Air (R)

Middle-aged dudes in the mid 1980s pin their career futures and their hopes for the financial future of Nike on a young NBA rookie named Michael Jordan in Air.

I feel like even the movie is somewhat conscious of the fact that it is not the story of a legendary athlete or even, King Richard style, the struggles of that legendary athlete’s parent but the story of some guys who really wanted to capitalize on the status of a hopefully legendary athlete to boost their basketball shoe line. The movie is more stakes-adjacent than stakes-having.

Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) is unimpressed with the meh candidates Nike is looking at to rep their unpopular line of basketball shoes in the coming season. Adidas and Converse are cool and that’s where the big-name players go — the Larry Birds and the Magic Johnsons — including Jordan, whose college career has made him an official One to Watch. Nike marketing guy Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) thinks Sonny should just stick to the brief from company head Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) and use the limited funds given to the basketball division to sponsor three or four lesser lights. But Sonny wants to bet the house on Jordan, even if, as Jordan’s agent David Falk (Chris Messina) tells him, Jordan is almost certain to go with Adidas.

Sonny breaks with the protocol of this type of deal and goes around Falk, traveling to North Carolina to show up at the Jordans’ home. There he meets Michael’s dad, James Jordan (Julius Tennon), and his mom, Deloris Jordan (Viola Davis), who seems to be the true gatekeeper for Michael’s career. She admires Sonny’s persistence just enough to have a brief meeting with him at their house and then later she decides — over her son’s objections — to listen to Nike’s official pitch to Michael Jordan at the company’s Oregon headquarters. (No “Michael Jordan” really appears on screen except as a hazy figure, usually turned away from the camera, who is with his family during business meetings or as the actual guy in historical footage.)

The movie spends not quite enough time with Peter Moore (Matthew Maher), the man who designs the first Air Jordan prototype that the Nike team — which also includes Howard White (Chris Tucker) — hopes to use to convince Michael to pick Nike. His scenes include a fun element of the shoe’s design, which was a purposeful decision to make the shoe more colorful than the NBA technically allowed, with Nike offering to pay the shoe fines, a factor they even planned to work into their marketing. Personally, I found some bits about the artistry of the shoe a fun part of this movie about the making of a hugely culturally significant athletic shoe line. Like, more sneakers in this sneaker movie, would be my preference.

I think we’re maybe supposed to think the heart of this movie is Damon’s ostentatiously schlubby Sonny, with his genuine desire to help Michael Jordan become a legend and his “Gil really needs a sale” energy. And maybe a little bit of our heart is supposed to be with Rob and his sad divorced-dad tale of bribing his daughter with Nikes. I don’t think even the movie believes we’re rooting for Phil Knight, who is giving flaky proto-tech-bro vibes. But come on, with no real Michael Jordan in the picture, the heart of the movie is Davis’ Deloris Jordan, who knows the score when it comes to both her son’s abilities and the way the world is going to want things from him. Casting Davis makes Deloris an easy character to care about — Davis brings weight and substance to the sort of dippy story of, not unlike Tetris, a licensing deal.

Without Davis, I think this movie would feel too lightweight, too lacking in stuff to fill out its nearly two-hour run time. With Davis, the movie feels just substantial enough to justify being in a theater — but just barely. It felt very similar to me to those HBO historical-events movies, particularly to something like The Late Shift, about the Jay Leno-David Letterman Tonight Show story.

If you are moderately interested in this side story from the career of Michael Jordan, Air is moderately interesting. C+

Rated R for language throughout, according to the MPA on filmratings.com, but probably also to signify to grown-up movie goers that this is a grown-up movie where nothing explodes, which is accurate. Directed by Ben Affleck with a screenplay by Alex Convery, Air is one hour and 51 minutes long and distributed by Amazon Studios, which means that it will eventually show up on Prime Video, though it is slated for a longer theatrical release than originally planned, according to Wikipedia.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (PG)

It’s-a him, Mario, in an animated adventure that really just made me feel some nostalgia for OG Nintendo Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

Not unlike AppleTV+’s Tetris, which somehow seems like the mashup of the two theatrical releases I watched this week, The Super Mario Bros. Movie made me think more about the video game from which it originated — in my case the console and Game Boy versions of the game in 1990something — than anything happening in the movie itself. I was the most casual of video and arcade game players back in the 20th century so it’s interesting how much both games still were part of the wider culture.

Here, we meet brothers Mario (voice of Chris Pratt) and Luigi (more engagingly voiced by Charlie Day), who have just started a plumbing business and sunk all their money into a pretty great TV ad, chock full of “Mama Mia!” type accents from these two otherwise nonspecific American-accented guys. I mention this only because the ad is sort of charmingly goofy in a way most of the rest of this movie isn’t.

After their first job goes wrong because of an angry dog, they try to “save Brooklyn” by fixing some water main problems in the road. Instead, though, they get sucked into a, let’s say, alternate dimension and, while traveling along a rainbow thing I’m just going to call bifrost, are separated. Luigi is flung into a lava world ruled by Bowser (voice of Jack Black), sort of a large battle-turtle intent on capturing all domains and using what Wikipedia tells me is a Super Star to gain invincibility. Mario lands in Mushroom Kingdom, which is sad because he doesn’t like mushrooms, but it’s a generally brighter happier place even if it too is under threat of invasion by Bowser.

Mushroom Kingdom’s Princess Peach (voice of Anya Taylor-Joy) plans to get the support of King Cranky Kong’s (voice of Fred Armisen) army to face Bowser and his army, which leads to Mario fighting the king’s son Donkey Kong (voice of Seth Rogen) and a fun sorta-friendship between the two, which was one of this movie’s better elements. Mario wants to defeat Bowser to get Luigi back — their brotherly relationship is also a nice element but, as they spend most of the movie apart, we don’t get nearly enough of it.

There is a flatness to this movie — it’s colorful and action-packed, but there just isn’t a lot to grab on to in terms of the story or the characters we spend the most time with. Pratt’s Mario is kind of a nothing despite being at the center of this story. He doesn’t have the personality of, say, Pratt’s Emmet in the Lego movies. His adventure partners Donkey Kong and Luigi bring a little something to their roles— the notes of sweetness and weirdness I think you need to make this kind of thing work — but not enough to give the whole movie life. Princess Peach is also kind of an empty character. I realize this is a cartoon based on a video game, but I feel like the movie just hangs it all on the admittedly eye-catching, gameplay-riffing-on visuals without giving the movie even the, uhm, depth of, like, the Trolls movies or that odd noir Pikachu.

The motivations of Bowser (to marry Princess Peach whether she likes it or not) are a little disturbing and a bunch of adorable creatures are threatened with slaughter but this is otherwise probably a fairly older-elementary-schooler acceptable movie. It’s just not a particularly memorable one. C+

Rated PG for action and mild violence, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic and co-directed by Pierre Leduc and Fabien Polack with a screenplay by Matthew Fogel, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is an hour and 32 minutes long and is distributed in theaters by Universal Studios.

Featured photo: The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (PG-13)

Chris Evans and Michelle Rodriguez make a good questing-buddies pair in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

And I should explain up front that I’ve never played Dungeons & Dragons, so surely there are Easter eggs about characters and gameplay that I missed. But not knowing that world doesn’t get in the way of understanding or basically enjoying what is a pretty straightforward adventure tale set in a magic-y world.

Edgin (Chris Pine) and Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) are partners in a smash-and-grab operation in the land of Neverwinter (it reads as a more chill Middle-earth) — a team that over time expands to include the so-so sorcerer Simon (Justice Smith) and the con artist Forge (Hugh Grant). We meet Edgin and Holga as they are rounding two years in prison after a heist they planned at the behest of the wizard Sofina (Daisy Head) goes wrong and they get caught. Edgin only took the job because the location contained a magical scroll that he hoped could bring his wife back from the dead, reuniting her with Edgin and their daughter, Kira (Chloe Coleman), who was only a baby when her mother died. She was mainly raised by Edgin and Holga, and for the last two years has been living with Forge — or so Edgin hopes. He asked Forge to take care of Kira when it became clear Edgin wasn’t going to escape and now he devises a somewhat stupid plan to bust himself and Holga out of prison so he can go and find his daughter.

Once they’re free, they find that Kira has been taken care of by Forge, who has really grown to relish his fatherly role. He’s enjoyed it so much, in fact, that he has convinced Kira that her dad was a jerk who abandoned her and, now that Forge (with the help of the wizard Sofina) has made himself lord of Neverwinter, he’s provided Kira with a very comfortable life and is reluctant to give it or her up.

When it becomes clear that Edgin and Holga will have to go a sneaky route to win back Kira, Edgin searches for sorcerer Simon, who now has a mediocre magic show (but a very capable pickpocket racket), and for a druid named Doric (Sophia Lillis) whose shapeshifting abilities can help the team make their plan to get into Forge’s castle, rescue Kira and find the life-giving scroll so Edgin can reunite his family.

Meanwhile, Forge and Sofina, who is secretly one of the bad guys known as Red Wizards, have some sort of nefarious plan of their own connected to a forthcoming tournament.

Showing up for too short a time is Xenk (Regé-Jean Page) as an extremely noble lone wolf warrior. The chemistry between him and the more cynical Edgin is a nice note.

“Nice” is probably an overall fair descriptor for this movie — which can sound like faint praise but isn’t really. It’s unrealistic that every movie be the best thing ever or a total mess. Honor Among Thieves is neither, it’s just light fun and uncomplicated good times. It cribs a bit from the Avengers movies, it has the fairy-tale-ish vibes of many other things but without the grimness (Game of Thrones) or the self-seriousness (many a Tolkien property) that can weigh that sort of thing down. The core characters are basically enjoyable to spend time with, even if Edgin is the only one we really get to know. And Pine is just enough of a scruffily charming hero to make that work, without ever tipping over into aggressive glibness.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is the sort of movie you don’t need to rush out to see but that is entertaining enough if you find yourself in a theater watching it. B-

Rated PG-13 for fantasy action/violence and some language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein with a screenplay by Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley and Michael Gilio, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is two hours and 14 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Paramount Pictures.

Featured photo: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

John Wick: Chapter 4 (R)

Keanu Reeves gets what feels like more fight scenes and even sparser dialogue in John Wick: Chapter 4.

John Wick (Reeves) has recovered from being shot by friend/Continental Hotel manager Winston (Ian McShane) at the end of the last movie (a benevolent shooting, I think?). He’s hanging out with the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne, who is still having the very best time), who gets him a new suit. And off John Wick goes to the desert, to try to get someone to lift his “excommunicado” status in the assassin world (which means that killers worldwide are looking to take him out to collect a sizable bounty).

Meanwhile, back at the Continental, the classy assassin hang-out, the High Table (the underworld’s ruling body) has decided to mark the hotel as condemned, which is even worse than when it was deconsecrated or whatever in the last movie. An hour after The Harbinger (Clancy Brown) shows up to deliver the news about the hotel’s condemnation, the building is demolished like a faded Las Vegas casino and Concierge Charon (Lance Reddick, who was awesome in everything and died on March 17 and will be missed) is, uhm, let go.

The person behind all of this punishment aimed at Winston for the crime of helping John Wick is the Marquis (Bill Skarsgard), a snootypants we will enjoy rooting against. The High Table has given him a blank check to do whatever needs to be done to put an end to John Wick, both the man and the legend. The Marquis calls into service Caine (Donnie Yen), a former assassin who like John Wick tried to leave the life behind (possibly agreeing to have himself blinded to do it?). But he has a daughter and to keep her safe he occasionally freelances, I guess. He reluctantly takes the job to kill John Wick, an old buddy.

Caine is also old buddies with Shimazu (Hiroyuki Sanada), manager of the Osaka Continental, which is where John Wick goes for help. Shimazu’s concierge and daughter Akira (Rina Sawayama) isn’t so keen on Wick’s presence at the hotel; she’s less concerned with old friendship and more concerned with their continued survival in the here and now, especially when High Table henchmen show up with Caine.

Also at the Osaka is a character we come to know as Mr. Nobody (Shamier Anderson), a contract killer with a loyal dog because somebody in this movie has to have a Very Good Boy who can do cute doggie faces in the midst of balletic violence. Mr. Nobody is in the game to get John Wick but first he wants the “getting” price to go up and helps orchestrate this bounty inflation by occasionally knocking off competing assassins.

There are several memorable set-piece battles in John Wick Chapter 4: Caine fights a series of dudes in a kitchen using motion sensors; John Wick fights guys standing in the street while fast-moving traffic flows around and between them; John Wick fights in a building as we watch from overhead, giving an illusion that we are watching a continuous shot filmed through several rooms; multiple characters fight multiple characters on a steep set of stairs with the up and down climbing and falling part of the choreography of the fight. And in between that are several scenes of smaller battles and one-on-one fights. These scenes are all exciting and extremely well-choreographed. Like, there needs to be an Oscar that recognizes the skill of creating an energetic, technically beautiful fight scene that is also believable both for two humans to participate in and in the context of the movie. There needs to be an Oscar for this and it needs to go to a John Wick movie because this is a skill.

And yet.

And yet maybe this movie could have had fewer of these scens? I can’t believe I’m saying that but I think fewer and better highlighted would have been the way to go with these stretches of the movie which, when I think back to consider them individually, really were a marvel. In the movie, however, there is a frosting on frosting on frosting effect in the way this movie piles up fight scenes without the cake that allows the punch of sugar to really come through. The original John Wick was an hour and 41 minutes long. Each sequel has been a little bit longer than its predecessor, with this one clocking in at two hours and 49 minutes. Somewhere in here is a solid, well-paced, energetic hour-and-50-minute movie. But this nearly three-hour version gets bogged down in its questing — John Wick going here to engage with this person, then there, then we’re meeting these people. This has always been a part of these stories, particularly in the second and third installments, but it seemed a little more spinning-its-wheels here than it did in previous movies. Also, I did have the sinking feeling that some of this was setting up potential side-quel elements — Caine, Akira and of course Mr. Nobody and his dog.

So, Chapter 4? Loved the Keanu, as usual; loved the Fishburne and the McShane absolutely acting to, not just the back row, but the people on the street in front of the theater. Loved the precision of the fights, loved the ideas and the cleverness that went into them. This movie isn’t the gleeful ride of its immediate predecessor but it was an overall better-than-average bit of entertainment. B

Rated R for so so so much killing (“pervasive strong violence and some language” is how the MPA describes it, according to filmratings.com). Directed by Chad Stahelski and written by Shay Hatten and Michael Finch, John Wick: Chapter 4 is two hours and 49 minutes long and is distributed in theaters by Lionsgate.

Featured photo: John Wick: Chapter 4

Shazam! Fury of the Gods (PG-13)

Shazam! Fury of the Gods (PG-13)

Billy Batson is trying to keep the Shazam team together even though his family of superhero kids is growing up in Shazam! Fury of the Gods.

Actually, I lie, the movie isn’t about that at all. It states that a few times as Billy’s (Asher Angel as the teen, Zachary Levi as the Shazam superhero he can turn himself in to) current concern, with him insisting that all his siblings and fellow superheroes attend all rescues and family meetings together. But the movie doesn’t really seem to know how to make his desire to hold his new family together part of the story, either plot-wise or emotionally, in any kind of an organic way. Mary (Grace Caroline Currey, in both her incarnations) has in fact aged out of the foster care system but continues to live with parents Rosa (Marta Milans) and Victor (Cooper Andrews) and works between super-suiting up to contribute money to the household. Billy is himself only a few months away from turning 18, as is his bestie Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer/Adam Brody), who occasionally superheroes alone and is trying to impress new girl Ann (Rachel Zegler) at school. Younger kids/Shazam team members Pedro (Jovan Armand/D.J. Cotrona), Eugene (Ian Chen/Ross Butler) and Darla (Faithe Herman/Meagan Good) are, uhm, also there. I feel like there was a plan for them to have story lines but it doesn’t really pan out.

Meanwhile, Greek goddesses, the Daughters of Atlas (who sound like a pretty good all-lady metal cover band) — Hespera (Helen Mirren) and Kalypso (Lucy Liu) — retrieve the staff that the movie thankfully reminds us that Shazam broke in the first movie. As it turns out, breaking the staff actually broke the barrier between the worlds of the gods and humans. (Wizard Djimon Hounsou had domed the gods off in a floating bubble or something — look, all the lore stuff in this movie presented dumbly and I’m not going to worry about it too much). So these ladies, dressed in full Greek warrior garb, go retrieve the staff and force the Wizard to put it back together and then head to the human realm to find and take their power back from Shazam(s).

Eventually, there’s a dragon, a giant tree that creates serious root-based damage to the Phillies’ Citizens Bank Park, and winged lions and cyclops causing havoc in the streets of Philadelphia. And, hoo-boy, is it all boring. Let me say that again: Helen Mirren is a god (typecasting) and Lucy Liu rides a dragon to fight Shazam — and this movie could not figure out how to make any of that interesting, even in a campy way.

Every dumb bit of DC Extended Universe business was a drag on the movie (there are apparently two credits scenes, I stayed for one and I don’t regret leaving before the other). There is an absolutely baffling cameo at the end of the movie that is so ham-fisted it made me mad about a character I have previously liked. The movie cares way too much about the minutiae of the backstory of Daughters of Atlas without ever bothering to make the characters of Hespera, Kalypso and mystery sister No. 3 (not really a mystery) interesting. There are a lot of things that are started, little story elements that seem like they’re going to add emotional heft to the movie, that are just dropped like they were forgotten about. The movie feels senselessly loud — not just in volume but in how everything feels three times too much as if to distract us from how nothing it is. It is brightly colored scarves thrown all over the living room in hopes you won’t notice there’s no furniture or carpet or TV.

The only time this movie shows any bit of charm is when the family — specifically, with the kids in their child versions, sometimes with the parents — is together. (In general, this movie does not have a good balance of the kids and their adult superhero avatars.) I think the heart of this superhero character and his story comes back to his family, specifically his family of people who have ultimately chosen to be each other’s family. Their kindness and empathy and decision to trust and love each other after whatever traumas and losses they previously faced are the superpowers of this group, and the first Shazam! did a good job of making that an organic element of the story. This movie seems to forget that completely, which is perhaps why most of it feels so hollow despite being so packed with superhero-movie bloat.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods feels like an inferior product whose only selling point is familiar packaging rather than a story with characters we know and care about. C-

Rated PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by David F. Sandberg and written by Henry Gayden and Chris Morgan, Shazam! Fury of the Gods is two hours and 10 minutes long and is distributed in theaters by New Line Cinema.

Featured photo: Shazam! Fury of the Gods.

Scream VI (R)

Scream VI (R)

Another sequel, another spate of Ghostface killings in Scream VI or, wait, is it a franchise now?

After all, as Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown), one of the Core Four (as they extremely reluctantly call themselves) next-generation survivors from the last movie (the 2022 installment, the fifth Scream, called just Scream), says, the rules for a franchise are different. Legacy characters like Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) can die. Main characters like Sam (Melissa Barrera), last movie’s lead girl and daughter of OG Ghostface Billy Loomis, and her younger sister Tara (Jenna Ortega) also can die — or be the new killer. They killed Luke Skywalker and Tony Stark, Mindy explains; franchises can do anything.

Scream VI takes the action out of Woodsboro and to New York City, where Sam and Tara and Mindy and her brother Chad (Mason Gooding) have all moved to try to put the past behind them but still stick together. They are all dealing, sorta: Tara is going to frat parties and making bad choices, Chad is slow to act on his feelings for Tara, Mindy is hanging close in part because what are the chances lightning (i.e. a serial killer) will strike twice (heh), and Sam is attempting therapy, in part because the narrative about Sam has shifted. The internet has decided that she is the secret true killer, not her boyfriend and his secret girlfriend, whom (the internet says) she framed. So sometimes strangers throw drinks on her and call her a killer while filming her reaction — a particularly disturbing turn of events because Sam does wonder if some part of her does have her father’s stabby inclinations.

Right away, the killings start — actually, as Mindy predicts, the movie goes bigger and actually starts with two Ghostface killings, rather cleverly setting up the movie’s whole vibe of being not just self-referential in its dialog but structurally meta too. And intentionally, I think, the movie pretty quickly lays out the best suspects for the murders, subverts your expectations a little but then steers right back onto the path you suspected from the start. And it works? There’s something sort of cute about how it plays with and fulfills your expectations at the same time. It’s, I dunno, fun in a way that keeps this movie, so so deep into its lore, so full of characters I do not remember at all (did you remember Hayden Panettiere was in this series? because I did not), unexpectedly lively. The new characters are fun, the old characters are fun. This is a solid cast that seems to understand what’s being asked of them and are able to (mostly) keep their characters just interesting enough to get me moderately invested in them. (As to the “mostly,” the movie itself points out that you’ve gotta fill out the cast with some redshirts.)

While I didn’t find most of the movie particularly scary or horrifying (it is not quite Cocaine Bear goofy in its gore but it’s also not entirely not that), there were a few legitimately unsettling moments, usually tapping into some non-horror-specific fears about whom in your life you can trust and some nice “everybody looks like a serial killer on this subway” shots (it’s Halloween in the movie so there are legitimately multiple civilians dressed as horror movie villains but also that kind of paranoia is well conveyed).

Scream VI is, ultimately, fine — which was more than I was expecting and just enough to make me like it more than not. B-

Rated R for strong bloody violence and language throughout, and brief drug use, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and written by James Vanderbilt & Guy Busick, Scream VI is two hours and three minutes long and distributed in theaters by Paramount Pictures.

65 (PG-13)

Adam Driver reminds you that he can do action movies with 65, a non-Jurassic Park franchise film that allows for fighting dinosaurs.

It’s been a minute since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) and he’s done more prestige-y stuff since then, so walking around in a chest-hugging shirt wielding a big sci-fi gun while uttering a minor amount of dialogue is probably good, career-wise, just to keep his hand in.

Mills (Driver) is the captain of a science space vessel transporting a bunch of people in cryo-sleep. The trip is going to take him two years, two years when he’ll be away from his wife (Nika King) and his young daughter Nevine (Chloe Coleman). This makes him sad but, as his wife reminds him, the trip significantly boosts his pay, giving the family the means to pay for Nevine’s medical treatment.

So, you know, paying for health care is a bummer everywhere, even a long time ago on a planet far far away, because, as we’re quickly told, we’re 65 million years ago and Mills and his family live on another planet.

Mid voyage, Mills’ ship runs into an unexpected asteroid field and is badly damaged. It crashes onto an unknown planet, with the cryo pods being flung this way and that. At first it appears that all the passengers have died, but then Mills discovers that one pod, carrying a young girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), is still intact and he takes her out of cryo sleep. He searches for the escape pod that will take them off the planet to where they can be rescued. It is about 13 kilometers away, which doesn’t sound so bad on this planet with breathable air and potable water except that Mills quickly realizes it is also chock full of giant bugs and even gianter people-eating dinosaurs. And there is a ticking clock on this endeavor; it seems that a catastrophically large asteroid from the field his ship flew through is headed to the planet.

Because — dun dun DUN — Mills is on Earth! Right before the dinosaurs are about to have a Very! Bad! Day!

This is maybe a mild spoiler; though I felt like the movie make most of this pretty clear pretty fast. There was something about this very blunt setup and the surface-level bleakness of the characters that made me worry initially that this movie would be very slow going with very little in the way of stakes. And while it did feel this way a little bit in the beginning, I did find myself interested enough in these two characters and in Adam Driver’s overall performance. Koa and Mills don’t speak each other’s language, which helps keep the cutesiness to a tolerable level. The movie uses very simple scenes and moments between them to build their makeshift parent-child relationship and I believed it enough. And Driver is compelling; I mean he brought something to Darth Sulkypants in the last Star Wars trilogy and he is able to make even the goofiness of House of Gucci watchable.

65 isn’t particularly deep or innovative in its Man vs. Dino interactions but it is a solid enough bit of action. B-

Rated PG-13 for intense sci-fi action and peril, and brief bloody images, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Scott Beck & Bryan Woods, 65 is an hour and 33 minutes long and is distributed in theaters by Columbia Pictures.

Featured photo: Creed 3.

Team Everything

Multiverse bagel, a dance battle song and other Oscar nominees worth rooting for

If I can find a “Team Pamela Ribon” jersey, I will be wearing that over my vintage Old Navy on Sunday, March 12, when the 95th Academy Awards start handing out Oscars (show starts at 8 p.m. on ABC).

As I’ve explained before, I’m a huge fan of Ribon’s work — she has writing credits on Moana and Ralph Breaks the Internet, she’s behind the comics My Boyfriend Is a Bear and Slam!, she’s a co-host on the excellent podcast Listen to Sassy. And add to that her animated short film, My Year Of D**ks, which is my favorite of a solid five-pack of animated films that utilize different animation styles to tell engaging stories. Her perfect look at teenage awkwardness and the sometimes opposing desires for romance and sex is a blend of animation styles itself and is a giddy delight. You can watch it on Vimeo or Hulu and in theaters as part of the presentation of Oscar shorts films.

Here are some of the other people and movies I’m rooting for (and where to find them):

Everything in Everything Everywhere All At Once. Ke Huy Quan (nominated for supporting actor), Michelle Yeoh (lead actress), Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu (both nominated for supporting actress), the Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), who are nominated for directing — even if I like other people in these categories I wouldn’t be mad if somehow all of these people won Oscars for their fun, moving film. Everything is also nominated in costume design, original score and original screenplay categories as well as, of course, best picture, where it would get my vote. The movie is streaming on Showtime/Paramount+ and is available for purchase.

Angela Bassett. As much as I would like Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu to bend the multiverse and both win supporting actress, my first choice in that category would be Bassett for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (available for purchase and on Disney+). She kills it as Queen Ramonda and brings a heft to the role and the movie overall. I’m also hoping that movie takes the prize for costume design, which not only repeated the first movie’s success at creating Wakandan looks but also crafted dazzling costumes for the Mesoamerican Talokan characters.

• “Naatu Naatu,” the song from RRR. I like Wakanda Forever’s nominee “Lift Me Up” but my favorite for the original song category didn’t even make the pre-nominations short list. I was rooting for “Marry Me” sung by Jennifer Lopez and Maluma in the delightfully silly movie Marry Me. Since that didn’t make it and since there is no Oscar category rewarding the accomplishments of overall soundtracks (the whole Wakanda Forever “Music from and inspired by” album is solid), I’d like “Naatu Naatu” the dance battle song to win just because it feels like the chaotic everything of RRR deserves some sort of recognition. This movie (available on Netflix) is more than three hours, has the aforementioned dance battle (which is a commentary on colonialism? and also contains character development?), a buddy adventure, human-on-tiger fights, a guy throwing what looked like a leopard at a British soldier, pretty great cinematography, a whole lotta slo-mo balletically choreographed fight scenes and an end credits dance number that features odd Soviet-propaganda-esque visuals.

Turning Red. This was a solid year for animated feature nominees: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Netflix) is weird but very spooky-beautiful; Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (Showtime and for purchase) is sweet and funny and just a little heartbreaking in the best way; Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (available for purchase) is solid Dreamworks fun, and The Sea Beast (Netflix), a surprisingly smart movie about sea creatures and the humans hunting them. But my favorite is Turning Red (Disney+) — whose “Nobody Like U” would also have made a solid best song nominee. This story about a 13-year-old girl working out all her 13-year-old-girlness while also dealing with a family heritage of becoming a large red panda when she experiences big emotions is absolutely excellent storytelling with very pretty visuals.

Top Gun: Maverick for visual effects — and nothing else. This movie has some cool shots of airplanes; actually cool shots of airplanes is all I remember of Maverick (Paramount+ and for rent or purchase). So I don’t mind if it wins for putting us in the cockpit when the pilots do twisty divey things. But this isn’t otherwise a good movie; it would bum me out if it took adapted screenplay from Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Netflix), which is goofy fun, or Women Talking (for rent or purchase), which is sad and beautiful and so good (it’s maybe my No. 2 of the 10 best picture nominees).

The Banshees of Inisherin for something — original screenplay?A weird dark funny little movie, The Banshees of Inisherin (HBO Max, rent or purchase) deserves some kind of recognition and I’d be fine if it took this category (assuming Everything gets awards everywhere). It also has a shot at Colin Farrell in lead actor, a win I would be fine with. I also wouldn’t be mad if Tár (Peacock, rent or purchase) got the win for screenplay, since Cate Blanchett (nominated for lead actress) will probably lose to Yeoh. I feel like this might be where The Fabelmans (rent or purchase) could also score a win; Steven Spielberg’s best picture entry just doesn’t feel like it’s winning much else.

Let Avatar: The Way of Water and Elvis battle it out for production design. The only Best Picture nominee still exclusively in theaters, Avatar: The Way of Water does a good job at putting action under the water and still making it eye-catching. Elvis (HBO Max, rent and purchase) is nutty-bananas and the look is part of putting you in its bonkers world of young and eventually old Elvis (played by Austin Butler, who probably also has a decent shot at lead actor if the good will people have toward Brendan Fraser, nominated for The Whale, which is available for purchase, doesn’t trump all). This is the only category I’d want either of those movies to win in, though.

Whomever to win in documentary feature and international feature. Other than international feature nominee All Quiet on the Western Front (Netflix), which is up for best picture as well as other awards, I haven’t seen any of the international or documentary nominees this year. But all of the documentaries and most of the international films are now available for home viewing, so once somebody wins I’ll know where to start. The documentary hopefuls are All that Breathes (HBO Max), All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (rent or purchase), Fire of Love (Disney+ or rent or purchase), A House Made of Splinters (rent or purchase) and Navalny (HBO Max). The other international features are Argentina, 1985 (Amazon Prime Video), Close (rent), EO (rent or purchase) and The Quiet Girl (which will be available for purchase but doesn’t yet have a date).

A fun surprise. What would be a fun surprise? Maybe Paul Mescal winning lead actor for the bittersweet Aftersun (rent or purchase) or Bill Nighy winning for Living (rent or purchase and in theaters), a contemplative movie with a surprising charm. Or, much as I want Wakanda Forever to win costume design, it would be kind of fun if Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (Peacock, rent or purchase), a sweet movie about the power of a beautiful dress, took home the Oscar. I guess it would be OK if best picture nominee Triangle of Sadness (rent or purchase) won something that wasn’t best picture. And I wouldn’t be mad if cinematography-only nominees Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (Netflix) or Empire of Light (HBO Max or rent or purchase) walked away with a prize.

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