Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

Anyone for Tetris?

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Tetris

by George Wolf

So, you had mad Tetris skills back in the day, did you? Wel then, maybe you know that the name came from merging “tetra” (Greek for “four”) with “tennis.”

But did you know that the road to your gaming glory was paved with blackmail, Cold War intrigue, corporate backstabbing, KGB harassment and perhaps even one exuberant singalong to Europe’s 1986 anthem “The Final Countdown?”

The Apple Original Tetris gives us all that and more, riding an animated lead performance from Taron Egerton and a nostalgic, 16-bit aesthetic for an entertaining ride through history that’s only too happy to borrow from both Pixels and Argo.

And no matter how familiar you are with gaming culture, this is one crazy-ass story.

In the late 1980s, Henk Rogers (Egerton) was a video game sales rep whose shoot-from-the-hip manner and boots-with-suits style earned him a cowboy reputation. His first look at Tetris left him mesmerized at its “poetry, art and math,” and obsessed with obtaining the marketing rights for he called “the perfect game.”

But Tetris was a spare-time invention from Russian worker bee Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov), and getting those rights would put Rogers in the criss-crossing crosshairs of a competing sales rep (Toby Jones), a billionaire tycoon (Roger Allam, under some questionable makeup) and his heir (Anthony Boyle), game developers from Nintendo and various members of the KGB.

Fun! it is, especially the moments when a Russian business exec (Oleg Stefan, fantastic) moves from room to room in his office building, pitting the players against each other with deadpan delight.

Once again, Egerton is terrific. We first meet Henk as a fast-talking sales dog always ready with a pitch. But as Henk’s passion for a possible Tetris goldmine gives way to manic desperation, it feels real, as does his concern for safety of Alexey and his family.

Director Jon S. Baird (Stan & Ollie) indulges the throwback Thursday vibe, with plenty of game player graphics, pixellated frames and 80s jams. But look beyond the breezy attitude, and you’ll also find that writer Noah Pink includes some resonant nods to how even the seemingly harmless technology can quickly be weaponized.

Yes, the finale becomes a bit tidy, idealistic, and familiar (does Ben Affleck get a credit?), but the fictionalized history of Tetris is worth revisiting, meaning that after a slew of terrible video game adaptations, the genre can bask in a rare double score. Dungeons and Dragons can please crowds at the multiplex, while briefcases and boots gets the job done at home.

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They Got Game

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Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

There is a new Dungeons and Dragons movie, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Unfortunately, there is not a topic on this planet about which Madd and/or Wolf know less than Dungeons and Dragons. It honestly took us decades to undersand that “zero charisma!” reference in E.T.

Well, good news, then, that MaddWolf pack writer Cat McAlpine is a D&D expert!

Bad news! Cat McAlpine was unavailable for the screening because she was – we swear to God this is true ­– playing Dungeons and Dragons. So, you’ll have to settle for us. And here’s the crazy thing: we liked it.

We did not expect to. You should have seen the fit we threw when we realized Cat couldn’t review it and we would have to. Hissy levels.

Obviously, we can’t speak to how closely the film sticks to whatever it is Dungeons and Dragons is/does/conjures. But as a comedic adventure film with a quest narrative and a game-like aesthetic, it succeeds.

Co-directors John Francis Daly and Jonathan Goldstein (Game Night), both writing with Michael Gilio (Kwik Stop), find an easy humor that feeds off the charm and charisma of their cast. They inject a Guardians of the Galaxy tone into a narrative that mirrors role-playing level changes, and let a talented ensemble keep you entertained.

Chris Pine is the lute-playing, wise-cracking Edgin, who teams with the badass Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) to bust out of prison and go on the run from that cad Forge (Who else but that cad Hugh Grant). They pick up young sorcerer Simon (Justice Smith) and the shape-shifting druid Doric (Sophia Lillis) along the way, and the foursome embarks on an adventure to retrieve a powerful relic that could help reunite Edgin and his daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman).

Does any of this follow a D&D storyline? We don’t know. But even before Bridgerton‘s Regé-Jean Page shows up to lampoon his own image as the dashing Xenk, the contagious, wink-wink swashbuckling had won us over.

The fantastical creatures are plentiful (an “owl bear,” presumably cocaine free!) and gameboard-worthy, while Daly and Goldstein keep upping the ante with fast-paced plot turns that recall those “extra life” badge things that gamers rely on to keep the action pumping.

And the adventure does run a tad long, sometimes feeling simultaneously overstuffed and superficial. But the tone it embraces feels just right, and Honor Among Thieves fulfills its quest to deliver likable characters, infectious humor, and escapist fun.

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Assault on Overlook Hotel

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Malum

by Hope Madden

Equal parts Assault on Precinct 13 and The Shining by way of Charles Manson, Anthony DiBlasi’s Malum is a quick, mean, mad look into the abyss.

Jessica Sula stars as a rookie cop whose first night on the job is a babysitting gig, so to speak. The new station is up and running and all she has to do is sit tight at the old station, redirect anyone who stops by, and wait for morning. So far, so Carpenter.

Jessica (her character’s name, as well) actually requested this stint because her dad, a hero, ended his career in this very building and she just wants the two careers to overlap, if only for one shift. But the cult that her father put an end to one year ago tonight has designs on Jessica.

DiBlasi is reimagining his own 2014 flick Last Shift, although it feels more like a riff on Carpenter’s 1976 Precinct 13 than anything. Regardless, what the filmmaker does is confine the audience along with our hero in a funhouse.

As the film wears on its nightmarish vibe intensifies. Weird characters and genuinely unsettling scenarios play out, some of them predictable but most of them surprises. The jump scares work, the gore plays, and the creature effects are top notch.

Inspired supporting turns from Natalie Victoria, Sam Brooks and Kevin Wayne keep the bizarre tensions building and Sula’s grounded, understated hero holds the mayhem together well

Malum gets nuts, exactly as it should. Though it never feels genuinely unique, it manages to avoid feeling derivative because of DiBlasi’s commitment to the grisly madness afoot. The result is a solid, blood soaked bit of genre entertainment fully worthy of your 92 minutes.  

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Glorious Madness

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I’m an Electric Lampshade

by Christie Robb

Oh man, what can I say about this one? That it’s a celebration of the confidence of mediocre White men? That it’s an inspiring hero’s journey toward self-love and acceptance? It’s kinda both. And a bunch of other stuff.

It’s like a mix of The Office, Spinal Tap,  Alice in Wonderland, and RuPaul’s Drag Race.

And the music videos. My God, the music videos.

I’m an Electric Lampshade follows Doug (Doug McCorkle), a 60-year-old corporate accountant, as he retires from office life to pursue his dream of becoming a concert performer. Director/writer John Clayton Doyle mines this material for all that it is worth—finding the humor, the heart, the beauty, and the weirdness in his cast and locations (the States, Mexico, and the Philippines).

The movie is based on the true story of Doug and is, at least in part, a documentary. But it also incorporates many fictional elements that give it a dreamy, hallucinogenic quality that at times verges on the cartoonish. This isn’t a “conventionally” good movie. It has the makings of a cult classic and is definitely a weird and wonderful little gem.

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Morphinominal!

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Smoking Causes Coughing

by Hope Madden

The narratives of brilliant French filmmaker Claire Denis tend to skip over dramatic highpoints in favor if those moments most filmmakers would ignore. She tells the same story but uses this device to undermine expectations and develop character. In Denis’s hands, it’s a brilliant approach that’s delivered many exceptional films: Trouble Every Day, High Life, 35 Shots of Rum, Let the Sunshine In and so many more.

In his own way, French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux does the same. He certainly does with his latest piece of absurdity, Smoking Causes Coughing, a high concept robbed of its drama and left with Dupieux’s favorite moments. The banal ones.

Costumed avengers Tobacco Force work as a team, each adding their unique gift to a combined weapon strong enough to bring down any enemy – or at least any kaiju in a rubber suit. The whole ordeal is only funnier when the helmets come off and some of the biggest names in French film spend an entire movie dressed like Power Rangers.

Nicotine (Anaïs Demoustier), Ammonia (Oulaya Amamra), Mercury (Jean-Pascal Zadi), Benzene (Gilles Lellouche) and Methanol (Vincent Lacoste) seem to be falling apart. Mercury’s powers were weak last time because he wasn’t sincere enough, and now the Chief (a particularly foul if amorous rat puppet voiced by Alain Chabat) thinks their team lacks cohesion.

And what a time to fall apart! Intergalactic supervillain Lezardin (Benoît Poelvoorde) is planning to eliminate Earth for being uninteresting.

Rather than follow the strategies and preparations, or even the battle itself, Dupieux sets his tale during the weeklong forced retreat where the team builds cohesion and shares campfire stories. The superhero film then becomes, essentially, the framing device for an absurdist’s horror anthology.

What is it all about? The ridiculousness of storytelling, of distracting yourself from life, and the insidious way capitalism influences both your life and your distraction from life?

I have no idea. But if you like Quentin Dupieux movies, you’ll no doubt enjoy this one. It’s less inspired than 2010’s Rubber, less endearing than 2020’s Mandibles. But Smoking Causes Coughing kicks expectations in the ass and has a fine time making moviemaking the butt of its joke.

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Freedom from Tyranny

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John Wick: Chapter 4

by Hope Madden

What do you want to know? John Wick: Chapter 4 doesn’t disappoint.

Guns, blades, cars, swords, fire, motorcycles, explosions, horses, bludgeonings, fisticuffs, playing cards, dogs. Of course, dogs.

Donnie Yen, Hiroyuki Sanada, Scott Adkins, Marko Zaror, Clancy Brown, Bill Skarsgard, Shamier Anderson, Aimee Kwan, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, Keanu Reeves and Lance Reddick. Farewell, Lance.

Do you need to see the first three installments to follow the plot? No. It’s good to know that John Wick (Reeves) wears a bulletproof suit. Otherwise, he’d just look silly pulling up his lapel all the time. Other than that, you can probably figure out the gist. The stakes? High. The villains? Bad. The good guys? Professional villains. The best thing about being four episodes in is the needlessness of context or exposition.

Chad Stahelski returns to helm the latest, having carved out an impressive niche in action with his 2014 original. Since then, John Wick has become a cultural phenomenon sparking more copycat action flicks than Die Hard or Taken and solidifying Reeves as an undeniable if  unusual cinematic presence.

Chapter 4 is not just more of what makes the series memorable, it’s better: better action, better cinematography, better fight choreography, better framing and shot selection. Sandwiched between inspired carnage are brief moments of exposition set within sumptuous visions of luxury and decadence. This movie is absolutely gorgeous.

One of the reasons each episode of this franchise surpasses the last is that the franchise is not exactly about John Wick. It’s a love letter to a canon, a song about the entire history of onscreen assassins and their honorable, meticulous action. Genre legends arrive and we accept a backstory that isn’t detailed or necessary because the actors carry their cinematic history with them, and that’s backstory enough.

It’s hard to believe it took this many sequels to get us to John Wick v Donnie Yen, but it was worth the wait. Yen’s wryly comedic presence injects the film with needed levity. Plus he’s a better actor than Reeves and he looks less silly when he runs.

Skarsgard ­– though his French accent is dubious – fits the bill as the diabolically privileged Marquis who’s forgotten that “a man’s ambition should never exceed his worth.”

Hats off to Stahelski, his entire ensemble, stunt department, action choreographers and crew. No one could have guessed back in 2014 how this would snowball, but the director at the helm has managed to up his game once again.

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Seoul Searching

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Return to Seoul

by George Wolf

“Your birth name is Yeon-Hee. It means ‘docile’ and ‘joyous.'”

None of those things apply to Frédérique (Park Ji-min), whose name was changed after a French couple adopted baby Yeon-Hee and moved her from Seoul to Paris.

25 years later, she’s back.

In Return to Seoul (Retour à Séoul), the trip “home” becomes a catalyst for one woman’s search for identity, as director and co-writer Davy Chou crafts a relentlessly engrossing study of character and culture.

Now 25, “Freddie”‘s planned vacation in Japan is diverted by a typhoon, and she lands in Seoul “by surprise” – or so she tells her adoptive mother in France. But it isn’t long before Freddie is visiting the agency that handled her adoption, and reaching out to her birth parents to gauge interest in a meeting.

And from the minute we meet Freddie, she is purposefully upending the societal expectations of her heritage. When Freddie laughingly explains it away to her friend Tena (Guka Han) as “I’m French,” Tena quietly responds that Freddie is “also Korean.”

Freddie’s birth father and mother have very different reactions to her outreach. Chou moves the timeline incrementally forward, and Freddie’s two-week holiday becomes a new life in Seoul, one that’s fueled by restlessness and unrequited longing.

In her screen debut, Park is simply a revelation. Her experience as a visual artist clearly assists Park in realizing how to challenge the camera in a transfixing manner that implores us not to give up on her character. Freddie is carrying a soul-deep wound and pushes people away with a sometimes casual cruelty, but Park always grounds her with humanity and restraint.

As the narrative years go by, Chou adds flamboyance without seeming overly showy, and manages to toe a tricky line between singular characterization and a more universal comment on Korean adoptees.

Freddie begins to embody the typhoon that pushed her toward this journey of self, and Return to Seoul becomes an always defiant, sometimes bristling march to emotional release. And when that release comes, it is a rich and moving reward for a filmmaker, a performer, and all who choose to follow.

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(Senior) Women Talking

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Chantilly Bridge

by Tori Hanes

Time: the paramount unreasonable force, promised to break most any sacred bond Earth has to offer. Navigation through the inevitable – birth, death, marriage, divorce, getting drunk with your friends – will be the muse of filmmakers until our rock stops spinning.

Chantilly Bridge is, in so many ways, a unique viewing experience. Going in completely blind, it’ll take unfamiliar audiences a hefty portion of their viewing time and brain power (unless they constitute the aid of ol’ pal Google) to decipher that this film is a sequel. Its predecessor, Chantilly Lace, was released 30 years ago into the warm reception of television movie stardom. Director and co-writer Linda Yellen returns for Chantilly Bridge, leaning on presumed familiarity like a splintered crutch to shape her wobbly narrative. Initially enlisting confusing flashbacks to scoot forward a clunky and unimpressive premise, Bridge eventually cracks the crutch over their good knee and sprints forward toward the meat of the film: the character chemistry.

The cast is loaded with veteran talent, including Talia Shire, Ally Sheedy, JoBeth Williams, Helen Slater, Jill Eikenberry and Lindsay Crouse, who all reprise their roles from ’93. The chemistry is palpable, and the film relies on improvisation to fill in the massive gaps between loose plot beats. These moments of filler snuggled within the “story” are to be savored. They’re teeming with the authenticity that makes film viewing a life affirming experience. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to find yourself intertwined in a conversation steered by women who deeply, irrevocably, unconditionally care for each other, you’ll feel Chantilly Bridge’s genius stir the deepest cockles of your heart.

What’s maddening is the production’s backward desire to hinder enjoyment. The cinematography makes the film’s made-for-tv roots obvious: intensive exposure and lighting, clinical color palettes, and jarringly un-inherent shots. Often, speakers will be out of frame for incredibly long beats while the camera lingers on a polite listener. This coincides with the clunky moments of obvious scriptedness – when Chantilly Bridge attempts to be a film, it largely fails. When it allows itself to be a vehicle for female friendship, it astounds.  

Through the nauseatingly winding start, an angry thought flickered: “how can a film say so much and mean nothing?” As the women on screen selflessly shared the complexities of connection and joy, the same thought reemerged in the shape of an ashamed trickle: “how could I have been so stupid?”

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The Long Goodbye

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One Fine Morning

by Hope Madden

“I wait for the thing that should come and it doesn’t.”

So says Georg Kienzler (Pascal Greggory, devastating), a retired philosophy scholar deteriorating under the weight of a neurodegenerative disease. His daughter Sandra understands.

One Fine Morning tempts you to believe it’s a film about nothing in particular. Mia Hansen-Løve conjures Claire Denis or even Kelly Reichardt in her approach to settling into a rhythm of small, intimate moments that tell a deeper if less tidy story than more clearly structured films. She robs the tale of melodrama, of obvious beats, and replaces those trappings with slice-of-life poetry.

Her poem is aided immeasurably by Léa Seydoux as Sandra, a widowed mother who’s already beginning to feel the loss of her father. An affair with an old friend complicates things by satisfying her profound longing while also leaving her vulnerable during an emotionally delicate period.

There’s a lot there that begs for drama, but it’s to the film’s great benefit that Hansen-Løve chooses nuance. A low-key melancholy colors this story of a woman losing pieces of herself. The beauty in that tone is matched by the raw authenticity in Seydoux’s performance.

Though she’s proven her talent a dozen times or more, this performance is a real departure for her. It’s open and vulnerable, effortlessly conveying the raw nerve this woman has become.

What Hansen-Løve captures so beautifully is the day-to-day tragedy of losing someone bit by bit and of the flashes of understandable, even necessary selfishness. Sandra is sole parent to precocious 8-year-old Linn (Camille Leban Martins), contends with facility options for her father, and oversees the unenviable task of sorting through his belongings while he’s still living. The filmmaker approaches all of this with the natural, relatable quiet persistence, resigned laughter, or unexpected tears that mark the reality of this situation.

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For Your Consideration

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Casting Kill

by Hope Madden

A stylish indie ride through the seedier side of filmmaking, James Smith’s Casting Kill delivers laughs and surprises on a shoestring.

The anxiety at the core of Casting Kill exploits an actor’s vulnerability. There are countless openings for a predator to take advantage, including desperation for a role and personal insecurities. It’s staggering what an actor might put up with – might make themselves see as “eccentricity” – in order to get a gig.

In this case, they have to put up with Arthur Capstone, whose eccentricities run deep. Smug, self-important and biting, Capstone somehow still wants you to relax as you audition for him. Specifically, he’d like you to close your eyes.

Rob Laird is Capstone, an identity thief passing himself off as a Hollywood casting director. But stealing hapless actors’ identities is hardly this guy’s biggest kink.

Hopeful after hopeful arrives, each starry-eyed for the big break. The film has the most fun in this early montage of mostly terrible auditions. It’s a laugh that makes the film’s final moments land with a smirk and a chuckle. 

Gareth Tidball is a charmer in a small, doomed role – though she keeps delivering even when her lines have run out. Andrew Elias injects a bit of macabre fun into an almost unending supply of creepy characters.

Caroline Spence’s script has a grisly blast with this conceit, looking at the casting process from every angle to give the film a “behind the curtain” vibe that suits it.

Smith’s direction intentionally recalls Hitchcock, a theme amplified by Shaun Finnegan’s score. Framing, camera angles, and in particular Smith’s use of color give the film an unsettling, off-kilter vibe that helps to offset Casting Kill’s lack of movement and action. Smith makes the most of the film’s tight quarters with shots that are equally lovely and bizarre.

From Starry Eyes to Neon Demon to Pearl and more, indie horror never seems to run out of horror stories about trying to make it big. That’s scary and a little sad in itself, but the result is, once again, a thoroughly entertaining film.