With a prelude this reminiscent of Edge of Tomorrow and a catalyst that recalls Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, The Tomorrow War makes itself clear early. This is not going to be a terribly original movie.
Dan Forester (Chris Pratt) is a high school science teacher
who believes he was destined for more important things. His opportunity arrives
when future earthlings show up to recruit present-day earthlings to fight a
battle against the end of the human race.
Some important questions to answer. What is going to be the
end of us?
Aliens.
Do we get to see them?
Yes! Early and often.
How do they look?
Nasty as hell! Dude, the teeth and these tentacle things—nice!
And finally, why is this movie so long?
While there is no clear answer to that, it appears that
director Chris McKay is a big fan of Roland Emmerich, Michael Bay, maybe Stephen
Sommers. The film emits a throwback vibe, conjuring popcorn munchers of the
late 90s—which is about the era when self-indulgent directors started making 2 ½
hour mindless Sci-Fi.
That’s not all bad, right? The film’s logic may be a bit sketchy, but its professed love of science makes up for a lot of that. Naturally, there are also syrupy family dramatics to drive the narrative, because we all remember Emmerich’s 1996 epic Independence Day.
Also, while many of the internal action sequences feel theme-park stagey, the outdoor set pieces are a blast.
Films like this don’t call for master thespians. Good thing,
because Pratt, who also executive produces, doesn’t bring any real depth of
emotion to the role. Luckily, J.K. Simmons cannot give a weak performance, so
the bruised masculinity and daddy issues have somewhere to take root.
Lose an hour and The Tomorrow War is a pretty fun time-waster, but nothing more. Writer Zach Dean doesn’t say anything new and McKay certainly doesn’t find any fresh ways to say it. But if you miss the bloated, 2+hour action/adventure flicks of the late 1990s, The Tomorrow War is your movie.
Based on the play by Mark St. Germain and adapted for the
screen by writer/director Austin Stark, The God Committee seeks to
provide insight into the fraught decisions behind who lives and who dies when
it comes to organ transplants.
A new heart is recently available for the St. Augustine Hospital, a building in disrepair and under renovation, and the transplant committee convenes to decide who among three matches is the worthiest to receive the heart. The committee has a paltry 90 minutes to make their decision or else the heart will be useless.
The initial set-up alone is worthy of an entire film, but the movie isn’t satisfied to stay within the confines of a sterile boardroom. The timeline jumps forward seven years to check-in on our committee, primarily Dr. Andre Boxer (Kelsey Grammer), and how the implications of their decision on that fateful day have affected them.
By moving back and forth between the past and present, the tension of those crucial 90 minutes is often interrupted. However, by weaving the present into the past, we get to know the people behind these decisions.
Grammer excels on screen as the pragmatic Boxer, basing his judgments on the medical data rather than emotion. As his foil, Dr. Jordan Taylor (Julia Styles) relies on her heart to guide her decision-making. Unfortunately, Styles can’t quite match the passion of Grammer. The other members of the committee, which include Janeane Garofalo and Colman Domingo, aren’t given as much to work with and don’t resonate on screen in the same way.
The play lends itself well to film, and Stark handily adapts
the source material. There are a few moments that remind us this is an adaption
of a play – mainly, characters who talk to the screen. This might have worked
better had it been transitioned from audience-directed monologue into
character-driven dialogue, as it would have heightened the conflict inside the
boardroom.
The film touches on numerous thematic issues: the ethics of deciding who is worthy of a transplant, the conjunction of corporatism and life-saving medical research, the inequity of medical care across racial and class lines, black market trade in organs, etc. Unfortunately, The God Committee never settles on any of them, careening across multiple threads without any direction.
If the movie had stuck to a theme and a timeline, it might have been more impactful.
In February 1983, Corpus Christi, Texas, gas station employee Wanda Lopez was murdered by a knife-wielding assailant during a robbery. Witnesses saw a man flee the scene, and police eventually caught Carlos DeLuna – shirtless and holding a wad of cash – hiding under a car. After a whirlwind trial, DeLuna, who always claimed his innocence, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The execution itself was carried out on December 7, 1989.
During his trial and subsequent incarceration, Deluna maintained that a Carlos Hernandez was the man responsible for Wanda Lopez’s murder. Local police and prosecutors looked into DeLuna’s allegations but claimed to have never found any existence of the Carlos Hernandez described. Nearly a decade later, a private investigator was able to prove that Carlos Hernandez did exist and that he bore a striking resemblance to Carlos DeLuna. What happened next convinced many in the Corpus Christi region that a severe miscarriage of justice had taken place.
With The Phantom, director Patrick Forbes (The Widowmaker) doesn’t waste any time digging into the particulars of Wanda Lopez’s murder, and its seemingly neat resolution. Like any good true crime doc worth its weight in gold, The Phantom is chock full of interviews with the investigators involved, and the family members impacted most. The approach is clinical in nature, with nearly everyone involved getting a chance to speak their piece about what happened.
The second half of the film is where things get really interesting, and the focus of the movie shifts. Miscarriages of justice aren’t new topics in crime docs – and especially crime docs set in Texas (The Thin Blue Line anyone?). More questions are presented than are answered, but answers don’t seem to be Forbes’s objective anyhow. There are more than enough questions surrounding DeLuna’s guilt, but The Phantom’s ultimate goal seems to be to comment on the morality surrounding capital punishment.
As the end credits start to roll, the lasting feeling from The Phantom is that of freshness. So many modern-day crime docs editorialize to the point of denying the audience a chance to think for themselves. Sometimes it’s nice to spend 80 minutes with a fascinating story and walk away with a lingering “What if…?”
The pandemic – as it did with everything else – played havoc with our latest half-year list. Because Oscar understandably extended last year’s window of eligibility, films that would normally have been included on the list below (such as Judas and the Black Messiah) technically come down on the 2020 ledger.
Do we have to play by Oscar rules? No. But mainly to avoid confusion when it’s time for the end-of-the-year list come December, we will.
So in alphabetical order, here are our picks for the best films of March thru June, 2021:
A Quiet Place Part II
AQPII is lean, moves at a quick clip, thrills with impressive outdoor carnage sequences and yet commands the original film’s same level of tension in the nerve- janglingly quiet moments. Writer/director John Krasinski had a tough task trying to follow his 2018 blockbuster, one made even tougher now having to prove the sequel was worth saving for a theaters-only release.
On both counts, we’d say he nailed it.
Final Account
The final film for late documentarian Luke Holland, this oral history of Nazi Germany challenges rationalizations. It doesn’t accuse, doesn’t accost, but it also doesn’t let anyone off the hook. What is the difference between being complicit and being a perpetrator? It’s a question that haunts the film and its subjects. It becomes clear that it’s a question that haunts a nation.
Holler
If you seek an antidote to Hillbilly Elegy, writer/director Nicole Riegel’s feature debut has what you’re looking for. Driven by Jessica Barden’s blisteringly confident lead performance, Holler sugarcoats nothing about American poverty, patronizes no one, and does not need a Mamaw to explain the facts of life.
In the Heights
Director Jon M. Chu takes Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award-winning In the Heights from stage to screen with the magic intact, for a block party worthy of celebrating – in a theater, with a crowd.
Are we really “back to normal?” Can the American dream still be alive?
For 143 minutes, it sure feels like it.
Nobody
The one and only thing that separates Nobody from dozens and dozens of expertly crafted, wildly interchangeable “underestimated badass” films is the utter brilliance of its casting.
And by that, I mean exclusively the perfection of Bob Odenkirk in this role. His placement at the center of the film not only sells the “average guy” masquerade better than Liam Neeson ever could, but it makes his inner struggle and his displays of violence actually stand out.
Regardless of the fact that you’ve seen this exact movie a dozen times, you just don’t expect it to be this good.
Riders of Justice
Men will single-handedly gun down an entire biker gang rather than go to therapy. That’s the premise from prolific writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen, where he reunites with Mads Mikkelsen in the dark comic revenge fantasy Riders of Justice.
But Jensen isn’t nearly as interested in the physical mayhem as the emotional wreckage his oddball characters are all coping with. Riders of Justice treats its characters with such forgiving empathy that it’s easy to forget that the group is also almost certainly responsible for the most murders in Denmark since the Vikings.
Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided To Go For it
Beyond the treasure trove of archival footage, home movies and interview praises, director Mariem Pérez Riera finds the most resonance in the personal journey told by Rita Moreno herself.
Looking back on the obstacles she faced and the successes and failures of her life and career, Moreno displays a hard-won self-worth and an honest self-awareness that she continues to probe.
This is not just an entertaining Hollywood story, it’s an inspiring American story and a hopeful human story. It’s just a damn good story, from someone worthy of celebrating while she’s still here.
Saint Maud
Maud (an astonishing Morfydd Clark) has some undefined blood and shame in her recent past. But she survived it, and she knows God saved her for a reason. She’s still working out what that reason is when she meets Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a former choreographer now crumbling beneath lymphoma. Maud cannot save Amanda’s body, but because of just the right signs from Amanda, she is determined to save her soul.
As a horror film, Saint Maud is a slow burn. Writer/director Rose Glass and crew repay you for your patience, though, with a smart film that believes in its audience. Her film treads the earth between mental illness and religious fervor, but its sights are on the horror of the broken-hearted and lonesome.
Shiva Baby
Clearly, much of writer/director Emma Seligman’s sharp dialog comes from personal experience, and if it’s one you share this is a film that will feel like part of the family. But you didn’t have to be Greek to get caught up in that Big Fat Wedding, and you don’t have to be Jewish to see the joy in Shiva Baby.
Seligman flashes an insight that disarms you with sex and humor, keeping its hand at a subtle distance. But by the time we’re leaving the buffet, a breakout filmmaker and star (the irresistible Rachel Sennot) have delivered a fresh, funny and intimate take on the indignities of finding yourself.
Slalom
The sports movie genre is littered with tales of the could-have-been athlete who regains what legitimacy he can by shepherding the next phenom. Slalom is more interested in the havoc that can wreak on the younger athlete.
Writer/director Charlène Favier’s take on the situation is even-handed. She never stoops to melodrama, never paints young skier Lyz (Noée Abita’s) as faultless in her relationship with trainer Fred (Jérémie Renier, great). Lyz’s complexities – particularly given Abita’s assured performance – only ensure that the film leaves more of a mark.
There Is No Evil
Presenting four short films together as separately compelling variations on a theme is impressive. Make those four shorts all from the same writer/director, telling distinct stories that raise the emotional stakes in distinct ways, and you have a stunning achievement.
You have Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof delivering a political statement of immense weight and moral conviction. You have There Is No Evil.
Each chapter of the film presents a seemingly unique paradox, then quietly mounts the tension before revealing gripping plot turns that unite the strands in memorably devastating fashion.
With four masterful bits of storytelling and the exceptional ensemble cast in There Is No Evil, Rasoulof deftly explores the wages of those decisions, as well as the immoral center of a despotic regime that makes them necessary.
This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
Incredibly beautiful and rich with color, light, and shadow, every scene in this film is a haunting painting. The cast, mixed with actors and non-actors alike, brings you to witness the erasure of a real place and real people, and you mourn with them.
Though the people of the film’s central town of Nazareth still live, something about them will be lost forever. They are some of the last of their kind as new roads, and new buildings, and new dams continue to creep into the quiet places of the world. Progress fills up little villages with the walking dead as ways of life are washed away.
Together Together
It takes a full two minutes to get a really good feeling about Together Together. Writer/director Nikole Beckwith delivers witty, engaging dialogue from the jump, defining characters and setting the stakes in a beautifully organic manner.
There’s love and family and funny stuff here, and though none of it is quite the kind we’re used to seeing, all of it is wonderfully real. Together Together is a delivery that somehow feels comfortable and unique, both overdue and right on time.
What happens when The Boss Baby we met in 2017 gets all grown up?
Well, when we catch up with Theodore “Ted” Templeton (voiced again by Alec Baldwin) in the Dreamworks sequel Family Business, he’s a hedge fund honcho who now has a statue in his honor at Baby Corp. But Ted works all the time, doesn’t see much of his family, and has a strained relationship with his brother Tim (James Marsden).
Tim and wife Carol (Eva Longoria) are parents of Tabitha (Ariana Greenblatt), a whip smart but increasingly distant second grader at the Acorn School, and Tina (Amy Sedaris), a new baby with a familiar secret.
Yep, Tina’s an agent from Baby Corp, and they need the Templeton boys to mend fences and work together. It seems Acorn headmaster Dr. Erwin Armstrong (Jeff Goldblum) is cooking up something nefarious at the school, so Ted and Tim need to drink the formula that will – to the tune of “Time Warp” – turn them back into a baby (Ted) and a schoolboy (Tim) for 48 hours. Then they must use that time to derail Dr. Armstrong’s plan for a baby revolution (“cake for everybody!”)
Director Tom McGrath and writer Michael McCullers return from the first film, where they struggled to expand Marla Frazee’s book to feature length without leaning on excess filler.
But this new installment comes together as a more independent, fully formed adventure. The pace is buzzing with often frenetic activity that should keep the kids interested, and though the laughs aren’t hearty LOLs, McGrath and McCullers score with several well-placed and understated asides that parents will appreciate.
Baldwin’s buttery sarcasm is again perfect for the little bossman (“I have a beautiful voice!”), while Sedaris and Goldblum bring some zany Sedaris and Goldblum (both always welcome) to the voice ensemble.
Can the Templeton brothers form a new bond while thwarting Armstrong’s plan? Can Tim return to adult form in time to see Tabitha sing in the Holiday pageant (which also features a song about global warming called “We’re Doomed”)? Is the head on Ted’s statue big enough?
Yes, answering these questions does get both predictable and convoluted, but Family Business stocks just enough inspired nuttiness and warm fuzzies to finish in the black.
