Tag Archives: Daisy Edgar-Jones

New In Theaters

Storm Team

Leave a comment

Twisters

by Hope Madden

Is Twisters 100% scientifically realistic? Well, taming tornadoes from inside souped up pickups seems likelier than following up the beautiful, Oscar nominated drama Minari with this movie. But if director Lee Isaac Chung can do that, anything is possible.

Chung’s film, written by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) and Joseph Kosinski (Tom Cruise’s favorite director, who also wrote the Cruse vehicle Oblivion), follows a new generation of storm chasers.

One team—scientists, PhDs with beta tech in their trunks and data collection on their minds—is led by Javi (Anthony Ramos). And yes, his crew carries degrees from MIT, NASA, ETC. But he can’t do it without Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones).

Team two is a more raucous bunch. Hot YouTuber Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) and his fly-by-the-seat-of-your-truck crew don’t need no stinking degrees. But maybe they also need Kate, who balances Team One’s academic expertise with Team Two’s organic know-how.

Kate doesn’t really need either team, which is one mark in the plus column for a film that doesn’t find a lot of ways to break new ground. It does wait a full hour before putting Powell in a white tee shirt in the rain, though, so at least it exerts a little restraint.

It’s fun, though. Is it big dumb fun? Well, I mean, there may be actual science afoot. I wouldn’t know.

Powell’s as effortlessly charismatic as ever, and it continues to be impossible to root against Ramos, who’s conflict and tenderness almost force you to care what happens. Edgar-Jones cuts a fine presence as hero, and the unexpected turns Twisters takes are welcome.

Yes, most of them are expected, but genuinely solid performances from the leads as well as the full ensemble elevate the script. The writing is better than the plot demands, to be entirely fair, but you don’t go to Twisters for the writing.

The action is arresting. Yes, a couple of set pieces look like MGM Studios attractions, but others—the opening sequence, in particular—impress. But Chung is looking for more than action. He gives his film the very throwback vibe of an 80s style blockbuster. It may be an effort to—as one character literally says—“get everyone into the movie theater” but it might work.

New In Theaters

Marsh Mellow Girl

Leave a comment

Where the Crawdads Sing

by George Wolf

“I had to do life alone. People don’t stay.”

Well-placed within a novel, those words could have major impact. But when you tell it to a movie audience, the power of your visual medium is wasted. You’re not showing us anything, you’re reading to us.

And like so many of these stories of a special girl who hides in plain sight, the big screen version of the Delia Owens bestseller Where the Crawdads Sing employs voiceover narration too early and too often. That’s disappointing, because the film does have its moments.

Most of those moments come from Daisy Edgar-Jones, who stars as Kya Clark, the “Marsh Girl” of Barkley Cove, NC who’s on trial in the late 1960s for the murder of local rich boy Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson).

Kya won’t agree to a plea deal, and throughout her defense from kindly lawyer Tom Milton (the always reliable David Strathairn), director Olivia Newman weaves in flashbacks of a reclusive young girl who grows up alone in the marshes, somehow emerging closer to Miss Carolina than Nell.

Overthinking it? Maybe, but seeing Beast of the Southern Wild screenwriter Lucy Alibar’s writing credit brings more attention to how often this self-reliance tale leans into fantasy. She and Newman sanitize the southern swamp song for convenience, replacing realistic grit with a makeover-in-waiting.

But if you haven’t read the book, there is a surprise or two in store, and a nuanced turn from Edgar-Jones (Fresh, TV’s Normal People and War of the Worlds) that stands out in a parade of broadly-brushed role players.

The lessons about classism and misogyny may be admirable, but they’re as obvious and as soft-peddled as the quick glimpses of racism and the idyllic marsh environment that’s somehow free of thunderstorms or bug bites.

Where the Crawdads Sing does Southern Gothic like Justin Beiber doing Delta blues. You’ll recognize the words and music, but any true feeling is bogged down by all the polish.