Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

Sea for Two

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Moana 2

by Hope Madden

Eight years ago, Disney took us to ancient Polynesia for a visually stunning journey of self-realization with an adolescent wayfinder and a narcissistic demi-god. Not a lot has changed in nearly a decade.

Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) is called by her ancestors to face a challenge she believes is too big for her. A god put a curse on an island to keep the people of the sea separated. She’ll need Maui (Dwayne Johnson) to help her.

Literally, that’s the same premise as Moana.

Some of the elements Moana 2 shares in common with the original benefit the film. The animation still looks dazzling, with gorgeous ocean colors, star-bedecked skies and the best hair in any Disney franchise. Songs are fun, and Cravalho’s voice remains as stirring as ever. Johnson’s voice has not improved, but the film makes that work.

“Beyond” is likely to be the song most remembered, but “Get Lost” is a fun one as well. And though the sentiment becomes important to the plot, the character attached to that piece of advice appears and disappears without any real attachment to the film. She’s a needless add on, someone who controls bats in the middle of the ocean.

There’s more goop in the sequel. Lots of slimy, oozy, day-glow goop.

Everything else seems like less. Moana’s high sea adventure involves more help—an actual crew this time—and fewer problems. There are not as many foes, fewer episodes of danger, the quest feels less imperative, stakes seem lower, and characters grow less. It’s like a nice color copy of the original—still pretty, very similar, just not as compelling.

It is good to see some familiar faces, even if those faces are drawn on coconuts, and Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda’s sweet performance and endearing voice bring little sister Simea adorably to life.

Kids’ tales that mine fresh cultural perspectives are always welcome and animated stories aimed at little girls that do not end in marriage are always needed. Moana 2 won’t bore anyone looking for a colorful time waster this holiday season. You’re just not likely to remember it into January.

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We Loved Them Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

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Beatles ’64

by George Wolf

A Beatles documentary? Do we need another Beatles documentary?

I don’t know, do you really need more than one plate on Thanksgiving? I’d say Beatles ’64 is thrilling enough to be pretty damn necessary for anyone even remotely interested in the history of the Fab Four.

David Tedeshi – who served as Martin Scorsese’s editor on both Rolling Thunder Revue and George Harrison: Living in the Material World – takes the director’s chair this time, with Scorcese backing up as producer. Together they showcase incredible BTS footage originally shot by cinéma verité icons David and Albert Maysles. Though the Maysles brothers debuted much of what they shot in their own 1964 documentary “What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A,” this new Disney + feature includes nearly twenty minutes of never-before-seen clips. 

And yes, it is nostalgic gold. Here are John, Paul, George and Ringo, all fresh faced and bursting with humor, energy and naïveté. Caught in the middle of the absolute frenzy that surrounds their first trip to America, they display the boyish charm of enthusiastic tourists eager to experience this long-promised land that’s going wild for their every move.

Well, not everyone is screaming, crying and collecting every piece of Beatle merchandise available (get a load of the guy who still has some unopened Beatle talcum powder!). There are also a few stuffed shirts running kids out of hotel hallways and calling these young pop stars “sick.”

But as enthralling as all these historical snapshots can be, Beatles ’64 finds its own voice in the way it connects past to present with touching context.

“Culture?” We see a young Paul McCartney respond to a reporter. “It’s not culture, it’s a laugh.”

Looking back now six decades later, Sir Paul does acknowledge the cultural shifts that aligned with Beatlemania, not the least of which was a nation mourning JFK’s assassination and utterly desperate for some joy.

Along with the new interviews featuring Paul and Ringo, and some later-in-life comments from John and George, Tedeshi catches up with a few of the teenagers who were there on the front lines of fandom. From writer Jamie Bernstein’s (daughter of Leonard) devotion, to music producer Jack Douglas’s priceless story of his teenage trip to Liverpool, to senior citizens still tearing up about their first Beatles moment so long ago, Beatles ’64 weaves intimate moments from idols and fans alike into a warm and wonderful snapshot of wistful innocence.

The music’s pretty catchy, too.

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Higher Ground

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The Quest: Everest

by George Wolf

Two years ago, documentarian and adventurer Alex Harz explored the culture and fascination surrounding Mt. Everest with The Quest: Nepal. Then earlier this year, he detailed his own Everest climb with 360-degree virtual reality treatment via the short film The Quest: Everest VR.

Now, Harz combines the two for The Quest: Everest, his earnest and committed video diary that is full of heart and conviction, if a bit lacking in cinematic pull.

Harz’s intention to honor the Nepalese people is informative and commendable, and much of his footage on the mountain itself is sufficiently majestic. Harz’s voiceover narration and directing choices are not quite as strong, ultimately keeping the film grounded in facts and declarations instead of reaching the rarified air of true tension, awe and wonder.

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Return of the King

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Gladiator II

by Hope Madden

Ridley Scott knows how to stage an epic. At 87, he’s lost none of his flair with massive battles on land or sea, nor with the brutal intimacy of hand-to-hand combat. And he still knows how to cast a movie.

His narrative skills have taken a step back, but his eye has rarely been sharper.

It’s been 24 years since Scott’s Oscar-bedecked Gladiator cemented its position as the best sword-and-sandal film, but in the age of Caesars, only 14 years have passed. Scott opens Gladiator II with a lovely animated sequence honoring the fallen Maximus, as well as many of the filmmaker’s most iconic images.

And then we land on the film’s present-day African coast, a battle with a Roman navy led by Acacius (Pedro Pascal), a nation subdued, and a grieving widower (Paul Mescal) claimed as prisoner of war.

But we know he’s no ordinary prisoner.

For the next 2+ hours, Scott toys with “echoes through eternity” as he undermines much of the rebellious political nature of his original in favor of a returning king parable. That, a few wobbly accents, a couple of narrative dead spots, and a really poor decision involving sharks weaken the sequel.

But a good gladiator can’t be stopped, and Mescal is a really good gladiator. Russell Crow layered righteous rage with tenderness. Mescal replaces that tenderness with a vulnerability that only makes the rage more unruly. A touch of mischievous good humor humanizes the character and compels attention.

As does Denzel Washington. I dare you to take your eyes off him. Vain but wise, calculating and saucy, Washington’s Macrinus proves a much more complicated foe than the original’s wholly dishonorable, incestuous crybaby Commodus. But the simplicity of good v evil clarified Gladiator’s appeal. Macrinus is harder to hate.

Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger supply the syphilitic excess this go-round as twin Emperors Geta and Caracalla. Connie Nielsen returns, regal as ever, though no more skilled at staging coups. The balance of the cast is uniformly solid if not entirely memorable.

Gladiator II delivers an often exhilarating, mainly gorgeous spectacle populated by enigmatic characters performed admirably. It does not live up to Gladiator. But what could?

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Holiday Season of the Witch

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Wicked

by George Wolf

Even if you’re only a little familiar with Wicked musical, you might know how part one of the long-awaited film adaptation is going to end. Yes, the closer reaches goosebump level, but director Jon M. Chu and some impeccable casting keeps all 2 hours and 40 minutes flying pretty high.

2021’s In the Heights proved Chu knew his way around a musical sequence, and the first hour of Wicked finds Chu honoring the material’s stage roots while bringing movement, space and cinematic flair to the introductory numbers.

“The Wizard and I” uses a changing color palette to underscore Elphaba Thropp’s (Cynthia Erivo) hopes for what her time at Oz’s Shiz University could bring. “What Is This Feeling?” begins growing the scale of production and choreography as Elphaba’s introverted, studious nature clashes with the humorous, self absorbent style of roommate Galinda Upland (Ariana Grande). And Chu utilizes all the stylized spaces in “Elphie” and “Glinda’s” dorm room to bring soundtrack favorite “Popular” to life with zest and mischief.

Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Baily) arrives to turn Glinda’s head, Shiz’s Dean of Sorcery (Michelle Yeoh, customarily terrific) takes a special interest in Elphaba’s supernatural potential, and an invitation from the Wizard comes just as the threats to Oz’s talking animal population grow more dire.

Grande gives Glinda’s vanity a charm that is somehow inviting and often quite funny, while Erivo brings a level of tortured longing to Elphaba that makes her journey all the more resonate. The two leads – who often sang live during production – have the pipes to bring their own brand of magic, and they share a wonderful on screen chemistry that anchors the film.

Even with the winning moments in Wicked‘s first act, there’s a feeling of unrealized potential, that Chu is holding back. But once we get to the Emerald City, the film – much like the “Wicked Witch” – comes into its own.

“One Short Day” ushers in a grand use of scale and color, and Chu makes sure our time spent at home with the Wizard (a perfectly slippery Jeff Goldblum) is eye-popping at nearly every turn. Stellar production design and CGI effects combine for some fantastic world building, and this change of setting is also when screenwriters Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox get the payoff from their time spent exploring the social commentary found in Gregory Maquire’s source novel.

Elphaba’s eyes are opened to the Wizard’s plan for her, and the newly urgent themes of gaslighting and misuse of power push her and Glinda to the brink. Chu gives Elphaba’s character-defining choice the showcase both it and Erivo deserve, propelling “Defying Gravity” to become the show-stopping finale you hoped it would be.

In the nearly thirty years since the Wicked novel kick-started our interest in “reimagining villains,’ the device has already grown pretty stale. Part one of the film version reminds us why we were captivated in the first place, and how satisfying a move from stage to screen can be.

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Shades of Grief

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The Shade

by Adam Barney

You can’t outrun grief. You can’t hide from grief. It lurks and waits for an inopportune time to pounce. In director and co-writer Tyler Chipman’s melancholic psycho-horror feature debut The Shade, grief is physically embodied as a pale creature haunting a family.

Ryan (Chris Galust) witnessed his father’s suicide at a young age. It’s not just his father’s tragic death that haunts him; he also saw a darkness that surrounded his father, portrayed by shadowy, robed figures that were also there to bear witness.

Flash forward to the present and Ryan is a college student who suffers from a severe anxiety disorder. He returns to his depressing hometown to help take care of his younger brother James (Sam Duncan) and help his mom Renee (Laura Benanti). To complicate matters, his trouble-making older brother Jason (Dylan McTee) also returns home and he’s dealing with some serious personal demons. This sounds like typical family drama fare, but Ryan sees a pale monster (credited as the Harpy) lurking around his older brother, portending an unfortunate fate like his father’s.

The Shade wears its metaphors on its sleeves. It is clearly about grief, depression, suicide, and the burden of mental illness in families, and the film mines these themes to varying degrees of success.

“Grief monsters” aren’t new in the genre, we’ve seen them before in The Babadook, The Night House, A Ghost Story, and even 1973’s Don’t Look Now. The Shade seeks to distinguish itself from these other titles through its use of the Harpy—a creepy, feminine figure that it does not hide, and for good reason. The makeup and f/x are excellent. The unsettling creature slinks, stares, and instills dread. There are no real jump scares. The horror comes from this creature and the inevitability that tragedy may only ever be an arm’s length away.

The performances across the board are quite good here. Galust has the heaviest load to lift as Ryan battles anger, guilt, fear, and debilitating anxiety. He manages to share these struggles effectively without going over the top in his performance.

The film is a slow burn—probably too slow a burn for its own good. We get plenty of time with the characters, but the narrative is light on any events or tension that would help hold interest for the two-hour plus runtime. The ending also lacks the emotional punch we have come to expect from a grief monster story and you may be surprised when the credits pop up.

Chipman and his team have crafted an admirable debut with The Shade. The cinematography is quite good throughout, especially with all of the nighttime and low light scenes. I’m definitely interested in whatever they might do next.

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Garbage Day

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Street Trash

by Hope Madden

In 1987, J. Michael Muro unleashed a colorful, sloppy bit of nastiness in bottles labeled Tenafly Viper. Street Trash was unlike anything you’d seen, sort of fearlessly nasty and endlessly goopy, in a way that rejected the notion of a remake.

Wisely, Ryan Kruger (Fried Barry) doesn’t remake it. His new film Street Trash is a sequel of sorts, set in present-day Cape Town. He retains the underdog spirit of the original, injecting it with equal parts irreverence and social commentary.

A repugnant, hateful, spray-tanned dictator in the pocket of billionaires has caused a boom in the population of homeless due to his one-sided economic policies. To clean up the streets so rich people don’t have to see the unhoused left behind by their greed, the politician gleefully greenlights the use of a new agent derived from the old Viper.

If you’ve seen Muro’s original, you know what happens to the poor sods sprayed by the politician’s drones. If you have not, it’s tough to describe, but it is brightly colored and highly viscous.

We tag along with a little band of buddies living on the street and trying to survive. Many alums of Kruger’s lunatic 2020 gem Fried Barry join this party, including ringleader Ronald (Sean Cameron Michael), 2-Bit (Fried Barry himself, Gary Green), Society (Jonathan Pienaar), Chef (Joe Vaz), and Kruger himself as the voice of the possibly imaginary and very horny blue gremlin, Reggie.

Muro sprinkles nods to the original throughout, although I do miss that toilet scene. The acting is sometimes fun, sometimes bad. The writing is also not great. But nobody looking for Shakespeare ever tuned into a movie where street people turn the tables on the 1% and melt them down into vibrant puddles of goo.

The film splashes vibrantly colored innards across the scene with abandon and delivers a message we can all get behind. This gooey mess may just be the healing balm we need right now.

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Brand New Bagmen

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Red One

by George Wolf

Do I want to see J.K. Simmons as a swole, supercool Santa? Yes, I do.

That sounds fun, right? It does, so it’s a big letdown when Red One becomes a soggy holiday slog that feels like way too much like one of Tropic Thunder‘s parody trailers come earnestly to life.

It’s two days before Christmas at the North Pole and Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson) lets Santa know that this will be his last midnight ride. Callum has been Papa Noel’s security chief for centuries, but this year the naughty numbers have finally eclipsed the nice, and he’s had it.

But just when Callum wanted out…dark forces pull him back in, by kidnapping Claus and hatching a Thanos-like plan to reign punishment down on anyone who’s ever so much as sniffed that naughty list.

So yeah, pretty much everyone.

Callum’s boss Zoe (Lucy Liu) turns to Jack O’Malley – the “world’s greatest tracker” – as an unlikely ally. Jack (Chris Evans) has never believed in Santa, is estranged from his own son (Wesley Kimmel) and doesn’t shy away from naughty, but Callum shoots him a steely glare and says those magic words.

“Let’s save Christmas!”

That one moment shows a glimpse of the self-aware romp that Red One might have been, but director Jake Kasdan and writers Chris Morgan and Hiram Garcia bury that promise under an avalanche of exposition and hokey CGI world building.

With Santa under wraps, we get the Johnson and Evans show, and while they’re both likable performers, the odd couple chemistry never quite clicks. Johnson’s uber-seriousness and Evans’s smart-assery both feel forced, while other notable performers (Bonnie Hunt as Mrs. Claus, Kiernan Shipka as the Christmas Witch and Kristopher Hivju as Krampus) are wedged into an already overstuffed narrative.

Any bits of momentum the film can build are undercut by constant speeches explaining the North Pole’s corporate-ready acronyms or Santa’s extensive mythological backstory. Kasdan’s pace is frustrating and inconsistent, with none of the winking fun that gave his Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Jumanji: The Next Level their most enjoyable moments.

The third act rallies a bit, as Simmons/Santa gets back in the saddle and requisite Christmas sentiments of human kindness and full hearts are unwrapped in full. But much like Santa for most Red One‘s two hours, the moviegoing joy is missing in action.

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Of a Feather

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Bird

by Hope Madden

There is nothing quite like an Andrea Arnold film. The writer/director sees through the eyes of cast aside adolescent girls like few other filmmakers, and her own eye for color and detail behind the camera creates transcendent cinematic experiences.

Her latest effort, Bird, represents something closer to magical realism than anything she’s done previously (American Honey, Fish Tank), but her generous nature with characters and her impeccable casting are present, as always.

Bailey (newcomer and treasure Nykiya Adams) is a 12-year-old bored and frustrated with life. She lives with her father, Bug (Barry Keoghan, magnificent as ever), who intends to start making real money with the “drug toad” he’s just brought home. (An actual toad. It “slimes” a hallucinogenic when it hears earnest music.) Across town, her mother’s abusive boyfriend is a threat to Bailey’s three younger half siblings.

Somewhere between the two, Bailey meets Bird (Franz Rogowski). Bird is unusual. At first, she quietly follows him out of curiosity, then a kind of protectiveness, and finally friendship.

Rogowski’s enigmatic performance never patronizes, never bends to the noble outsider cliché.

Keoghan—easily among the most fascinating actors working—exudes a childlike charm that makes Bug irresistible.

Bailey’s life with her father—though hardly a safe or comfortable environment—takes on qualities of a fairy tale, or at least the absence of an adult world. In many ways, Bird tells of his coming-of-age even as it follows his daughter’s.

What makes the third act such a standout—whether you can get behind its surreal quality or you cannot—is the unerring authenticity of the first two acts. And what makes that authenticity so magical in itself is the way Arnold and her cast mine it for beauty.

Arnold is forgiving, though never naïve. There’s plenty of ugliness as well, but spray painted eyes and matching purple jumpsuits have rarely seemed so beautiful.

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Cousins Are Forever

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A Real Pain

by Hope Madden

“My pain is unexceptional, and I don’t feel the need to burden everybody with it.”

It’s a revelation articulated by David Kaplan (Jesse Eisenberg), and just one of countless memorable insights in the screenplay Eisenberg penned for his second feature behind the camera, A Real Pain.

David and cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin) are traveling together to Poland to honor their recently deceased Grandmother Dora, who’d survived the Holocaust by “a thousand little miracles” and left her grandsons funds to make the trip.

David’s been busy with work and family. Benji has not. The odd couple—one reserved and polite, the other charming and wild—join a tour group and embark on their adventure.

Culkin is excellent, delivering a masterful performance that oscillates between charming emotional manipulator and hard-core emotional basket case. The relationship between the cousins is lived-in and fraught. Benji plays Dave, plies him with intimate attention, prods him with tenderness then punishes him the next second. But thanks to Culkin’s raw performance, it’s hard to hold anything against Benji.

Eisenberg’s performance meshes with Culkin’s, reflecting the authentic yin to his yang. In Eisenberg’s hands, Dave’s manipulation is quiet but pointed, his sympathy condescending. The two actors—much thanks to an observant script and delicate direction—carve out the recognizable patterns of family.

Screenwriter Eisenberg complicates characters. The enjoyable verbal sparring between two bright, witty buddies keeps the film entertaining, but the tremendous depth of both performances unearths something surprisingly moving.

Eisenberg’s work as a filmmaker here is very sharp, never taking the cheap shot. Both characters are held to account, but there’s a generosity of spirit in the film that’s equally forgiving.  The result is a poignant treasure.

As an actor, Eisenberg has never been better, truly, and one of his many strengths (as an actor and a filmmaker) is to just let Culkin steal this movie. Benji is recognizable and unforgettable in a film that wants badly to embrace the uncomfortable complications of family, if only it could.