The Gray Man is more forgettable than anything else

 

If there's anything positive to say about The Gray Man, it's that directors Anthony and Joe Russo feel much more comfortable here as filmmakers than they did in their last directorial effort, Cherry. With a quartet of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies under their belt, The Russo Brothers are understandably a lot more at home handling a global action film like The Gray Man, an adaptation of Mark Greaney's novel of the same name, than whatever the hell Cherry was trying to be. But the same familiarity that seems to make the Russo's at ease as directors also makes it hard to get invested in The Gray Man as a movie. The whole thing struggles to emerge from the shadows of superior blockbusters it keeps evoking.

Court Gentry (Ryan Gosling) was once resigned to live out his lengthy prison sentence when CIA agent Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) came to him with a proposition. Gentry could become a mercenary for the CIA named Sierra Six, a job that would allow this prisoner to put his experience with violence to good use. Cut to two decades later and Gentry has become one of the best and most efficient assets in the CIA. During a seemingly routine mission, Gentry realizes other members of the Sierra program are getting killed off and that he can't trust his superiors. Armed with an important flash drive, Gentry is now a man on the run. The sociopathic Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) is sent to kill Sierra Six in a chase that will span the globe and eventually involve Fitzroy's granddaughter, Claire (Julia Butters).

Throughout The Gray Man, I was just as rarely bored with what I was watching as I was engaged. There's little to repel you in this feature, but there's also little that'll sink its claws into you and never let go. I kept waiting for an extra flourish, a really ludicrous plot twist or a distinctive trait in the performances, to take things from simulating the idea of entertainment to being entertaining. No such luck. There are certainly worse movies out there and there's no denying that The Gray Man is largely competent on a technical level. But there's not much of a soul here. Instead, the crux of The Gray Man is borrowed from a barrage of other movies, whether it's having a bad-ass assassin lead character with a soft spot for a child or a bunch of generic CIA goons ripped straight out of a Bourne installment.

The whole movie would've been better off with just a dash more fun or steaminess. The Gray Man operates in a harsh world, one where the enjoyably ludicrous parts of the spy genre, not to mention any semblance of romance, have been stripped away. Everybody's brooding, including the audience! The result is a movie that's got gunfire to spare, but little humanity or zest. It can't even commit fully to its darker qualities thanks to a PG-13 rating that ensures, among other shortcomings, audiences can't get the kind of exciting death scenes that automatically made movies like Dead Calm or Deep Blue Sea enjoyable rides. It's baffling to imagine why a streaming movie isn't just rated R, anyway. You don't have to worry about alienating teen moviegoers on Netflix, anyone can watch it, and they won't get carded by movie theater employees. Just go for the more brutal rating so The Gray Man could occasionally get spiced up with some gnarly deaths.

But even a couple of head explosions wouldn't have helped the awkward narrative structure of The Gray Man, which is especially confounding in its saggy second act where a pair of abrupt flashback sequences derail any plot momentum. Even worse than all of that, though, is how The Gray Man utterly wastes leading man Ryan Gosling. Gosling is an actor with a wide sense of range who can do goofy physical comedy in The Nice Guys one minute before doing a restrained portrait of torment in First Man. Unfortunately, The Gray Man doesn't give him much of anything to work with. Gentry's a blank slate of a character and Gosling is never given any opportunities to fill in the blank spaces with a vibrant personality. The character's recurring quips even feel like a poor use of Gosling's skills as a comedic performer.

Most of the cast members of The Gray Man are on this kind of autopilot, though Dhanush does deliver a charismatic supporting turn while main baddie actor Chris Evans seems to be having a ball channeling John Lithgow in Cliffhanger in portraying a dastardly foe to the core (though he sometimes feels like he's in the wrong movie). Mostly, though, these forgettable performances encapsulate the similarly disposable nature of The Gray Man. Henry Jackman's generic score and a collection of mostly forgettable foreign locales similarly ensure that this expansive blockbuster won't linger in your mind for long. There are enough explosions and instances of decent fight choreography (the latter detail undercut by some terrible editing) to likely make some action fans pleased in the moment while watching The Gray Man, but even they'll be wishing the movie had tried for something more compelling by the time the credits begin rolling.

Go ahead and say "yep" to Jordan Peele's newest winner, Nope

There will come a day when writer/director Jordan Peele helms a dud. It's bound to happen. Every filmmaker has a movie that just doesn't work. Steven Spielberg has Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. David Fincher has The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Gore Verbinski's got The Lone Ranger. Direct enough movies, one' s bound to not click. The director of Get Out and Us will doubtlessly helm such a production in the future. Thankfully, his third directorial effort, Nope, is not that feature. Instead, it's another affirmation of Peele's gifts as a filmmaker and a signal that he can expand his scope as a storyteller without sacrificing substance for scale.

OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) runs a ranch for horses, which are used in various entertainment properties (ranging from commercials to The Scorpion King). This domicile has belonged to his family for years, but after the sudden death of his father, who supposedly died after getting hit with debris from an airplane, getting reminded of the past feels more like a burden than a gift to OJ. Feeling adrift, some direction comes into his life when, whilst tending to his horses one night, OJ spies...something moving in the sky. His sister, Emerald (Keke Palmer), happily jumps into OJ's plan to film whatever's out there. This could be it, a chance to solve their money problems and maybe get some answers about what thing killed their father.

By Monday morning, I'm sure there'll be dozens of essays floating around about the various underlying meanings of Nope. I'm probably a few tools shy of a full toolbox to get everything Peele's going for here, but one notable theme of the movie that did stick out to me was the kind of entertainment figures it focuses on. The famous movie stars or filmmakers of many features about Hollywood are largely absent here. Our characters are largely below-the-line workers, like cinematographer Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott), or figures on the fringe of notoriety, like child-star-turned-theme-park-owner Ricky "Jupe" Park (Steven Yeun). 

These are more relatable grunts just trying to earn a day's living, much like the majority of the people who're going to see this movie (or even yours truly!). This makes them the perfect underdog figures to contrast with something much larger-than-life hovering in the clouds. Their references to and engagement with pop culture are also fun and reflect how they're a bit more at the bottom wrung of the entertainment industry totem pole. Rather than name-dropping the biggest movies of 2019 and 2020, characters bemoan "a pilot for The CW" while a poster on Park's wall is a homage to Holes. These clever details reinforce the lack of mega-star wattage that the characters of Nope engage with and they also give a specific identity to the movie's relationship to the broader world of entertainment. Where else this year will you find a blockbuster that has a character waxing poetic on the virtues of Chris Kattan?

The fact that you can unpack that much simply from the kinds of movies and TV shows Nope name-drops is a testament to how layered this motion picture is. There's a similar level of profound detail in the visuals, which are brought to life through cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema. It shouldn't be a shock that a film combining the might of Peele and van Hoytema with IMAX cameras is going to look great, but it's still tremendous to watch the beauty of Nope's images unfold. There's a fun sense of theatricality to the film's depiction of a possible UFO lurking in the shadows that harken back to how the dinosaurs were portrayed in Jurassic Park or the depiction of the shark in Jaws. You see a little bit of it here, a little bit of it over there, all building up suspense and making you question what you did see. 

It's an exquisite mixture of thoughtful filmmaking and pure unfiltered fun. There's an outright cheeky quality to some of the visuals that wring as many whispers of "no no no" from viewers as possible. That's the kind of controlled camerawork that informs so much of the entertainment in the delightfully squirm-inducing suspense sequences of Nope, the best of which will ensure you won't go into a barn or look at a cloud the same way ever again. Come to think of it, the underlying rascally tone of such moments is a key reason why Nope can alternate between horror and comedy so gracefully. The two genres have often been unexpected but welcome bedfellows throughout cinema history and they make a fine pairing here. The jokes in Peele's script are quite funny, but they also feel like an organic companion to the vibes of certain scary scenes. Turns out, you can have your cake and eat it too, or in this case, have jokes and also be intense enough to make audiences member dig their nails into the armrests of their seats.

Nope's assorted performances are just as well-realized as its sublime tone, with Daniel Kaluuya delivering especially terrific work as OJ. Here's to hoping Kaluuya becomes the Toshiro Mifune to Peele's Akira Kurosawa, as the duo just seem to bring out the best in one another. In the other lead role, Keke Palmer is endlessly compelling as Emerald, she just exudes such effortless confidence from the moment she walks on-screen, while we should all be hailing the welcome return of character actor Michael Wincott in his first credited acting role in seven years. Just listening to him talk in that wonderfully gravelly voice is great, but his physical presence is also fantastic. Steven Yeun, though, especially stands out in his supporting role as Park. Yeun's natural charisma works as such an interesting contrast with this man's internal life and helps inform one of Nope's most fascinating players. 

There's lots to love about Nope, which thoroughly delivers both brains and entertainment. But what draws me to it is how much it defies traditional Hollywood logic. They say IMAX cameras are merely for movies that cost $250 million and span multiple continents, yet here they are effectively used on something with a much more intimate storytelling scale. They say combining Westerns and science-fiction is a fool's errand, but here Peele mixes the two genres to incredible effect. A movie that critiques spectacle shouldn't also dazzle the eyeballs, but Nope does just that. One could even say the storytelling structure, which often bounces between perspectives and briefly shifts across time, should be convoluted, yet it's pulled off here with grace. Like so many other enjoyable movies, Nope looks at what logically shouldn't work and runs in that direction. So long as he keeps following those sorts of creative instincts, maybe Peele won't be delivering that directorial effort dud anytime soon.

Click here for Douglas Laman's spoiler discussion of Nope.

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is an agreeably pleasant trip

 

Based on the novel of the same name by Paul Gallico, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is such a gentle movie that it makes something like Downton Abbey look like a Takashi Miike movie. That's not a bad thing (certainly Paris is better overall than both of the Abbey films), but it's good to know what you're getting into with this movie. It's a soothing feature designed from the ground up to not offend grandparents, right down to it garnering a PG rating. Again, this is not a criticism, since Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, despite being too fluffy for its own good, is an agreeable enterprise that gets a lot of mileage out of its lead performer. 

Mrs. Harris (Lesley Manville) has spent decades working as a cleaning lady in London. She's saved every pound and shilling, all without ever clinging to any dream bigger than hoping that maybe her husband, who went missing fighting in World War II, may still come home. After an encounter with a Christian Dior dress at one of her client's houses, though, Mrs. Harris has a new ambition. She's going to Paris, France to get the snazziest dress imaginable. The wall-to-wall elegance of the Christian, Dior headquarters is initially anything but welcoming to Mrs. Harris, particularly powerful employee Claudine Colbert (Isabelle Huppert). But this spunky and encouraging soul is not one to give up easily on anything, least of all her dreams.

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris kept reminding me of Paddington. How could it not? They're both sweet yarns about British-accented people with hearts of gold struggling to fit in while exploring a new culture. Paris can't even hope to hit the heights of quality reached by the two Paddington features, but there are worse movies to evoke. The constant kindness present in Mrs. Harris's spirit proves to be an endearing enough quality to hang her French escapades on, especially since the screenplay (credited to director Anthony Fabian as well as Carroll Cartwright, Keith Thompson, and Olivia Hetreed) makes it clear there is no ulterior motive fueling all these acts of emotional generosity. Harris behaves like this because that's just who Harris is.

Such a personality is brought to life through Lesley Manville, who's really the reason to see Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. A fixture of Mike Leigh movies and having earned an Oscar nomination for going toe-to-toe with Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread, Manville adds another superb film acting credit to her resume here. Much like with Denzel Washington in The Preacher's Wife, Manville injects substantive pathos into a script that could've lapsed into an avalanche of treacly sentiment. Mrs. Harris isn't a caricature in this woman's hands. Instead, she conveys realistic flourishes in her body language and dialogue deliveries. The result is a compelling performance that ensures Mrs. Harris feels about as real as somebody sitting next to you in the theater.

Other aspects of Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, though, never quite reach the heights of Manville's central performance. Fabian's direction, for one thing, isn't terribly imaginative. The closest thing to super memorable camerawork here is the use of double dolly shots whenever Mrs. Harris is getting especially enamored with a dress. Aside from that, the streets of Paris, France in the 1950s have somehow failed to inspire much visual bombast in this filmmaker's eyes. The script could've also stood to inject extra doses of personality into key supporting characters like noble but bland numbers guy Andre Fauvel (Lucas Bravo). The moving moments of Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris work more often than they don't. However, these moments would be extra poignant if the people Mrs, Harris encountered in Paris were as detailed and believable as the film's lead character. 

Throughout Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, Mrs. Harris, as well as protesting garbagemen in a recurring subplot, challenges societal norms and expectations over where a cleaning lady from London belongs. The film she anchors, though, is less accustomed to subversion. There aren't many surprises in here to elevate the feature, but maybe that'll be just fine with the target audience for this motion picture. You still get to see lots of pretty dresses, experience your heartstrings getting tugged, and another killer Lesley Manville performance. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris had the potential to be exceptional rather than just pleasant, but as Mrs. Harris herself is always proving, there's nothing wrong with a little bit of niceness.

Thor: Love and Thunder doesn't pack as mighty a wallop as Thor: Ragnarok

 

Sometimes, you just can't escape the shadow of your predecessors. Such is the problem facing Thor: Love and Thunder, which serves as writer/director Taika Waititi's much-anticipated follow-up to his 2017 film Thor: Ragnarok (this go-around, he wrote the script with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson). Ragnarok was so much fun, so tightly written, and so good at balancing the silly with more introspective material, it would always be difficult to follow that film up. Even if Love and Thunder weren't constantly reminding you of that superior movie, it would still have some noticeable shortcomings. Ironically, an issue of weightlessness keeps bringing this project down to Earth like an anchor. Thankfully, some of Waititi's greatest assets as a filmmaker are still here to make the proceedings largely enjoyable.

Picking up shortly after Avengers: Endgame, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is struggling to find himself and specifically what his purpose should be now. At the same time, Thor's ex-lover Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) has come into possession of that mystical hammer Mjolnir. Wielding this weapon, she's now become The Mighty Thor, a formidable superhero in her own right. The two Thor's are gonna have to work together to stop Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale). He's using a fancy sword known as the Necromancer to slaughter every single God in existence. Grab your gear and the fierce warrior Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), because it's time for another Thor adventure. 

Waititi thankfully maintains Ragnarok's love for unabashedly silly cosmic mayhem, with nary a desire in sight to ground things in reality or handwave away something as just being futuristic science. Shadow beasts hunt down children in the night, a big bug can wear clothes, and a big city that's home to many Gods (including Russell Crowe's Zeus) can have a bunch of peculiar-looking weirdoes that the camera treats as totally normal. The status quo in Love and Thunder is absurdism and it often conjures up memories of 1980s Jim Henson movies like The Dark Crystal or Labyrinth in its love for ridiculous fantasy storytelling. 

Much like The Dark Crystal, though, Love and Thunder is often more fun in pieces than as a whole. Part of this comes down to the characters not being as concretely-defined as they could be. Major pieces of information in the backstories of Thor and Jane are breezed past in flashbacks and montages suffocated in narration by Korg (Taika Waititi). That's especially problematic since Thor's starting issue (he has trouble letting other people in) doesn't align with what we've seen of him in prior Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. He's always been a gregarious soul, so it's weird that we're starting out with the premise of him being somebody who keeps people at arm's length. We're also only just now getting to know anything about Foster and information about her personal life would've made more of an impact if it could've had room to breathe. Thor: Love and Thunder knows what emotional and character beats it wants to hit, but its comedic impulses keep intruding on those ambitions. 

Waititi's script's love for the inexplicable is better suited to random comedic asides than in the more dramatic sequences. In the latter scenarios, it can often feel like the screenplay is just coming up with random new MacGuffin's or aspects of Marvel Comics cosmic lore to keep things moving rather than finding new entertaining places to take these characters. Just playing with the toys Love and Thunder establishes from the get-go rather than trying to find new shiny objects at every turn would've help the dramatic beats feel more organic. 

On the positive side, Waititi's exploration of the weightier concepts do land some emotionally potent moments, particularly anything that has to do with Christian Bale's ruthless Gorr. Despite Love and Thunder suffering from a sense of weightlessness, some of the introspective details related to figuring out what defines a good worthy life do hit the mark. Waititi's balance between the silly and the poignant isn't as strong as it was on Hunt for the Wilderpeople, but his willingness to let the Gorr-centric sequences of this film have a gravitas that isn't interrupted by gags ensures that there's still some emotional heft here.

Much of that heft comes from the performance of Bale, who lends a palpably fervent aura to Gorr's quest for slaughter. There's a cracked quality to Gorr, he just seems like someone whose very gait suggests he's somebody missing a critical part of his emotional capacity. A sequence that limits the scope just to Gorr antagonizing our three lead heroes is a highlight of the entire film while the practical makeup work used to realize this villain is spectacular-looking. Put simply, Bale's great here. Not being beholden to replicating the behaviors of someone from real life (like his Dick Cheney in Vice) allows Bale to remind viewers that he's just as good at conjuring up original performances wholesale as he is at mimicry. 

Save for the clumsy incorporation of CG sets and creatures (the Marvel Cinematic Universe visual effects pipeline strikes again), Thor: Love and Thunder largely looks as good as Gorr's makeup. The practical sets are a lot of fun, especially ones used to realize the lavish land Zeus and other Gods call home. Not only does Gorr get the best performance and tone of the whole movie, but he's also the center of the best-looking sequences of the entire feature, particularly a duel in his monochromatic world. Even with this standout black-and-white sequence, color is, thankfully, still in high supply for Waititi's vision of the cosmos and informs lots of the fun eye candy in Love and Thunder. 

Even if the gags are never quite as fresh as they are in Thor: Ragnarok (the jokes building off fan-favorite moments from Ragnarok especially feel lacking), Thor: Love and Thunder delivers plenty of jokes that still made me cackle. Chris Hemsworth is such fun playing a himbo, it's such a shame that it took so many movies for them to figure out that this is the best mold for the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Thor to inhabit. With Hemsworth still a hoot, Thor: Love and Thunder manages to be quite funny, features an enjoyable villain, and it all looks like a million bucks. Unfortunately, it's also a disjointed venture, sometimes heavily so, that offers up too many callbacks to a superior predecessor and is too weightless to hit its lofty thematic ambitions. The shadow of Ragnarok looms large over Love and Thunder and this new installment is never strong enough as a standalone outing to escape it.

Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song shines in its most introspective moments

 

No piece of art solely belongs to the people who make it. When we look at and experience a painting, film, statue, or any other form of artistic expression, it also becomes a part of us in some way. This is especially true of music, which is devoid of a visual form and often features abstract lyrics or orchestral accompaniment that invites the listener to make their own interpretation of what they're digesting. It's why songs so often become more than just tunes on the radio. They become the soundtrack to a first date, a coping mechanism during a breakup, an anthem during a karaoke session you'll never forget. Even a chart-topping hit can feel like something that was designed for you and your circumstances.

Part of the focus of the documentary Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song is on how the titular tune, "Hallelujah," has managed to resonate so deeply with so many different people. But that's not the only focus here, as directors Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine use this film as an opportunity to explore a chronological look at Cohen's life. This portrait of this musician's existence allows for the greater context of "Hallelujah's" very existence to come to light, particularly how it was initially never given a proper release in the U.S. by Columbia Records. While we get to dive into the finer points of this man's career, the second half of Hallelujah then splinters into exploring the various covers of that famous song and how they extended the lifespan of what once looked like a piece of music headed for the trashbin of history.

The latter scenes of the film provide some of the most insightful parts of Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song. That's not a slam on the archival interview segments we hear from Cohen or his backstory. It's just compelling to hear how musicians read into "Hallelujah" concepts or ideas that Cohen himself could never have imagined being a part of this tune. Brandi Carlile, for instance, observes in an interview how the song helped her come to terms with her queerness while the tragic passing of Jeff Buckley, who sang a famous cover of "Hallelujah," injected further unexpected layers of poignancy into a piece already rich with subtext.

Through these anecdotes and perspectives, we can see the full impact of "Hallelujah" as well as how even the most deeply personal works of art can end up resonating with other humans. There is a bit of tragedy too in the film's depiction of its ubiquity. Shrek director Vickey Jensen mentions in an interview that, so it could be featured in an animated title aimed at kids, she edited together a new version removing lyrics dealing with sexual material. That's not a bad idea when you want to use this song in a PG-film, but Jensen goes on to note that that's the default version that's been performed by other people since then. Shrek gave "Hallelujah" a gargantuan amount of notoriety, but it also came at the cost of removing some of its most challenging and vulnerable passages. With this development, everybody knows Cohen's song, but they don't know the most revealing parts of Cohen's lyrics.

Exploring the benefits and drawbacks of "Halleluljah" becoming such an iconic track is where Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song really thrives. The talking head interview segments and sequences dedicated to chronicling the backstory of Cohen are serviceable, but boilerplate for a music documentary like this. Cohen was always pushing the boundaries in his work with that gravelly but also the weighty voice of his. This makes it a shame that a movie dedicated to his work isn't quite as groundbreaking in its form and presentation as its central subject. Geller and Goldfine still execute these parts of the production with competency and do include a wide range of interview subjects, including the bewildering presence of country music superstar Eric Church.

Most thoughtful of all in their filmmaking is the smart decision to not linger on the death of Cohen. The films end with on-screen text referencing his passing in 2016, but Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song isn't built around the climactic reveal that he's died. This is a film largely about how songs and the musicians who write them can live on and on forever. As long as people are performing "Hallelujah" on TV singing competition shows, Cohen, in some small way, won't really be gone. Even more importantly, the impact this song had on people, made evident all throughout this documentary, ensures that the legacy of Cohen will be an eternal one. No piece of art solely belongs to the person who makes it and "Hallelujah" owes every shred of its popularity to that truth.

The Black Phone calls up some solid entertainment

 

Adapted from a short story by Joe Hill, The Black Phone spends much of its first act establishing a bleak world for adolescent sibling protaganists Finney (Mason Thomas) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) to inhabit. This is made especially apparent in one of the most quietly tragic scenes of the whole movie, where Finney joins his sister in watching TV right after Gwen has been beaten by their father. What's flickering on the Idiot Box? An episode of Davy & Goliath. This stop-motion Christian show spoonfeeds Finney, Gwen, and countless other kids hamfisted easy morals that don't apply in a world where parents can abuse their kids without consequence or where violent bullies lurk around every corner. 

The Black Phone is emphasizing that these youngsters are growing up in a world of abuse that doesn't even offer them tools to normalize their experiences. Just TV shows that instill in them the message of complying with authority, that present a warped sanitized vision of reality.

It's a bleak start for what ends up being a relatively tame (by R-rated horror standards) scary feature, but it does provide a fine groundwork for what's to come. The ensuing story sees Finney getting kidnapped by The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), a notorious local figure who has been kidnapping kids for a long time. Waking up in this man's basement, Finney is terrified about his impending demise. But a seemingly busted black phone on the wall could have the answers Finney's looking for. The spirits of The Grabber's previous victims are now calling Finney up and giving him guidance on how to fight back against this wicked man. Meanwhile, Gwen is a young girl who has dreams that serve as supernatural visions, including of those who've previously died at The Grabber's hands. She could prove helpful in figuring out where Finney is...and figuring out a way to save him before it's too late.

The Black Phone is the latest film by director Scott Derrickson, a man who's been working in horror cinema for over two decades now. In that timespan, Derrickson has shown a skill for crafting eerie images and some clever scares rooted in reality. Unfortunately, projects like The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Sinister were held back by his screenwriting and filmmaking choices that lacked subtlety. Going the obvious or over-the-top route isn't bad, but Derrickson's horror films have tended to fall prey to the wrong kind of pronounced story or character details. Plots or scares that require a bit more subtlety tend to get weighed down by intrusive scores or didactic dialogue.

Derrickson sometimes succumbs to those shortcomings again here, including indulging in too many flashback sequences and some clumsy depictions of suburban cruelty that are caricatured when they should be hauntingly raw. Luckily, the inherently restrained nature of The Black Phone's premise, which largely confines one kid to a man's basement, does keep some of these issues at bay. Any sequence depicting Finney in The Grabber's clutches also allows for Derrickson to deliver some of his most interesting visuals as a filmmaker yet. Any instance of the bodies of dead kids just wandering around an oblivious Finney (who can hear, but not see these souls) is especially chilling and memorable in terms of blocking and framing.

Those moments are made all the more engaging by the choice to have the dialogue of the kids tweaked so that it sounds drenched in static like you're hearing it from an old telephone. It's a detail that subtly reminds you you're hearing voices of the past, people who have no life left to live but do have wisdom to impart. Plus, the inherent situation Finney's trapped in is stripped-down enough, not to mention populated with reasonable obstacles (like a potential escape door jammed shut or a piece of wood breaking at an inopportune time), to feel like something grounded enough that it could really happen. Even with the supernatural presence of dead kids coaching Finney, much of what we're witnessing feels tangible enough to get you invested in wanting to see Finney get the hell out of there.

Succeeding on that front was enough to make The Black Phone a solid, though flawed, watch in my book. Ethan Hawke being around to deliver a great villain performance is just a cherry on top. Even with his face either entirely or partially covered in a mask for the entire runtime, Hawke still conveys an eerie aura that puts you on edge. It's a testament to his gifts as a physical actor that he can still convey genuine menace even with key parts of his body all covered up. As for the adolescent performers, Madeleine McGraw is easily the standout. It's a testament to her range that she gets the most emotionally devastating moment of The Black Phone (captured in a single take to boot) and then, later on, delivers the best comedic line of the film in one of her conversations with Jesus Christ.

It's easy to imagine The Black Phone living up to its full potential as a horror movie if its scope were narrowed (limiting the film to just The Grabber's basement would've been fascinating) and if recurring tendencies towards super conspicuous details had been eschewed. The Black Phone isn't the next horror classic, but it functions just fine as an enjoyable watch that mostly delivers the goods as a survival drama and as a showcase for Ethan Hawke's talents as an actor. I also must give this motion picture props for being a straightforward serious horror movie that features a villain called The Grabber. That's commitment right there.

Minions: The Rise of Gru is a largely amusing, albeit disposable, kid-friendly comedy

Writing a review for Minions: The Rise of Gru feels like a somewhat pointless exercise. Maybe that's why I've waited four days since I saw the film to write this up. What else can be said about the Despicable Me saga at this point? It's highly popular, but not especially deep. Like most Illumination films, your mileage with these Minions or Despicable Me installments will vary based on how much you like just watching a succession of gags. That doesn't offer much to analyze or break down, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to look at here. In the case of The Rise of Gru, the jokes have a little more oomph to them compared to every other Despicable Me follow-up and it's nice to see the franchise getting in touch with its naughty side again.

The biggest issue the Despicable Me franchise has faced in trying to sustain the exploits of Gru (Steve Carell) across multiple films is that he peaked as a character in the first film, where he was nonchalant about the idea of a young girl getting impaled to death. Since then, he's been a more conventional suburban dad whose default behavior is foiling baddies, not being bad. Much like Shrek, Gru is a lot more fun breaking the rules than adhering to them.

The Rise of Gru, then, is already getting off on the right foot by setting its story in 1976, when an adolescent Gru is aspiring to become a supervillain. This guy is in kid-friendly mischief mode as he tries to land a spot on the supervillain team The Vicious Six, led by Belle Bottom (Taraji P. Henson). While auditioning for the group, Gru, after being told he's too young to be a supervillain, steals a precious medallion that The Vicious Six need for world domination. Once this heist results in Gru getting kidnapped, it's up to a plucky trio of Minions, Kevin, Stuart, and Bob (the lead characters of the first Minions movie) to save their boss.

For better and for worse, The Rise of Gru is built primarily on individual gags and character designs that director Kyle Balda and company found amusing. More often than not, that's enough to make the movie an amusing enough distraction, especially since the design team went all-out to give the supervillains over-the-top costumes. Nunchuck, a Nun who wields nunchucks and has a penchant for violence, is an especially great creation who spawns some of the best visual gags in the whole movie. All the colorful foes show a lot of imagination and are a big reason why The Rise of Gru proves to be a bit better than expected. This isn't a movie about diluting villainy to be a suburban dad, it's about embracing kid-friendly chaos.

The Minions themselves still can't quite sustain a whole movie, but there's no denying that they can still land some amusing gags, like the hysterical sight of them all swaying to and fro sadly while a somber Carpenters song plays. Plus, give them the right character to bounce off of, and they become especially humorous. Michelle Yeoh specifically makes for a great straight man to their antics in her supporting role as Master Chow, an acupuncturist who teaches the three main Minions the art of Kung Fu. The quiet gag that nobody in this universe is ever that unnerved or surprised by the existence of these sentient corn pops has surprising value as a running joke.

Minions: The Rise of Gru made me chuckle more often than not and it never bored me in a runtime that thankfully doesn't exceed 80 minutes. Unfortunately, it's weighed down by some heavy problems, including a groan-inducing reliance on fan service. Like so many prequels, The Rise of Gru is here to answer questions you never asked about your favorite characters. By the time the film ends with dialogue meant to provide a backstory for why Gru would want to steal the Moon in the first Despicable Me, my eyes were rolling so hard they were practically rolling out of their sockets. Like a lot of Illumination titles, this feature also suffers from having way too many plotlines that can't quite congeal properly in the third act. This animation studio has a real problem with trying to do episodic storytelling and then swerving back into a conventional narrative for the third act. That hat trick can be accomplished, but I don't think the writers of the Minions movies are up to the task.

Again, reviewing Minions: The Rise of Gru is a bit of an odd task. Judging by the hordes of people who've seen it (and in suits no less), you've probably already decided whether or not the fifth entry in the Despicable Me saga is for you. The film itself is all surface-level pleasures, without ever offering the truly surreal zaniness of classic Looney Tunes or SpongeBob SquarePants shorts to take its wacky comedy to the next level. I'm still not sure the world of Despicable Me could ever sustain more than one movie, but The Rise of Gru is a more consistently amusing than usual expansion of that universe, though one still bogged down by many familiar flaws in this franchise.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes on is a quietly moving piece of stop-motion wizardry

A sentiment I've often heard from artists and filmmakers working on animated features is that they want their work to be so good that it makes the audience forget they're even watching something animated. It's an understandable inclination given how many preconceived notions about this medium that the general public carries. People tend to think animated storytelling is, among other shortsighted notions, exclusively the domain of either kid's entertainment or adult animation told with an excessively repulsive art style. To make something that's so engaging you forget it stars animated organisms, would be a fantastic way to melt down such ill-advised conceptions of animation. In the process, you can remind people that this is simply just another way to tell engaging stories. 

I was reminded of this oft-repeated ambition whilst watching Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, a new film from director Dean Fleischer-Camp that expands on a 2010 short film of the same name. Midway through this feature, I realized I had totally forgotten Marcel (Jenny Slate) and his grandmother, Nanna Connie (Isabella Rossellini) were animated characters. I was just so wrapped up in them doing simple things like talking that it had failed to cross my mind that I was watching masterful stop-motion animation at work. That's the power of animation right there, making the unbelievable physically and emotionally tangible.

In Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Dean Fleischer-Camp (played by himself) stumbles onto Marcel and Nanna Connie while staying in an Airbnb. These two little shells used to be part of a large collection of shells that called this place home. Unfortunately, when the old owners of the domicile separated, Marcel and Connie were left behind. Now surviving on their own, Fleisher-Camp gets to discover what a unique day-to-day life the duo lead. In fact, he finds it so compelling that begins to film everything involving these people, hence the mockumentary format of this motion picture. Once Marcel's exploits begin to take off online, this tiny shell begins to wonder if it'd be possible to go on a journey to recover his lost family.

"Incidentally insightful" is the best phrase to describe the overall atmosphere of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. This is a movie whose entire aesthetic follows the vibe of Marcel's speaking style; quiet, not drawing attention to itself, but often with something thoughtful to offer. This is a story about the necessity of change, no matter how scary it may seem. This heavy concept is communicated in a quiet, touching manner as Marcel clings to everything he's still got after losing his family. With this concept grounding the proceedings, the screenplay by Fleischer-Camp, Slate, and Nick Paley ensures that a YouTube video can be translated into a proper feature-length movie. This exploration is told with a gentle hand, one that makes watching Marcel the Shell with Shoes On akin to getting a big warm hug that you never want to leave.

Through this approach, the writers are able to unearth moments of insight in quiet, seemingly throwaway moments of Marcel and Connie's existence, which feel all the more intimate and powerful when captured through camerawork mimicking documentary filmmaking. Going for restraint is a boon for the pathos of Marcel, but it's also a great tactic for this production in terms of comedy. The wall-to-wall subdued filmmaking becomes a great way to wring extra chuckles out of innately funny imagery like a tennis ball being used by Marcel as a way to get around the house or dialogue about how Connie immigrated "from the garage". Marcel's understated line deliveries especially thrive in these confines. His nonchalantly matter-of-fact proclamations of misconstrued interpretations of how aspects of the world, like maps, work are constantly amusing thanks to Slate's downplayed vocals. Speaking of which, Slate's track record of great voiceover roles in the last decade culminates in her tremendous performance here in Marcel. At times, she's the lynchpin holding things together but she never sacrifices Marcel's childhood naivete even with so much on her shoulders.

Back to the restrained nature of the entire project, by not poking the audience in the ribs on what's supposed to be funny, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is downright hysterical in some spots. The laidback nature of the piece also affords the melancholy crux of the whole movie an opportunity to be as fleshed out as possible. At its heart, Marcel is a film dealing with a heavy topic: a child grappling with feeling alone. With its emphasis on intimacy and quietness, Marcel's script offers up plenty of moments where the audience can feel the pent-up sorrows of the titular lead. This being a PG-rated film aimed at children, Marcel, thankfully, doesn't lapse into just being an avalanche of misery. However, it also believes youngsters deserve stories that don't shy away from depicting emotions its target audience will go through, like heartache or feeling isolated.

The faux-documentary style of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a big reason why such emotions and character details feel as vividly realized as they do. The innate structure of this project affords an opportunity for characters like Marcel and Connie to speak aloud their internal thought processes without these moments coming off as didactic. Plus, the intentionally ramshackle nature of the camerawork and even the 1.55:1 aspect ratio create an intimate quality to the on-screen imagery that makes one feel extra closer to Marcel and company. With these details embedded into Bianca Cline's outstanding cinematography, small scenes like Marcel sending off a paper balloon into the night sky become incredibly poignant.

Speaking of visuals, the efforts of Marcel's animation team, led by animation director Kirsten Lepore, also exacerbate the authentic pathos of the entire feature. Stop-motion is the perfect mold to realize Marcel and Connie, especially since this medium affords the characters such instantly tangible textures. Similarly impressive is their designs, which are so elegantly simple and make no effort at channeling "realism." These two organisms have clearly been designed from the ground up to evoke what the artists thought would look charming, not what would best emulate reality. Ironically, pairing such pleasing-looking figures with a script that can make your heart ache makes Marcel far more of a believably real being than any CG creation that ends up falling into the Uncanny Valley.

Combining such terrific character designs with a slew of great visual details (like how neighboring bugs are also realized through stop-motion) ensures that Marcel the Shell with Shoes On carries on the tradition of great stop-motion masters like Ray Harryhausen or Nick Park in making you transfixed by the unbelievable. The animation of this film will dazzle your eyeballs, while its touching script ruminating on how frightening change can be will doubtlessly touch your soul. No wonder I found myself forgetting that Marcel the Shell with Shoes On was animated while watching it. While an accomplishment as a feat of stop-motion wizardry, the visuals are so engaging that they just become another part of a moving yarn. Leave it to a little shell to remind us all of the enormous possibilities of animated storytelling.

Elvis warbles some notes, but is mostly a catchy cinematic tune

 

Returning from a nine-year hiatus from feature film directing (largely spent shepherding the short-lived Netflix show The Get Down), director Baz Luhrmann has returned to the big screen with Elvis, a movie that's almost defiant in how much of a classic Luhrmann movie it is. The filmmaker behind Moulin Rouge! and The Great Gatsby has once again set his sights on a period piece told with thoroughly modern music choices, lots of colorful extravagances, and zippy camerawork. If you didn't like any of Luhrmann's prior films, Elvis, which opts to tell the story of Elvis Presley, probably won't make you a devotee to his style. But if you were on the fence about his earlier efforts, and especially if you would ride or die for Romeo + Juliet, then the sincerity behind Elvis is primed to win you over.

Elvis immediately establishes its offbeat affectations by beginning with the final days of Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), the former manager of the great Elvis Presley (Austin Butler). Now a withered old man, Parker recounts to viewers how he first came to know Presley back in the 1950s. Here was a kid that seemed like a joke to everybody when he initially waltzed onto the music scene. "I cannot emphasize," Parker recollects during Presley's first stage performance, "how strange he looked." Wearing a pink suit, makeup largely associated with women, and then belting out such aggressively sexual gyrations with his tunes. Presley was a paradox that seemed to be throwing up a middle finger to America's love for conformity in the 1950s. 

Being a veteran carny, Parker prides himself on knowing how to tempt people with "feelings they don't think they should be having." Seeing how the ladies react to Presley's on-stage behavior, not to mention hearing his voice, Parker sees an opportunity for fame and fortune. So begins the duo's dynamic, which stretches on for decades. The screenplay for Elvis, penned by Luhrmann as well as Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, and Jeremy Doner, proceeds to take us through the life of the king of rock n' roll until his tragic end. All along the way, Presley and Parker are an inseparable duo, but not always for the best of reasons, with this scheming manager primarily acting like an abusive spouse more than a thoughtful mentor.

Luhrmann's works have varied from being original concepts to adaptations of famous texts. No matter their origins, they're all bonded together by the dissonance between grand personal ambitions and the brutalities of reality that nobody escapes. The love at the center of Romeo + Juliet, for instance, can never be real, while The Great Gatsby is all about being consumed by a past that will never become a present-day reality. His characters exist in worlds full of "BOING!" sound effects and peppy Jay-Z tunes, but they're also odes to how our world can trample idealism and classical romanticism. This core theme of Luhrmann's films informs the most insightful thoughts that Elvis imparts about its central subject. 

This story is about how capitalism-informed greed wrings everything out of a man, even a "king" can become a pauper when he can be financially exploited. All those hopes and dreams Presley started his career with are suffocated by endless merchandising and an inescapable Las Vegas performance gig. Plus, unlike in past Luhrmann films like The Great Gatsby or Moulin Rouge!, the tragic qualities aren't cemented by a sudden death in the third act. Elvis's third-act chronicles this singer trapped in a slow death, we're watching him implode piece by piece. The gradual depiction of his decline allows this biopic to emphasize the tangible human being trapped behind the grand oversized pop culture image of Elvis Presley.

Elvis's parallels to prior Luhrmann works is apparent on a thematic level. However, the recurring facet of his career that people will walk away talking about when it comes to Elvis is his visual tendencies. This is a movie slathered in cartoonish maximalism, nary a scene transition goes by without the camera twirling around or one object transforming into another. This approach is best-realized during the scenes where Presley belts out his tunes. Here, Luhrmann ramps up the spectacle, noise, and camerawork to create the same sense of energy on-screen that listeners felt when they first heard "Hound Dog" or "Heartbreak Hotel." It's excessive, but it's a sense of excess that both feels appropriate and is a lot of fun to watch, especially Luhrmann's amusing lingering on how one man's pelvis can make the world quiver. 

While Luhrmann injects Elvis with plenty of enjoyable distinctive qualities, even he can't outrun the sense of familiarity that permeates all music biopics. While Presley's stage performances brim with life, depictions of his troubled domestic life do tend to play like serious renditions of select Walk Hard scenes. Similarly, much like with other music biopics about male legends, there's not much room for women in this production. Dutiful partner Priscilla Presley (Olivia DeJonge) is around to say all the normal dialogue wives say in this kind of movie (namely, "I love you" and "I'm taking the kids") with little variation. Speaking of underwhelming aspects, Luhrmann disappointingly maintains the sporadically distracting editing from The Great Gatsby. Some unimaginative and clunky cuts undercut what should be pivotal intimate moments for the characters, like an early conversation between Presley and his mama that keeps cutting around to a distracting degree.

Most troubling of all, even with Luhrmann finding emotionally affecting ways to apply his fascination with reality trampling dreams to the life of Elvis Presley, I did find myself wondering if Elvis truly had something Earth-shattering or new to observe about its titular lead. Was this all just glossy energetic mayhem rehashing the famous life events of a man we've seen chronicled in cinema so many times before? Thankfully, the third act manages to lend enough downbeat heft to the proceedings to stave off some of these concerns. Plus, Austin Butler turns out to be so good in the lead role that he keeps you from wondering if Elvis could've dug deeper into this music legend.

If there's any reason to see Elvis, it's to witness Butler deliver a performance that's still going to be impressive even after the inevitable onslaught of praise the internet bestows upon him. Butler manages the impressive hat trick of perfectly channeling an image of Presley we all know and love, especially in his Southern twang, but he transports those qualities into a discernible human being. Butler doesn't feel like a caricatured impression of Presley, he just feels like an everyday guy who happens to be a music legend. Plus, he's got magnetic charisma to spare and throws himself into the physicality of the assorted stage performances. More so than anything else, Butler is the heart and soul of Elvis.

Tom Hanks is less consistently successful as Tom Parker, but he's not necessarily bad. Hanks leans into chewing the scenery as the character, particularly through his unreliable narration, and that leads to fun line deliveries. But the application of a fatsuit, prosthetics, and an erratic accent makes it a bit harder to buy this version of Parker as a believable human being, especially when he shares so much screentime with Butler's effortlessly real vision of Elvis Presley. Hanks as Parker is emblematic of the big admirable swings Elvis is constantly taking as a whole movie, with some working out much better than others. This is a music biopic that registers as ambitious, flawed, moving, unwieldy, conventional, and rebellious, all sometimes in the same scene. Most importantly, though, I was moved and entertained by what I witnessed in Elvis, and that counts for a lot. Baz Luhrmann has returned from a hiatus with Elvis, a movie that's far from perfect (it's no Rocketman, that's for sure), but delivers the kind of imaginative gusto that makes him a filmmaker worth watching. Even in his off-notes, you can't help nodding your head to the tune he's playing.

Micro Reviews Are Not Dead They're Surely Alive!

 

I'll admit, part of my reviving Micro Reviews is basically because I need something to focus on before my flight to New York City leaves tonight! But I've also watched some interesting films recently that I do wanna talk about, but, since I'm going on vacation for a week, I don't wanna go through the pitching/revising/etc. process for Looper/Collider/SlashFilm, etc. So you all get to read my ramblings here! Yay for you! Below are abbreviated reviews for six movies I've watched in the last week, all from different years and an assortment of genres. 

Miami Vice

Oh what I wouldn't give to see the faces of the Universal Pictures executives the moment the lights came on from the first screening of the final cut of Michael Mann's Miami Vice. Everyone who financed this thing was probably salivating at another big-screen adaptation of a famous TV show chock full of fan service and conventional thrills. Instead, Mann delivered something totally unorthodox. This is a feature that inhabits a world of unyielding despair straight out of Robert Bresson and is packed with experiential touches from the get-go, as seen by how the movie starts in media res. Mann's vision for Miami Vice is relentlessly dour, from the constant presence of thunder to central romance between Colin Farrell and Gong Li that's so innately doomed even the characters themselves comment on how it can't last forever. The cinema verite style of shooting only enhances the tangibility of the proceedings, and by proxy, the palpable tragedy that permeates the entire production.

These kinds of film adaptations usually leave you walking away talking about callbacks to the past, not an evocative sense of dread rooted in the here and now. Granted, not everything in Miami Vice hits a bullseye like that tone or its cinematography. For one thing, women characters, despite committed performances from Li and Naomie Harris, do end up fulfilling ultra-familiar archetypes, a frustrating development for a crime thriller that so often throws convention to the wind. Largely, though, this is a compelling piece of cinema that works especially well in terms of atmosphere and imagery that's practically shackled to the hardships of reality. Even better, this is a $135 million movie that was supposed to function as a summer blockbuster. Who doesn't love seeing something that was meant to just exploit a brand name get twisted into something more idiosyncratic and daring?

His Motorbike, Her Island

Though His Motorbike, Her Island is drastically different from director Nobuhiko Obayashi's 1977 film House in tone and genre, both share an instantly endearing affinity for subverting viewer expectations visually. Here in Her Island, that manifests through constant shifts from a monochromatic color scheme to vibrantly colored shots and even alterations in what aspect ratios images are viewed through. The visual fluidity often reminded me of walking through a dream, where there are no rules and seemingly concrete rules of reality can change on a whim. These details work magnificently in making viewers of His Motorbike, Her Island feel like they're wandering inside actual memories of yesteryear, a sensation enhanced by the tender melancholy of the entire film. A visual feat, His Motorbike, Her Island is also a sterling accomplishment in capturing romantic longing. Once the credits start rolling, you'll be pining for more movies this good as much as His Motorbike, Her Island's protagonist longs for the girl of his dreams.

The Phantom of the Open

The true story of Maurice Flitcroft (Mark Rylance), a middle-aged man who tried to play in the British Open despite being terrible at golf, is the centerpiece of The Phantom of the Open. Director Craig Roberts and screenwriter Simon Farnaby realize this yarn with wall-to-wall feel-good vibes occasionally punctuated by some dark humor (like Flitcroft's stepson getting called nasty names at school...but by his teachers). Farnaby's script, which spans well over a decade, can't help but be overstuffed, with some emotional beats and characters, namely the dynamic between Filcroft and his stepson, getting lost in the shuffle. Luckily, there's a lot of effective instances of heartwarming storytelling in here, particularly in the irresistible relationship between our hero and his wife, Jean (Sally Hawkins). Nothing in The Phantom of the Open is life-changing, but it's charming more often than not. Sometimes, it's enough to watch talented actors deliver pleasant material.

Sinister

Sinister is a good movie that I could easily see being great. Among the virtues that exist in the film as it stands are plenty of memorable visual touches, like the controlled camerawork or constant use of largely darkened backgrounds by director Scott Derrickson and cinematographer Christopher Norr. Plus, Ethan Hawke's lead performance is nicely measured to fit right into a grounded drama rather than a conventional mainstream scary movie. I just wish Sinister had the commitment to not handhold the audience so much in what are supposed to be its most spine-tingling sections. Specifically, any sequence involving old home video footage of families being brutally murdered would work so much better devoid of any music or sound beyond the flickering of a projector. Christopher Young's score often just hammers home the obvious terror of these sequences. More restraint would've made the scares in Sinister as potent as possible. As it stands, it's a perfectly acceptable horror feature with some real highlights, though it's easy to see how Sinister could've been something truly special if it trusted its audience more.

The Daytrippers

I had no clue The Daytrippers existed before I stumbled on it on The Criterion Channel last week. Don't know how this one slipped through the cracks for me, especially given that I'm a big fan of Adventureland, a 2009 film from Daytrippers director Greg Mottola. Even if it took me a while to discover this feature, though, I'm so glad I finally caught up with The Daytrippers. The story of a large family traveling out to New York to try and catch the family's daughter's husband being a cheater, Daytrippers primarily functions as a way for a bunch of actors to show their chops in handling subdued comedy and turning potentially broad characters into discernible human beings. Liev Schrieber and Parker Posey especially excel at these tasks, with both constantly finding new ways to surprise the viewer. It's all perfectly low-key but engaging and gets capped off with my favorite kind of bittersweet movie ending, one built on the concept that the world is a rough place but also a bearable one provided you're experiencing it with the right person (see also: Tangerine). Even if it took me decades to even hear about it, The Daytrippers already feels like it's been with me forever.

Hustle

Adam Sandler's still doing dramas, yes! Please let Hustle be a sign that he's doing these regularly now because, once again, the man behind You Don't Mess with the Zohan has proved his superb talents for dramatic fare. An inspirational basketball story, Sandler stars as a down-on-his-luck coach who ends up championing an unknown basketball player from Spain as a potential new NBA champion. You've seen this story before in plenty of other feel-good sports titles, but who says familiar ingredients still can't make up a tasty dish? Really leaning into Sandler's character's middle-aged ennui ("Guys my age don't have dreams," he remarks. "They have nightmares and eczema.") lends a distinct personality to Hustle's rendition of enjoyably recognizable sports movie hallmarks. Plus, the heartfelt rapport between coach and player is heavily endearing while director Jeremiah Zagar imbues the basketball-heavy sequences with extremely distinctive camerawork. It's always good to see Sandler stretching himself with dramatic performances, but it's especially nifty to see that when it involves movies as good as Hustle.

You won't need any luck to enjoy Good Luck To You, Leo Grande

 

Sex. Even in the modern world, it’s a word that send shivers up the spines of so many people. Largely informed by religion standards for “proper” behavior, the demonization of human sexuality adversely affects so many. These include the broad perception of sex workers and women, who are never supposed to think of sex as something freeing, exciting, or a way to reflect their own agency. It’s doubtful Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, a new indie movie debuting on Hulu, will shatter all these harmful notions in mainstream society. What solitary feature could? But it’s lovely to see a piece of cinema fighting against those norms and also being so fun to watch at the same time.

Nancy Stokes (Emma Thompson) just lost her husband. His passing was sad, but it also led Stokes to realize how little she’d lived during their decades of marriage. Specifically, she’s never been sexually pleased once in her life. That’s about to change now that she’s hired Leo Grande (Dylan McCormack), a sex worker, for a session of passion in a hotel room. But more than just physical intimacy occurs in this space, as Stokes discovers somebody she can talk to about matters she never thought she could open up about. One session leads to another, with a friendship beginning to blossom between the duo. Sex is a wonderful thing. So is getting to know and care for somebody.

Screenwriter Katy Brand and director Sophie Hyde realize Good Luck To You, Leo Grande as an intimate enterprise. This is a movie almost exclusively confined to two people in one hotel room. This choice must’ve made this an extra easy movie to film during the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are more rewards to this scope than just making principal photography easier. It also helps make the central backdrop of the movie function as a kind of oasis from a harsher judgmental world. Our two leads talk about the difficulties they face out there in mainstream society, it’s not like the outside world is ignored. But restricting this screenplay to a singular location detached from that realm allows the focus to remain on these individuals and their experiences.

Such focus is also felt in the quietly detailed camerawork. Often, Nancy is captured in wider shots meant to emphasize that she’s overwhelmed by the wider world she inhabits. This visual motif means that whenever Hyde opts for a close-up, it lands with an intimate impact. We’re suddenly up close and personal with a woman who's been told to never let anyone into her own personal world. Good Luck To You, Leo Grande is not a flashy project, but it shouldn’t be considering the material it’s covering. Plus, there are still thoughtful instances of direction and cinematography throughout the feature that ensure that, just because the movies low-key, doesn’t mean it’s being assembled in a lazy manner.

Even more impressive than these visual flourishes is the writing from Brand. Thankfully, this movie's dialogue does what any movie this restrained should do: entertain. The pronounced contrasting personalities between our two leads turn out to be plenty of an interesting bedrock to build a cinematic house upon. Even better, Brand keeps injecting small cheeky details into the banter between Stokes and Grande, namely little comments that reaffirm how Stokes is an older white lady. Her intentionally abrupt diatribe that the men in Grande’s generation need a war to make themselves tougher is an especially good example of this. Committing to that kind of verbiage just makes these people seem so extra real, not to mention opening up further enjoyable opportunities for comedy. 

Much like the dialogue, the acting is going to be under extra scrutiny in a movie as small-scale as Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. Luckily, this feature doesn’t have to worry about that with Emma Thompson around. Shocking nobody, a woman who was able to unearth genuine human emotion in Men in Black 3 is a riot in a grounded tale like this one. Flawed, relatable vulnerable, and armed with a wit that’s quick but not so sharp it upends your perception that Stokes is a real person, Thompson is a marvel here. More than holding his own in this two-hander is Dylan McCormack, who proves especially engaging in peeling back further complicated layers to Leo Grande as the movie goes on. 

All these delightful qualities combine to make Good Luck to You, Leo Grande a grand example of a film that sneaks up on you in terms of how much you enjoy it. The story may not go down the most unexpected pathes but it's difficult to complain considering how entertaining the central rapport is and how well-earned the moments of poignancy are. Best of all, the frank attitude about sex, especially regarding the sexual agency of older women and the perspective of a sex worker, is an utter delight to see. A feel-good movie that doesn't trade depth for easy crowdpleaser moments, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is an utterly remarkable title. We should all be open more open to talking about sex, just as we should also all be open to talk about movies as good as this one.

Lightyear doesn't quite go to infinity and beyond, still proves mostly entertaining

 

Lightyear, the new feature from PIXAR Animation Studios, is meant to be the movie that inspired the Buzz Lightyear action figure in the Toy Story universe. Rarely has a pit more immediately formed in my stomach than in the opening minutes of Lightyear where they're really hammering home the connections to earlier Toy Story films. This version of Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Chris Evans) prattles off several lines said by Buzz in the first Toy Story (including "You're mocking me, aren't you?") and director Angus Maclane seems to be telling audiences to strap in for a bunch of fan-service. As someone who considers the final "falling with style" scene from the initial Toy Story one of the great cheer-worthy movie moments, the prospect of getting lines of dialogue from my childhood regurgitated back at me sounded deeply unpleasant.

Thankfully, Lightyear manages to reorient itself and set a much better creative path from here. Never quite good enough to justify why we needed a solo Buzz Lightyear film, the feature does manage to craft its own identity beyond reminding people of some of PIXAR's greatest motion pictures.

Lightyear begins with Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear and his commander, Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba), trying to escape from a distant alien planet with a spaceship containing thousands of human beings. Lightyear takes it on himself to get everyone to safety, which only results in everybody getting marooned. The work-focused Lightyear is now more determined than ever to complete this mission and get people back to their old lives. To do this, he'll need to test new potential sources of hyperspeed. The wrinkle here is that each test inspires time discrepancy. Buzz will age mere minutes while everyone back on the alien planet ages years. 

Eventually, Buzz's tests endure for so long that he winds up confronting a version of the planet cornered by the evil Emperor Zurg (James Brolin). Here, Lightyear will have no choice but to work with a ragtag group of wannabe Space Rangers, including Hawthorne's granddaughter Izzy (Keke Palmer), to save the day. Buzz already has trouble playing with others when they're experienced warriors, so you can imagine there's some difficulty in having this guy place nice with people like elderly convict Darby (Dale Soules) or the clumsy goofball Mo (Taika Waititi).

PIXAR movies are pretty well-known at this point for their ability to make even the most hardened grown-up viewers a blubbery mess of tears. Lightyear is a departure, then, for the studio in how it works better as zippy entertainment than poignancy. There are plenty of attempts at pathos here, and some tug at the heartstrings. However, they're not quite as impactful as they could be, possibly because several of them are oriented around broadly-defined supporting characters who usually function solely as comic relief. There's a reason Rex or Hamm didn't get solo tearjerker scenes in the Toy Story saga. Meanwhile, without getting into spoiler territory, centering the Lightyear plot on a job-oriented guy who sometimes forgets about the people around him can't help but inspire comparisons to Soul, with that familiarity further diluting the attempts at poignancy.

But while Lightyear won't make you wipe away tears, it does function quite well as a zippy sci-fi adventure. The best parts of the entire feature are where the focus shifts away from Toy Story references or pathos and just onto whatever new cosmic concept crept across the imaginations of screenwriters Jason Headley and Angus MacLane. Sequences built on entities like "Capture Cones" or TV dinners that cook if you shake 'em around aren't just fun, they're also details that could only exist in a sci-fi narrative. There's no desire to apologize for occupying this genre nor drag it down to gritty realism. Lightyear has no apologies about being silly and fun, which goes a long way to making its runtime enjoyable. 

It also helps that the action sequences are a hoot. Much like fellow 2022 animated family movie The Bad Guys, Lightyear features extremely crisp editing and thoughtful camerawork whenever it's time for a chase scene or hand-to-hand skirmish. Free from the shackles that weigh down live-action sci-fi blockbusters like accounting for compositing live-action people against digital backdrops or even just the weight of cameras themselves, MacLane's filmmaking has an infectious sense of fun and zest to it. Plus, the planet Buzz and company are trapped on manages to have a whole slew of different environments to set exciting set-pieces against ranging from a darkened cave to lava fields to a massive spaceship. The variety of backdrops further helps in making the spectacle-driven scenes entertaining.

If there is a quibble to be had with the visuals, it's that setting a film in the furthest reaches of outer space still didn't inspire PIXAR to abandon its go-to visual aesthetic of cartoony characters set against ultra-realistic backgrounds. Lightyear is a gorgeous-looking feature, especially in its lighting choices, but slightly more stylized tendencies in the environments would've been welcome. On the plus side, there is some fun character animation here, especially with the comic relief character Sox the Cat (Peter Sohn). The animators find clever ways to convey tiny bursts of personality within Sox while still maintaining his appearance as a rigid robotic helper. A slight twitch of an eyebrow or a tilt of the head conveys a vivid personality within this mechanical feline without undercutting that he's supposed to just be a piece of hardware. 

Sox is also graced with one of the best voice-over performances of Lightyear courtesy of Peter Sohn. In just his latest comedic supporting turn in a PIXAR movie, Sohn makes sure to leave behind his past roles and concoct an enjoyable persona for this feline. The infectious gusto of Keke Palmer as Izzie is also a joy while Dales Soules steals the show with her hysterical line deliveries as Darby. Unfortunately, Chris Evans can never quite fully leave behind images of Captain America in his voice work as Buzz Lightyear. He's not bad in the role and his lack of cynicism or snark in his performance is fitting for the overall tone of Lightyear. However, someone a little less famous, or at least Evans being directed to not sound so reminiscent of Steve Rogers (he's much more than that role, after all), would've helped to give this iteration of the character a more distinct personality. 

Evans frequently calling to mind Captain America is emblematic of how Lightyear sometimes can't escape the gravitational pull of the movies that came before it. Most notably, it can get too bogged down in Toy Story fan service, while its adherence to both the default animation style and pathos-heavy narratives of past PIXAR movies is an issue. Luckily, Lightyear does largely deliver as an enjoyable action romp, one with enough robots, laserblasts, and lively characters to keep you plenty entertained for 100 minutes. It's not a modern PIXAR classic on par with Soul or Turning Red, but contrary to what its reference-heavy opening scene would indicate, there's some real fun and standalone charms to be had with Lightyear. 

Dinosaur action can't begin to save the lifeless slog Jurassic World: Dominion

Something's off in Jurassic World Dominion. Way off. 

It's not like the Jurassic World movies have been all that good or in touch with human emotions up to this point. But even by the standards of the last two entries in the franchise, Dominion is discernibly unbalanced. Something in the human performances especially is off-kilter, everybody seems to be acting off each other like they've never interacted with another person before. Maybe as a result of filming during the COVID-19 pandemic, actors are often restricted to tight close-ups or being confined to isolated environments. Everything feels unintentionally claustrophobic and exacerbates the detached aura surrounding all the human characters. There's a strange aura permeating every scene of a movie that's gonna about as haywire as the original Jurassic Park theme park. 

Taking place shortly after the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Jurassic World Dominion begins with dinosaurs unleashed on the world. Everywhere from big cities to forests has been inundated with prehistoric critters. Meanwhile, little clone girl Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) has been living off the grid with Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen Grady (Chris Pratt). Trying to protect her from the outside world, both Lockwood and baby raptor Beta, the latter the offspring of the raptor Blue, are kidnapped by mysterious poachers.

Simultaneously, Dr. Ellie Satler (Laura Dern) discovers that a flock of locusts is causing chaos in the American food chain. To get to the bottom of what's happening here, she recruits the help of old colleague Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill). The duo decides to take on an invitation to the isolated labs of BioSyn, a company run by Dr. Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) that might have a hand in these locusts. Believe it or not, these plotlines will eventually collide, since BioSyn has its own dinosaur sanctuary. Oh, and Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) is also working for BioSyn now.

Jurassic World Dominion is a perfect example of a blockbuster that throws so much at the wall yet never impacts the viewer. Its plot spans multiple continents (we hop across so many different locations just in the opening 20 minutes alone) and shifts between several different characters, but all the leapfrogging around never feels like it's adding up to a substantial whole. None of the individual storylines stick around long enough to make an impact while supporting characters just come and go in the blink of an eye. The screenplay by Collin Trevorrow and Emily Carmichael (the former also directing) mostly just feels like a sweaty stand-up comic prattling off all the vulgarities they can think of to keep you distracted from how empty their act truly is. 

Part of the issue here is that the non-dino characters are just so boring. Grady as a stereotypical macho action man was always tedious, but he's even worse trying to play attentive father to a teenage girl. It's nifty to see Laura Dern and Sam Neill in prominent roles in a big-budget movie. However, they don't have characters to play, they're just reacting to dinosaur mayhem and making occasional nods to their behavior from the first Jurassic Park. The lack of interest here on the part of Trevorrow to give them substantive parts to handle makes one further appreciate the juicy roles they got to play in recent indies like Marriage Story or Hunt for the Winderpeople. Jeff Goldblum, for his part, is mostly around to make jokes rather than play a person. Even his dry wit gets old fast.

Without any humans to get invested in, Jurassic World Dominion gets real boring real fast, especially since the story is just one dinosaur chase scene after another. Like a Universal dark ride that goes on for 147 minutes, Dominion is often just a barrage of dinosaurs roaring and humans running away. It's all mayhem, all the time. Since such peril involves almost exclusively our main characters, nobody dies or even suffers major injuries, which really detracts from the sense of danger these dinos can exude. They might as well be pop-up ghosts on a haunted house ride. Worse, when everything is chaotic chase scenes, the tension gets diluted. There are no quiet or harmonious sequences to balance out the intensity. 

Maybe that's for the best, though, since the scant few dialogue-based scenes with the humans are so awkwardly staged and executed that it's downright embarrassing. An extended comedic bit of Malcolm trying to convey information to Satler with a noisy barista nearby is staggering in its incompetence, right down to the subpar sound mixing that undercuts the intended humor of this bit. Howard and Pratt, meanwhile, continue to have zero chemistry, they're never believable as human beings in love. Strangest of all, though, is the incredibly awkward way characters enter scenes. Trevorrow has no sense of bombast or style in how he introduces individuals into a given scene. Our main baddie Dodgson just suddenly appears on-screen with no extra flourish, no special camerawork to signify his importance. Another secondary baddie wanders onto the screen moments before getting arrested like she just woke up from a nap, I'm convinced the performer had no idea she was on camera. 

Where's the bombast? Where's the fun? Where's the sense that we're watching something exciting? Jurassic World Dominion's flat camerawork at least functions as an appropriate parallel for how often its screenplay gets bogged down in dealing exclusively with exposition. Perfectly lifeless visuals for a lifeless story. If there's anything here to commend, it's the strong work from the visual effects team in charge of making the animatronic dinos. They look quite impressive and lend tactility to a handful of urgent moments. These do pose the problem of making the rubbery CG dinosaurs all the more apparent, but you do get some nifty practical effects in here. These backdrops aren't captured on-screen in an interesting way, but props too for filming in practical locations while Michael Giacchino's score is decent, even if it's not one of his more distinctive collections of tunes.

Jurassic World Dominion is not a bad movie because it's not like the original Jurassic Park. If anything, Dominion is too beholden to that film and other installments of the series, right down to setting the second half of its runtime in another isolated laboratory location where dinosaurs could never possibly get out and cause a ruckus. Even more than its slavish devotion to its predecessors, though, is how Jurassic World Dominion is a film with its priorities way out of wack. Placing clone girl conspiracies and locusts as being of greater importance than dinosaurs is a staggering miscalculation that this movie never comes back from. Intended as a soaring swan song for the Jurassic Park saga, Jurassic World Dominion instead warbles off-key notes that are bound to disappoint moviegoers. 

Messy yet intriguing, Crimes of the Future will satisfy Cronenberg fans

"Hell is other people", so the saying goes, but writer/director David Cronenberg knows better than anyone that Hell can be our own bodies. Considering how unpredictable and fragile everything associated with our bodies is, it's a wonder our days aren't spent staring at our fleshy vessels in a gigantic mirror contemplating how these things don't just crumble after a few minutes of use. Throughout his captivating career, Cronenberg has found various ways to explore the horrors of our bodies, ditto the various ways human beings transform both physically and psychologically. His newest film, Crimes of the Future, his first directorial effort in nearly a decade, isn't the best thing he's ever made, but boy does it feel good to see Cronenberg delving into his favorite themes and style of weirdness again.

As the title implies, Crimes of the Future takes place at an unspecified point in the future. Here, surgery has become so commonplace that people can just do it on their lunch breaks. The ubiquity of this process has allowed performance artists like Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) and Caprice (Lea Seydoux) to perform extraordinary acts of surgery for captive audiences. They're so infamous that members of the National Organ Registry, particularly Timlin (Kristen Stewart), keep an eye on these performers and the disease (Accelerated Evolution Syndrome) that allows Saul to undergo so many surgeries. While this is all going on, our lead characters begin to plan a new shocking act. This proposed show will take Saul and Caprice right into the heart of another faction of society that's also challenging the status quo. 

Cronenberg's vision of the society of tomorrow is not a utopian paradise nor an evocative depiction of a neon-covered dystopia, like Blade Runner. Instead, the world of Crimes of the Future is one that seems to be dying around all the characters. Walls are chipped, wallpaper is peeling, and everything seems to be crumbling. There are no lavish locales here, the rich and the poor appear to all inhabit the same dingy backdrops. There's an interesting contrast in how these environments are succumbing to the kind of vulnerability and aches of time that the main characters of Crimes of the Future work overtime to avoid. While the humans in this story scramble to erase the presence of pain, their homes and workspaces remind them of the ever-present existence of time's ceaseless march.

The dissonance there lends an innately compelling quality to Crimes of the Future's exploration of mortality and the dangers of trying to control so much in our lives. Such thoughtful notions help guide viewers along the bumpier parts of Crimes of the Future, of which there are several. For one thing, Cronenberg's screenplay often resembles a collection of short stories jaggedly sewn together to create a singular feature film. This type of structure has its interesting moments, but it can also make it hard to keep the momentum of tension going for certain subplots, such as Saul's recurring rendezvous with an investigator. I also wanted even more disturbing body horror stuff! A dude with a bunch of ears stitched across his body is a cool visual (no wonder it's been all over the posters), but there isn't a ton of stuff like that. More disturbing body horror please! Certain visual elements, including both CG enhancements and the execution of certain prosthetics, also leave something to be desired in how they're filmed and lit. 

While these are the parts of Crimes of the Future that are messy, there are also several elements of the production that are so ambitious it makes you want to stand up and cheer for the return of a distinctive auteur like Cronenberg. For one thing, this is that wonderful kind of film that drops terribly silly dialogue with full-stop seriousness. Discussions about cannibals and children eating plastic wastebasket are delivered with nary a trace of irony by the actors on-screen. It's so much fun to watch ludicrous material be handled like that. The actors are also all swinging for the fences and then some, with Kristen Stewart especially impressing in her supporting role. It's hard to even describe her perpetually horny yet timid character, but her line deliveries and body language are fantastically idiosyncratic and convey such a unique personality beautifully.

Best of all, some of the best aspects of Crimes of the Future perfectly capture human beings and their bizarre relationship to their bodies. A chair meant to help Saul chew and eat his food is the perfect microcosm of this. How on Earth anyone would think this chair, which looks like it was designed by Guillermo del Toro and made out of bones, would be something you'd want in your house is beyond me. But of course, people would buy such an item if it made their lives easier, just as people would start ripping organs out of their bodies if they saw it as a gateway to fame and recognition. The things people will do to their bodies for personal gain and to stave off mortality are remarkable, there's really no other way to convey such preposterousness except for a skeleton eating chair. Even if it's messier than his best works, Crimes of the Future is a welcome sight just to have Cronenberg delivering such thoughtful and visually arresting insights.