Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

Belly of the Whale

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Whalefall

by Hope Madden

Austin Abrams is having quite a year. First, he battled mutants all over Raccoon City (Resident Evil), and now the poor guy gets swallowed whole by a sperm whale! Dude cannot catch a break!

Whalefall director Brian Duffield, who adapts Daniel Kraus’s book, traps you in there with him and for an hour and 46 minutes, you both struggle with Josh Brolin’s memory, an undigested octopus, time, and digestive fluids as Jay (Abrams) fights to survive.

Brolin is Mitt Gardiner: scuba enthusiast, tourist whale watching boat captain, and Jay’s combative father. Remember how fun it was to watch the two of them fight in Weapons? Well, this is not like that. The sparring Jay and his dad do, and the regret and resentment left behind, echoes loudly through Jay’s entire ordeal.

Were there no underlying metaphor, no larger concept fueling Jay’s fight for survival—no reason to cut away from that pulsating pool of goo now and again—Whalefall would have been little more than a pretty gross survival tale. It is as much a story of surviving grief as surviving the whale. Those daddy issues are a little heavy handed and sappy, sure, but still, you’ve never seen anything like Whalefall.

Editing, creature design, set design, and sound design coalesce to heighten tensions and convince you that you’re surrounded by innards. Crushing, moving, opening, closing, unpredictable innards. Duffield plays with the most primal of fears, and somehow, he and his team have crafted an environment that convinces.

Terrifying, claustrophobic, squishy, and primal, the anxiety Duffield creates is extraordinary. Is it realistic? How the hell do I know? But the filmmaker is committed and confident, and he’s found the perfect hero.

There is just something deeply likeable about Abrams. Whether he’s the laid-back smack head in Weapons or the arrested post-adolescent in Resident Evil, Abrams’s performances are earnest. There’s truth to them, as well as humor. For Whalefall, less humor and more earnestness.  In many ways, that’s why the film succeeds. It is unabashedly sincere, and Abrams carries that off perfectly.

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Mistress of Myself

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Sense and Sensibility

by Hope Madden

Has it really been 31 years since Emma Thompson and Ang Lee beguiled us with Jane Austen’s iconic tale of love, sisterhood, and the crushing effects of patriarchy in Georgian England?

Georgia Oakley (Blue Jean) helms the latest look inside the Dashwood family. Level headed Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and her free spirited sister Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles) face perils of heart and home after their father’s death leaves them, their mother (Caitriona Balfe, Belfast) and younger sister (Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Shelter) facing homelessness as the estate passes to the sisters’ dullard half-brother and his greedy wife.  

Class, the economic powerlessness of women, love, and sisterhood are among Austen’s most cherished themes, and every adaptation of each of her novels chooses its primary target. Usually, it’s love. But for Oakley and screenwriter Diana Reid, Sense and Sensibility is about sisterhood.

That hardly means that the quiet aching between Elinor and Mr. Ferrars (George MacKay, ideal) goes ignored. Or that Marianne’s passions for the rogue Willoughby (Frank Dillane) don’t throw the Dashwoods into a chaos of emotion. The new Sense and Sensibility is perfectly swoony in those important ways.

But Reid’s adaptation streamlines tangential characters to draw focus, and Oakley’s attention is paid to the effect love, passion, worry, and dependence has on Elinor and Marianne. Their relationship anchors the film and colors the rest of the tale with a sense of hope and struggle for agency that reminds you how timeless Austen can be.

Oakley also lets the girls’ hair down. The Dashwood women are less cinched and coiffured this go-round. Marianne, in particular, prefers her hair loose. It makes her connection to the wilds more vivid, but this earthiness carries over to the story as a whole. The Dashwoods are far easier to connect to as they do their own laundry and  then stain their dresses eating wild berries.

The bones of Austen’s story are absolutely intact, but Reid and Oakley amplify interactions that may mean more to a modern audience than those attended to in previous interpretations, big screen and small.

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Legs

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Crawlers

by Hope Madden

Is Crawlers the best arachnid horror movie ever made? No. It’s not the best arachnid horror movie made in the last couple of years. Did I nearly scratch myself raw watching it, certain I had spiders crawling on me? And did I have a nightmare later that I was looting a shoe store trying to find tie-up boots for my son to protect him from the spider invasion?

Yes, to both.

So, obviously director Ángel Gómez Hernández was doing something right as he traps us for 90 minutes in a quarantined 4-floor LA apartment building very recently overrun with spiders. Not just any spiders. Spiders that, as clarified by the opening title cards, have decided to eat people.

Decided. They decided this. But you know what? Writer Jayson Rothwell’s lack of imagination here frees us up to spend more time where we want to spend it. And if you’ve chosen to see a movie where an apartment building full of tenants is trapped inside with thousands of killer spiders, my guess is that you want to see some nasty spider business. Crawlers has it.

Matilda Lutz (Revenge) is Serena, the put-upon would-be musician/building super, who finds the first body. It looks bad, so the police put the building on lockdown until they can figure out what kind of virus took out George (Chris Rogers). And then once they realize it was no virus, they drape the building so nothing goes in or out, just as Serena’s neighbors are starting to see evidence of the infestation.

It’s a great way to build tension. And we’ve spent just enough time with the tenants to root for some to survive, and root for others to get into that elevator. And the film’s CGI is believable enough that I was forever scratching and swatting in my seat.

There’s little underneath the basic story, so you’ll have to make do with surface level tension and character development. For more visual panache, check out Kia Roache-Turner’s 2024 terror Sting, and for more visceral scares with character, Sébastien Vanicek’s Infested makes every move Crawlers makes and does it better.

But those movies are not on the big screen right now, and if you want to be in a dark room full of skittering, hungry spiders, Crawlers delivers the creeps.

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Weak Thrills

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Animals

by George Wolf

Director/co-writer/star Ben Affleck continues his Netflix partnership with a serviceable thriller that is curious in its timid approach to being thrilling.

Affleck stars as a Los Angeles mayoral candidate who is mulling a big decision to get the funds for one last campaign push. Then his young son is kidnapped, throwing his candidacy and his sputtering relationship with his wife (Kerry Washington) into chaos.

With Steven Yeun as the campaign manager and Gillian Anderson popping in as a high-end fixer, the cast alone is enough to keep you watching. But after borrowing a twist from a similar classic, the film settles into a comfort zone that is just too comfortable.

The editing is choppy, and the narrative feels like it’s been re-shaped by too many producers and focus groups, leading to an unsatisfying final act more in line with a morality play.

There are moments of substance here, but just like too many campaign promises, Animals is a pretty smile without much behind it.

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The Great Pretender

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Other Mommy

by Hope Madden

A great deal goes unspoken in Other Mommy, a horror film informed by the complex idea that it’s what breaks your heart that makes you human.

Jessica Chastain is Aurora Martin, mommy to 7-year-old Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark). Chastain is also Other Mommy, a mommy-shaped entity who wants Bela’s permission to become human.

If a lot of this sounds familiar—a child, unhappiness in the house, an imaginary friend who’s less imaginary than demonic—credit director Rob Savage and writers Nathan Elston and Josh Malerman for complicating the tale with fairly realistic (if unreasonably wealthy) human damage.

And, of course, Chastain for being game for some serious freakiness.

Jay Duplass keeps things grounded in tenderness as Daddo, the one reminder that humans can be wonderful. A strong supporting cast includes Karen Allen, Sean Kaufman, and Arian Moayed, but Savage’s investment in Clark to keep us engrossed pays off.

She reminds you of a very young Mckenna Grace. Her soulful attention and authentic performance create real tension. The youngster carries a lot of this film and manages beautifully.

Other Mommy spins a cautionary tale about tricksters, letting the wrong person into your heart, people who aren’t as they seem, and the generational damage done by less-than-ideal parents.

Like a lot of imaginary friend horror films, Other Mommy writes itself into a bind it can’t entirely escape. But the cast mines the script for a backstory they wear in their gestures and behaviors, and Savage throws enough random insanity at you that things never feel predictable.

It’s not an uncontested win, but Other Mommy delivers creepiness that picks a particular scab.  

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A Helluva Drug

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The Social Reckoning

by Hope Madden & George Wolf

Back in 2010—aah, that innocent time—writer Aaron Sorkin (with writer Ben Mezrich) took us behind the curtain to witness the weaselly, insecure, creepy underpinning of the social media revolution.

With The Social Reckoning, writer/director Sorkin checks back in on Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) to see how his social network was doing between 2018 – 2021. A less innocent time for all involved.

But “Zuck” is not the main character. This is the story of whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), a Facebook engineer who loves her job on the Civic Integrity team and believes in the mission to connect people. But she can no longer live with Facebook and Zuckerberg’s intentional misuse of research to amplify profits while knowingly damaging users’ mental health, public safety, and democracy itself.

If The Social Network was a warning, The Social Reckoning is less an “I told you so” than a “holy shit!”

Haugen slowly learns to trust Wall Street Journal investigative journalist Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) with what she knows, hoping he can expose the corporate malfeasance, and her dream job can go back to being dreamy.

Sorkin’s films work best when he’s dealing with hyper intelligent characters, and that’s certainly the case here.  His spectacular cast, including Betty Gilpin, Wunmi Mosaku, Billy Magnussen, and Bill Burr, is on point in every scene. The banter between the analog Horwitz and the tech-intensive Haugen is often delightful, bringing a low-key levity to the otherwise very high-key script.

The film’s pace juggles timelines efficiently, allowing Sorkin to make a sly juxtaposition of two viruses and use a data scientist’s “dumbed down” explanations to an old school journalist as the perfectly organic vehicle for bringing us all into their circle of trust. The Oscar-winning Madison is terrific, revealing hurt and disillusion as Haugen’s belief that social media reveals the best of us is crushed by the realization that her employer is knowingly manufacturing our worst.

White becomes a wonderful counterpoint, a more world-weary soul careful to protect his prized source while patiently encouraging her instincts to expose what she knows.

And Jeremy Strong turns in yet another award-worthy supporting turn as a real person. He takes the cutthroat glimpses of Zuck we saw from Jesse Eisenberg and molds them into a cold and detached tycoon, eager to proclaim his devotion to the “public square” while quietly giving bigger bullhorns to the town criers that are most profitable.

Anyone with a social feed knows that anger is a helluva drug, and when the company line fears blowback more than incitement, fires get stoked early and often.

Scenes with Zuck conferring in a lair with investors prove there are still spots where Sorkin can’t resist the urge to overstate the obvious and push one preachy beat too hard. But, man, then he’ll unleash a string of intelligent, well-stated and completely engaging points, counterpoints and rebuttals (often between Strong and Burr in the film’s most fiery moments) that right the ship right quick.

Even if you haven’t followed the story of Haugen, Horwitz and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Facebook Files, The Social Reckoning probably won’t surprise you with how obscene this all has become. But it might help you reconsider your own algorithms, and it will definitely remind you of the type of courage and integrity that still defines the best of us.

I mean, really, how many of us still think that social media was a good idea?

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When Darkness Comes

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Never After Dark

by Hope Madden

Who doesn’t like a good ghost story? And a Japanese ghost story at that!

Writer/director Dave Boyle (Man from Reno) generates spooky tension with Never After Dark, his tale of a traveling psychic hired to help the dead leave this plane. Airi (Moeka Hoshi, TV’s Shōgun), the quietly no-nonsense medium, arrives at an isolated little inn recently purchased on auction by a widow (Tae Kimura) and her son (Kento Kaku). Odd things are happening at the property.

It’s hard to place the period for the film. Landlines, sweater vests and shoulder pads suggest early 90s (a sweet spot for J-horror). The analog vibe suits the film’s dreamy pace. This is a slow burn, sometimes perhaps slower than necessary, but it’s still effective.

Boyle immediately introduces a worn-out genre trope only to expose it, using the gimmick as a tool for the narrative at hand. It works surprisingly well. Images throughout the film feel familiar more than borrowed, and Boyle’s framing and use of light give scenes a lovely but spooky quality.

Hoshi delivers a fascinating central performance: a loner who’s not alone, a polite misanthrope more comfortable with the dead than the living. The balance of the small cast impresses with memorable characters, but the tension grows because of Hoshi. Airi’s petulant defiance of sound advice, her occasionally reckless behavior, and her utter isolation coalesce as the entity in the inn is more fully revealed.

When the violence does come, it’s unsettling. But Boyle has spent more than an hour slowly drawing your interest and almost reluctant affection for these characters, and that’s where the tension really comes from.

Never After Dark delivers on its earliest promise of a stylish supernatural thriller, but Boyle isn’t afraid to get nasty here and there. The combination gives the horror a little substance and the style a nice punch.

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Solid Choice

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The History of Concrete

by Brandon Thomas

The mundane is probably the last thing that comes to mind when I think of the world of documentaries. Documentaries are meant to be serious business that deals with serious subject matter. Well, that and the slew of celebrity-focused films being released these days. It’s a balance, I guess.

Maybe that’s what makes John Wilson’s (HBO’s How to With John Wilson) The History of Concrete so fresh and appealing. There’s not an ounce of self-seriousness in Wilson’s film, yet by the time the end credits begin to roll, you still feel like you got a peek into what drives him, what he finds beautiful, and what frightens him about our changing world. 

As someone who’d never seen an episode of Wilson’s previous work, the bait-and-switch of the film’s title is a bit of a delightful surprise. Yes, The History of Concrete isn’t really about the history of concrete. Concrete is ever-present in the film’s periphery, but the real meat comes from Wilson’s side quests, if you will. The runners who run the same lap around an NYC block for 52 days, a concrete salesman who moonlights as an actor (or is that the other way around?), and the oldest concrete road in America. These are just a few of the detours Wilson takes, and they are certainly not the strangest. 

It might sound like I’m giving Wilson too much credit for knowing exactly what this film would be about and how he was going to approach it. Fortunately, the film itself doesn’t even do this. From a long prologue where Wilson attends a seminar on writing a Hallmark movie, to various Zoom calls where the filmmaker struggles to even describe the film he wants to make to potential investors, the “fly by the seat of your pants” aspect of the first third of the film is thrilling and ultimately a necessary part of Wilson’s organic approach.

In a world where even documentaries are playing it safe, The History of Concrete is a fantastic cinematic breath of fresh air.

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Amused to Death

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Digger

by George Wolf

Don’t listen to me about Digger.

Don’t listen to anyone about Digger. I’d say the odds are 50/50 that you’ll love it or hate it. But if you appreciate a positive ratio of sheer ideas per moviegoing minute, you’ll be hard pressed to beat the latest opus from Oscar-winning Mexican auteur Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

Speaking of awards, get used to seeing Tom Cruise in the upcoming nomination lists, and he most definitely earns the acclaim. Call it tour de force, over the top or whatever, but he absolutely commands the screen and this satirical epic as Digger Rockwell, a my-way-or-the-highway oil tycoon whose company has caused an environmental disaster that threatens life as we know it.

Can Digger dig us all out? And can director/co-writer Iñárritu climb out of the narrative hole he digs in the early going?

For my money, yes.

His impressive resume (including The Revenant, Birdman, Bardo, and Babel) is stacked with impeccable craftmansmanship, ambitious framing, boundary pushing visuals and increasing self-indulgence. You’ll find it all in Digger, and per usual, subtlety is not in the toolbox.

If you thought Don’t Look Up was too direct, buckle up. This message, and this coal black humor, is obvious and repetitive, layered through extreme POVs and garish sets that underscore Digger’s promise of damage control through performative storytelling. And just when the bombast threatens to bring the entire film down, Iñárritu makes a shocking pivot that is sure to make Digger one of the most divisive films in recent memory.

I’m not spoiling it, and shame on anyone that does.

Even with Cruise dominating the film, the incredibly stacked supporting cast carves out a steady stream of interesting and often larger-than-life characters. From John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, Sandra Hüller to Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons and even a Burn Gorman sighting, there is excellence evident on nearly every corner of the screen.

And by the way, choose that screen wisely. Iñárritu shot this in VistaVision, so unless you want the pillarbox view, avoid the standard widescreens.

But if you appreciate the movie theater experience, do not avoid Digger. And don’t leave halfway through, even if you’re tempted. You’ve got to see this through — including a few minutes into the credits — before you can really start mulling over what you’ve seen.

Hell, a year from now I may wish I’d given this five stars, or two. But right now, I’m glad it’s given me this much to think about.

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Now Pulp Free!

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Verity

by George Wolf

The most interesting thing about Verity is what a stupefying mess it turns out to be. Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson aren’t just stars, but producers as well. And though Michael Showalter might seem a surprising choice to direct an erotic thriller, his resume includes some big wins (The Big Sick, Wet Hot American Summer).

Where did it all go wrong? Pretty much everywhere.

Based on Colleen Hoover’s best seller, the film follows struggling novelist Lowen Ashleigh (Johnson) as she is hired to finish a book series by world renowned writer Verity Crawford (Hathaway). Crawford is incapacitated after a car accident, so her husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) invites Lowen to stay in their Vermont mansion, pour over Verity’s notes and deliver three much-anticipated books.

But Lowen finds more than notes. She finds a flash drive holding a secret manuscript that appears to be an autobiography where Verity makes some earth-shattering confessions.

Cue the thunder claps and lightning strikes, and hold any trace of a winking nod to how ridiculous this all is. Hoover’s story (adapted by Nick Antosca) seems heavily borrowed from a couple more well-plotted novels, and Showalter’s humorless tone never leans into the pulpy aspects that might have made this a fun, guilty popcorn pleasure.

Sexy moments aren’t sexy. Jump scares aren’t scary. Witty banter isn’t witty, and the three very talented stars just seem confused. That’s a bad combo, one that allows for plenty of time for us to wonder about those breakdowns in internal logic.

But honestly, there isn’t much concern with any one thinking too much. An over-reliance on voiceover narration drains the shock value from big reveals, and ends up negating those seeds of doubt the film seems to think it is planting.

This type of Neo-noir blurring of truth and fiction has resulted in some twisty fun in the theaters over the last several years. But what might have been a self-aware ride on the order of A Simple Favor or The Woman in the Window barely rises to the level of Hathaway’s own curious dud Serenity.

Too much talent, not enough pulp. Sad to say, that’s Verity.