Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

Tales From the Dark Side

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Thunderbolts*

by George Wolf

In the post-Avengers world, CIA Director Valentina is quick to tell America that there is no one to protect us.

Well, make way for the Thunderbolts* (named for a peewee soccer team!)

Valentina (Julie Louis-Dreyfus, a treasure as always) makes her declaration while testifying at her own impeachment hearing. It seems she’s after unchecked power to alone decide who the criminals are (can you imagine such a thing?), and the details of Valentina’s attempts to develop her own brand of super-soldiers are about to come to light.

She has a plan to stop that, but it only ends up uniting now-Congressman Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Alexei “Red Guardian” Shostakov (David Harbour) “Ghost” Ava Starr (Hanna John-Kamen) JV Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell) and a mysterious guy named Bob (Lewis Pullman).

Red Guardian has been biding time operating a limo service (“we protect you from a boring evening!”) so he’s only too happy to get back in game, but the others aren’t so sure. And they have no idea what Bob’s deal is.

It turns out to be pretty dark and interesting, just like this new superteam origin story. Director Jake Shreier (Robot & Frank, Beef) and the writing team do a solid job balancing the required backstory exposition with superhero action and character driven humor (mainly via Harbor’s can’t-miss timing and some delicious deadpans from Louis-Dreyfus.)

And speaking of character driven, Pugh is just so good. As a new, all-powerful villain emerges, she and Yelena carry the film to some dark, psychological places in the third act. Thunderbolts* isn’t just interested in how this team assembles, it wants us to feel comfortable talking about why we all need a good support system, especially in the age of gaslighting, disinformation and power grabs.

A crowd-pleasing glimpse at what’s next comes in the post credits scene, and after the messy misstep of Brave New World, Thunderbolts* puts one back the MCU win column.

New In Theaters

Unwelcome Back

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The Surfer

by George Wolf

Have you seen Wake in Fright, the 1971 Australian nightmare with Donald Pleasence? How about The Swimmer from ’68, where Burt Lancaster’s delusions of greatness are slowly punctured by the reality of his past?

The Surfer will hit harder if you can appreciate how it blends the two for its own deranged tale, as Nicolas Cage takes full advantage of another chance to come unglued before our eyes.

Cage stars as the titular surfer, who has come back to Australia’s Luna Bay in hopes of buying his childhood home. He brings his son along to surprise him with the news, but quickly finds the locals most unwelcoming.

“Don’t live here, don’t surf here!”

The “Bay Boys” rule the beach, and their guru Scally (Julian McMahon) takes the surfer and son aside to give them one polite warning: best move along.

They oblige, but the surfer won’t give up his dream so easily. He returns solo and things quickly escalate with the Bay Boys until the surfer is bloody and barefoot, without money, phone, car, or friends.

The font of the opening credits sets the perfect retro vibe, and director Lorcan Finnegan (Vivarium) leans into it from there. The minimalistic score, wide frames and dramatic punch-ins cast a spell of 70s Ozploitation that makes a fine launching pad for Cage’s slide into lunacy.

Australian accent? You think Cage needs one to sell this quest for survival? He doesn’t, and writer Thomas Martin weaves his lack of dialect into the thread of wry humor that runs throughout the film. Like Wake in Fright, circumstances hold a stranger prisoner in a foreboding Australian town, where – like The Swimmer – the past comes calling.

The Surfer is often smart but can be less than subtle, with some “hey don’t miss this” camerawork – which, to be fair, aligns with the throwback feel – and a lesson about toxic masculinity that’s well-meaning but repetitive.

But there’s much to like here, starting with Cage. The surfer is the kind of role that’s in perfect sync with his legendary eccentricities. He’s a man on the verge for ninety minutes, and nearly all of those are too much fun to look away.

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Rock in the Ruins

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Pink Floyd at Pompeii

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

The gorgeous new restoration of 1972’s Pink Floyd at Pompeii delivers a beautifully discordant glimpse of a transitional period for one of music’s most important rock bands. Gorgeously restored image and sound immerse you in Floyd’s music. 

Adrian Maben’s doc focuses primarily on Floyd’s 1971 trip to Italy, with performances recorded live in the ruins of the Pompeii Amphitheatre to an audience of only crew . The setlist (including selections recorded later in Paris) consists of some of Floyd’s more loosely constructed symphonic jams—Careful with that Axe Eugene, Echoes, Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, One of These Days—which frees Maben visually from the need to capture a singer. Rather, he lets Floyd’s trippier melodic concoctions provide a soundscape for various images. Sometimes eerily beautiful landscapes and vistas populate the screen, while elsewhere the filmmaker turns the camera to period artwork.

Maben punctuates the live cuts with bits of interviews and fly-on-the-wall footage as the band shares a meal. David Gilmour seems forever in need of a glass of milk, while drummer Nick Mason’s request for apple pie goes unanswered. These brief snippets, though borderline Spinal Tap, balance the live performance’s grandiosity with a sweet bit of banality.

Yes, both Gilmour and Roger Waters get their screen time, but late keyboardist Richard Wright also finds his time in the spotlight while Mason often draws most of Maben’s interest. His manic drumming and respectful requests for “no crust” are a delight, and the interplay between all the band members is a bittersweet counter to the rancor that erupted in years to come.

Wisely, the restoration includes material that had made its way into an earlier director’s cut. We spend time in Abby Road studios with the band as they work through tracks for their as-yet-unreleased masterwork Dark Side of the Moon album.

It’s the perfect balance. The live, undiluted imagination and experimentation that marked Pink Floyd’s early career gives way to the masterful, controlled artistry of the album that would redefine the band (and music history).  

Even for Floyd fans who have seen much of this before, the new restoration – especially the IMAX version hitting select theaters – is a must. It not only gives some classic early jams due respect, it provides a fascinating glimpse at the days just before a legendary rock band stepped into its future.

New In Theaters

The Old Familiar Sting

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Until Dawn

by Hope Madden

Watching the 2011 genre classic Cabin in the Woods when it came out, you couldn’t help but think it would make a great video game. Each new level could bring on a different one of those beasties from the elevator, and you’d have to try to survive them all to win. Fun!

Until Dawn, the new horror flick from David F. Sandberg (Lights Out, Annabelle: Creation), follows exactly this logic. It’s as if someone did make that video game, then turned that game into a movie. Which is kind of what happened.

Sandberg and writers Blair Butler (The Invitation, Hell Fest) and Gary Dauberman (the Annabelle, Nun, and It franchises, among others) retool the popular Until Dawn survival game to give it more of a cinematic structure. Five friends, out on a road trip to remember a pal who’s been missing for a year, stumble upon a long-abandoned welcome center.

They spy their missing friend’s name in the register. It’s in there 13 times.

Next thing you know, time loop horror overtakes the friends as one malevolent force after another descends upon the welcome center. As soon as all five friends are dead, an hourglass resets, they revive, and the next wave of horror hits.

Peter Stormare lends his effortless creepiness to the proceedings, which benefit from his performance as well as work from an ensemble that’s better than the script demands. Belmont Cameli and Hellraiser’s Odessa A’zion are particularly effective, but all five friends break free of the tropiness of their roles to find familiar, human centers.

It had to have been hard, as their characters continually make the dumbest decisions possible.

The film feels terribly confined by its premise. Rather than the gleeful celebration of all things monstrous that made Cabin in the Woods such a joy, Until Dawn lacks inspiration. The set design never rises above a seasonal haunt aesthetic, the creature design lacks imagination, and the repetitive nature of the time loop grows tedious.

It shouldn’t come as a great surprise, given the filmmakers. Dauberman’s hit big a couple of times, but his fare is mainly middling. Sandberg’s genre films are exclusively mediocre, and Butler’s work rarely reaches that height.

But Until Dawnis not a complete waste of time. Sandberg doesn’t skimp on bloodshed, and the cast really elevates the material. It’s no classic, but it offers a bit of bloody fun.

New In Theaters

Death, Decomposition and the Maiden

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The Shrouds

by Hope Madden

Cronenberg’s gonna Cronenberg. Isn’t that why we love him? Whether it’s 1983’s Videodrome or 2022’sCrimes of the Future, Dead Ringers (1988) or A Dangerous Method (2011), 1996’s Crash, 1986’s The Fly,  or his first feature, Shivers (1976), David Cronenberg is fascinated by the human body, sex, technology, and conspiracies in a way distinctly his own.

Even as you can kind of expect the expected in his latest, The Shrouds, the film is simultaneously more personal and less like a David Cronenberg movie than anything he’s made.

Vincent Cassel is Cronenberg’s stand in, Karsh Relikh, a man who, like Cronenberg, once made industrial videos but now creates opportunities for those who are interested to watch bodies rot. Karsh owns GraveTech, cemeteries with tech built into shrouds that wrap bodies. The shrouds contain micro xray cameras that allow mourners to see their loved ones—on a screen placed in the headstone, or conveniently on their phone.

It was Karsh’s overpowering grief after losing his wife Becca (Diane Kruger) that inspired the technology. But this being a Cronenberg film, the tech can’t be trusted.

Because Cassel is so clearly, right down to his hair style, playing Cronenberg’s avatar, it’s only fitting that Cronenberg plays with that idea. Hunny, an AI personal assistant programmed by Karsh’s former brother-in-law, Maury (Guy Pearce) even looks like Karsh’s late wife (also voiced by Kruger).

But is Hunny friend or foe? And does Maury have anything to do with the recent vandalism of the graves? Or is Becca’s sister (Kruger again) right in thinking it’s all a medical conspiracy?

The intrigue feels vaguely like Scanners or Videodrome, while the chilly sexuality pulls from the same preoccupations that fueled Crash. But Cronenberg leans more on dialogue and Douglas Koch’s precise cinematography to tell this story than any outright horror.

The Shrouds is not the kind of body horror usually associated with Cronenberg, but his corporeal obsession is more pronounced here than maybe any other film. Karsh is fixated on his wife’s body—the pieces lost during her struggle with cancer, its fate under the ground. It all feels like the filmmaker is asking us to accompany him on his own journey, not just through grief but through his reflection on his own preoccupations as a filmmaker.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t make for an especially compelling or exciting movie. The pace is slow, the performances stilted to match the dialog, and the resolution is nonexistent. The Shrouds has a grotesquely beautiful dreamlike quality, and it teems with notions both weird and fascinating. It just can’t pull that pull it all together into an entertaining whole.

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Hellhound on My Tail

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Sinners

by Hope Madden

Ryan Coogler can direct the hell out of a movie, can’t he?

For Sinners, he reteams with longtime creative partner Michael B. Jordan to sing a song of a 1932 Mississippi juke joint. The Smokestack twins (Jordan) are back from Chicago, a truckload of ill-gotten liquor and a satchel full of cash along with them. They intend to open a club “for us, by us” and can hardly believe their eyes when three hillbillies come calling.

Jack O’Connell (an amazing actor in everything he’s done since Eden Lake) has a brogue and a banjo. He and his two friends would love to come on in, sing, dance, and spend some money, if only Smoke would invite them.

He does not.

The night becomes a standoff between those inside the club and those outside, but by the time Act 2 sets its fangs, Coogler and his terrific ensemble already have you invested in everyone inside.

The great Delroy Lindo effortlessly charms as bluesman Delta Slim. Wunmi Mosaku (His  House, Lovecraft Country) works with Coogler’s direction to turn the horror trope “supernatural expert” (the one person who can explain to the others what’s going on and how to stop it) into the film’s broken heart.

Newcomer Miles Caton shines as the young blues guitarist whose voice is so sweet it can conjure the devil.

The setting and period suit the film beautifully, giving Coogler room to play with ideas of religion and redemption, music and temptation, and everything else that offers hope to the powerless. Every character carries a rich history that you can feel.

Jordan impresses in dual roles, carving out unique but dependent characters. O’Connell delivers lines and lyrics with a lived-in magic, twisting together Coogler’s insightful ideas about how prayer and song are often tools of the oppressor.

It’s scary. It’s sexy. The action slaps. It’s funny when it needs to be, sad just as often. It looks and sounds incredible. And there’s a cameo from Buddy F. Guy, in case you needed a little authenticity.

When Ryan Coogler writes and directs a vampire movie, he gives you reason to believe there is yet new life for the old monster.

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Beauty and the Beatings

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The Ugly Stepsister

by George Wolf

Are we done clutching our pearls about the recent Snow White update? They’re about to get plenty gooey.

Really, writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt doesn’t care either way, she’s too busy infusing her feature debut with an impossible-to-ignore blast of sharp wit, subdued rage, and grotesque bodily horrors.

Yes, The Ugly Stepsister (Den stygge stesøsteren) the latest new angle to a classic tale, but don’t expect it follow the trend of humanizing misunderstood villains. Blichfeldt makes sure there are plenty of bad guys and girls throughout this Norwegian Cinderella story, punctuated by grisly violence surprisingly close to what’s in the 17th Century French version of the fairy tale penned by Charles Perrault.

As her mother Rebekka (Ane Del Torp) is set to marry the wealthy Otto (Ralph Carlsson), braces-wearing, teenage gawk Elvira (Lea Myren, amazing) dreams of one day marrying handsome Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth). But not long after Mom, Elvira and sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) move into Otto’s manor, he drops dead and new stepsister Agnes (the awesomely named Thea Sofie Loch Næss) drops a bomb.

Otto was the one trying to marry for money. They’re broke.

You know the plan that’s hatched: Elvira has to marry Prince Julian. If she can prove herself to be the most beautiful and charming of the “noble virgins” assembled at the upcoming ball, Elvira can secure the family’s future. Neither physical imperfection nor that slut Agnes is going to get in Elvira’s way.

As Elvira learns that “beauty is pain,” Blichfeldt’s aesthetic recalls both Cronenberg and Fargeat, with wince-inducing procedures, the oozing of bodily fluids, and a proud, unflinching satirical lens. This is Blichfeldt’s reminder that these impossible beauty standards have a long history, as do slut shaming, compromised nobility and the limited options of desperation.

Plenty of ugliness to go around.

Myren carries the film with a transformational performance that parallels the impressive physical changes. Elvira arrives as a shy, impressionable child, but when she begins to resemble the required standard, the toll to keep it – while not quite as garish as in The Substance – is equally destructive.

The Ugly Stepsister is fierce, funny, gross and subversively defiant. But is one feature film enough to immediately put Blichfeldt on the watch list of cinema’s feminist hell raisers?

Yes. The shoe fits.

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I Dos and Don’ts

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The Wedding Banquet

by Hope Madden

Back in 1993, Ang Lee scored his first Academy attention when The Wedding Banquet was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. The marriage of convenience farce reimagined rom-com tropes and landed emotional hits thanks to nuanced direction and generous characterizations.

A generation later, director Andrew Ahn reimagines once again. His sweet film reexamines the same culture clash and romantic comedy tropes, this time with more of an insider’s viewpoint in an allegedly more progressive world.

Min (Han Gi-Chan) is a wealthy Korean man in the US, making art and living with his commitment phobic boyfriend, Chris (Bowen Yang). The couple stays in the guest house behind the home of their friends Lee (Lily Gladstone) and Angela (Kelly Marie Tran), long-committed partners living through the heartbreak, hope, and financial burden of IVF.

Min’s student visa is about to expire, and his grandmother (Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung) has decided Min needs to return to Korea and take his place in the family business.

So, Min decides to marry a sex worker…no, wait. That’s a different movie. No, when Chris refuses Min’s sincere marriage proposal, he proposes something different. He will pay for Lee and Angela’s IVF if Angela will marry him to keep him in the country.

What follows is a dear if too broad comedic fable about found family, acceptance, and forgiveness. There’s no way Ahn—working from a script co-written with Lee’s original writing collaborator, James Schamus—could have foreseen the sinister cloud that hangs over immigrants, IVF patients, gay marriage, indigenous women, the entire LGBTQ+ population, and essentially every human represented by a character in this film.

The Wedding Banquet already feels nostalgic for a time when disapproving grandparents and medical bills were the only things a gay couple had to worry about.

That aside, Gladstone, You-jung, and Ang Lee regular Joan Chen (as Angela’s mother) are true talents. They do what they can to bring depth to their roles.

Yang struggles with the dramatic needs of his character while Tran has trouble with the comedic, but there’s charm in the mess. Ahn conjures a bubbly, romantic confection and maybe that’s needed right now.

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Spies Like Us

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The Amateur

by Hope Madden

A lot had changed in black ops, terrorism and surveillance since 1981, when Robert Littell wrote the novel and film The Amateur. The Cold War gave way to a surveillance state where it’s even easier to believe that a guy from CIA’s encryption team could undermine their entire operation.

Rami Malek plays that guy, Charlie Heller. Malek can be an acquired taste, but he brings a believable fragility and oddball quality to Heller that suits the film. When his wife—a photographer in London for a conference—is killed by terrorists, Heller uses compromising intel he has on his department head to get the training he needs to find the four responsible.

Of course, it’s all a double cross, but maybe Heller’s smart enough to have predicted that?

Director James Hawes (One Life, TV’s Slow Horses) keeps the story one step ahead of the audience, building in just enough layers to satisfy without overwhelming.

Malek’s the key ingredient. He projects a vulnerability that makes the ridiculousness believable. His is an unselfconsciously gawky, awkward performance that never leans toward caricature or mockery.

A solid supporting cast including Julianne Nicholson, Holt McCallany, Jon Bernthal, Rachel Brosnahan and Laurence Fishburn help to elevate scenes of exposition or, worse still, naked sentimentality. The script from Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli boasts a somewhat nuanced view of tech-aided murder. It also contains ham-fisted red herrings and silly moments of audience pandering.

Are there leaps in logic? More than a Bourne, fewer than a Bond. It’s the kind of laid-back spy thriller we used to get in the ‘80s and ‘90s—no gorgeous humans jet setting, no big explosions, no breathless vehicular gimmickry. Just normal looking people trying to outsmart one another and an audience that’s fitting the puzzle together as quickly as we can.

The Amateur is no masterpiece. (You should really see Black Bag.) But it is a nice change of pace.

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Can You Hear Me Now?

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Drop

by Hope Madden

The thing about Drop, Christopher Landon’s new first date thriller, is that we’ve seen it before. Maybe not this exact scenario, but the idea. Go all the way back to 2002’s Phone Booth, when Joel Schumacher and a self-righteous sniper trapped Colin Farrell on a pay phone. Or back to 2014 and Drop co-writer Chris Roach’s extortion-by-text-in-the-sky thriller, Non-Stop.

The point has always been that, via our technology, we’re helplessly surveilled and those watching can pull strings we don’t want pulled. It can be effective because it mines our collective reality. And Landon and a game cast keep the cat-and-mouse antics about as believable as they can be.

Meghann Fahy (The Unbreakable Boy, White Lotus) is Violet, a single mom out on her first date since the death of her abusive husband. She leaves her precocious 5-year-old Toby (bespectacled Irish internet sensation Jacob Robinson) at home with her sister (Violett Beane) and heads to a downtown Chicago high rise for a pricy dinner with too-good-to-be-true Henry (Brandon Sklenar).

But before she can even taste that calamari appetizer, Violet’s phone starts pinging with messages, including a command to check her home security footage. If Violet doesn’t kill Henry, the masked man in her living room will kill Toby.

Landon (Freaky, Happy Death Day, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse) has a strong track record with horror comedies, but Drop is not really either. It’s a tidy thriller, and though Landon’s instinct for humor gives the first date banter a charming quality, he can’t quite direct his way out of the script’s physical limitations and storytelling contrivance.

Almost, though. Landon gives the penthouse eatery a dizzying fishbowl quality. Between savvy editing and the cast’s commitment, tensions rise with gamesmanship that usually feels fairly authentic.

But then, a dramatic convenience reminds you that this is a movie, and that no human would react as the character is reacting if, indeed, a gun was pointed at their 5-year-old.

Still, Drop exceeds low expectations mainly on the charisma of the cast and two universal fears: technology and first dates.