Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

Holiday Season of the Witch

Leave a comment

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.

New In Theaters

Shades of Grief

Leave a comment

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.

New In Theaters

Garbage Day

Leave a comment

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.

New In Theaters

Brand New Bagmen

Leave a comment

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.

New In Theaters

Of a Feather

Leave a comment

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.

New In Theaters

Cousins Are Forever

Leave a comment

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.

New In Theaters

Play It With Feeling

Leave a comment

The Piano Lesson

by George Wolf

You can often find ghosts lurking in the plays of August Wilson. His characters work to forge a better future for their families, haunted by the trauma and systemic racism that has beaten them down for generations.

Those themes also define Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, while a vengeful spirit from the past adds a layer of the supernatural to director and co-writer Malcolm Washington’s debut feature.

Malcolm’s brother John David Washington plays Boy Willie, who brings his friend Lymon (Ray Fisher) and a truck full of watermelons to visit his sister Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler) and uncle Doaker (Samuel L. Jackson) in 1936 Pittsburgh.

Boy Willie’s plan is to buy a piece of farm land back home in Mississippi, and all he needs is cash he’ll get from selling all the watermelons…and the family piano sitting in Berniece’s living room.

That second part is going to be a problem.

The piano is an important piece of the family’s history, and we feel its weight thanks to the way these remarkable actors – several of whom also played their roles on Broadway – illuminate Wilson’s wonderful prose. The well-defined living room scenes recall the film’s Pulitzer Prize-winning stage roots, while Malcolm Washington displays understated skill with weaving in more cinematic shades.

Flashbacks to the early 1900s deepen the resonance of what Berniece holds dear, and add to the mystery of the ghost sightings that occur upstairs. Visits from the talented Wining Boy (Michael Potts) spur breaks into song, allowing the musical pieces (and another moving score from Alexandre Desplat) to provide more organic building blocks toward a memorable narrative.

As a strong-but-cautious woman fighting for both her past and her future, Deadwyler is an award-worthy revelation. John David Washington has never been better, managing an impressive balance between Boy Willie’s manic ambition and his sobering reality. Mother and daughter Paulette and Olivia Washington join the ensemble, with Denzel and daughter Katie Washington’s producer credits rounding out the true family affair.

And for a story so deeply rooted in family legacy, that seems only right. The Piano Lesson is played with a committed intensity of feeling, giving a symphony of talent the room to honor its source material with lasting resonance.

New In Theaters

Good Evening

Leave a comment

My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock

by Matt Weiner

My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock isn’t the first Alfred Hitchcock documentary in the last decade. It’s not even the second prominent one. But this unique take on the director’s entire filmography sets out to show why these movies have not only endured, but continue to speak to audiences—and some of our seamiest impulses.

My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock is a welcome companion piece to the other recent documentaries, falling somewhere between the broad interrogation of 2015’s Hitchcock/Truffaut and the technical hyper-focus of 2017’s 78/52. Writer and director Mark Cousins uses Hitchcock’s “voice” and—more importantly—almost exclusively clips from his films to take a fresh look at the legend.

Thankfully for anyone tackling a feature-length video essay, you’re at a huge advantage when the subject is Alfred Hitchcock. Cousins breaks the documentary up into six key themes, some expected (height, escape) but others taking a surprising metaphysical turn.

It’s hard not to want to dive into a full Hitchcock movie after watching the clips. Especially notable is the amount of time that Cousins devotes to the less usual suspects. There are the silent films and early movies pre-Hollywood, but also plenty of love for techniques in his late films that show him fully in command of his craft.

Even the classics that have been analyzed to death show off new themes. If you want more on the shower, well… there’s an entire movie for that. It was novel to sit with some of the other parts of movies like Psycho or North by Northwest without getting caught up on “that scene.”

The documentary’s strict adherence to showing us “what’s on the page” has some limits, though. Hitchcock’s wife, Alma, gets a section of the movie. But it doesn’t do justice to her role, not just as beloved muse, but extremely influential collaborator. 

And then there’s the voice. Hitchcock gets a writing and voice credit at the start of the film, and it isn’t a spoiler to point out that Alfred Hitchcock is not writing new scripts in this century. The voice belongs to English impressionist Alistair McGowan, who does a solid job sounding equally plummy and put-upon.

But it’s an affectation that wears across the two-hour runtime, especially when it shouldn’t be a surprise reveal to tell the audience that this was just part of the artifice of film. Cousins’ script, plus the exceptionally deep range of highlights, stand on their own without the gimmick. The shots speak for themselves to reveal even more than the voice of the director himself ever could, if you buy into the psychology behind the movies. And Cousins makes a decent case that you should.

New In Theaters

You Need Involvement

Leave a comment

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

by George Wolf

It is surprising that it’s taken this long for The Best Christmas Pageant Ever to come to theaters. Well, it’s here now, courtesy of a release date that brings with it some sad irony.

Barbara Robinson’s 1972 children’s novel did get a TV adaptation in ’83 with Loretta Swit and an 11-year-old Fairuza Balk, but now a team of faith-based filmmaking veterans brings the wholesome Holiday message to the big screen with easily digestible intentions.

Beth Bradley (Lauren Graham) is set to direct the latest production of her church’s Annual Christmas Pageant in the small town of Emmanuel. But before beginning auditions, Beth narrates the uplifting story of the town’s 75th pageant, when some misfit kids taught everyone about loving thy neighbor.

Beth takes us back to when she was a child (played by Molly Belle Wright) watching her mother Grace (the always welcome Judy Greer) volunteer to take over the play when longtime director Mrs. Armstrong (Mariam Bernstein) breaks both her legs. The town busybodies aren’t wild about this, especially when Grace allows the six feral Herdman kids to join the cast.

They smoke, cuss, steal and fight, and are often left on their own thanks to a runaway father and a mother working several jobs to get by. The Herdmans wander in to the church looking for snacks, and end up volunteering for the best roles in the play, including the intense Imogene (Beatrice Schneider, a natural) as Mary and wild little Gladys (Kynlee Heiman) as the Angel of the Lord.

Even if you aren’t familiar with the source material, you can probably guess how things turn out and what lessons are learned. Director Dallas Jenkins (“The Chosen” TV series) wraps everything in a nostalgic picture book presentation that recalls A Christmas Story, making sure all the brushstrokes of character, circumstance and humor are broadly drawn and safely conservative. The congregation is predominately white, with women as the sanctimonious busybodies, and the men as patient, understanding elders. Jenkins and his writing team of Platte Clark, Darin McDaniel and Ryan Swanson do manage to squeeze in one nod to a deeper conversation with a reference to the Herdman clan looking “like refugees.”

But remember, this larger-scale Best Christmas Pageant Ever is still aimed at young viewers, and for that target it is serviceable. For adults, the most compelling aspect here is the glaring hypocrisy of so many who will be recommending it. We in America want the children to know what Jesus taught about compassion, charity, inclusion and judging not, and we’ll spend this Christmas season giving plenty of lip service to peace and goodwill. And then we’ll just keep refusing to practice any of that.

Maybe this film could be a small step toward turning things around?

Check the current headlines, and get back to me.

New In Theaters

Not So Silent Night

Leave a comment

Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point

by George Wolf

So, what happens on Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point?

Murder mystery? Love triangle? A miracle of faith?

No, none of that. Director and co-writer Tyler Taormina is more interested in an observational approach, just letting the night play out as members of different generations prepare for some major life changes in the coming new year.

The Balsano family is gathering in their ancestral home in New York. Drinks are flowing, songs are being sung and young cheeks are being pinched by relations wondering how this little one got so big!

But the adult Balsano kids (including Ben Shenkman, Chris Lazzaro and the always wonderful Maria Dizzia) are realizing this may be the last chance to come home for the holidays. It just might be time to finally put Mom in a senior care facility and sell the family house.

This is a big decision, but teens Emily (Matilda Fleming) and Michelle (Francesca Scorsese) are more concerned with sneaking out to meet their friends (including Eighth Grade‘s Elsie Fisher) for some Christmas break hang out time.

And then there’s Officer Gibson (Michael Cera) and Sergeant Brooks (Greg Turkington), two nearly silent partners who observe the socializing while a shameless bagel thief lurks in the shadows.

The are plenty of characters here, but instead of arcs, Taormina (Ham on Rye, Happer’s Comet) serves up some terrific production design, visual mischief (watch for a wandering cardboard standup attached to a Roomba) and plenty of throwback needle drops to keep the mood festive.

And that’s how this film is able to work on you, through its total commitment to a warm, nostalgic tone. Taormina dedicates it to “the lost,” in hopes they “find their way home” for the season. Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point makes you feel like you’re already there.