Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

“It” Looks Good, though, Right?

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The Dark Tower

by Hope Madden

So, there’s this tower, see. And it sits at the center of all the parallel worlds of the universe and as long as it stands, it keeps the monsters away. Why? How did it get there? No time!

Anyhoo, an evildoer (Matthew McConaughey) wants to knock it down, let in the monsters and rule it all. But there’s this kid – you know what, let me not summarize what amounts to little more than a summary in the first place. Suffice it to say, The Dark Tower is not very good.

There are a lot of bad Stephen King movies. But even Dreamcatcher, The Night Flier and Sleepwalkers (three of the worst) offered a sort of B-movie charm. The Dark Tower is not even the fun kind of bad. It’s tedious, lumbering and schmaltzy, visually unappealing, narratively embarrassing and a woeful waste of Idris Elba.

McConaughey, on the other hand, makes the most of his time onscreen as Walter – which is a much funnier name for the prince of darkness than Man in Black. As the antagonist, he brandishes a restrained evil and moves with a little swagger, plus there’s that wig. Glorious! Real Shatner – hell, even Travolta-esque.

But McConaughey and Elba – true talents, no doubt – are hamstrung from the beginning by the production’s meat-cleaver-and-band-aid approach to screenwriting.

Nobody is more convinced than I am that Stephen King uses too damn many words. Too damn many! Succinct he will never be. But to believe you can boil his multi-volume, many-thousand-page Dark Tower series into a coherent 90 minutes is just brazen idiocy. No offense to the team of writers working on the adaptation – some of whom have talent; the other one is Akiva Goldsman.

Director Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair– also credited with writing) is zero help, managing to take this Cliff’s Notes version of King’s prose and still produce something bloated and slow.

I remember reviewing the Tom Cruise debacle The Mummy earlier this year and thinking, this isn’t even any fun, it’s just bad. Dark Tower makes The Mummy feel like a rollicking good time.

But, hey, the trailers for It look great, don’t they?

Verdict-1-5-Stars

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Protect This House

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An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power

by George Wolf

Plenty of movie sequels hit theaters every year, and plenty are unnecessary. Too bad this isn’t one of those.

If the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth sounded a dire alarm over ten years ago, Truth to Power conveys how vital the climate change crisis still is, while channeling its most prominent spokesman to remain ever hopeful in the face of gut-wrenching setbacks.

Taking the reins from Davis Guggenheim, co-directors Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk (producer and director, respectively, of another stirring climate-based doc The Island President) shift the format to one less about filmed lecture and more focused on Al Gore’s daily commitment to the cause he has championed for over two decades.

We still see the charts, the data, and the photographic evidence, all never less than bracing and some frequently stupefying. But this time, we also see how vast the political and bureaucratic roadblocks have grown, as Gore laments the “democracy crisis” now looming large over any progress toward climate change reversal.

Are Cohen and Shenk preaching to the choir? Is their shared admiration for Gore constantly evident? Yes on both counts. But the sermon is damned persuasive and the man has earned it.

Gore’s commitment, often appearing both tireless and lonely, might be most evident while under pompous questioning by ardent climate change denier Jim Inhofe. Gore’s exasperated olive branch to Inhofe is both patient and sincere, revealing an eye for the long game he continues to fight.

And yet, even as the rise of Donald Trump threatens every inch of hard-won climate progress, Gore’s meeting with a staunchly conservative mayor shows common ground is still possible.

In what the mayor calls “the reddest city in the reddest county in the entire state of Texas,” they’ve made the switch to renewable energy because it not only makes economic sense, it makes common sense. Imagine that.

Supreme Court decisions have consequences, and while Truth to Power might make you hopeful for another presidential run from Gore, it never lets you forget he’s right where he needs to be.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

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Still Just a Rat in a Cage

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Some Freaks

by Christie Robb

High school, amirite? Setting of so many movies: The Breakfast Club, Heathers, Clueless, Mean Girls… and lately, Some Freaks, written and directed by Ian MacAllister McDonald.

McDonald’s perspective on high school is bleak, lonely. The other kids whisper about you behind your back, when not being physically menacing. The adults are absent. And even your closest friends are kind of douchey, sensing your weak spots and needling them under the guise of jokes.

The action starts with a one-eyed dude named Matt (Thomas Mann), who is stalked by classmates desperate to see what’s under the eyepatch. And maybe capture a photo of the gaping hole to upload to the internet.

He’s partnered up with the new girl, Jill (Lily Mae Harrington), to dissect a fetal pig in biology. Turns out she’s related to his only friend Elmo (Ely Henry), a fast-talking wannabe popular kid who monologues about getting into his jock crush’s gym shorts, but is quick to lash out at anyone but Matt who seems clued into his sexuality.

After school, Matt and Elmo chat while playing video games on Elmo’s couch, sharing some misogynistic fat girl jokes. Then Jill walks in.

She’s living with Elmo’s family for a while. She’s fat – and the clear butt of the jokes. But she just lets it slide. Jill has clearly been putting up with this bullshit for years and has a fairly thick skin when it comes to sexism and body shaming.

With this auspicious beginning, Jill and Matt stumble into the sort of romantic relationship you have when your main reason for being there is to put a temporary patch on the gaping wound of your own loneliness and poor self-esteem.

Jill flies across country to college, but Jill and Matt take their relationship long distance with Jill sending Matt provocative selfies.

After six months, Matt flies out, step one in his plan to move in with Jill permanently. She’s lost 50 pounds, changed her formerly green hair to a sunny blonde, and traded in her punk gear for a more boho vibe. All the photos she’d sent him were taken before her transformation. He hates it.

Unwilling to let Jill change, Matt attempts to regain the status quo. A quo in which Matt was the only man who could find her attractive (besides “elderly degenerates”), and thus, had no competition. No reason to think about how he measures up to other guys.

Contrary to movies like John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club, the coming together of these teenage misfits doesn’t do much to bond them and bolster their self-esteem. Instead, each of the central characters remains isolated with their own damage, even if sometimes physically close. Their very proximity gives them increased ability to wound each other.

The climax of the film, in which each character attends a party that provides a setting for them to confront their greatest insecurities, seems a little contrived. Some characters are underwritten, making their motivations in these moments a bit confusing.

However, the film is well acted. Each member of the cast does a decent job of portraying their character as a mixture of victim and aggressor. Harrington stands out, providing emotional depth behind her wariness and verbal armor, undergoing an impressive physical transformation for the role.

Some Freaks does not provide a cheery John Hughes ending, but may be a more authentic representation of the high school experience for some.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFtR28a6Qf8

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Talk to the Hand

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The Emoji Movie

by George Wolf

I don’t pretend to understand the emoji game, but I do know that getting Patrick Stewart to voice the poop seems like a classy way to go.

But the star of The Emoji Movie is Gene (T.J. Miller), a young “meh” emoji ready for his first day on the job in teenager Alex’s smartphone.

Gene wants to emote more feelings than just “meh,” so things don’t go well, and he’s quickly labeled as a malfunction and targeted for deletion. With the help of a “high five” fixated on his glory days (James Corden), Gene runs for his life in search of the legendary hacker “Jailbreak” (Anna Faris) who might be able to get them all to freedom in a valhalla known as the cloud.

Director/co-writer Tony Leondis (Lilo & Stitch 2, Igor) pinches the secret world from Toy Story with the run through technology of Inside Out to present an adventure just clever enough to remind you how much potential was disregarded. The idea is timely and probably inevitable, but never developed much beyond pleasant time-waster status.

It’s rarely more than amusing, the visuals can’t rise above average, and the “be true to yourself” mantra is entirely generic.

There is a big dance number, though, which inexplicably doesn’t involve Stewart.

Poop.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

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Missed Connections

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Landline

by Hope Madden

Jenny Slate is the perfect mix of raunchy and sweet to anchor an indie dramedy. Co-writer/director Gillian Robespierre tested that theory in 2014 with the character study and edgy rom/com Obvious Child.

Following on those proven results, Robespierre re-tests her theory with the 1995 family saga Landline.

Slate plays Dana, the older, almost-married sister in an upscale Manhattan family. But she and her ever-since-college beau Ben (Jay Duplass) are maybe not everything Dana hoped they’d be.

Her own entanglements with infidelity happen to exactly coincide with a discovery younger sister Ali (Abby Quinn) makes of their father’s (John Turturro) erotic poetry, written for someone who is definitely not their mother (Edie Falco).

Things begin to fall apart. Ali’s lived-in resentment toward her overbearing mother is tested and turned instead toward her sweet, laid back father. Meanwhile Dana embraces recklessness and begins hanging out with her boundary-pushing teenage sister, drinking during the day and sneaking away for clandestine sexual encounters with Nate (pitch-perfect Finn Wittrock).

So, crumbling family dynamics in a well-to-do Manhattan family. Not exactly as edgy as a romantic comedy written around an abortion.

Still, between its loving nostalgia for the pre-cellphone days of the mid-Nineties and its truly game cast, Landline keeps you interested and entertained.

Falco and Turturro are unfortunately underused. Both are spectacular talents, and their well-worn relationship offers each the opportunity to create moments of sudden, honest, everyday heartbreak.

The characteristically effervescent Slate charms, and her off kilter chemistry with Quinn serves the film well. They’re irritated and protective, bitching and admiring all in the same breath. They often feel unsure of their own feelings toward each other, which reads as very authentic.

Quinn is the real heartbeat of the film. Equally vulnerable and mean, she’s less the cinematic equivalent of a conflicted adolescent than she is a conflicted adolescent, and the film takes on a sharp focus whenever she’s onscreen.

Unfortunately, that’s not all the time, and Robespierre – writing again with Elisabeth Holm – loses focus too easily. Landline, for all its insightful moments and clever lines, feels a bit unwieldy and murky.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

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Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blonde in Me

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Atomic Blonde

by Hope Madden

Charlize Theron is a convincing badass. (You saw Fury Road, right?) She cuts an imposing figure and gives (and takes) a beating with panache.

Director David Leitch understands action, having cut his teeth as a stunt double before moving on to choreographing and coordinating action for the last decade. With the help of a wicked soundtrack and about a million costume changes, he also makes 1989 seem cool – which is a real feat.

Together, Theron and Leitch take on Antony Johnston and Sam Hart’s graphic novel The Coldest City, under the far more rockin’ title Atomic Blonde.

It’s Berlin in ’89. The wall’s about to come down, the Cold War’s coming to an end, but there’s this pesky double agent issue to contend with, and a list of coverts that has fallen into the wrong hands. MI6 sends in one lethal operative, Lorraine Broughton (Theron), to check in with their embedded agent Percival (James McAvoy) and work things out.

What to expect: intrigue, Bowie songs, boots – so many boots! – and a great deal of Charlize Theron beating up on people. Mayhem of the coolest sort.

From the opening car crash through half a dozen other expertly choreographed set pieces to the action pièce de résistance, Theron and Leitch make magic happen. Each sequence outshines the one before, leading up to a lengthy, multi-villain escapade shot as if in one extremely lengthy take. (It isn’t, but the look is convincing and the execution thrilling.)

Theron delivers. Reliable as ever, McAvoy is once again that guy you don’t know whether to love or hate – probably because he always looks like he’s smiling and crying simultaneously. He makes for a wild and dicey counterpoint to Theron’s sleek, ultra cool presence.

Precise and percussive, the action propels this film. Leitch’s cadence outside these sequences sometimes stalls, and not every casting choice works out.

Sofia Boutella, saddled with an underdeveloped character who makes idiotic choices, suffers badly in the role. Other supporting characters, though – including the always welcome Toby Jones and John Goodman – take better advantage of their limited time onscreen.

The storyline itself is equal parts convoluted and obvious, with far too many conveniences to hold up as a real spy thriller. But unplug, soak up that Berlin vibe and appreciate the action and you’ll do fine.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

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Spirit in the Material World

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A Ghost Story

by George Wolf

Before some empty misnomers such as “prestige horror” are bandied about, let’s be clear: this is not a horror movie.

But what A Ghost Story is not hardly matters when what it is remains this beautiful. Writer/director David Lowery has crafted a poetic, moving testament to the certainty of time, the inevitability of death and the timeless search for connection.

Opening with a telling quote from Virginia Woolf’s short story “A Haunted House,” Lowery shows us Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara as a loving couple at odds over whether to move from their current house. She wants to, he doesn’t.

A car accident tragically takes his life, and as her life must move on, his spirit rises to wander as the silent, white-sheeted embodiment of any number of homemade Halloween costumes.

The irony of such a childlike image representing themes so vast and existential seems silly, but only for a few moments, until Lowery’s stationary camera and long, elegant takes wrap you in a strangely hypnotic trance.

After the curious detour of Pete’s Dragon last year, Lowery returns to the dreamlike imagery that drove his richly rewarding Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and evokes the best of Terrence Malick. Here, the Malick comparisons may be even more apt as A Ghost Story‘s narrative is loose and abstract, with long stretches of little to no dialogue.

Both Affleck and Mara (also Lowery’s leads from Bodies Saints) are deeply affecting, though a big part of the film’s conscience is instead revealed through the monologue of a random one-scene character. That’s fitting, for what makes this film so eerily touching is not what it tells but what it shows, and our ache for the couple comes in part from their staying out of our reach.

As the ghost travels through time and circumstance, it’s easy to see Woolf’s short story as a major inspiration for Lowery – right up to the sudden and glorious finale that’s sure to fuel plenty of conversation. Restless spirits amid the slow, silent march of mortality may sound like a horror show, but A Ghost Story is anchored by a loving hope that might bring a tear to the eye.

Verdict-4-5-Stars

 

 

 

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You’re Killing Me, Smalls

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It Stains the Sands Red

by Hope Madden

Given the recent, tragic passing of filmmaking icon George A. Romero, you may find yourself nostalgic for the walking dead. Not just any hungry, re-animated cadaver, but the kind that serve as a parable or vehicle for self-awareness. The slow moving kind. The kind you don’t know whether to fear, pity or admire.

It Stains the Sands Red is here for you.

Director/co-writer Colin Minihan, with co-writer Stuart Ortiz (formerly known collectively as The Vicious Brothers), tests your patience, but the effort mostly pays off.

We open with some impressive aerial shots of the smoking, neon ruin of the Las Vegas strip. Cut to another gorgeous aerial of a sports car zipping up a desert highway. In it, a couple of coked-up strip club lowlifes, Molly (Brittany Allen) and Nick (Merwin Mondesir), are escaping to an airfield where they’ll meet with other lowlifes and head to an island off Mexico.

Naturally, this isn’t going to work out. But what Minihan has in store will surprise you.

He’s made a couple of fine choices with his film. The point of view character is not only an unlikely protagonist – an unpleasant thug with a drug habit – but she’s also female.

Soon the car goes off the road and one meathead catches her scent, and suddenly Molly’s stripper shoes are not her biggest problem as she faces a 30-mile trek across the desert to the airfield.

Molly names her zombie pursuer Smalls, but she may as well call him Wilson.

What develops is an often fascinating, slow moving but relentless chase as well as a character study. With a protagonist on a perilous journey toward redemption, It Stains the Sands Red takes a structure generally reserved for the man who needs to rediscover his inner manhood and tells a very female story.

Very female. Menstruation and everything.

Credit to the formerly Vicious for investing in a female’s perspective, and for doing it some level of justice.

Allen makes a great anti-heroine. Convincingly hard-knock and difficult to like, she never becomes the would-be lunch meat you root against.

As is too often the case in film – horror, thriller or otherwise – the only way a female can tap that survival instinct is by way of the maternal one. This picture becomes too predictable and too sentimental once it embraces this cliché, but that’s not reason enough to condemn it.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

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Get Thee to a Nunnery

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The Little Hours

by George Wolf

Two nuns lead a wandering donkey back home to their convent in the 1600s. The groundskeeper offers them a quiet, respectful good morrow. In response, the sisters promptly unleash a torrent of f-bomb filled abuse his way, with an aggressive command to keep his perverted eyes to himself.

Welcome to the The Little Hours, a desert-dry sendup of one of the classic tales in The Decameron, a 14th century Italian novel.

This update from writer/director Jeff Baena (Life After Beth, script for I Heart Huckabees) keeps the original text’s basic premise. Servant Massetto (Dave Franco) is running for his life after being caught canoodling Francesca (Lauren Weedman), the wife of Lord Bruno (Nick Offerman). Father Tommasso (John C. Reilly) offers Massetto refuge as the new groundskeeper at the convent, but only if he pretends to be a deaf/mute.

Deal.

The handsome Massetto is fresh meat to the ladies of the convent, many of whom are not there from a Godly calling. In short order, Massetto is juggling the sweet Alessandra (Alison Brie), the crazy Fernanda (Aubrey Plaza, also one of the film’s producers) and the sexually confused Ginerva (Kate Micucci).

The Holy Grail scene with Sir Galahad in Castle Anthrax will come to mind, and not just for the lustful young ladies. The entire affair has the feel of a Monty Python setup that just never turns a silly corner. The extremely talented ensemble (which also includes Molly Shannon, Fred Armisen and more) plays it nearly stone-faced all the way, just daring you to think there is anything humorous about their anachronistic sex farce.

Some of it is screamingly funny, and other times the film falls flat. Through it all, though, there runs a sly comment on the treatment of women (specifically in the Church) that’s smart and well-played.

It’s never a consistent gut-buster, but The Little Hours is inspired, ambitious lunacy that is always entertaining.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meGfRXMSW9c

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Coasting on Good Looks

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Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

by Hope Madden

There is a pleasantly madcap quality to the environments filmmaker Luc Besson creates. His best work combines that untamed world – whether earthbound and criminal or colorfully intergalactic – with unusual characters performing slickly choreographed action.

His lesser efforts don’t. On that note, meet Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

Based on France’s beloved comic series about a pair of time and space-hopping agents, Besson’s film looks pretty cool.

Not as good as Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, or Matt Reeves’s War for the Planet of the Apes, or Spider-Man: Homecoming or Baby Driver or about one out of every three movies released so far this summer.

At this point in cinematic history, you have to bring more to the screen than visual flair.

What else you got, Luc?

Because it’s not acting.

Dane DeHaan plays Valerian. Poorly. Wildly miscast as the scoundrel flyboy who might find love with his partner, the often reliable actor cannot make his way through Besson’s stilted, lifeless banter.

DeHaan has a better time of it than Cara Delevingne as Valerian’s strong-willed partner Laureline – perhaps because Delevingne has no discernible talent.

Still, the writing is awful and she’d be in a tough spot even if she did have talent. Just ask Clive Owen. He has talent galore and even he embarrasses himself with this garbage.

To be fair, Valerian is basically a kids’ movie. Except for that extended and utterly needless stripper sequence showcasing Rihanna. But if you cut that out (if only we could – along with at least another 15 minutes, because damn this movie is long!), then you basically have a kids’ movie.

Not a good one. So just don’t set your standards too high. Go in looking for an overly long, addle-brained extra-terrestrial romp that looks great and you’ll be fine.

Unless you really want quality acting. Valerian an’t help you there.

Verdict-2-0-Stars