Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

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Mortal Kombat II

by Hope Madden

I went into 2021’s Mortal Kombat with the lowest possible expectations. Maybe that’s why I liked it so much. It was dumb. So dumb! But director Simon McQuoid made excellent use of that R rating, there were some real laughs thanks to one character, and more than enough goretastic violence to make up for a lot.  

We lost Hiroyuki Sanada in the first installment, though, which left the franchise with no actors. Who can act, I mean. So, McQuoid, returning for Mortal Kombat II, relies on the ever-reliable Karl Urban to punch things up.

Urban is Johnny F. Cage, washed up 90s action hero (tipped hair and all!). And he’s not interested when the elder gods come calling. Tournament to the death? Dude, he’s got stunt guys for that!

There’s also a necromancer, which means more returning cast than you might expect. This is sometimes a really good thing.

And there’s not that much plot to slog through between the lightning bolts and blood spatter. What’s there involves a subjugated princess (Adeline Rudolph), a very big dude bent on inter-realm domination (Martyn Ford), a Thunder God who oversees warriors of the Earthrealm (Tadanobu Asano), said warriors (Jessica McNamee, Mehcad Brooks, Ludi Lin, Lewis Tan), a washed-up action hero, an amulet, very toothy people, and a bunch of battles to the death.

Less time is spent this go-round on the super meaningful weighty drama of each back story, leaving more time for bloody fisticuffs and what not. These fight sequences lack a lot of the zest for violence and fatalities of McQuoid’s first film, but the Cage foolishness helps to pull the film back from its several brinks of tediousness.

It’s a full 2-hour runtime, just like last time, which is still wildly unnecessary. But casting the fool as the hero helps engagement, especially when the necromancer (Reggie Herriman) starts bringing back the fun guys.

Is Mortal Kombat II as dumb as the first? Almost. Is it as fun? Not quite. But as a bloody, lightningy time waster, it’s A-OK. B-OK. It’s B-OK.

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Fashion Comeback

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The Devil Wears Prada 2

by Hope Madden

It has been 20 years since Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) learned how to dress. And now, after two decades of award-winning investigative work, she’s back at Runway Magazine thanks to the death of journalism.

What makes her think print magazines aren’t also mortally wounded?

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is essentially a mash note to all things analog. Can Andy and the gang save this fashion icon through sheer determination, journalistic integrity and fashion sense?

Hathaway’s co-stars return: Emily Blunt as the irascible Emily, Stanley Tucci as the warm yet caustic Nigel, and Meryl Streep as the formidable Miranda Priestly. Also returning: impeccable costuming, gorgeous locations and glamour. And quips, acerbic remarks, and fish-out-of-water humor. Amanda Priestly flying coach?! Bon dieu!

Yes, Miranda’s lost a bit of her bite. She’s even hanging up her own coat now, thanks to the ever-present HR checklist (a fairly funny gag during staff meetings). No, the real villain in TDWP2 is the soulless maw of progress, personified by the CEO’s son (B.J. Novak) and Emily’s billionaire boyfriend (Justin Theroux). And fast fashion.

While Blunt, Tucci and Streep slip easily back into the old skin, it’s tough to believe Hathaway’s Andy, after years of global investigative journalism, hasn’t developed a thicker skin. Indeed, Andy’s well-intentioned naivete causes as many problems this go-round as it did in 2006.

But that’s the point, right? Update context to the degree necessary but play the hits. Returning director David Frankel and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna understand the assignment.

The stakes never feel as high as they should, the resolution is a telegraphed fantasy, and it’s less fun seeing Miranda Priestly brought down a peg than you’d expect. But Streep looks amazing, and she gives Miranda’s third act the bittersweet vulnerability it deserves. She has too few scenes with Tucci if only because the two are so effortlessly perfect onscreen together. Still, his eye-rolling snarky nurturing is as charming as ever.

Blunt is again the butt of the joke and, again, she shoulders the comedic weight with aplomb.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 ends up being a jacket that doesn’t fit quite as well as it did years ago, but it’s comfortable and it still looks pretty good.  

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Serkis Circus

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Animal Farm

by George Wolf

You may have questions going into the newly realized Animal Farm. And it’s a good bet you’ll have more coming out.

Who is this for exactly? What’s with these changes? Did someone think Orwell didn’t get the point across? And just…why?

For his part, director Andy Serkis has addressed some of these concerns in the weeks leading up to the film’s release. Serkis has stressed that he worked closely with Orwell’s estate, striving to update the classic tale with modern themes and a nod toward understanding “the contradictions within its author.”

That is an ambitious goal, to say the least, and one that Serkis, screenwriter Nicholas Stoller and a star-studded voice cast can’t completely bring to market.

The first major adjustment is adding the character of Lucky (voiced by Gatan Matarazzo), a young pig that serves as a moral compass for younger viewers. Lucky is easily influenced by boss hog Napoleon (Seth Rogen) as the farm rules of equality and fairness are twisted and broken.

Lucky is key to Napoleon’s plan of exploitation, and to making hard working animals like Boxer (Woody Harrelson) believe Napoleon has their best interests at heart. So why is he cozying up to the cyber truck driving tycoon Frieda Pilkington (Glenn Close) and Mr. Whymper the banker (Steve Buscemi)?

Well, some animals are more equal than others. That’s always been the rule!

The fart jokes and obvious humor are a bit jarring for such cherished material, but make it clear Serkis is aiming to give younger audiences a primer in Orwell’s belief that absolute power corrupts absolutely. It’s best to keep that in mind when the movie delivers a new, hope-filled ending that’s a few pastures away from Orwell’s bleak reveal.

To adults who revere that original cautionary tale, much of this overhaul may feel like a blasphemous Chicken Run rebellion. These animals have to decide for themselves that they’ve been hoodwinked, don’t they? So isn’t Lucky’s hand-holding a bit contradictory? And as well meaning as this might be, why risk diluting the power of Orwell that will come when the kids are old enough to grasp it?

After a series of examples both pro and anti-capitalism, the end credits montage cements the message that the enemies are the absolutely corrupt of any ilk. And history has shown they can be overcome.

Some of it works, yes. But honestly, it’s just impossible to come at it with the fresh eyes and clear heads of the ones it appears to be meant for. Do I respect what this Serkis circus is trying to do? Yes.

Do I wish he did it with an original story not named Animal Farm?

Also yes.

New In Theaters

Wrecked Him? Nearly Killed Him!

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Deep Water

by George Wolf

It isn’t too long before counting all the borrowed ideas becomes the most fun Deep Water is offering.

It’s a shark movie, so…Jaws. But you’ll also spot Titanic, the Airport franchise, The Shallows, Train to Busan, The Perfect Storm and a good bit of The Poseidon Adventure.

At least they acknowledge that last one with a Shelly Winters wisecrack, and it’s welcome. Because for a film that seems to think it’s farther above a Sharknado sequel than it ends up being, a bit of self awareness is long overdue.

First, director Renny Harlin has to get us on a plane to Shanghai, so the team of six screenwriters (six!) runs us through a some broadly-drawn Airport style intros of passengers and crew.

In the cockpit we meet the rugged First Officer with personal demons (Aaron Eckhart), the veteran Captain with scalawag charm (Sir Ben Kingsley), and the patient flight attendants (Lucy Barrett, Chrissy Jin). On the passenger list we have the asshole (Angus Sampson), the idiot parents looking to join the Mile High Club (Kelly Gale and Ryan Bown), kids in peril (Molly Belle Wright and Elijah Tamati), the Shelly Winters (Kate Fitzpatrick) and two twentysomething dudes who almost throw hands early on (might they be forced to put aside petty differences and work together??)

The plane crashes into the sea, and the placement of the two main chunks of wreckage allows Harlin to execute some Poseidon-esque set pieces in between shark attacks. Those sharks are CGI, of course, and their ridiculous gymnastics make you long for the true tension of a mechanical maneater that often broke down.

Nothing here is the least bit scary, the writing is obvious and overwrought, and the entire tone is caught awkwardly between giving in to sharksploitation silliness and striving for a well-plotted thriller.

Only Kingsley seems to know which end of the pool Deep Water belongs in. Too bad nobody else let the Cap’n make something fun happen with all these remnants of better movies..

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Irish Spirits

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Hokum

by Hope Madden

Damian Mc Carthy is doing something right. The Irish filmmaker writes original stories, invests time and attention to visual storytelling, and produces eerie, memorable horror. There’s an elegance to his movies, but his tales are not meant simply to provoke thought or to elevate the genre. Caveat, Oddity, and now Hokum draw from a long tradition of Irish horror storytelling and love a jump scare as much as anybody.

Mc Carthy’s latest sees an absolute prick of an American writer (Adam Scott) checking into an Irish inn to spread his parents’ ashes. Is he having a problem with writer’s block? He is! Is the hotel haunted? It is!

Hokum does feel less original than either of the filmmaker’s previous features, but somehow that works in its favor. Mc Carthy knows you think you’ve seen this before, and he leans into its familiarity to lull you.

Scott’s prickly, unpleasant performance at the center of the film is a gift. His unlikability gives the film a nice edge. Scott’s lowkey, brittle performance anchors the macabre whimsy so gorgeously brought to life by Til Frolich’s production design. The inn looks like a place where time stood still, quaint to the eyes of a tourist, spooky in the hands of a talented filmmaker.

Though Mc Carthy’s script feels less original than expected, he knows how to light, pace, and frame scenes to heighten dread. The sound design is also an eerie delight. And Mc Carthy reminds you that jump scares are not just for kiddie horror.

It would be easy for Hokum to feel overstuffed. The protagonist’s own ghost story, a very flesh-bound horror, and don’t forget the witch—that’s a lot to fit into a honeymoon suite. Scott’s grounded performance provides a clear path through it, and Mc Carthy ‘s skill at crafting intelligent yet primal horror pulls it together.

Scene after scene balances a funhouse vibe with Irish folktale spookiness, and the vintage horror beauty of every frame beguiles you. Caviat offered quietly claustrophobic terror. Oddity delivered clever, melancholy horror. Hokum feels more polished yet more old school. It is perhaps less terrifying than Mc Carthy’s previous features, but it’s a haunting good time.

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Full of Grace

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Mother Mary

by Hope Madden

Whatever it is director David Lowery is making, I’m watching. Not every film lands but he always delivers something thought provoking, and his best films are unlike anything else you’ll see.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, A Ghost Story, and The Green Knight were cinematic wonders. His latest, Mother Mary, is as tough to pin down as any of these, and just as gorgeous.

Anne Hathaway is Mother Mary, a Lady Gaga styled music icon and diva in the midst of some kind of prolonged torment who seeks the aid of an old friend. Michaela Coel is Sam, Mother Mary’s oldest confidant and the designer who created the pop star’s legendary look. Ostensibly, Mother Mary needs a gown. In reality, both women are open wounds who need the other, either to heal or to die.

Essentially a chamber piece—more than half of the film takes place in Sam’s barnlike studio—Mother Mary is as poetic and dramatic as a pop song. Lowery, who also writes, seems genuinely empathetic of the isolating nature of superstardom, particularly for those vulnerable souls who create their own art.

Lowery’s vision benefits immeasurably from two outstanding performances. Hathaway seems equally comfortable in semi-surreal concert footage as she does with the raw, constant verge-of-tears intimate drama. And Coel may be the one person who cuts so fascinating a figure that she makes Hathaway look ordinary.

Their fraught back and forth, though occasionally overwritten, feels lived in and wounded but seeking. What they ask of each other allows the filmmaker to pose, but not answer, questions about connection, authenticity, superficiality, fame, creativity, and who ultimately owns the artist and their art.

It’s a heady piece wrapped in silks and sequins, and it won’t be for everybody. But Lowery and his small cast make bold, risky choices. It works because the actors are fully committed and taking those risks themselves, some of which don’t pay off. But Cole and Hathaway bring their vulnerability, buoyed by tremendous talent. The result is a film that feels quite unlike anything else, and for any piece of art, sometimes that’s accomplishment enough.

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War Toys

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Fuze

by Rachel Willis

An unexploded bomb from World War II is discovered at a construction site in the heart of London and a massive effort to diffuse it gets underway in writer/director Ben Hopkin’s film Fuze.

As wild as it sounds, 80-year-old bombs exploding in populated cities in England is not unheard of. A bomb discovered in Exeter in 2021 resulted in the evacuation of 2,600 homes and caused massive property damage.

However, the bomb uncovered in Fuze seems out of the ordinary, and to say anything more would remove the elements of suspense and surprise Hopkins works into every minute.

The best thing about the movie is the unrelenting pace. It never gives you time to second guess some of what’s happening on screen. While some moments might falter under the weight of skepticism, Fuze keeps you hooked by the action. There’s something bigger at play, and the film demands you stay focused as it unfolds.

The cast is more than game for the material. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Theo James play opposite sides of the action. The film moves from one to the other, tension continuing to build as you’re kept on edge, waiting for the next link in the overarching chain.

The downside, though, is that the film doesn’t offer anything in the way of character development. We get little bits and pieces through dialogue, but it’s not enough for us to feel invested in any character. The stakes aren’t high enough, which is a major blunder. The overfocus on plot makes for a tense thriller but not a very interesting one.

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Pop Life

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Michael

by George Wolf

Two of the best things about Michael are hardly shockers. One is a pleasant surprise.

Colman Domingo and Nia Long are both terrific as Michael’s parents Joe and Katherine Jackson. The surprise is Jaafar Jackson, rising to the challenge of carrying this move as his real life, iconic uncle Michael. In an impressive acting debut, Jaafar is assured and charismatic, flashing plenty of natural talent.

And for the first half of this two-hour biopic, director Antoine Fuqua and writer John Logan find some depth with the story of the Jackson 5’s rise from Gary, Indiana to major chart success at Motown.

That’s the movie I would have loved to spend more time with, ditching the greatest hits nostalgia package that followed. Because from the pivotal moment that Michael seeks management from John Branca (Miles Teller) and starts to break away from his domineering father, the film feels force fed and surface level.

The second half is reduced to a parade of very slick recreations of Michael’s most famous pop culture moments (Motown 25, the “Thriller” video, “Beat It” video, Pepsi commercials, the Victory Tour), unabashed fan service wrapped around an overcooked metaphor of a messianic Peter Pan battling an unrelenting Captain Hook.

With most of the family (Janet’s name is noticeably missing) on board as producers, a warts-and-all biography wasn’t to be expected. And while Father Joe takes plenty of hits, they become the springboard for a reminder about Michael’s greatness that’s as nuanced as a fan club prize package.

Though there’s already chatter about a sequel, I’m not convinced the parting bit of onscreen text is guaranteeing a part two that picks things up in the late eighties. As we know, Michael’s later years came with plenty of complications. The smarter play for the family might be take a cue from Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis EPiC.

After these impressive imitations, just raid the vaults, and put the real footage up there in all its IMAX glory. That might fit like a sequined glove.

Michael ends up feeling like an empty suit.

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Living Out Loud

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I Swear

by George Wolf

Honestly, I didn’t know that much about I Swear until Robert Aramayo’s amazing performance won a BAFTA Award earlier this year. Now, after seeing it, I have to wonder why officials from BAFTA and the BBC didn’t take more of its lessons to heart.

The film follows the life of Scottish Tourette’s campaigner John Davidson, and opens with Davidson yelling “F*&$ the Queen” moments before Queen Elizabeth herself presented him with an MBE for services to the Tourette’s community.

As a teenager, Davidson developed Tourette’s with coprolalia, a complex vocal tic which causes “the involuntary, uncontrollable utterance of obscene words, sexual/racial slurs, taboo phrases or profane language.” The condition brought isolation within his community and his own family, leading Davidson to move in with the family of a friend, where he found the unconditional support that launched his journey to help others.

Aramayo’s turn as Davidson is simply astonishing. Beyond the physical and vocal authenticity, Aramayo crafts an endlessly sympathetic arc of frustration, acceptance, perseverance and triumph. Heartbreaking but ultimately joyful, Aramayo’s is a deeply felt performance that fills each scene with a humanity that buoys the film.

Writer/director Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine) is careful to keep events accurate, drawing from the 1989 doc John’s Not Mad, actual clinical trials, and Davidson himself. Nothing here feels overwritten or sensational, as Jones allows the terrific actors (including great support from Maxine Peake as John’s surrogate mother and Shirley Henderson as his actual mum) to work specific moments for emotional depth.

The message of education, patience and understanding is meaningful and lasting. And it reminds you that, with more of each, there was certainly a way to host Davidson at the BAFTA ceremony and still safeguard other attendees and the television audience from the slurs that occurred.

But I Swear can stand on its own merits. It is a film that is able to turn simple human compassion into a crowd-pleasing event. May it play to large, humanity-pleasing crowds.

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Death Do Us Part

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Over Your Dead Body

by George Wolf

Why would Jason Segel plot to kill Samara Weaving?

Has he not seen Ready or Not? Borderline? Azreal? Ready or Not 2?

Segel is surely smart enough to play nice, but Dan – his character in Over Your Dead Body – is not. Dan and Lisa (Weaving) are off on a secluded weekend in a cabin by the lake. After 7 years together, they can barely say a cordial word, but this time Dan is laying the sweetness on pretty thick.

He’s cooked up a great dinner, along with a great alibi. Because after a nice boat ride on the lake, Lisa will sleep with the fishes.

Or not. Because Lisa has a plan of her own. And so do some convicts on the run (Timothy Olyphant, Keith Jardine) and the corrections officer who helped bust them out (Juliette Lewis).

Power shifts, violence and blood splatter ensue!

Writers Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, fresh off the hilariously unhinged Pizza Movie, adapt the 2021 Norwegian film The Trip with a healthy scoop of witty cynicism atop one good ol’ American mean streak.

Segel and Weaving make an excellent pair of frassasins (friendly assassins), he of the emasculated man child and she of the exasperated younger wife wondering what she saw in this guy. Neither is blameless in the demise of the marriage, and the two actors make the deadly bobbing and weaving (pun intended) a surprising, squirm-inducing delight.

Those squirms only increase once the three fugitives enter the fray, and comic director Jorma Taccone (Popstar, MacGruber) forays into body horror with a respectable aversion to sparring the rum or the wisecracks. What starts out as an in-the-moment sendup of how couples avoid therapy takes a nasty turn in the second half. The threat of violence inherent in the premise makes for a smoother transition, but make no mistake: Taccone leans into that R-rating with some serious bloodshed.

If you’re fine with that, Over Your Dead Body is an entertaining genre blast that’s pretty hard to ignore. And by pretty, I mean pretty funny.

And pretty gross.