Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

Spy vs. Spy

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Black Bag

by George Wolf

What is more diabolical: enacting a global plan for widespread destruction, or pursuing a selfish agenda in your relationship, ready to twist the knife precisely where it hurts your partner the most?

Black Bag has a satchel full of fun weighing the two options, as director Steven Soderbergh and a crackling ensemble contrast the power plays in both love connections and spy games.

Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett (already sounds good, right?) are downright delicious as Londoners George Woodhouse and Kathryn St. Jean, master spies and devoted spouses. He’s emotionless and tidy, an expert cook, and a dogged sleuth with a hatred of dishonesty. She’s cool, calculating and seductive, with a wry sense of humor, a prescription for anxiety meds and a sudden cloud of suspicion around her.

Could Kathryn really be the mole who has stolen a lethal malware program and is shopping it to Soviet extremists? And can George be trusted with the job of investigating his own wife? The agency director (Pierce Brosnan) doesn’t hold back his distaste for the predicament.

While hosting a dinner party for two other couples who also mix business and pleasure – Freddie (Tom Burke)/Clarissa (Marisa Abela, so good as Amy Winehouse in Back to Black) and James (Regé-Jean Page)/Zoe (Naomie Harris) – George spots the first clue that Kathyrn’s allegiances may be compromised.

So the game is on.

Veteran screenwriter David Koepp follows his minimalist winner Presence with a smart and twisty throwback drama, relying less on action and more on dialog and plot, often staying a step ahead of your questions about internal logic. There’s a good bit of dry British humor here, too, which these stellar performers dig into with understandable relish.

From the opening prologue – an extended take that winds through the cityscape with purpose – Soderbergh seems perfectly at home with this self-assured style . The aesthetic is lush and sometimes showy, but in a relaxed manner of somebody who knows his audience is going to appreciate it.

They should. Black Bag is an adult-centric drama that offers bona fide movie stars, glamour and romance, challenges, surprises and humor. And it gets it all done in 90 minutes. Throw in a fine meal beforehand, and you’ve got a damn fine date night that just might put you in a pretty friendly mood when you get home.

Don’t waste it.

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Feeling No Pain

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Novocaine

by Hope Madden

So, this mild-mannered bank manager (Jack Quaid) has a rare medical condition, and he can’t feel pain. He spends his entire life extremely cautious because with even a minor injury, he could bleed to death without knowing he’s even injured.  But then the girl of his dreams is kidnapped by bank robbers, and he decides to risk everything, use the condition to his advantage and save her.

Yes, that does sound like the most contrived movie ever—no doubt good for a handful of action gags but ultimately superficial and dopey.

Don’t sell Novocaine short.

The film is a smart rom com loaded with action and laughs, tenderness and badassery. Amber Midthunder (Prey) plays Sherry, the flirtatious extrovert who finally nudges Nate (Quaid) toward the real, scary, injury-friendly world. Their chemistry is sweet and authentic. You get why Nate decides to risk it all.

Ray Nicholson is a lot of fun as the gleefully sadistic bank robber, and Spider-Man’s bestie Jacob Batalon delivers reliably enjoyable goofy best friend vibes. A bright, engaging ensemble including Betty Gabriel and Matt Walsh elevates every scene with subtle comic instincts that strengthen both the action and the draw of human relationships.

Directors Ben Berkand and Robert Olsen (The Body, Villains) invest in the comedic possibilities of every action set up without overpowering the action itself. Car chases, fisticuffs, shoot outs and more are choreographed for thrill, performed for laughs. It’s a delightful mix.

None of it would work if Quaid couldn’t effortlessly sell the sad sack loverboy, but he does. Never does this feel like a fella with a particular set of skills. The lanky actor does lovestruck and low confidence equal justice.

One of the reasons the film succeeds the way it does is that Lars Jacobson’s script does not hate Nate as he is. The film wants him to take some risks, sure, but nothing about Novocaine believes what Nate needs is to man up and kick some ass. He’s a romantic, as awe struck by Midthunder as the audience is, and we’re all just rooting for their happily ever after. And some Neosporin.

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Stinking, Thinking and Saving Lives

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The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie

by Hope Madden

I am not what you would call a Looney Tunes fan. Writer/director Peter Browngardt and co-writers Kevin Costello and Alex Kirwan (along with a writing team of at least a dozen) clearly are. Their animated feature The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie delivers looney adventures that are hard to deny.

Essentially an odd couple buddy picture, the film follows Porky Pig and Daffy Duck as their live progress from youngsters with their beloved Farmer Jim, to adults with a problem. On the one hand, the problem is the hole that alien space pod left in their roof.

On the other hand: ALIEN SPACE POD?!!!

Though a bizarre tone and a wild variety of animation styles entertains, the film’s a tad slow moving at first. But once the bubblegum monster shows up, things get pretty fun.

Eric Bauza voices both Daffy and Porky without losing any of the character that made the two popular in the early going. Daffy, that chaos agent, is delivered with the love and lunacy necessary not only to do justice to his long history of animated disruption, but to serve a real narrative purpose. Because Porky, upon meeting the weird but efficient Petunia Pig (Candi Milo), begins to crave the kind of life you can have without a buddy who uses an oversized mallet to solve problems.

Browngardt makes sure you’re emotionally conflicted. That’s pretty impressive, really.

But mainly, he and his animation team make sure you’re entertained with clever sight gags, surprising humor, fascinating animation, and a fun B-movie vibe.

It gets weird, this one. But when the chips are down and the gum zombies are chewin’, these two will rise to the occasion.

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It’s Guys Like You

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Mickey 17

by Hope Madden

People mainly familiar with filmmaker Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-sweeping masterpiece Parasite may not know of his remarkable skill with a SciFi creature feature. Mickey 17, then, will be an excellent primer.

Robert Pattinson is the titular Mickey. Well, he’s a bunch of Mickeys, all 17 of them. Hoping to get away from some pretty bad fellas on Earth, Mickey signs up for a flight of space pioneers, but there’s a lot of competition to make the voyage and he has no skills so he signs on as an expendable: a clone who, for the betterment of science, subjects himself daily to every conceivable new threat so science can better prepare the non-expendables.

Chief among the unexpendable on this colonizing mission are the commander, vainglorious attention whore Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), and Lady to his Macbeth, Ylfa (Toni Collette).

Joining Mickey onboard are his best friend, con-man extraordinaire Timo (Steven Yeun, playing delightfully against type) and the love of his many, many lives, Nasha (Naomi Ackie, Blink Twice).

Pattinson’s a hilarious, self-deprecating charmer, a man who believes he somehow deserves his fate. Fates. Through him the filmmaker employs absurd, sometimes even slapstick humor to satirize our own current fate. Beautifully (and characteristically), all of this is in favor of the reminder that our humanity requires us to be humane.

There’s great tenderness in this film, though it competes with sharp satire and fun action. But what fuels every scene, however lunatic or sweet or absurd, is the heat of Bong’s rage. His more than capable ensemble—from the sycophant scientist (Cameron Britton) to the ego-stroking puppet master (Daniel Henshall) to the guy forever dressed as a mascot (Tim Key) and on and on—brings every enraged idea to vivid, remarkable, too-close-to-home life.

Weaving sensibilities and ideas present in Snowpiercer, Okja, The Host as well as any number of clone movies, Mickey 17 could feel borrowed. It doesn’t. Like the best science fiction, it feels close enough to reality to be a bit nightmarish.

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Art Imitating Life Imitating Opera

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Seven Veils

by George Wolf

Real-life creative roadblocks pushed filmmaker Atom Egoyan to channel his frustrations into a new project. Seven Veils is the result, an impressively crafted and consistently compelling psychological drama of life imitating art imitating opera.

A few years back, Egoyan was set to re-mount his vision of Richard Strauss’s Salome with the Canadian Opera Company. Producers blocked some of Egoyan’s proposed changes, which led him to create the character of Jeanine.

Jeanine (Amanda Seyfried) is a young theatre director given the reins to a re-mount of Salome, which was the crown jewel in the resume of her mentor, Charles. Producers would no doubt prefer someone more seasoned at the helm, but it was Charles’s dying wish for Jeanine to direct, and she dives into the project with earnest ambition and a complicated past.

Repressed trauma begins to influence Jeanine’s edits to the production, and her ideas are met with a resistance that leads to mockery.

Egoyan (Chloe, The Sweet Hereafter) was able to incorporate the set of his own staging of Salome into the Seven Veils production, giving the film’s fictional opera a sumptuous, authentic visual pull that helps to seamlessly blur the narrative lines.

Because whether these characters are on stage or off, Egoyan funnels every thread through the act of spectating. Jeanine watches rehearsals. Cast and crew watch Jeanine. Jeanine has face-time conversations with her mother and her estranged husband, while production artist Clea’s (Rebecca Liddiard, an ensemble standout) BTS vlogs fuel some desperate backstage deal-making.

And as Jeanine complains about the effect of an intimacy coordinator on her plans for more overt sexuality onstage, persistent flashbacks foreshadow the film’s third act turn toward melodrama. It’s Seyfried’s committed performance that keeps the series of reveals from collapsing under pulpy self-indulgence.

Jeanine is clearly working through some things, and Seyfried makes it worthwhile to labor along with her. Instead of overwrought hysterics, Seyfried brings a slowly unraveling intensity to Jeanine, allowing the unease that inspired Egoyan’s Seven Veils to play out as a fascinating peek behind the creative curtain.

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Grow Old Along With Me

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The Rule of Jenny Pen

by Hope Madden

In 2021, Kiwi filmmaker James Ashcroft made his feature debut with the lean and unforgiving thriller Coming Home in the Dark. While his follow up discards the taut terror of a road picture in favor of lunacy and a hand puppet, The Rule of Jenny Pen mines similar tensions. Vulnerability, institutional ignorance, helplessness, bullying—Jenny Pen comes at it from a different angle, but the damage done bears a tragic resemblance.

The great Geoffrey Rush is Judge Stefan Mortensen, a self-righteous ass who finds himself institutionalized after a stroke. But as soon as he’s better, he’ll be out of there. In the meantime, he will berate and belittle staff and patients alike—even his kind roommate, Sonny (Nathaniel Lees).

But Dave Creely (John Lithgow, never creepier) doesn’t think the judge is going anywhere. He doesn’t think he’s such a much, if you want to know the truth, and he looks forward to pressing every vulnerability the judge has, terrorizing him until he breaks him. Just as Dave has broken every other patient at the home—with the help of his bald little hand puppet, Jenny Pen.

Back in the Sixties, hagsploitation (or psycho-biddie films) featured middle aged women with likely mental health concerns that led to various kinds of horror: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?; Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte; Strait-Jacket. The women’s age was what made them suspect, the films reveling in the grotesquerie of their images.

Lately, though, filmmakers are realizing that the more powerful horror mines our own fears by empathizing with the aged characters, forcing us to see through their eyes. Relic, Bingo Hell, The Taking of Deborah Logan, The Demon Disorder and Bubba Ho-Tep all focus on the inevitable and terrifying vulnerabilities of aging.

The Rule of Jenny Pen fits neatly into this real estate. Ashcroft’s direction situates the sadistic within the well-meaning. Hospital staff, visiting musicians, family members—all genuinely hope to make the world better for these patients. But this is a world Dave knows well, and he exploits every opportunity to wield his and Jenny’s sadistic power.

Lithgow’s a maniac, making the most of his substantial physical presence among the fragile patients and delivering the most unseemly moments with relish. And Rush is his absolute equal. The veteran broadcasts pomposity with rigid authenticity that only lends power to the judge’s most helpless moments.

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Eerie Desert Vibes

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The Buildout

by Daniel Baldwin

When The Buildout opens, a religious group known as “The Clergy” is set on establishing a home in a remote part of a desert. Vague references are made to the fact that they’ve moved around a few times in search of a place where they can find a deep spiritual connection.  Is this dusty and arid middle-of-nowhere locale what they’ve long sought? Given that this is a horror movie, the answer is undoubtedly yes, while also falling into the “Be Careful What You Wish For” category.

Our leads – Hannah Alline (Mayfair Witches) and Jenna Kanell (Terrifier) – are two friends on a road trip who make the unfortunate decision to stop in that same area for a pee break. What follows is what one might call a “vibes movie”, where mood is tantamount to plot-based events. If you can roll with that, The Buildout may just be for you.

This is the feature-length debut of writer/director Zeshaan Younus and it’s an impressive one. Shot with a small cast and crew for pennies on the dollar, it still manages to pack both an aural and a visual punch. The footage is a mix of more classic anamorphic cinematography and camcorder vlogs, giving it a distinctive feel. The sound mix is full and immersive. From a technical standpoint, it’s exactly what one hopes to be gifted when they sit down with an indie genre film: something that looks like it cost way more to make than it actually did.

While the script falters a bit, Alline and Kanell are great together, which smooths over the film’s narrative deficiencies. The otherworldliness of what occurs to their characters brings to mind the early films of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. The Buildout might not be quite as impactful as their feature debut, Resolution, but it’s playing in similar terrain. Enough so that it makes one excited to see what Younus might conjure up next.

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Rolling Along

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My Dead Friend Zoe

by Hope Madden

Filmmaker Kyle Hausmann-Stokes impresses with his feature debut, My Dead Friend Zoe. Based on his 2022 short Merit x Zoe, the film follows Army veteran Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green, Star Trek: Discovery) as she tries to overcome some post-Afghanistan trauma.

Merit’s best friend Zoe (Natalie Morales)—who is, as you might surmise from the title, dead—isn’t making recovery easy. A constant companion (at therapy, on dates, etc.), Zoe— as well as Merit’s noticeable interactions with the invisible friend—is a big part of Merit’s problem.

But therapy will have to hang on because Merit’s hero, Vietnam Veteran grandpa (Ed Harris), has early onset Alzheimer’s and Merit (with Zoe in tow) needs to get to the family lake house and figure things out.

While the title and premise may sound a tad flippant, My Dead Friend Zoe turns out to be a rewarding and earnest drama. Morales delivers a boldly funny and equally vulnerable turn, and love interest Alex (Utkarsh Ambudkar) injects the film with charming, self-deprecating humor. But the levity tends to enrich the film’s truly human quality rather than distract from its underlying tensions.

Hausman-Stokes’s patient direction and unsentimental script, co-written with Cherish Chen and A.J. Bermudez, slowly uncover Merit’s trauma, which gives the unfolding family drama the attention and respect it needs.

Martin-Green’s stoic performance is offset by well-timed flashbacks to the friendship during active duty. So often in other films, this structure feels cliché and formulaic, as the look back teases a dark episode that the frivolity is meant to contrast with. Instead, Hausman-Stokes and his remarkable cast clarify the joyous bond the two women shared, deepening the sense of loss that is now drowning Merit.

We’ve seen plenty of solid dramas depicting struggles facing veterans, Megan Leavey, Thank You for Your Service, American Sniper, and the masterpiece Leave No Trace among them. The commonality My Best Friend Zoe shares with these films is the profound need for the veteran services currently on the DOGE chopping block. While My Dead Friend Zoe’s delightful and moving buddy picture vibe carves a different direction than the others took, the message is even more urgent.

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Success Is No Accident

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Trigger Happy

by Rachel Willis

Unhappy George (Tyler Poelle) has a plan. Miserable at work, miserable at home, George needs a change. His chosen method for changing his life becomes a madcap adventure of sorts in director Tiffany Kim Stevens’s film, Trigger Happy.

Since misery loves company, George isn’t alone in his dissatisfaction. George’s wife, aspiring actor Annie (Elsha Kim), is as annoyed with George as he is with her. Several others express their frustrations and despairs in various ways as well.

Thankfully, Stevens isn’t interested in making us miserable. Rather than wallow with unhappy characters, we watch as George, Annie, and their friends find ways to improve their circumstances through torrid affairs, spouse murder fantasies, and hilarious professional accomplishments.

Of course, because none of the characters are honest with each other, or even themselves, misunderstandings abound. What could almost be described as comedic hijinks occur, except they’re a little too bloody to be truly called hijinks.

Stevens, co-writing with Daniel Moya, pens dialog with a strange, melodic poetry that gives it a musical quality, adding a level of surrealism to the film. George’s increasing frustrations play well with this quality.

Adding to Trigger Happy‘s uncanniness is the slyly revealed reality of George’s world, which isn’t quite the same as ours. It’s not obvious at first, but as the film progresses, more hints are dropped. And as the title of the movie suggests, guns abound (not so different from our world in that way).

Each person in George’s world is compelling in their own unique way. Though some play a bigger part in George’s misery than others, none of the ancillary characters feel unnecessary. From his coworkers to his boss, to the friendly shop owner, each person has a place in George’s orbit.

Still, it’s Annie, as both his antagonist and his wife, who has the most commanding presence in George’s life. It’s easy to love and loathe both characters.

Trigger Happy is, overall, a winning parody about the miseries of everyday living.

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Horny Danger

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Riff Raff

by George Wolf

What’s that you say? The Monkey‘s brand of humor wasn’t dark enough for ya?

Well Merry F-ing Christmas. Riff Raff lives where it’s none more black, crafting just enough murderous, deadpan funny business to make it worthwhile.

The trouble all starts when Rocco (Lewis Pullman) and his pregnant girlfriend Marina (Emanuela Postacchini) run into Johnny (Michael Angelo Covino). The three share a romantic and friendly past, but when Johnny turns violent Rocco retaliates, which means he and Marina quickly find themselves on the run from Johnny’s gangster father, Lefty (Bill Murray).

The two head to Maine, and check in with Rocco’s father Vincent (Ed Harris), his wife Sandy (Gabrielle Union) and their teenage son D.J. (Miles J. Harvey). Oh, yeah, Rocco’s mother/Vincent’s ex Ruth (Jennifer Coolidge) is there, too, and danger sure makes her horny!

Hubba hubba, then, because danger’s on the way. Lefty and his henchman Lonnie (Pete Davidson) are coming to settle plenty of scores with Rocco’s extended brood.

There’s already much to keep track of, even before director Dito Montiel and writer John Pollono add in various time jumps and voiceover narration from young D.J. At times it feels like they’re both pushing too hard for nutty originality, desperate to put distance between this and other films you’ll be reminded of – especially Bad Times at the El Royale (also with Pullman).

What the film does have in its corner is a winning cast of vets who are all in on this dark ride. Of course, Murray and Coolidge are both a hoot, but Pullman and Postacchini seem believably desperate, Harris and Union hide their character secrets well, and Davidson brings a comically sympathetic layer to the doting and lethal Lonnie.

And when P.J. Byrne and Brooke Dillman pop in as an oversharing couple of suburbanites who are too clueless to be scared, their few minutes of exaggerated laughs are a welcome yin to the yang in the rest of the film.

It’s dry, bloody and violent, and is sure to be polarizing. If that’s an approach that speaks to you, Riff Raff can be downright hilarious. But chances are you may find this family crime caper as curious as it is funny.