belonging and memory that will resonate with audience members of all ages. Filled with tenderness and twists in equal measure, The Sheep Detectives is a sheer delight.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Obsession, starring Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette, is a supernatural horror movie in which a music store employee buys a supernatural “One Wish Willow” toy and wishes for his childhood friend to fall in love with him.
In The Grey, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Henry Cavill, is an action thriller involving a secret elite team of agents who are tasked with reclaiming a vast fortune stolen by a ruthless tyrant.
Is God Is, starring Kara Young and Mallori Johnson, is a revenge thriller following twin sisters with disfiguring burn scars as they’re ordered by their bedridden mother to kill their abusive father who caused their scars.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

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