An exotic dancer gets caught up in the rich-kid-nonsense of the son of a wealthy Russian family in Anora.
Ani (Mikey Madison), the titular Anora, dances at a strip club where one of her special talents is a working knowledge of Russian, even if her accent isn’t the best. When young Russian goofus Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) comes in, she is sent out to dance for him. He gives her his cell number and she agrees to some hang-out time outside the club. Eventually their arrangement stretches into a week-long girlfriend experience, with Ani traveling to Las Vegas with Vanya and his entourage. Vanya doesn’t want to return to Russia, where it sounds like he will have to work and won’t be able to just get high and play video games all day. He suggests that he marry Ani and thus become a U.S. citizen and thus not return. Despite seeming like she’s worldly enough to see the pitfalls in this, Ani says yes and they head to a Vegas wedding chapel.
Vanya is 21 and Ani is 23. You act 25, Vanya tells her. Really, she acts like a 23-year-old who sees a ray of economic light and he acts like a 14-year-old for whom there have never been any consequences for his careless actions. Madison does a good job of giving us this very young woman who’s in way over her head and struggling to do the best she can with what she, at least for a little while, believes could be a real marriage and a real chance at a better future for herself. In its second half, the movie does feature segments that read more as kind of a comedy of errors with Vanya’s father’s American-based henchmen trying to find and hold onto Vanya while they “fix” what they see as yet another mess he has made. This part of the movie has its charms, with Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian and Vache Tovmasyan playing workers in this family operation who have to deal with the increasingly enraged Ani and the increasingly petulant man-child Vanya. But I don’t know that this “Chris and Paulie in the Pine Barrens” comedy entirely fits with what otherwise feels like a portrait of Ani. I will also say that, for me, this movie had expectations working against it — it has been nominated for, like, every movie award this season. I enjoyed it fine, it is worth a watch, but there are visible seams and rough patches (Vanya’s parents, when they show up, feel very underbaked) I didn’t expect based on all the accolades. B+, I guess, but credit the + mostly to Madison.Available for rent or purchase.
A Different Man (R)
Sebastian Stan plays an actor with facial differences in the at-times comic, at-times sad A Different Man.
Edward (Stan) gets a role in what appears to be a human resources video about working with employees who have differences in facial structure or appearance. It’s only about a minute of screentime, but it’s an acting credit at least for struggling actor Edward, who has facial tumors. When he meets his new neighbor, a playwright named Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), her initial reaction is a gasp, though she later becomes friendly with him. Meanwhile, he agrees to take part in a new clinical trial, taking a drug that causes extreme pain. His skin begins to slough off his face and after a particularly dramatic skin peeling he discovers that his face is now, well, Sebastian Stan’s differences-free “normal” face. Basically disowning his old self, Edward becomes Guy, a Stan-ily handsome successful real estate salesman who tells Ingrid and others that Edward is dead.
Years later, he sees a notice for an audition specifically looking for an actor with facial differences for a play called Edward, written by Ingrid. He auditions and gets the part, which he plans to play while wearing a mask that looks like his old face. But then Oswald (Adam Pearson) shows up. Oswald has facial differences similar to Edward’s but he also has the confidence, positivity and personability — and charming English accent — that Edward never did. “Guy,” the real Edward, watches as Oswald eventually plays Edward better than Edward does and then becomes the life of the afterparty as well.
Is there anything more irritating than someone who can take your particular set of lemons and make wildly popular lemonade out of them? Stan is excellent as someone who realizes the limitations of “normality” and is torn between clearly admiring Oswald and kind of hating him for how much better he is at living their life. It’s a quiet, confused rage and Stan wears it very well, simmering and boiling over in a way that makes no sense to the other characters. Adam Pearson, who does have neurofibromatosis and facial differences in real life, does a good job of differentiating Oswald from Edward. Oswald seems to move through the world matter-of-factly, presenting himself openly and then pushing people to see him fully. The movie doesn’t show us the work this takes from Oswald but that kind of fits with our point of view, which is Edward’s point of view, which is of this guy who lights up a room and gets the girl, something that even “Guy” can’t quite pull off. B+ Available for rent or purchase and streaming on Max staring Jan. 17
Flow (PG)
A cat keeps on keeping on through floods, storms and hostile lemurs in Flow, a beautiful, watercolor-esque, dialogue-free animated story.
Wikipedia says the animation was done with computer graphics, which you can see, particularly in the way water is rendered, with a look that is sometimes almost photorealistic. But the animals themselves often have a picture book watercolor-painted look — vibrant in their color and well defined but with a softness. We follow the adventures of a black cat, who at the beginning of the movie spends its nights sleeping in a bed in a house surrounded by outdoor cat statues. We never see the artist who left one statue half-finished on their workbench, nor any other people in this world full of human structures and human items, like bottles or a mirror, but that otherwise gives the sense of humans being long absent.
The cat is chased by a pack of dogs for a while, before a sudden rush of water floods the forest where the cat is living. The cat eventually hops on a boat that floats by and finds a capybara also living there. They continue to float, meet other animals along the way and run into the dogs from the beginning of the movie a few times — with one dog seeming to be particularly attached to the cat and the group as a whole.
The movie is ultimately more meditative than plot driven, with the soft music and lovely visuals taking you more to a place of float-along wonder. I don’t know that it is action-packed enough to hold a young audience but it held me through all of its beautiful scenes of watery paradises and big eyed animals. A Available for rent or purchase.
Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (PG)
The cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his much smarter dog Gromit face off against the super criminal penguin Feathers McGraw in Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
Since Wallace and Gromit helped put away Feathers for stealing the blue diamond, the wordless, devious penguin has been locked in “prison” (a penguin exhibit at the zoo). Meanwhile, Wallace (voice of Ben Whitehead) has continued to invent — mostly semi-terrible gadgets like the automatic jam-on-toast applier and robotic dog-patter. But then, to “help” Gromit, he invents Norbot (voice of Reece Shearsmith), a garden gnome robot who is extremely overzealous about tidying up — he mows down Gromit’s newly planted tree and flowers and trims the hedges into squares. Gromit is annoyed but the neighbors are delighted and ask Wallace to hire Norbot out, which he does. The local news team shows up to do a story on this invention, which Feathers happens to see on TV. Feathers hacks in to Norbot’s operating system, turning his core setting from “good” to “evil.” Norbot then creates his own army of gnome robots to enact Feathers’ dastardly plan.
The animation here is fun, the usual Aardman look of clay creations in a world full of tactile items like a book with paper pages — such as Gromit’s copy of A Room Of One’s Own by Virgina Woof. Authority figures — Wallace, police chief Mackintosh (voice of Peter Kay) — are pleasantly clueless while brainier figures like Gromit and the young police officer P.C. Mukherjee (voice of Lauren Patel) know there’s trouble afoot. In Aardman style, there are “wrong’uns” and meanness without cruelty, making it very friendly for a wide range of ages, including older kids who can enjoy the overall goofiness. AStreaming on Netflix.
Cousins visit Poland in a trip meant to remember their grandmother and reconnect with each other in A Real Pain, a sweet, kind, frequently heartbreaking comedy written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg.
Comedy? I mean, it’s a movie about two grief-stricken men from a Jewish American family, one who has just suffered a mental health crisis, engaging in a Holocaust-centered tour of Poland. But I also laughed out loud at some truly funny, well-observed moments so — comedy like that.
David Kaplan (Eisenberg) is married with a demanding job and a young son but he has cleared his schedule to spend a week in Poland in honor of his recently deceased grandmother, who grew up there and survived Nazi concentration camps during the war before coming to America. He is also there for Benji (Kieran Culkin), his cousin who, even before we know all the particulars, we can feel that David is deeply worried about. Benji is, as he later says, someone who lights up a room with his charm only to later poop all over everything. Almost exactly the same age as David, Benji is clearly bright and exuding a desire for connection at all moments. He is also, it’s strongly implied, directionless, erratic and spends most of his time getting high.
The trip is a structured tour with non-Jewish, British leader James (Will Sharpe) walking through the history and tragedy of Jewish Poland with retired American couple Mark (Daniel Oreskes), whose Jewish family immigrated from Poland decades before the war, and his wife Diane (Liza Sadovy); the recently divorced New Yorker Marcia (a luminous Jennifer Grey), whose mother was a survivor, and Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), a survivor of Rwandan genocide who converted to Judaism. Benji becomes something of the active ingredient in the tour mix — spurring fun, spurring introspection, causing chaos.
Culkin makes need pour out of Benji just as Eisenberg makes worry and anxiety radiate from David. Benji and David’s relationship, one that was clearly brotherly in their youth, is the warm center of this movie. They love each other intensely, just as they intensely want to smack each other. Everything about it feels genuine, which makes their actions — from their big outbursts to their moments of side-eye — feel real and lived in. When Benji rants at a tour dinner, for example, it doesn’t feel stagey, it feels awkward and sad and the responses by the other tour participants give you a deeper window into each of their characters. Excellent performances all the way around in this short, bittersweet movie that is well worth a watch. A Available for purchase.
Nightbitch (R)
Being a mom to a young son breaks Amy Adams’ brain — relatable — in the light-horror comedy Nightbitch.
Previously a visual artist, Adams’ character, who is just called Mother in IMDb, now spends her days caring for her son, who I think is just called Baby (Arleigh Snowden and Emmett Snowden). He’s sort-of early preschool age — still young enough to injure himself just toddlering through life but old enough to express opinions in words about his food or his unwillingness to go to sleep. Her husband, Scoot McNairy — whose character is called “Husband” — works a job that frequently takes him away on work trips, so not only is she with her son all day but frequently all day and all night, a job she can never clock out of. She loves her son intensely but she would also like to shower more than once a week and laughs with a kind of bitter, gleeful horror at the unflattering things she sees in the mirror: wrinkles, gray hair, facial hair, a patch of fur on her back, longer pointy-er teeth, maybe a tail? As she sort of spirals with her own identity — is she even an artist any more? — she is also sort of fascinated with this other thing she might be turning into, something decidedly more primal, more canine.
Nightbitch, based on the book by Rachel Yoder that is in my to-read pile (and thus I’m judging the movie entirely as its own thing), feels like it is “in conversation,” to quote one of Adams’ snooty art friends, with Tully, the Diablo Cody-penned movie about the brain-altering effects of motherhood. In Tully, Charlize Theron’s mother character is dealing with something like postpartum depression shortly after having a baby. Here, it’s the period when Baby has become just enough of an independent person to give Adams the space to wonder what the hell is happening to herself. She is initially prickly toward a group of moms with similar-aged kids — seeing only their “Wheels on the Bus” exteriors and not the thickets of rage, confusion and wildness that is underneath for them as well. She is also awkward around her former art friends; her kid-talk is silly or sad to them, at least that’s what she’s taking from their reactions. What to do with all of that white-hot frustration? Well, some of it gets thrown at clueless Scoot, who really does an excellent job crafting a character that is both basically a nice guy and also has no idea what his wife is going through. And maybe some of it is magical realism-ing Adams into a dog, a dog whose nighttime activities may or may not be resulting in the bodies of small animals being left at her doorstep.
I think Marielle Heller, who adapted and directed this movie, leaves a lot of the dog stuff for you to do with what you want. Are you watching Adams metaphorically succumb to her more feral instincts or is she a woman actually werewolfing out? “Yes” is a perfectly fine answer to me. And on that level, the alt-reality inner-is-outer level, I think Adams does a good job of finding the darkness and the humor of this very specific slice of the “longest shortest time” to borrow the name of a parenting podcast. She captures the blend of screaming-into-the-void and this-is-the-best-thing-ever really well and gives herself over to its body horror. This is a fun movie that takes its “weird places a mom can go after two glasses of wine” emotions seriously but isn’t self-serious. B+ Streaming on Hulu.
Emilia Pérez (R)
A Mexican cartel boss fakes her death and tries to become a sort of hero of the people while also hiding a secret from her wife and children in the high-drama musical Emilia Pérez, the winner of four awards at the recent Golden Globes.
Karla Sofía Gascón plays the titular character who begins the story living as Juan Manitas del Monte, the cartel boss whose violent crime-world life won’t allow for living as her true female self. She feels her only way to transition fully and live publicly as a woman is to “kill” Manitas — and even convince her wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and two sons of this death. I’ve read criticisms by trans writers about how all of this is presented and how the movie treats both her gender-affirming surgery and her relationship to her family. These criticisms seem fair (as do criticisms of the cartoonish way Mexico is presented) and it feels worthwhile to consider the issues people have with this movie, especially for its handling of a trans character (who is played by a trans actress). The movie (and its whole awards deal) can feel a little like it’s patting itself on the back without seeing some of its problems.
I also don’t find this movie to be particularly grounded in reality on any level, and not just because lawyer Zoe Saldaña occasionally breaks into song. Rita Mora Castro (Saldaña, who won one of those Globes) is a talented lawyer in Mexico who sings that her gender and her skin color make it hard for her to live her ambitions. Because Manitas could see Rita’s talent propping up her empty-suit boss, Manitas hires (after first kidnapping) Rita to manage all the legalities of her transition, from moving money around to set Jessi and the boys up for a comfortable life in Switzerland to finding a doctor willing to do what appears to be full body surgery all at once in semi-secret. After cashing the check for that service and building a new life in London, Rita is scared when she realizes the Mexican woman she seems to just run into at a dinner party four years later is Emilia. Are you here to tie up loose ends, Rita sings. Emilia clarifies that her plan is not murder but getting her sons back. She wants to pose as a long-lost cousin of Manitas who Jessi and the boys will move in with back in Mexico.
Which they do? Despite Jessi not really wanting to? And meanwhile Emilia becomes a sort of patron saint of families who are looking for missing loved ones? She uses Manitas’ old criminal contacts to find out — consequence-free I guess? or why would they help her? — where victims have been buried to give people closure. The big public splash she makes for the cause would seem to be at odds with her fear of being “found out” but like I said, this isn’t a movie that’s grounded in any kind of realism.
Here’s the thing, though, in spite of all the “really?” story beats and questionable choices, I can’t entirely discount this movie. It’s sort of a dizzy, colorful, tragic fantasy story — very primary colors in its opinions and not all that thoughtful about its three female characters (joined in the third act by Adriana Paz as an abused wife delighted to learn that she is in fact a widow who then becomes the girlfriend of Emilia). It’s kind of a mess and kind of fascinating and features a definitely interesting performance from Gascón, more for what she’s doing than for the words on the page, and a big-swing performance by Saldaña. B- Streaming on Netflix.
I was sort of bummed out about the whole movie-going experience in 2024 and then I saw Wicked.
I’m not a Wicked person, in the sense of owning the cast album or having seen a stage production. And has there been too much Wicked everywhere with everything? Yes, totally. But this candy-colored musical brought something I felt was generally lacking in 2024: a fun time at the movies. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are a great team — both are solid with the songs, have good chemistry as an enemies-to-friends duo and are good at the tone of this fairy tale with darkness around the edges. It’s a long movie but doesn’t feel like a slog and it is worth putting on your shoes and silencing your phones to see this in a theater, where the colors and whimsy will get their proper scale. With the numbers of local movie screens dropping in 2024 (RIP to Chunky’s theaters in Nashua and Pelham, Regal in Concord and AMC in Londonderry), it was good to feel excited about being in a theater. Wicked, which is still in theaters, will get a release of a special sing-along version on Dec. 25.
But Wicked wasn’t the only thing making me feel upbeat about movies.
• The “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” Award for making me feel positive things about a superhero franchise: That would go to Deadpool + Wolverine (for rent and streaming on Disney+). If I think about the whole Ryan Reynolds thing or watch extended trailers for this movie, I feel sort of exhausted. But in the midst of the movie, watching Deadpool and Wolverine/Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, both just so game, I kind of couldn’t help having fun. Also, I enjoyed the goofy 20th Century Studios-Marvel cameos and how that universe was egg-white-foam folded into the Marvel Cinematic Universe proper. I even had a moment of “aw, cute” during the credits, which used the aforementioned song, to give that world its sendoff.
• The exact right kind of dumb: Recently, I watched Carry-On, a Netflix movie seemingly going for low-budget Die Hard. It was perfect — wheeee! — in the way that only an action movie that doesn’t take itself seriously but also doesn’t goof off can be. The Beekeeper (rent, purchase and on MGM+) is similarly such a movie. It stars Jason Statham saying “I protect the hive” a bazillion times as he punches dudes who stole money from the nice Phylicia Rashad, who was letting him live on her farm (keeping bees, it’s a whole theme with him). Did you have a tough week? Pour yourself a tall glass of The Beekeeper.
• Also fun: “Sexy tennis” was not a thing I ever thought or thought I needed in my life but then I saw Challengers (rent, purchase, Prime Video and MGM+), which is soapy silly fun with the trio of Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor.
• The M3gan Award for funniest horror:Abigail (rent, purchase and Prime Video) features a bunch of random criminals brought together in a creepy old house to do the simple job of kidnapping one little girl and keeping her alive and unharmed until her father pays the ransom. The trailer gives away both what will make this a challenge and a hoot.
• This horror movie has no stakes! (complimentary): I did not have high hopes for A Quiet Place: Day One(rent, purchase, Paramount+ and MGM+); the trailer doesn’t give you much and it’s not really a story plugged into the main Quiet Place universe. But as we get to know Lupita Nyong’o’s character the movie becomes a whole unexpected thing, with a whole different approach to what counts as stakes and what the big bad truly is. It’s great! Very much not what you expect from a prequel/sidequel.
• Horror movies doing a thing: These streamers might not work as big-budget, big-screen outings but I feel like the scale of TV allows them to focus on one element of their horror-ness and really amp it up. Woman of the Hour (streaming on Netflix), directed by and starring Anna Kendrick, is scary not for anything specific that happens in the movie but for the way it perfectly captures the “how do I keep this man at a bar/job interview/dark parking lot/apartment common area from killing me” anxiety of women in so many circumstances. Hold Your Breath(Hulu/Disney+) is set during the Dust Bowl but it has real pandemic-era vibes with how danger is in the air and how that plays with the mind of a woman who has already lost one child and is trying to protect the other three. Don’t Move (Netflix) is a suspenseful movie about survival. House of Spoils (Prime Video) has Ariana DeBose maybe going mad from the haunted house where she is trying to start up a trendoid fine dining restaurant or maybe the toxic chef culture or maybe it’s the strange greens from the garden possibly planted by a witch? Either way, it’s a fun time of a horror movie that kind of morphs into something else.
• Character-forward: Lily Gladstone in Fancy Dance(Apple TV+), Joan Chen and Izaac Wang in Didi(rent, purchase and Peacock), Danielle Deadwyler and John David Washington in The Piano Lesson (Netflix), and everybody in Rez Ball (Netflix) andThelma(rent, purchase and Hulu/Disney+) turn in great performances in solid movies that all blend comedy and drama, family relationships and people trying to figure out who they are now.
• Honorable character mentions: Wobbly movies can still have barnburning performances. Check out Jodie Comer going big with the hair and the accent work in The Bikeriders(Prime Video, rent or purchase). Kerry Washington (and the real life story) wins you over despite some shakiness in The Six Triple Eight (Netflix). Chris Hemsworth feels like the only person really having fun with the sandy craziness of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga(Max, rent or purchase). But the “making his own fun, baby!” prize for this year truly goes to Denzel Washington in Gladiator II (in theaters).
• Animation! The Wild Robot(for purchase) is full of animal hijinks and it’s a tear-jerking look at parenthood — plus so lovely! Transformers One (rent, purchase and Paramount+) is a neat prequel of the Transformers universe we know and also a clever story about the ways people (er, transforming robots) respond to injustice. Big City Greens The Movie: Spacecation (for purchase and on Disney+) is a sweet story about family and it’s a musical and it’s in space and it has an early The Simpsons level of high joke density. Inside Out 2 (Disney+ and rent) mostly avoids the lessening effects of a sequel and turns in a really interesting look at what happens when anxiety (and Anxiety, as voiced by Maya Hawke) takes the wheel.
• The Once Upon a 1980s Time at the Movies Nostalgia Award: Kevin Smith gives us his The Fabelmans withThe 4:30 Movie (rent or purchase), a very cute riff on the filmmaker as a young goofus.
• The usual caveats: There are, as always, like a whole slew of late season movies I haven’t seen yet — in theaters now Flow and Mustafa: The Lion King; Christmas Day releases Nosferatu, A Complete Unknown, Babygirl and The Fire Inside;Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Netflix on Jan. 3); thus-far only limited release films like Nickel Boys, Nightbitch, The Return, The Brutalist, September 5 and now-harder to find movies like A Real Pain (Forbes.com reported it should be on VOD on Dec. 31). There are several awards attention-garnering movies that we can all catch up on now — Anora (rent or purchase), Emilia Pérez (Netflix), Memoir of a Snail (rent or purchase), Heretic (rent or purchase), We Live in Time (rent or purchase), Maria (Netflix), and Here (rent or purchase).
• Real world: Martha Stewart would be a fun person to three-martini-lunch with, is my takeaway from Martha (Netflix), her documentary where she offers crisp observations about everything from her romances to her legal woes. In Will & Harper (Netflix) longtime friends and comedy co-conspirators Will Ferrell and Harper Steele road trip across America in this documentary about friendship, the never-ending journey of figuring yourself out and Harper’s desire to travel to the middle America places she’s always loved and see if, as she says, they will love her back now that she’s out as trans. The song about friendship Kristen Wiig sings at the end might actually be one of the sweetest things in movies this year. In Piece by Piece (purchase), Pharrell Williams not only tells his life story but also is able to illustrate his relationship with music via the use of Lego animation.
• Just some really great movies: In Janet Planet (Max, rent and purchase) Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler are an unconventional but loving mother-daughter pair. In My Old Ass (Prime Video), an 18-year-old Maisy Stella meets her 39-year-old Aubrey Plaza-self with bittersweet passage of time and yet very funny results. The Substance (Mubi, rent or purchase) features a very good Demi Moore performance and a very funny bit of body horror about beauty standards. His Three Daughters (Netflix) features absolute top-shelf performances by Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen and Carrie Coon as three sisters gathered for their father’s final moments — but it’s funny and smart and a well-crafted story about family and grief. And then there’s Conclave (Peacock and for purchase), just an absolute delight about clashing ambitions at a Vatican gathering to pick a new pope.
Hopeful about 2025
All dates extremely approximate.
• Dog Man (Jan. 31) Dav Pilkey’s books are a treat. My kids are excited for this movie — and I agree!
• Love Hurts (Feb. 7) Ke Huy Quan plays a former criminal enforcer turned mild-mannered real estate agent.
• Black Bag (March 14) Steven Soderbergh gives us sexy spies Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett.
• Mickey 17 (April 18) Bong Joon Ho’s new movie features a promising cast — Robert Pattinson, Toni Collete, Mark Ruffalo, Steven Yeun — and a goofy-fun sci-fi premise.
• Thunderbolts* (May 2) I can’t help it — Marvel’s kickoff to summer featuring Florence Pugh and David Harbour in their Black Widow characters looks like it has the potential to be scruffy fun.
• 28 Years Later (June 20) That trailer, featuring Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Boots,” is creepy-great. I am officially excited for the third of Danny Boyle’s zombie movies.
A heretofore-mid TSA agent gets tangled up in a terrorist attack in Carry-On, Netflix’s attempt at a “Die Hard is a Christmas movie”-style Christmas movie.
It’s Christmas Eve and Ethan (Taron Egerton) has just learned that girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson) is pregnant. For the first time since failing to get into the police academy, he’s suddenly motivated to make more of himself at his TSA job at LAX. And lucky him, he gets a chance at working the carry-on bag X-ray machine on a busy Christmas Eve. Unlucky for him, his sudden show of ambition messes with the plans of Jason Bateman (his character is just called “Traveler” on IMDb), who is running some kind of terrorism operation. He had planned to kidnap Ethan’s buddy Jason’s (Sinqua Walls) family to force Jason to let through a bag carrying some clearly dangerous thing but when Jason gives Ethan a shot at the X-ray, suddenly Ethan is the one getting a mysterious ear bud and having a conversation about not calling the cops. Jason Bateman threatens Ethan’s girlfriend and demonstrates his abilities by hurting one of Ethan’s coworkers so Ethan feels like he has no choice but to follow his instructions, while also trying his best to find ways to stop Jason Bateman’s ultimately convoluted-but-who-cares plan.
Carry-On is goofy and I am here for it! “More silly holiday action” is my special Christmas wish; it’s an excellent bit of “goes-with” programming to the holiday rom-coms. Egerton is completely serviceable as a guy forced to step up and be heroic — his abilities are believable enough. Bateman is good fun as a smarmy villain. And Danielle Deadwyler, playing the one cop who knows the score, is a delight; give this woman her own Reacher. She also gets to participate in the movie’s funnest/dumbest action sequence; it’s silly and great. BStreaming on Netflix.
That Christmas (PG)
Santa Brian Cox Claus tells us the story of the English town of Wellington-on-Sea during That Christmas, a sweet animated tale co-written by Richard Love Actually Curtis.
Kids and their families navigate the days before Christmas with an assortment of concerns. Bernadette McNutt (voice of India Brown), of mid-teen-ish age, is eager to break free from the traditions of the season — from zhuzhing up the school nativity pageant to finding something other than the boring turkey dinner for Christmas Day. On Christmas Eve, she’s left to care for her younger sister Eve (voice of Bronte Smith) and neighbor kids Teddy (voice of Freddie Spry), Scarlett (voice of Ava Talbot) and Nisha (voice of Kuhu Agarwal) when Bernie and Eve’s parents (voices of Rosie Cavaliero and Rhys Darby), Teddy and Scarlett’s parents (voice of Alex Macqueen and Lolly Adefope) and Nisha’s mom (voice of Sindhu Vee) head to a wedding for the afternoon.
Meanwhile, Sam (voice of Zazie Hayhurst) is worried that her twin sister Charlie (voice of Sienna Sayer) won’t get anything from Father Christmas because Sam is certain Charlie is on the naughty list. Sam doesn’t fully appreciate that some of Charlie’s pranks are meant to help her get together with Danny Williams (voice of Jack Wisniewski), a new kid who is smitten with Sam as well. Danny, when he isn’t struggling with his new school, is struggling at home with being mostly alone — his hard-working nurse mom (voice of Jodie Whittaker) is often at her job and he hasn’t seen much of his dad since their divorce. When a snow day is called on what would have been the last day of school, Danny winds up spending all of it at the school being one-on-one tutored by the imposing Mrs. Trapper (voice of Fiona Shaw), a teacher who still scares adults she once taught and doesn’t like to show how otherwise alone she is.
When a blizzard rolls in on Christmas Eve, all of these townsfolk — plus Lighthouse Bill (voice of Bill Nighy) and Santa — work together to help the kids have a good Christmas in spite of various suboptimal circumstances and find joy in community. It’s all very good-natured British, very Call the Midwife Christmas special but without the horrifying medical emergencies.
My younger kids were occasionally bored with some of the ramp up to the big day and its blizzard but the last 60 percent or so of the movie held their attention. And it has a nice mix of kid wackiness, silliness involving a flock of turkeys that runs loose and just a touch of snark to help balance out some truly heartwarming Christmas-y-ness. B+Streaming on Netflix.
Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (PG-13)
A big, largely-Italian-American family comes together on Christmas Eve for a night of food, light bickering, kid antics and general merriment in Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.
Someone on Bluesky described this movie as feeling like if Robert Altman made a holiday movie and that is a pretty clean way to explain what you’re getting here. A group of adult siblings and others — cousins, and/or “cousins” in the sense of people who are part of a big family even if it’s not entirely clear how — gather at the home where they grew up, with all of their children, ranging in age from small to adult themselves. The mother (Mary Reistetter) still lives in the house with one of the siblings — who now wants to sell the house and put her in a facility that can better care for her. We get hints at how far along this plan is throughout the movie, putting a general sense over the movie (one that we in the audience might be more aware of than the characters all are) that this could be the last Christmas Eve of this kind for this family.
This is, however, kind of background. Mostly we are just mingling, poking in on conversations between different relatives. We get to the party with Kathleen (Maria Dizzia) and her teenage daughter Emily (Matilda Fleming), her younger son and her husband Lenny (Ben Shenkman). We see some of Kathleen complaining about her prickly relationship with Emily and some of Emily’s “eyeroll, Mom” at Kathleen and at times follow Emily when she and other cousins sneak out and drive around. They meet up with other kids, hang out at a diner, hang out at a place where teens go to make out, try to convince someone to sell them booze. Nothing “happens” in the big-event sense. We get family members reliving annual traditions, we get spreads of food and a big meal, we get teens teen-ing around. We are just spending Christmas Eve with them and experiencing the overheated togetherness of a joyful/obligatory family gathering. Solid performances (including by Francesca Scorsese, Sawyer Spielberg — yes, the kids of that Scorsese and that Spielberg — and Elsie Fisher of Eighth Grade fame) make this a solid hang movie. BStreaming on AMC+ and available for rent or purchase.
Red One (PG-13)
Santa Claus is kidnapped and Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans have to save Christmas in Red One, the unnecessarily CGI-heavy, grimly quippy, unfun holiday action adventure.
Nick a.k.a. Red a.k.a. Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons, continuing this season’s widely commented on “ripped and/or hot Santa” trend) is kidnapped. An investigation by Callum Drift (Johnson), head of security, and Zoe (Lucy Liu), head of some organization that protects mythological creatures, leads them to Jack O’Malley (Evans), a con artist and hacker. He was paid to sneak into a government office and find the location of what he was told was a weapons test. He didn’t realize that what he was actually tracking was the location of Santa’s cloaked North Pole metropolis. Jack has long been a “no beliefs, no loyalty” guy and agrees to help Callum hunt down his employer (for money).
Eventually, Santa’s brother Krampus (Kristofer Hivju) and a Christmas witch (a real Icelandic thing, according to Wikipedia) called Gryla (Kieran Shipka) are in the mix. Also, Jack finds that the investigation is getting in his way of being even a C-minus dad to his young teen son Dylan (Wesley Kimmel). Mary Elizabeth Ellis plays Dylan’s mom and mostly she just plays a person who delivers exposition on what a crummy parent Jack has been. I mention this because she is often a really fun actress, as in her recent role playing Ted Danson’s daughter on the Netflix series A Man on the Inside, which is a truly funny, sweet show about aging, life phases, family relationships and more and you could watch about of half the season in the time it takes to watch this movie, which I think is a better use of your two hours.
Here, we get a chase through the streets of the North Pole, a Santa’s workshop staffed by penguins and bears, magic portals and other Santa lore stuff that probably could be fun but here just feels like mid-quality CGI for the sake of CGI. This is particularly noticeable with Krampus, a character that is given a Hulky-Thanosy outsized demonic body, which actually gets in the way of what could have been a personable performance by Hivju, who you may remember as Tormund Giantsbane on Game of Thrones. He is a fun actor playing a fun character but it’s so buried in nonsense that you don’t get to get a real sense of him or his relationship with Santa.
This movie feels very much “Marvel but Christmas” in the worst sense of that description (unlike The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, an actual Marvel holiday product which is goofy and delightful and is available on Disney+). It also straddles a weird line of being more violent and creature-scary than you’d want your kid movie to be but doesn’t offer much for adults. C-In theaters and streaming on Prime Video.
Hot Frosty (TV-PG)
A sad widow falls in love with a ripped snowman in Hot Frosty, the delightfully bonkers but not winky holiday rom-com from Netflix.
Kathy Barrett (Lacey Chabert), who runs the diner in downtown Hope Springs, is mourning the loss of her husband and doesn’t have the mental energy for things like fixing her house’s many repair issues or looking for new romance. Her friend at the local consignment store gives her a good-luck red scarf to encourage her to get back out there. But sad Kathy just ends up putting the scarf on a snowman in the town square, one who has a well-chiseled set of abs. Later that night — through the Magic of Christmas!, probably — the snowman becomes a human, though one with a very cold resting temperature and a tendency to sweat profusely when exposed to even minor warmth. Jack (Dustin Milligan, Josh the podcaster from the excellent Rutherford Falls), as this “man” is eventually called, isn’t sure about much — like, if he can melt or how clothes work or how eating works — but he is certain he is very fond of Kathy. Not exactly sure what Jack’s deal is, Kathy just sort of goes with the whole “I used to be a snowman” thing and lets Jack crash at her house, in part to hide him from the sheriff (Craig Robinson). When Jack came alive, he accidentally streaked in front of an older couple, broke a window in the consignment store and took some coveralls — a crime spree the sheriff and his deputy (Joe Lo Trugilo) just can’t countenance.
There are a lot of little goofy moments in and aspects of this movie that are played perfectly straight in a way that made me truly enjoy this bit of holiday fluff: Jack excitedly telling the other (non-alive) snowmen in the town square that maybe “it could happen” for them too. Craig Robinson’s increasingly Inspector Javert-like obsession with finding the man who crimed up his one-street town. Joe Lo Trugilo, still basically Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Charles Boyle, answering “how does some soup sound?” literally. Lacy Chabert never once winking at the audience. Dustin Milligan giving “beautiful dummy” without playing his character as too witless. Either you’re going to buy into “lady falls for ripped snowman” or you can’t. But if you do, you’ll be rewarded by this movie that has fun with, without making fun of, its silly premise. B Streaming on Netflix.
The Merry Gentlemen (PG)
Chad Michael Murray PG-ily The Full Montys (“full” in this case being “shirtless in jeans, sometimes Speedos”) to save Britt Robertson’s family’s nightclub in The Merry Gentlemen.
After being fired from her Rockettes-like Broadway show in New York City, Ashley (Robertson) returns to her hometown to find that her parents (Michael Gross and Beth Broderick) are behind on their rent for their nightclub, the Rhythm Room — which is also not exactly mobbed with customers. Ashley comes up with an idea to quickly earn the $30K her parents owe and save their business: a male revue of sexy men sexy dancing. She enlists/enforces Luke (Murray), the club’s volunteer handyman who is also a woodworking artisan, to join along with a few other guys. Using her dancer skills, she helps teach the boys routines that bring in the crowds of local ladies, politely whooping it up from their seats as the men enchant them from the stage only, no touching.
This is a totally solid and watchable cast and the premise had the promise of some Hot Frosty fun, but this movie is missing the daffiness that made that movie such a treat. It is also, like many of this genre of movie, quite sexless — a thing that just is what it is for these children-of-Hallmark but which really sticks out with this movie’s premise. Also, despite its just under 90-minute runtime, the movie drags a bit and feels like it would be best enjoyed as a thing on in the background while you’re doing something else. C+ Streaming on Netflix.
The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland (7+)
Santa Claus attempts to make a delivery to Wonderland and runs into the very anti-Christmas Queen of Hearts in The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland, a prettily-animated sweetness-with-a-hint-of-tart animated adaptation of the book by Carys Bexington and illustrated by Kate Hindley.
Just as he’s about to set out on Christmas Eve, Santa Claus (voice of Gerard Butler) gets a last-minute letter from a young princess in Wonderland asking for a Bandersnatch. He decides to rework his flight plan to make a little stop in Wonderland — over the objection of the skeptical reindeer — but, Wonderland being Wonderland, he and the reindeer and an elf who tagged along are quickly waylaid in their task. In addition to mazes with rooms that seem to defy physics and potions that make you big or small, Santa and company find their present-delivering task made harder by the Queen of Hearts (voice of Emilia Clarke), who hates Christmas and every tinsel and pudding and (because this is the United Kingdom) Christmas cracker that reminds her of the holiday.
Also because it’s the U.K., the movie has nice notes of acid through all the holiday sweetness — the reindeer who are a bit cynical office workers for a somewhat scatterbrained boss, the silliness of the Wonderland characters like the March Hare (voice of Asim Chaudhry) and the Mad Hatter (Mawaan Rizwan), the elf band that pops up everywhere to add mood music to scenes. Clark makes for a fun mad Queen and Gerard Butler is a surprising Santa choice but he works. And throughout the movie has lovely storybook animation that adds notes of humor to the full-color prettiness. B+ Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Dear Santa (PG-13)
An 11-year-old with a tendency toward misspelling accidentally sends his letter with his fondest wish to Satan in Dear Santa.
Liam (Robert Timothy Smith) is having a hard time with life — he’s not really fitting in at his new school, his parents are constantly fighting and the family is still struggling with a recent tragedy. He does have a good friend, Gibby (Jaden Carson Baker), and a crush — Emma (Kai Cech), who is nice but who Liam can’t figure out how to be normal around. He writes to Santa, really just because the ritual gives his mom a bit of cheer, but due to some spelling difficulties it’s addressed “To: Satan, North Lope” and is received in the hot place by Jack Black. Tickled that a kid has written to him, Satan appears, all devil horns and stinkiness, to grant Liam’s wishes. It takes Liam a bit to realize he’s dealing with Old Nick, not Saint Nick, but eventually he learns the terms of the deal: he makes three wishes, the devil gets his soul. No, thank you, Liam says. But without realizing who he was dealing with, he already made one wish — for Emma to give him a chance. The wish is a pretty deluxe package deal — VIP tickets to a Post Malone concert, with sweet transportation and even a ticket for Gibby. But Liam is loath to make another wish and lose his soul.
Dear Santa is a bit of a Farrelly Brothers joint — Bobby directs, Peter has a screenplay co-writing credit and both have producer credits. Though this movie is PG-13, it has moments of R-rated-seeming comedy that are more in line with their early R movies than a more family-friendly comedy. The movie also has some real lesser-quality Disney-sitcom vibes — the kids and the material are largely not a good fit. The young actors oftentimes can not sell the comedy they’re given and/or aren’t given comedy that they can make work, leading to some very tinny, artificial scenes. Add in yikes-some acting by Brianne Howey and Hayes MacArthur as Liam’s parents, and this feels more toss-off TV movie than the Farrelly Brothers presence and Jack Black’s leading role would suggest. The movie’s main problem, I think, is that it’s not solidly a family comedy or solidly a Bad Santa-esque R-rated comedy. Either could have worked but this middle way leaves the movie mushy and underbaked. C- Streaming on Paramount+ and available for rent or purchase.
Nutcrackers (PG-13)
Businessman Ben Stiller finds himself caring for his four semi-feral nephews in the mournful but sweet Nutcrackers.
Michael (Stiller) feels like a stock 1980s comedy character, with his “Big Presentation” deadline looming and his big-city ways and his inability to cope without wi-fi (which would have been, what, a fax machine in a 1980s movie?). When his sister and her husband died, he sent an Edible Arrangement to the funeral for his four young-teen-through-young-elementary -age nephews (Homer Janson, Arlo Janson, Ulysses Janson and Atlas Janson). Now he is headed to their rural working family farm to sign some papers and get them adopted or something — it’s not clear what he thinks is happening with the kids and the farm but “not it” is very clearly his position. Social worker Gretchen (Linda Cardellini) tells him that she doesn’t have a family willing to take all four boys yet and Michael needs to stick around to care for them for what he clearly thinks will be more days than weeks. With their long hair, their home-schooled farm-focused lives and their general brotherness, the Kicklighter boys are known as sort of a handful. Their mom/Michael’s sister was, however, beloved in the town for her dance studio. Eventually, Michael hits on the idea of them putting on a kid-penned variation on the Nutcracker to show everyone how adorable and adoptable the boys are.
Stiller here is fine — the right amount of prickly for a guy who doesn’t have child experience and had been estranged from his sister but not cartoonishly heartless. But it’s the Janson boys, real-life brothers, who give the movie heart. They play the boyness of their characters — a constant whirl of wrestling, bad decisions, general messiness, loyalty and surprising moments of kindness — in a way that feels genuine and will be instantly recognizable to anybody who has parented or taught or otherwise attempted to corral more than one boy. B- Streaming on Hulu.
Mary (TV-14)
The Christmas story is the focus of Mary, a biography of the early years of Jesus’ mom.
The standard nativity pageant story is not generally feature-length so this movie starts with the difficulties Mary’s parents Joachim (Ori Pfeffer) and Anne (Hilla Vidor) have conceiving in 18 B.C. Nazareth. Blue-robed Archangel Gabriel (Dudley O’Shaughnessy) shows up to Joachim and Anne to tell them that God will give them a daughter, with conditions. Years later, their daughter Mary (Mila Harris) is elementary-aged and when Gabriel shows up again mom and dad know it’s time to take Mary to the temple where she will serve God, as they’ve agreed. Mary spends years at the temple (long enough to age up into actress Noa Cohen), mostly doing housekeeping stuff with a similarly aged group of girls and under the mentorship of Anna (Susan Brown), who feels a bit like she’s on loan from the Bene Gesserit. One day, stoneworker Joseph (Ido Tako), with a little heavenly nudging, sees Mary doing the laundry at a nearby river. Their interaction includes only Mary telling him the name of her father and also calling him crazy for wading into the river to get her shawl. But Joseph decides she’s the one for him and asks Joachim for her hand in marriage. Mary’s parents aren’t sure but then he mentions getting some directions from the blue-robed guy and they give him the thumbs up. Mary is more-or-less OK with the engagement but then she gets her own visit from Gabriel and is told that she is “with child.” The wider community is really jerky about Mary’s single mom-to-be status and Joseph has to decide what he wants to do about it.
Extremely meanwhile, King Herod (Anthony Hopkins, very “angry Odin” but bigger and louder and more bonkers) is busy restoring the temple, murdering his wife, acting twitchy about his place in the Roman power structure and just generally being a pretty unhinged guy. When he crosses paths with Mary, he has a sort of prophetic-vision-reaction, leading his main bodyguard (Gudmundur Thorvaldsson) to get all obsessed with hunting down this random teen who gave the stink-eye to his boss.
I enjoy a good Bible story movie, particularly if the movie takes a Ridley-Scott-with-the-Gladiator-movies “sure, whatever” approach to historical accuracy and has at least one character who decides to go full Shakespeare-at-top-volume theatrical. This movie has all of those things: the costuming here feels more galaxy far, far away than Earth a long, long time ago; Anthony Hopkins goes All In as Herod, and I do not remember the Bible having as many action scenes for Mary and Joseph as we see here. Are Mary’s eyebrows way too on point for a pregnant lady in antiquity? Yes, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a fun watch. B-Streaming on Netflix.
An Almost Christmas Story (PG)
A young owl ends up in the Christmas Tree in Rockefeller Center in An Almost Christmas Story, a visually lovely animated movie.
According to Wikipedia, this is actually computer-generated animation but the visuals suggest paper craft (cars and buildings that seem to be made of cardboard, puffs of steam that look drawn on paper) and characters with a wooden puppet or papier mache look. Their movements suggest stop-motion animation and puppetry — it’s all very well done and helps give a kind of tactile warmth to the story.
Little owl Moon (voice of Cary Christopher) does not, as his father, Papa (voice of Jim Gaffigan), tells him, stay put while his father flies off to look for shelter and instead flies out to look for sticks to fix the family nest. A hawk chases Moon, who falls and hurts his wing, and Papa hurries Moon into a random tree and says to wait for him. Before Papa can get back, though, the tree is cut down and winds up at Rockefeller Center, decorated for Christmas and sitting next to the ice rink. When Moon ventures out of the tree, he winds up falling into Luna (voice of Estella Madrigal) a young girl with a prosthetic leg attempting to relearn to ice skate. After some adventures through the subway while being chased by pigeons (voices of Mamoudou Athie, Philip Rosenthal and Natasha Lyonne) who think Moon is trying to steal their garbage food, Moon and Luna end up wandering around, each lost and trying to seek their family.
The movie (which clocks in at 21 minutes) is a celebration of human (and animal) kindness. Its real highlights are the beautiful animation style and the very fun and fitting voice work, with standouts being Lyonne and John C. Reilly as a narrator of sorts. B+Streaming on Disney+.
A juror realizes he has a pretty significant connection to the case he’s on in the Clint Eastwood-directed courtroom thriller Juror #2, a competent, enjoyable movie.
Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) attempts to get out of jury duty by explaining that his wife Allison (Zoey Deutch) is in the final weeks of a high-risk pregnancy, but the judge (Amy Aquino) says nice try and thus Justin becomes juror #2 on what he learns is the trial of James Sythe (Gabriel Basso), accused of murdering his girlfriend Kendall (Francesca Eastwood). As prosecutor Faith Killebrew (Toni Collete) starts to describe the crime in her opening arguments, Justin realizes that Kendall was killed at roughly the same time, in the same general area, where he “hit a deer” (a deer, he assumes) with his car on a rainy night after leaving a bar. Several years sober, Justin didn’t drink at the bar, but just stared down the drink he bought while wrapped up in grief over his and Allison’s previous pregnancy loss. But still, as his AA sponsor and lawyer Larry (Kiefer Sutherland) explains, his history of DUIs and the politics of the case, coming as Faith is running for district attorney, means there will be no going easy on Justin should he turn himself in. Will Justin let the jury convict James? Will anyone figure out that this guy acting squirrely during the whole trial is more involved than he lets on?
Chris Messina plays the defense attorney and the jury members include characters played by J.K. Simmons, Cedric Yarbrough and Leslie Bibb, all bringing nice character notes to their relatively minor roles. Juror #2 across the board has a John Grisham-lite sheen and does a good job balancing a few serious thoughts with character drama. It is takes itself just seriously enough but not too seriously and is neither too clever nor too silly. It is an interesting story, with good performances — an entertaining movie even if it isn’t setting the world on fire. Which makes the most unsettling aspect of this suspense film the movie itself. If you’ve heard anything about it, you’ve probably heard about its half-hearted theatrical release, quick move to VOD (where it seems to be doing well) and its scheduled Dec. 20 release on Max. I’m not sure what this movie’s weird release trajectory means for the future of solid, non-awards-seeking dramas but, I guess, enjoy ’em while we’ve still got ’em? B
Available for rent or purchase.
Conclave (PG)
The pope-picking process is filled with intrigue and a fun amount of cattiness in Conclave.
An old (fictional) pope dies and the Vatican machinery gears up for the election by the cardinals of a new pope. Even as the pope’s close associates — such as cardinals Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), Bellini (Stanley Tucci) and Tremblay (John Lithgow) — pray over his very recently deceased body there is political jockeying. Three weeks later when the cardinals from all around the world arrive to be sequestered in conclave to pick a new pope, all the men standing in clumps outside, getting in a smoke, have a real Tammany Hall vibe. An Italian cardinal, Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), seems to be working hard for the top spot, letting anyone who will listen know what a conservative, traditional guy he is, looking to make Latin great again and whatnot. Also a frontrunner is Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), an African cardinal who seems friendly and popular and has very hardline social views. Bellini doesn’t want to be pope — and tells everybody that doesn’t want to be pope, while also letting fly his opinions about openness and tolerance and, gasp, the involvement of women. And then there’s Tremblay, who seems to be a consensus candidate for the “least worst choice.” As everybody tries to Nate Silver about whose support will go where, a mystery cardinal shows up, Benitez (Carlos Diehz). Born in Mexico, Benitez has served in hot spots — Congo, Iraq — and was recently named the Cardinal of Kabul. He is the new kid everyone in this very clique-y lunch room is whispering about.
A “woo-hoo!” from me came during one of the too-few scenes with Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini), a nun from the order of Our Lady of Mess Around and Find Out. Shortly after Benitez arrives, Lawrence asks him to say grace before the meal and when he gives a shout out to the Sisters who prepared the food Agnes gives a little snort-chuckle, which feels like it just wraps up all sorts of things about her relationship with the church and the priests. It was a well-crafted moment (and not even the one I woo-hoo-ed about).
Maybe you’re sick of anything election-y, but Conclave is an engaging dishy drama, particularly if you have some CCD in your past. Stanley Tucci may not be at full speed here but he’s fully compelling as a man wrestling with how much he wants this job he knows he has only a slim chance at getting. Fiennes is also fun to watch as he has to deal with one person and their problems after another while seemingly getting sucked in deeper to his own crisis of faith and maybe just a little bit giving into ambition. And all over, the air is thick with side-eyes, enjoyable soap-opera-esque close-ups and little nuggets of the driest humor. I don’t know that this is necessarily a great movie but I had a great time watching it. A Available for rent or purchase.
Megalopolis (R)
Put the TV show Succession, Julie Tambor’s 1999 film Titus and Baz Luhrman’s Red Curtain movie trilogy in a blender and sprinkle that glittery, stilted-dialogue smoothie with vibes from the old Emo Kylo Ren Twitter account and you get the general idea of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, just a weirdo trip of an “I’m using my own money, nobody can say ‘no’ to me” visual project.
New York City is here called New Rome, ruled by Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who I think is supposed to represent the tired status quo. Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) is sort of a tech bro-ish inventor of a Vibranium-esque does-everything material called Megalon. Cesar is also an architect type who is part of the Design Authority that is building/seeking to build a bunch of Dr. Seuss twisty nonsense that somehow represents society’s improvement. Party girl Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel) takes a shine to Cesar but, like, shouldn’t — it feels like one of those “he’s a genius, I can fix him” situations that just makes you sad for women in film. (This whole movie is filled with female characters that seem to only exist in relation to the male characters, with no independent motivations or thoughts.) Cesar’s uncle Hamilton Crassus (Jon Voight) is the richest man in the, let’s say, world and helps to fund Cesar’s vision. Also a Crassus nephew is Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf), a weaselly fail-son with an interest in fascism. And then you have Aubrey Plaza as a TV money honey with gold digger ambitions, Grace VanderWaal as a pop girlie vestal virgin, Jason Schwartzman I think still playing his Hunger Games character, Laurence Fishburne as a narrator and, why not, Talia Shire and Dustin Hoffman. Plus Cesar and Julia can sometimes stop time — figuratively or literally, you decide!
If all that sounds like a bunch of unconnected words, that is a pretty good sense of what it’s like to watch Megalopolis. The most consistent element of the movie is the visuals, in particular the way the clothes are designed to sell a “Rome but make it modern” fashion aesthetic. Lotta belted drapiness — but I’m not mad at it! The movie’s costume designer (Milena Canonero, according to IMDb, who has done some costume design in Wes Anderson movies) seems to be having fun with the idea of, for example, translating Rome senate robes to male business looks. It may even be worth a costume design Oscar nomination.
Then there’s the Adam Driver of it all — taking this whole thing very seriously. Maybe a little too seriously? But occasionally you get moments of him making the whole ridiculous Shakespearean vibe legitimately funny (Google “Adam Driver back to the club”) or making it feel like an actual human is involved (a few but not all of his scenes with Emmanuel), which feels like a real accomplishment for a movie this turned-up-to-11 at all times.
Megalopolis is long and rambling, though you get the sense that Coppola would tell you every minute is intensely necessary. I don’t feel like it’s intensely necessary for anyone to watch it but, some day when its rental price comes way down or it shows up on some streaming network, this experiment in an almost comic book movie approach to Ideas-based filmmaking is worth a viewing as a curiosity. C+ Available for rent.
Spellbound (PG)
A 15-year-old princess is trying to keep up family appearances after her parents, the king and queen, turn into giant destructive monsters in the animated musical Spellbound.
I’m going to spoil the end of the movie because the “what it’s all about” might hit some families harder than others: “My parents are monsters” is clearly fairy tale metaphor territory. In this case, it’s a couple that have stopped operating successfully as a couple or even a team of co-parents but have become, literally, trapped in their own anger. The movie does a good job of addressing what that means for adults and how parents who don’t have the same love they once had for each other can still work together to make their child feel unconditionally loved and supported. And how kids can trust that love as a forever thing, even if their parents’ marriage isn’t. All of this is I think pretty well told but I can also imagine that for families going through it this might not be a fun movie night.
With the help of royal advisers like Nazara (voice of Jennifer Lewis) and Bolinar (voice of John Lithgow), Princess Ellian (voice of Rachel Zegler) has done a good job of making sure the right things get signed and the right people get enough proof of life that the kingdom generally thinks the royal couple are alive, well and in charge. And while they’re alive, King Solon (voice of Javier Bardem) and Queen Ellsmere (voice of Nicole Kidman) are not well or in charge. They are giant, brightly colored fuzzy-and-feathery monsters who don’t recognize Ellian or anyone else and who crash through the palace knocking things over and smashing holes in walls. This can’t go on, Nazara and Bolinar say, and convince Ellian that if they can’t change her parents back then she will become queen.
Ellian agrees because she has a plan that involves a pair of Squishmallow-esque oracles — Luno Oracle of the Moon (voice of Nathan Lane) and Sunny Oracle of the Sun (voice of Titus Burgess). The Oracles are sort of horrified that the royals are literal monsters but eventually explain the quest Ellian must take her parents on to turn them human again.
Along the way, Bolinar accidentally trades bodies with Ellian’s pet rat, the palace guards chase the family in order to catch the monsters they don’t believe are the king and queen and there’s a lot of completely acceptable singing that I don’t remember a single tune from.
Spellbound is a perfectly cromulent example of the mid-level animated feature. Spellbound doesn’t break new ground but it does tell a story with well-crafted emotional beats and enough fuzzy creature goofiness to satisfy kid viewers. B- Streaming on Netflix.
Piece by Piece (PG)
The life and musical career of Pharrell Williams gets the autobiography documentary treatment in the animated Lego movie Piece by Piece.
In some ways this is a fairly straightforward look at Williams’ life and impact on music, with discussion of his longtime love of music and talking heads telling their parts. Except that everybody here, from his parents to Snoop Dog and Gwen Stefani, is rendered as Legos in a Lego world. This animated element allows for a nice visual exploration of Williams’ discussion of his relationship to music — how it makes him feel, what he sees and thinks about when he’s listening to music and creating music. And his Behind the Music-style “dark period” is about what sounds like basically a creative block, which he talks about working through.
The Lego of it all makes the movie perhaps appear on its face to be a kids’ movie. While the songs have been, as far as I can remember, largely edited to only their PG parts and a “PG Spray” fogs up the room for Snoop’s scenes, it is a movie that is probably of more interest to adults or older kids who are familiar with the music. I could see the movie appealing to musically or creatively inclined kids — but again, probably an older audience than the bigger-tent The Lego Movie-style Lego movies.
But for adults and those older kids, Piece by Piece is a fun and visually exciting charmer. A Available for rent or purchase.
Gifts for movie-lovers
• Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat and Tearsby Michael Schulman. This 2023 book is a delight for movie history fans. It looks at different periods of Oscar races, from the silent film years through a coda on The Slap, and uses Oscar campaigns as a way to look at the movie industry and wider culture. My current read is November 2024 release Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops by Tim Robey, an interesting examination of eras in movies through the lens of box office bombs.
• This Had Oscar BuzzNow that Patreon allows you to gift memberships, you can give a fellow movie lover a subscription to this podcast hosted by Joe Reid (who does the Cinematrix game and Movie Fantasy League, both over at Vulture.com) and Chris Feil (an excellent freelance writer and thinker about movies). The show produces one regular episode a week plus bonus episodes for subscribers, which in this award season include quick-hit looks at award nominations. Make it a deluxe gift by also giving a subscription to Demi, Myself and I, a Patreon-subscription podcast where Joe Reid looks at the films of Demi Moore.
• Movies at Red River Theatres This downtown Concord theater sells gift certificates, gift memberships (which, depending on the level, can come with discounts, movie passes, free popcorn and more) and Dinner and a Movie packages, which feature two movie passes plus a $25 gift certificate to a participating restaurant for $40, according to redrivertheatres.org.
• Movies at O’neil Cinemas The O’neil Cinemas at Brickyard Square in Epping sells gift cards, which can be purchased online at oneilcinemas.com.
• Movies at Chunky’s If you like to give a physical thing with your gift card, Chunky’s Cinema Pub in Manchester offers gift boxes (with a gift card, movie pass and popcorn pass) themed to look like movie candy and gift baskets (with a gift card, admissions and popcorn passes and theater candy, all in a popcorn bag or bucket, depending on the size). See chunkys.com.
• Movies and more at Smitty’s Cinema Gift cards to Tilton’s Smitty’s Cinema also cover purchases in the GameLAB with its arcade and other attractions. See smittyscinema.com.
• MUBI You can gift the streaming service that offers a changing roster of independent, international and other not-your-standard blockbuster films. A big deal film currently streaming is this year’s Demi Moore stand-out The Substance — you can even get a “We are sorry you didn’t appreciate your experience with The Substance” T-shirt (that’s a particularly chilling phrase from the movie) to level up your gift.
Moana takes another trip, but this time without the songs of Lin-Manuel Miranda, in Moana 2, a serviceable animated movie.
Moana (voice of Auli’i Cravalho) becomes her island’s official wayfinder and gets an ominous message from the ancestors — a vision of her island empty and her people gone. The tribe’s continued existence depends on finding other people spread across the ocean. She sets out — this time with a crew — to find an island she saw a vision of, one that will help her people connect with others. The crew consists of her rooster Heihei (voice of Alan Tudyk) and pig Pua plus three completely unnecessary human characters — builder Loto (voice of Rose Matafeo), farmer Kele (voice of David Fane) and storyteller/beefy dude Moni (voice of Hualālai Chun).
Once on the seas, Moana again meets up with her buddy, the demi-god Maui (voice of Dwayne Johnson), who is having his own issues with Matangi (voice of Awhimai Fraser), a bat goddess lady who is presented as sinister only to become a mushy whatever that the movie sort of sets aside until a mid-credits scene I didn’t see. Eventually, Maui and Moana’s crew team up to face a thunderstorm god-type guy who has sunk the island they need to find. The group works to bring the island back to the surface, thus connecting all the people of the ocean. They are joined in this task by the only fun new character, a member of the Kakamora, the seafaring tribe of adorable warrior coconuts, that Wikipedia tells me is named Kotu.
The movie also gives Moana a new baby sister, Simea (voice of Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda), who feels like her whole deal is related to ideas for new merch and for a character that can be spun off into her own adventure. When I read about the mid-credits scene, most articles mentioned that this movie was originally meant to be a streaming series, which makes all of this feel like a setup for another sequel or other content, Marvel Cinematic Universe-style, sucking up dollars and remaining creative energy. The first Moana had clarity of purpose, a streamlined story, themes about honoring the past and looking toward the future and catchy songs. Moana 2 has none of that.
But it still has the rooster and Johnson doing his affable Maui thing and a legitimately touching moment in its final act. I heard some squirming and general sounds of kid-boredom at about the hour mark at my packed screening, but kids also seemed to generally enjoy some of the goofiness and adventure. Moana 2 is, ultimately, fine — above average as family-chills-out-and-watches-a-movie entertainment, just not up to the high standard set by the original. B-
Rated PG for action/peril, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by David G. Derrick Jr., Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller, with a screenplay by Jared Bush and Dana Ledoux Miller, Moana 2 is an hour and 40 minutes long and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
