Tag Archives: Netflix

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Bully Pulpit

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Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

by George Wolf

We may be early in awards season, but the slam dunk winner for Best Use of a Church Organ in an Ensemble Whodunnit has arrived.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery brings that LOL moment and many other deadly delights, as writer/director Rian Johnson again shows a wonderful grasp on giving the Agatha Christie blueprint his own wickedly fun stamp.

There’s been a murder at a small Catholic church in upstate New York. Just as young priest Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) is learning his way around Monsignor Jefferson Wick’s (Josh Brolin) iron-fisted control of his flock at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, Wicks turns up with a literal knife in his back.

Jud has some violence in his checkered past – and he found the body – but the pews are filled with suspects. There’s lawyer Vera (Kerry Washington), her adopted son Cy (Daryl McCormack), writer Lee (Andrew Scott), Dr. Nat (Jeremy Renner), newcomer Simone (Cailee Spaeny), groundskeeper Samson (Thomas Haden Church) or maybe even devoted church secretary Martha (Glenn Close).

That much sleuthing is a bit overwhelming for Chief Scott (Mila Kunis) and her officers, so WGD (World’s Great Detective) Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is on the case, albeit reluctantly.

In fact, Blanc is loath to even set foot inside a church, a feeling detailed in his breathtaking introductory speech, the opening salvo in Johnson’s assault on demagoguery and the quest for power via radicalization.

That assault is far from subtle, but man it’s a treat to get caught up in.

Brolin continues his stellar year with a masterclass of egotistic bullying, and O’Connor is the perfect counterpoint. Fresh-faced and mop-haired, Father Jud is committed to being a force for good in the world, and to honoring Christ’s mission to heal the world. That mission seems lost amid Wick and his parishioners, and each member of this sublime ensemble understands Johnson’s assignment to skewer such commonplace self-righteous hypocrisy.

Craig is letter-perfect once again, dialing back the giddy flamboyance that drove 2022’s Glass Onion with darker shades in line with the film’s tone. Blanc is troubled and stumped about more than just the facts of the case, and Craig continues to craft him as an endlessly fascinating figure.

Wake Up Dead Man is less of an outright comedy than the last mystery, though some solid laughs do land (like the church organ gag). And just like last time, it will not be hard to guess who Johnson has his knives out for. What you won’t guess is who done it, or how they done it.

But it sure is a kick to try.

Outtakes

Exit Light, Enter Night

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In Your Dreams

by Hope Madden

The delightfully juvenile humor that propels much of the new Dreamworks animated film In Your Dreams entertains. It also amplifies the tension between tween big sister Stevie (Jolie Hoant-Rappaport) and little brother, Elliot (Elias Janssen).

If the perfectionist eldest sibling is going to somehow get her parents to stay together, the last thing she needs is Elliot and his foul-smelling stuffed animal Baloney Tony (Craig Robinson) getting in the way.

But naturally, when Stevie makes a wish to find Sandman and make her dream of a happy family come true, somehow Elliot gets himself involved. Now Stevie can’t make her way through dreamland to find the Sandman without her pesky little brother.

In that way, In Your Dreams is sort of the Predator: Badlands of the grade school set.

Though the computer-generated animation is sometimes disappointing, the movie’s chaotic energy and humor while our heroes work toward finding the Sandman—plus a fun, splashy bit of hand drawn animation— are a blast. It’s during these dream montages that co-writers/directors Erik Benson and Alexander Woo (who write with Stanely Moore) are most inspired. It’s also where we get to spend the most time with Baloney Tony, easily the film’s funniest character.

As dreams of life among happily animated breakfast foods turn rancid under the influence of Nightmara (Gia Carides), In Your Dreams runs through a fun, funny, and often insightful set of dream sequences set to appropriate and fun needle drops.

The film’s themes are compelling and often insightfully rendered, and the storyline itself bears originality sometimes lost in family films. But once we finally reach the Sandman, the look, feel, humor and imagination seem to disappear. We build and build to Sandman, but he and his castle are bland and forgettable.

In Your Dreams never fully recovers, most of Act 3 feeling like a quick and easy escape route from the otherwise clever conceits in the plot. There are definitely laughs and fun sequences, but you may forget this one as quickly as last night’s dream.

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You Bet Your Life

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Ballad of a Small Player

by George Wolf

Many fans of Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 book Ballad of a Small Player won’t be surprised to learn how long the film adaptation was stuck in development. The tale presents a tricky narrative tone, mixing metaphor, dark comedy and psychological mind games for a ride of desperate obsession.

Director Edward Berger and star Colin Farrell are all in for the Netflix version, but they leave the final table a little short of the jackpot.

Farrell is Lord Doyle, on the run in the Chinese region of Macau. Doyle needs to settle a $350,000 casino tab in three days or he’ll be arrested. But there are plenty of other glitzy casinos to visit, and Doyle works whatever angle he can to get credit at the baccarat tables, always promising that big score that never comes.

He seems to meet a kindred spirit in Dao Ming (Fala Chen), a casino manager who takes pity on Doyle’s lonesome loser nature. It is the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts in Macau, and Dao Ming may have some surprising burnt offerings in mind.

While the two begin to form a fragile bond, private investigator Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton) is on Doyle’s tail, and may finally force him to confront the secret life he has been hiding.

Farrell brings sympathy to Doyle’s downward spiral in writer Rowan Joffe’s adaptation, making it easier to accept a third act that surprises no one. Swinton carves her usual glory out of limited screen time, and Chen gives Dao Ming the mysterious grace of possible salvation. Kudos as well to Deanie Ip as Grandma, an ultra-rich gambler who has no trouble sizing Doyle up in hilarious fashion.

Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front, Conclave) brings his own air of desperation, filling each frame with a forced showiness that wears out its welcome pretty quickly. There’s no doubt many set pieces are bursting with color and beauty, but the attempts to blur the real and surreal are so forced it begins to detract from the pleasure of watching these actors claw closer to that final reveal.

Ballad of a Small Player has no problem reminding you that the source is probably a great read. Watching it unfold – in select theaters, or on Netflix – is just too frustrating to rise above pretty good.

Outtakes

Stab Me With a Spoon

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Fear Street: Prom Queen

by George Wolf

If you’ve been waiting for Netflix to bring their bloody Fear Street fun to the 1980s, Prom Queen is here to gag you with a spoon (or stab you with a hatchet). But after some satisfying time traveling to the 90s, the 70s, and 1666, part four of the series proves the devil is in the details.

Really, one big detail.

After adapting the original trilogy of R.L. Stine’s Fear Street books, writer/director Leigh Janiak gets only an executive producer credit here, and her absence stands out like a new zit on the night of the big dance.

It’s 1988 in the cursed town of Shadyside, and outcast Lori Granger (India Fowler) tells us she is running for Prom Queen. Seems the town is still whispering about what Lori’s Mom did to her Dad years ago, and Lori wants to prove her worth. Standing in the way? Only Queen Bee Tiffany (Fina Strazza) and her “Wolfpack.”

That, plus the masked, red poncho-wearing marauder who starts picking off the Prom Queen candidates one by one.

Director and co-writer Matt Palmer provides the requisite kills, but can never capture the fun that has made Fear Street such a blast to visit. To start with, the time stamp is off. Where’s the big hair, the slang and the fashions from the late 80s? The production has also switched music supervisors, leaving us with needle drops that are a few years off the mark.

The homages to classic horror, Heathers and Mean Girls seem to be here more as an expected requirement than an understood assignment. Plus, the killer’s identity is not much of a surprise while solid performers such as Katherine Waterston and Lily Taylor are wasted with shallow, throwaway roles.

Is there an After Prom? Maybe that’s where the fun is.

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Why Yes, That Chicken Looks Familiar

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Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

by Hope Madden

Just over 30 years ago, cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his long-suffering dog Gromit took in a lodger and invented a new kind of pants. Neither were what they seemed.

And just when you thought you’d seen the last of Feathers McGraw—well, several decades after you thought you’d seen the last of him—he resurfaces with a diabolical scheme involving zookeepers, turnips, and gnomes.

Oh, and vengeance. Vengeance most fowl.

Longtime Aardman Entertainment filmmaker Nick Park takes on a couple of partners this go-round in co-writer Mark Burton (Shaun the Sheep) and co-director Merlin Crossingham, who’s been part of the Aardman team for years, directing video games, television, as well as the documentary A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman.

After 2023’s disappointing Aardman sequel Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, the stop-motion plasticine legends could use a reminder of how they nabbed all four of those Oscars. And so, W&G return with Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

What have the lads been up to? Gromit’s been finding peace in his garden. Meanwhile, Wallace has invented a yard gnome that does gardening so Gromit doesn’t have to. Norbot (voiced Reece Shearsmith) is so efficient and hardworking that the whole of Wallaby Street wants his help! What could go wrong?

Loads! Especially once Feathers McGraw catches wind of the new invention, thanks to the crack reporting of one Onya Doorstep (Diane Morgan).

We lost Peter Sallis, longtime voice of Wallace, back in 2017, but Ben Whitehead takes on lead duties with appropriate aplomb.

Otherwise, expect the expected, which turns out to be the film’s strength as well as its weakness. The film mixes silly with clever in exactly the right proportion, as is the charm with the entire franchise. Wallace is so addicted to tech that he’s sure his old ceramic teapot is broken because he keeps pushing its knob and nothing happens. It doesn’t turn on. Nothing!

There are dozens of bright sight gags, loads of Rube Goldberg style tech, and plenty of endearingly dunderheaded characters. The animation itself, full of thumb prints and vivid color, is as brilliant as it has ever been.

There’s just not a lot of surprises. No one expected a giant were-rabbit in the lads’ last film, and it was right in the title of 2005’s magnificent Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Vengeance Most Fowl is a comforting, comfortable adventure, but it breaks no new ground and leaves less of an impression than you might hope.

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Appointed Rounds

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The Six Triple Eight

by George Wolf

“Where there is no mail there is low morale.”

For a time during the height of WWII, there was no mail. Battalion 6888 – the only all-black outfit in the Women’s Army Corp to see overseas duty – was given six months to sort through a backlog of 17 million letters between soldiers and their loved ones back home.

If they succeeded, the women would restore hope to families and morale to the troops. If they didn’t, bigots throughout the military would use the failure as proof of inferiority.

Netflix’s The Six Triple Eight tells a lesser-known story of unsung heroes who deserve the acclaim, but the best intentions of writer/director Tyler Perry are often hamstrung by his broad brush and heavy-handed approach to telling it.

Our window into history is Lena Derriecott (Emily Obsidian of TV’s Sistas), who enlists after her high school love Abram (Gregg Sulkin) is shot down and killed in action. Captain (later Major) Charity Adams (Kerry Washington) whips Lena and the rest of the women into shape, and longs for marching orders that her superiors have no intention of providing.

But when President Roosevelt (Sam Waterston), First Lady Eleanor (Susan Sarandon) and National Council of Negro Women founder Mary McLeod Bethune (Oprah Winfrey) learn of the interruption of mail service, openly racist officers such as General Halt (Dean Norris) have to begrudgingly deploy the 6888th.

Perry adapts Kevin Hymel’s 2019 article “Fighting a Two-Front War” with a well-deserved respect for the mission, but a lack of depth that often reduces the timelines to little beyond sanitized set pieces and expositionary dialog. The ensemble consistently over-emotes, while even reliable talents such as Washington and Norris seem coached to push the dramatics and facial reactions.

The history lesson here – which includes the Army’s attempt to sabotage the 6888th – doesn’t need that hard sell. What these women accomplished was truly heroic, and Perry works best when he’s letting us in on the meticulous methods they found to connect the more hard-to-decipher addresses with their rightful owners.

Even the finale – when we get the expected (and welcome) archival footage featuring the real women involved – comes equipped with an extended retelling of the plot points we just watched unfold. From start to finish, The Six Triple Eight seems engineered for the distracted attentions of streaming audiences. So while the film’s limited theatrical run is appreciated, it also feels a bit outside the post code.

For Your Queue

Santa Actually

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That Christmas

by Hope Madden

More than two decades ago, writer/director Richard Curtis made a very British Christmas film. It hasn’t aged particularly well, though many folks watch it year in, year out. Including, apparently, the inhabitants of Wellington-on-Sea.

Now, that may be because That Christmas—the new animated film set in the little port village—was co-written by Curtis. The Love Actually joke is a good bit in director Simon Otto’s holiday tale that’s a bit disjointed but never lacking in charm.

The film opens with Santa (Brian Cox—wait, really?) narrating the climax of one particularly problematic Christmas Eve night in the tiny community. The worries are larger than just this massive blizzard. But to do it all justice, Santa has to take us back a few days, to the school Christmas play.

One set of twins is split on the naughty and nice lists. One tween girl, left to care for her baby sister and three other children, breaks tradition but may also be negligent enough to allow tragedy to occur. And lonesome Danny (Jack Wisniewski) fears he will spend Christmas utterly alone.

Curtis, writing with Peter Souter, creates another crisscrossing of bittersweet, intimate, interconnected Christmas stories. And once again, Bill Nighy (this time voicing the character Lighthouse Bill) is underused.

The animation is delightful, the humor decidedly British, and the hijinks wholesome but relatable and often bittersweet. One bit about an under-appreciated single mum is not only beautifully tender but also quite welcome.

But none of it is particularly funny, or terribly fresh.

Five years ago, Netflix produced Klaus, a Christmas story that was stunning to look at and full of surprises. This year’s holiday offering is a charmer, and its understated humor and wry observations help to keep it engaging regardless of your age. But that’s not enough for That Christmas to transcend the glut of Christmas fare this year (and every year) to become an annual tradition.

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Get the Date You Really Want

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Woman of the Hour

by Hope Madden

The Seventies were wild, weren’t they? No seatbelts, ashtrays at McDonald’s, gameshows fixed unsuspecting women up with wanted criminals. Plus, shag carpet!

Anna Kendrick makes her directorial debut with Woman of the Hour, which revisits a popular 70s gameshow and its seriously suspect casting direction. Cheryl Bradshaw (Kendrick), a struggling actor waiting for a break, agrees to appear on The Dating Game.

This was a real show where a woman would ask mortifyingly innuendo-riddled questions (supplied by the producers) to three male contestants hidden behind a screen. Each contestant would respond with their own innuendo, and at the end of the episode, the woman would choose a date. The show would then send her away with a man she didn’t know at all.

And if that doesn’t sound dangerous enough, on one episode, Contestant #3 was honest to God serial killer Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto).

Though Kendrick’s Cheryl is the titular “Woman of the Hour”, her instinct as a filmmaker is to share the spotlight with a number of other women—witness, survivor, victims. The choice, which presumably began with Ian McDonald’s compelling script, is in keeping with a long-overdue move toward deflating the mysterious air often given to serial killers, instead respecting the perspectives of the people who should still be alive to tell their own tales.

It’s a powerful choice that keeps the film from feeling lurid while creating emotional connection that amps up tensions.

Cheryl’s backstory lets us see how even this smart woman caves to the need to be polite, and how that instinct is manipulated by individual men, but also (and more catastrophically) by the systems that support society. The conflict fuels Kendrick’s every smile, every glance, every expression. It’s a subtle but authentic performance.

Zovatto takes on a D’Onofrio-esque presence as the charming psychopath. He’s at his best in the character’s quietly sinister moments, nuanced shifts in his interior playing with quiet menace across his face.

A tight and emotionally honest supporting cast and a handful of excruciatingly tense moments keep the thriller gripping whether you know its outcome or not. Woman of the Hour takes on a story that could easily have been exploitation, delivering instead a thrilling, reverent, angry witness.  

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You’ve Got a Friend in Me

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Will & Harper

by Hope Madden

Harper Steele loved traveling America and spent years upon years hitchhiking and driving from town to town, dive bar to dive bar, stock car race to pool hall to backwater, savoring every minute of it. But since she transitioned a couple of years ago, she’s afraid to do it anymore. She’s afraid to travel these roads in the same way any woman would be, and she’s afraid to travel them in the way that only a trans woman would be.

Her friend thinks maybe she can reexplore the country she loves as her true self if she has a man with her. Preferably a big, lumbering, lovable, friendly, famous friend willing to shift attention away from her whenever she might want him to. All she has to do is agree to go to stop at least once so Will Ferrell can get a traditional glazed at Dunkin Donuts.

There are so many reasons to watch Will & Harper, not the least of which is to see two of the smartest comedic minds (the two met on SNL when Steele was head writer for the show) riff.

And it’s not just the two of them. Their trip leads to run ins with some great SNL alum and a reminder that Kristin Wiig is insanely talented.

Another great reason to watch Will & Harper is that this film fits so beautifully into that American cinematic tradition of emotional, thrilling, deeply human road picture: one relationship changes and deepens with the landscape as America itself is more clearly revealed.

Because Steele’s America is not what anyone would consider a safe space for trans people—but where, really, is that space?

The friends begin in NYC with an SNL reunion and an awkward-at-best hug from Lorne Michaels. At a Pacers game, Indiana governor Eric Holcomb is eager to meet Ferrell, and it isn’t until a little googling after the photo op that he and Harper learn about the Republican politician’s aggressively anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ2+ policies. The scene leads to the first of many brazenly honest and emotional moments between the friends.

Ferrell’s tenderness and endearingly bumbling protectiveness is deeply lovely, even when—maybe especially when—it’s almost desperate. The deeper into red state territory the two travel, the more attention seeking Ferrell seems, almost certainly to try to create a protective shield around his friend. It doesn’t always work, and his own grief at his shortcomings as her friend are heartbreakingly lovely.

But it’s Steele whose openness and forthrightness breaks any but the coldest and most ignorant heart. And what she does—she and her buddy—that’s so important is to show how utterly and undeniably normal it all is: hating the way you look in a bathing suit, wanting and failing to love the sound of your own voice, wondering what it’s like to have boobs for the first time.

Will & Harper just makes you wonder how it can be possible for anyone to be upset by another person’s transition. It also makes you hope those who feel too stigmatized to do it realize that there is a better life.

“From the moment I transitioned, all I wanted to do was live.”

God I hope people see this movie.

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Mommy Issues

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A Family Affair

by George Wolf

First off, A Family Affair seems like it might have been a better fit for Netflix’s November slate. Not only does the film have an important Holiday sequence and at least one Christmas tune, a fall release would have put more distance between it and Amazon’s very similar May release The Idea of You.

But here we are again, where the Nancy Meyers rom-com fantasy formula is tweaked by having the mature rich white lady find love with a very famous younger man.

Here, the famous guy is the 34 year-old Chris Cole (Zac Efron), a major action star with an upcoming film in need of a script re-write. Chris’s 24 year-old assistant Zara (Joey King) is tired of just running his errands and would like to move up in the movie biz, but it’s her 50-something mother Brooke (Nicole Kidman) that gets Chris’s attention.

Zara’s not happy about Mom’s “sexcapades” with her demanding boss, but Grandma Leila (Kathy Bates) reminds Zara that Brooke is not just a mother, but a woman, too. And it’s been over ten years since Zara’s Dad passed, so surely she’s “earned” this indulgence, right?

Nothing wrong with a fantasy aimed toward older women, but like any familiar formula, the key lies in executing it well enough to move beyond the generic and develop a distinctive voice. Director Richard LaGravenese (Beautiful Creatures, P.S. I Love You) and first-time screenwriter Carrie Solomon can’t summon many wins beyond the three likable leads.

Not only will the inevitable comparisons to the warmer, more organic The Idea of You come up short, but madcap peeks behind the production of Chris’s latest action film instantly recall one of Tugg Speedman’s (“Tuggernuts!”) sequels in Tropic Thunder.

There are a few amusing jabs at fame and self-absorption, but A Family Affair never feels any fresher than a plate of reheated leftovers.

Which usually taste better at Christmas.