Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

The Talented Monsieur Jérémie

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Misericordia

by Matt Weiner

It’s a familiar story in the sleepy French town of Saint-Martial. Traditional ways of life are being upended, like getting your fresh bread from the village baker instead of a large supermarket chain. Or spending the afternoon on the farm knocking back shots of milky pastis. Or seeking absolution from the local priest and becoming entwined in a psychosexual conspiracy that effortlessly weaves together morality, sex, violence and a laugh-out-loud penis sight gag.

… Make that a familiar noir thriller until Misericordia director and writer Alain Guiraudie puts his own assured stamp on it.

Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) returns home from Toulouse to attend the funeral of his former boss, Jean-Pierre. The widow Martine (Catherine Frot) knows how close the two were, and Jérémie stays with her as he entertains the idea of taking over the local bakery with Jean-Pierre gone.

Martine’s hot-headed son Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand) resents how quickly Jérémie insinuates himself back into the village, and especially his apparent closeness with Martine. Jérémie and Vincent have an uneasy familiarity. And as Jérémie overstays his welcome, the menacing play-fighting between the two spills into a vicious confrontation in the woods. Jérémie, overtaken by a burst of passionate violence, murders Vincent and hides the body—but not without being seen by the village priest (Jacques Develay).

All this setup feels like the start of a light noir in the countryside, but Guiraudie delights in blowing up all expectations. What unfolds after the murder is an unnerving philosophical cover-up, where the lonely priest plays both confessor and emotional blackmailer to the unraveling Jérémie. In this stylized version of Saint-Martial, sexual identities run together as fluidly as Jérémie’s collapsing alibis, something the gendarmes have begun investigating with a persistence that is equal parts dogged and inept.

Guiraudie’s existential detours as Jérémie and his perhaps too-forgiving priest are serious, but Misericordia is also unexpectedly funny. From Jérémie’s fickle and deadpan sexual escapades across town to Develay’s arch attitudes toward crime and punishment, there’s more than a little twisted homage not only to the thriller side of Hitchcock but also to the ink-black sense of humor.

Jérémie’s desires, seemingly like those of everyone else in Saint-Martial, are unknowable to all but his conscience and God. It’s just the sort of moral predicament that calls for a good priest… if only Jérémie knew one in town he could trust.

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Boys to Men

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Sacramento

by George Wolf

“You would bail. I see it all over your face.”

First their first meeting on opposite sides of a serene California lake, Tallie (Maya Erskine) sizes up Rickey (Michael Anganaro) pretty well.

Anganaro’s instincts are just as sharp in Sacramento, only his second feature as writer/director after decades of acting gigs. It’s a witty combination of finely-drawn characters, consistently boasting a dry self-awareness that earns the LOLs.

Rickey favors socks with sandals, giving unlicensed psychological counseling, and milking sympathy from the semi-recent death of his father. Dropping in (literally, from a tree) on his buddy Glenn in L.A., Rickey suggests a spur-of-the-moment road trip to Sacramento – for old times sake!

But Glenn is a husband who out kicked his coverage and a neurotic soon-to-be father, trying to assemble cribs and hold on to his job while his pregnant wife Rosie (Kristen Stewart) exhibits the calm, pragmatic demeanor of an actual grownup. She’s patiently understanding of the boys’ self-important tomfoolery, and up the road they go.

Yes, there are some hi-jinx typical of road movies, but Anganaro’s dialog is always crisp and surprising enough to keep you engaged and curious. Both he and Cera delivering affecting performances that ground the characters enough to hilariously elevate what are essentially pretentious bouts of “I know you are but what am I?”

And why would Stewart sign on to just be the understanding wife at home? She wouldn’t, and Rosie is more than that. She and Tallie become nuanced, interesting characters essential to this journey, and the film would crumble without them and the turns from both Stewart and Erskine.

Anganaro also has a good sense of pacing, wisely keeping things moving quickly enough to wrap up before conveniences turn to contrivance.

Sacramento haș plenty of fun with arrested development – Glenn’s desperate phone calls to one of his old buddies are awkwardly hilarious. But the film’s heart comes from those moments when boys (and girls, too) start accepting the responsibilities of adulthood. It’s far from a new story, but these characters make it one worth revisiting.

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Audacity to Burn

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Thank You Very Much

by George Wolf

Watching Thank You Very Much, you can’t help but wonder how this might land for someone who didn’t live through the Andy Kaufman phenomenon. He was such a pop culture anomaly that even the best explanation wouldn’t completely clue in the uninitiated.

That’s a compliment to Kaufman’s fearless approach to comedy. And to director Alex Braverman’s credit, he assumes you’re coming to his film hoping for a better understanding of the maverick you remember.

Braverman, a veteran TV director and cinematographer, is blessed with some great archival footage, and some very personal interviews with Kaufman’s former girlfriend Lynne Marguiles and his partner in performance art hi-jinx, Bob Zmuda.

Kaufman’s greatest hits – from Mighty Mouse to Elvis to ice cream to Taxi to Tony Clifton and wrestling women – are all here, along with an acceptable summation for newbies about Kaufman’s goals as an entertainer.

From his start at the comedy clubs, Kaufman didn’t tell jokes. Instead, he wielded a brazen “audacity to burn stage time,” and gradually turned that into a quest to blur performance lines until his audience had only one reaction.

“Was that for real?”

It’s all a fine reminder of Kaufman’s unique legacy, but the film makes its best mark by deconstructing his motivations with as clear of a lens as we’re likely to get. We see a young boy deeply affected his grandfather’s death, a restless soul embracing transcendental meditation and a wrestling fan influenced by “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers.

Plus, we meet the real life inspiration for Latka Gravas!

Braverman also rolls out a succession of interviews with fellow comics, co-stars and admirers, though many of these are dated by fashion or hairstyle and appear more self-indulgent than essential. What isn’t stale is the sly way Braverman is able to make the obnoxious Clifton and his manufactured outrage seem pretty damn prescient.

Thank You Very Much.

Did you read that with Latka’s voice in you head? Then don’t miss this film.

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A Mother’s Burden

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Eric LaRue

by Hope Madden

The film Eric LaRue pairs two of modern cinema’s most talented and least appreciated actors: Judy Greer and Michael Shannon. Intriguingly, Shannon doesn’t appear onscreen. Instead, he makes his feature directorial debut with this emotionally raw drama about a mother’s spiral after her son murders three of his classmates.

As we meet Janice (Greer), she’s struggling just to make it through a grocery store when she runs into Pastor Steve (Paul Sparks, pitch perfect). The dynamic these two actors and their director develop in this crucial scene sets the tone for a movie unafraid to get messy and stay there.

Pastor Steve wants to help. He sincerely does. He doesn’t want to think about what happened, doesn’t want to blame anybody for anything, doesn’t want to rehash the ugliness of the incident. He wants to help this woman clean her wounds and end the infection, but definitely does not want her ripping off any scabs to get there.

Likewise, across town at the more evangelical Redeemer church, Janice’s husband Ron (Alexander Skarsgård) is being wooed into an even cleaner and more complete erasure of his pain by giving his burden to Jesus.

Janice is just not sure any of this helps. And even if it does, it’s not the help she wants.

Shannon directs a script by Brett Neveu, the screen adaptation of his own stage play. It’s a tough story, and one that’s been covered by some outstanding indie films: Fran Kranz’s 2021 chamber piece Mass, and Lynne Ramsay’s 2011 masterpiece We Need to Talk About Kevin ranking among the best.  

Eric LaRue leans closer to Mass in that it examines the influence of religion on the grief, shame, and anger left after such a crime. But Shannon mines his material for a different outcome. A single moment of surreal absurdism (in a booth at Cracklin’ Jane’s restaurant) underscores the film’s cynicism concerning the good-faith efforts of religion to end suffering.

Skarsgård breaks your heart as an awkward, broken man trying desperately to move past his pain. A supporting cast including Tracy Letts, Lawrence Grimm, Kate Arrington, Nation Sage Henrikson, and especially Annie Parisse, delivers precise and authentic turns. But it’s Greer whose powerful performance—full of anger, shame, regret, longing, disappointment and most of all weariness—plays across her face in ways that seem achingly real.

Not everything works, but every performance is remarkable and there is bravery and power behind the message that life and death are messy things.

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Freaks Off the Leash

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Freaky Tales

by George Wolf

Look, I’m not saying I didn’t expect someone to make a Sleepy-Floyd-as-a-ninja-assassin horror comedy. I am saying I didn’t expect it to be Boden and Fleck.

Eric “Sleepy” Floyd played thirteen years in the NBA, making the All Star team in 1987 as a member of the Golden State Warriors. Freaky Tales makes him the heroic centerpiece of a wild anthology that loves the late 80s, Oakland, and Nazis dying some horrible deaths.

Let’s party!

Ryan Fleck may be an Oakland native, but his films with partner Anna Boden haven’t primed us for this campy, Grindhouse detour. Breaking in with the standout indie dramas Half Nelson and Sugar, they moved closer to the mainstream with the road tripping gamblers of Mississippi Grind before giving Captain Marvel a satisfying MCU debut in 2019.

Freaky Tales feels like a return to a low budget indie mindset, where ambitious and energetic newcomers want to showcase their favorite movies, music, and neighborhoods while they splatter blood and blow shit up.

The tone is set in the first of four chapters, when local skinheads make a habit of busting up a punk club. Pushed too far, the young, pierced pacifists decide to take bloody revenge with the help of a Scott Pilgrim aesthetic and a glowing green substance seemingly from another world.

Episodes two and three back off on the bloodletting, but begin interconnecting the tales with shared characters. A racist cop (Ben Mendelsohn) harasses two ice cream shop clerks (Normani, Dominique Thorne) before they get the chance to battle rap star Too $hort (DeMario Symba Driver, although the real rapper is also in the cast) onstage at a local hip hop club.

Meanwhile, an organized crime enforcer on the way to losing all he cares about (Pedro Pascal) disappoints a snobbish video rental guy (Tom Hanks in a fun cameo) while references to Sleepy Floyd (Insecure‘s Jay Ellis) get more and more frequent.

Part four brings everything together in an explosion of Metallica metal and Tarrantino-esque alternative history, with Floyd slicing up enough bad guys to impress Uma Thurman before breaking out the break dancing that runs beside the closing credits.

If you haven’t guessed, this is a crazy ride that has plenty to offer fans of bloody fun and WTF plot turns. And while the middle chapters sometimes tread water compared with the action splatter of parts one and four, give Boden and Fleck credit for throwing us one we didn’t see coming.

Buried under all this blood and camp, the film displays a genuine love of time, place and genre that you cannot ignore. These Freaky Tales are truly off the leash, usually in the best possible way.

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Boys of Summer

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Hell of a Summer

by Hope Madden

Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk are not the first to send up the summer camp slasher. They may not even be the first this year. But that fact doesn’t make Hell of a Summer any less delightful.

The co-directors and co-writers are also co-stars, playing two best friends returning to their beloved Camp Pinewood for the first time as counselors rather than campers. Bryk’s Bobby is a wannabe Romeo hoping to score. Wolfhard’s Chris is a little more enlightened.

“Single use plastics are the real killer.”

Among the charms the writers bring to the film is the ironically unironic Gen Z humor, which can’t help but set the film apart from similarly themed comedies. The pair also invest in character. Yes, the circle of counselors looks like every other set of doomed slasher victims: horny teens making bad decisions. And while no actor is asked to shade in a lot of various grays, each character has enough screen time that their jokes feel character driven and earned.

Abby Quinn shines as the grungier kid in the bunch, but it’s Fred Hechinger—who had one hell of a 2024, with roles in Thelma, The Nickel Boys, and Gladiator II—who steals this movie. The same sweet natured haplessness that fueled his turn as devoted grandson in Thelma lends power to the trope-skewering at the center of this film.

Hell of a Summer’s subversions are never heavy handed. They’re almost delicate, with quietly observed authenticity that echoes the film’s—and generation’s—underlying, if often comedic, empathy.

The plot itself could have used a few more solid surprises. Hell of a Summer does not set out to reinvent the wheel, and even commits to one of the genre’s most tiresome new stereotypes. (The social media influencer has replaced the rich, popular blonde as horror’s shorthand for victim most deserving a comeuppance.)

Still, it’s fun while it lasts. And Fred Hechinger is a treasure.

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Shadow Dancing

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The Woman in the Yard

by Hope Madden

Exciting news! There’s a new scary movie starring Danielle Deadwyler—you know, who should have  been Oscar nominated in 2024 for The Piano Lesson and in 2022 for Till? Well, the Academy may not appreciate her talent, but horror does. Deadwyler leads director Jaume Collet-Serra’s new Blumhouse PG-13 scarefest, The Woman in the Yard.

Deadwyler plays Ramona. Newly widowed and still badly battered from the wreck that took her husband, Ramona wakes up one morning to a power outage, sick dog, irritated children, and a creepy woman in her front yard. Give her strength.

Peyton Jackson impresses as the adolescent son, pushing boundaries partly because of his age, partly because of necessity. The authenticity of his interplay with Deadwyler rattles you, each act of rebellion ratcheting tension inside the farmhouse everyone is afraid to leave and not entirely sure why.

Okwui Okpokwasili cuts an impressive figure as the Woman—elegant, hypnotic, and terrifying. The film’s entire cast consists of five people, but you never tire of them and each pulls their weight.

The cast’s commitment, chemistry, and the anxiety they build help the film feel more robust than it really is. An obvious metaphor finely cloaked in veils, shadows, and leg braces, The Woman in the Yard sometimes feels a little slight.

Sam Stefanak’s script skirts awfully close to being an American remake of an Australian classic. So close that I won’t mention the title to avoid spoilers. But Collet-Serra has fun with shadows, and his off-kilter camera work draws attention to how tightly the story comes together.

And, of course, Deadwyler’s excellent. She mines the character for the depths necessary to pull off the horror. You feel for Ramona, but you may not like her, and you probably don’t trust her. It’s a fascinating performance and fearless in many ways.

The film around her is no masterpiece, but it is a solid piece of genre filmmaking enlivened by bright performances and dark, nasty shadows.

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Me So Horny

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Death of a Unicorn

by George Wolf

Man, what’s with all these “eat the rich” movies lately?

Cough, cough..it’s a mystery. But Death of a Unicorn treats the idea more literally than most. And though it ultimately pulls up too safely, the film does have some fun unleashing mythical mayhem and the bloodiest of comeuppances.

Elliot (Paul Rudd) and his daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) are driving through the mountains to the Leopold Wilderness Preserve, a sprawling compound named for the family that runs the big Pharma firm where Elliot is legal counsel.

Elliot and Ridley’s relationship is still fractured from the recent death of their respective wife and mother, and their front seat bickering takes Eliot’s eyes off the road long enough to strike what really looks like a unicorn.

Misplaced priorities leave Elliot too worried about blowing his big promotion, so they load the beast in the rental car (“I got the damage waiver!”) and head on up the road where cancer-stricken CEO Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant), his wife Belinda (Téa Leoni) and their designer shorts-loving son Shepard (Will Poulter) are waiting.

But Unicorns are too magical to stay dead, and they have healing powers that can cure things like acne and cancer. Big Pharma families find those cures very attractive, while Big Uni is out to punish the greedy.

This is the feature debut for writer/director Alex Sharfman, and his high concept is always kept afloat by the underplayed commitment of this cast. Characters fall somewhere between the big eyebrows of Mickey 17 and the dark button pushing of Companion, with Leoni’s dry asides (“Not to be a size queen, but that horn was rather girthy”) and Poulter’s daft Dunning-Krugering scoring the most laughs.

Though the unicorns themselves could use more pixie dust in their CGI, Ortega sells her spiritual connection to them, and to the legend she uncovers that traces the “final girl” back much further than we knew. It’s a shame Sharfman doesn’t follow that thread long enough for a killer connection between peasants.

Instead, we get warm fuzzies, and the point of all this carnage ends up feeling muted. Even with literal rich-eating, Death of a Unicorn just won’t commit to the bit as giddily as something like Ready or Not, and a true lasting impression remains an elusive beast.

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Diamond Life

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Eephus

by George Wolf

Any serious baseball fan knows what comes with that first chill of the fall. If you’re lucky, your favorite team may be playing for a few more weeks. But even so, it won’t be long before – as former MLB commissioner Bart Giamatti so eloquently put it – “the days are all twilight, when you need (baseball) the most, it stops.”

For the men at the heart of the wonderfully nostalgic Eephus, those twilight days have turned into years, and they suddenly find themselves desperately clinging to the last few moments of boyhood joy.

It’s mid-October in a small New Hampshire town, and rec league teams are assembling to wrap up the season at Soldiers Field. Some bellies are a bit larger, some fastballs are a bit slower, but the cracks are as wise as ever and the love of the game has never wavered. And though what bleachers there are will be nearly empty, Franny (Cliff Blake) will be keeping the scorebook as usual, and there may even be fireworks after the final out.

Because next year, local development will bulldoze the field, and these players may have to accept a future without that diamond life.

Director/co-writer (and veteran cinematographer) Carson Lund finds the emotional pull that exists in the space between an enduring game and the souls forced to let it move on without them. The ensemble cast (including legendary MLB free spirt Bill “Spaceman” Lee on hand to perfectly illustrate the titular type of pitch) is authentic and eccentric in equal measure, and anyone who has ever spent time around the ballfield will recognize these people, and the simpler way of life that may also be slipping away.

Lund’s writing is warm and witty, with a sense of pace that is unhurried, perfectly reflecting the one American team sport without a time clock. And at the end of the film’s single day, when the league’s last game goes into extra innings and darkness falls, the cool night air is heavy with metaphor and meaning.

Another great baseball movie reminded us that “This field, this game, is a part of our past.” Beautiful.

But what if you could hold on to those last minutes of the present just a little bit longer – even if you eat dirt just trying to beat out a weak grounder to third? Eephus conjures up enough romantic notions to spur a trip down to the basement looking for the old ball and glove.

Just be sure to warm up first. You’re not a kid anymore, you know.

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Princess Problem Solver

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Snow White

by George Wolf

Death, taxes…Disney live action remakes?

We may not be there quite yet, but the train keeps rolling with Snow White, an update that’s consistently appealing enough to rise above an unsteady opening and one unfortunate choice.

Much of that winning appeal comes from a terrific Rachel Zegler, who commands the title role with confidence and zest. Pairing Zegler with a well-cast Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen, the film dives into their royal power struggle and finds a nice sweet spot between honoring a classic and nudging it toward new sensibilities.

That new attitude starts right from the “Once Upon a Time” prologue, where we get a new inspiration for the name Show White, and a quick look inside a wholesome upbringing that focused on the common good.

Her stepmother’s attitude toward power is especially timely, and the Magic Mirror (in great voice thanks to Patrick Page) is quick to point out that beauty can be more than what’s seen in a simple reflection.

Once Snow White is grown, with her royal father out of sight and her wicked stepmother on the throne, Director Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer, The Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2) and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary, Chloe, The Girl on the Train) give us a princess who is still in peril, but is not content to wait around for a handsome prince to save her and her kingdom.

In fact, there’s no handsome prince in sight. Oh, sure, she’s attracted to the rouge-ish peasant Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), but this Snow White’s not about to stay home with the dwarfs while he does all the heroic adventuring.

We’ll get to those dwarfs in a minute.

Songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul provide original tunes, and while the style they brought to The Greatest Showman, Spirited, and Dear Evan Hansen will be instantly familiar, the songs here showcase the talent, bolster the narrative, and add a little new Disney magic.

Zegler soars on “Waiting on a Wish,” and Gadot – in her best turn since Wonder Woman – seems positively giddy to vamp it up on “All Is Fair,” the Evil Queen’s defiant ode to evildoing. Burnap and Zegler both have fun with “Princess Problems,” a tongue-in-cheek framing of privilege and stereotypes, but their audience of dwarfs only calls more attention the film’s nagging question.

This is a live action remake, correct? So why are the dwarfs not played by live actors? The CGI results seem to point to an attempt at making them look as much like the original cartoon characters as possible, which is curious at best. Much of the film is committed to a new vision, how did this tired one get through?

The CGI animals I get – they’re cute – but man these dwarfs become such an albatross it’s even more impressive that Snow White manages to charm despite them, and the few too many opening minutes spent on exposition.

But it does, and Disney’s live action scorecard earns one in the ‘plus’ column.