Author: Amy Diaz

Amy Diaz is the executive editor and writes about movies and compiles the Kiddie Pool column. Reach her at [email protected].

At the Sofaplex 22/12/15

Lady Chatterley’s Lover (R)

Emma Corrin, Jack O’Connell.

In this adaptation of a book that I feel like I should have read but probably won’t ever, dissatisfied Lady Chatterley, a.k.a. Connie Reid (Corrin), starts an affair with Oliver (O’Connell) the groundskeeper at her husband’s, Lord Clifford Chatterley (Matthew Duckett), big family estate. The pair got married during what sounds like a brief mid-World War I romance, after which Clifford returns to the front. After the war, he comes home paralyzed from the waist down and drags Connie from London out to the family’s country home. She seems initially interested in making the best of things, but Clifford is not interested in finding new ways to, uhm, show affection. He is, however, interested in having an heir — so long as Connie doesn’t catch feelings for the guy she chooses to hang out with for just long enough to get pregnant. Connie is actually appalled by this idea and increasingly annoyed by Clifford himself — first with his dumb literary friends as he tries to be a writer and then by the businessmen who appear when he decides to take over the running of the local mine. By the time we get to the “workers should be grateful for whatever crumbs we brush their way”-type discussion, we’re well out of sympathy for Clifford and just fine with Connie pursuing her affair with the kindhearted Oliver, who made it to lieutenant in the war but just wants the peace and quiet of groundskeeping.

This movie is very pretty and filled with lots of scenes that I think are supposed to be steamy and romantic of the pretty Corrin and the very pretty O’Connell in various states of undress. But the movie, which takes nearly 50 minutes of its more than two-hour run time to get to the Lover part of things, feels like it is running at .75 speed. We get a lot — A Lot — of scenes of people walking through fields at less than a brisk pace or just staring off into the middle distance or looking after someone who is leaving the shot. It’s maybe supposed to help build tension but mostly it made me want to fast-forward.

Joely Richardson shows up as a character who seems mainly like she’s supposed to deliver information but she does help to highlight some of the more interesting aspects of the movie. There is this whole post-war labor-management tension that runs through the story as well as some nods to the idea that, after the calamity of the war, maybe some prewar societal conventions are just less important to some people (Oliver seems to represent, to a degree, the idea that after the battlefield people might be less willing to just “know their place”). But the movie doesn’t do much more than present these ideas — you know, between long walks. B- Available on Netflix.

Descendant (PG)

This documentary from Higher Ground Productions (the Obamas’ production company) looks at the current residents of Africatown, a neighborhood near Mobile, Alabama. The community was founded by people who had been enslaved and transported to Alabama from Africa shortly before the start of the Civil War. The trip, which was an illegal smuggling operation some 50 years after the international slave trade had been outlawed in the U.S., ended with the people being offloaded from the ship, the Clotilda, which was then burned to hide the crime. After the Civil War, many of the Clotilda survivors and their families moved to Africatown, which is still home to many of their descendants. The documentary follows both the rediscovery of the Clotilda and the attempts by community members to memorialize their families’ histories and place them in the larger context of the calamity of slavery in the U.S.

The movie serves as a nice companion piece to Zora Neale Hurston’s book Barracoon, which was published in 2018. It features her 1927 interviews with Cudjoe Lewis, one of the last living survivors of the Clotilda. The movie focuses not only on the stories of the Clotilda survivors but also the way land grabs and indifferent zoning have led to Africatown’s being surrounded by industry and to the hollowing out of the area’s main street. As much as its story contains an important slice of American history, the community is shown as a vibrant, energetic and hopeful part of the present. A Available on Netflix.

Sr. (R)

Robert Downey Jr. makes a documentary about his father, the filmmaker Robert Downey Sr., who died in 2021. The movie features interviews with Sr. starting in about 2019 — and while Jr. put together his film, Sr. worked on his own cut. He also dealt with worsening health due to Parkinson’s disease, a situation that pushed Jr. to learn and discuss as much as he could with his father while they could still be together. While giving us the professional life of Downey Sr. (an idiosyncratic filmmaker in the 1960s through the mid aughts),the movie also tells an intergenerational story of a son (Jr.) attempting to embrace the good and make peace with the bad from his childhood while also raising his own children. The movie reminded me a bit of Dick Johnson Is Dead, another documentary about a filmmaker coming to terms with a father’s mortality. Sr. is incredibly sweet with Robert Downey Jr. being shockingly vulnerable and honest as he examines the relationship with a father he clearly loves and admires. A Available on Netflix.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (PG)

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (PG)

The tale of the wooden puppet gets the Pan’s Labyrinth-but-animated treatment in Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, a beautiful-looking weird-in-its-own-way adaptation.

All Pinocchios are weird, is my theory on this IP. In the league of cautionary fairy tales, this one seems to lean the hardest on the cautionary element, making it sort of disturbing from the jump no matter how a director or writer chooses to go with it. This particular Pinocchio is maybe less disturbing than others but still dark. But maybe in my top five for potential Oscar animation nominees?

Once again, we get a sad Geppetto (voice of David Bradley), a woodworker in Italy who lost his young son during World War I. After years of drowning his sadness in wine, Geppetto one day crafts a wooden version of his son that a spirit (voice of Tilda Swinton) gives life to. The wooden boy, more angular and del-Toro-ish than his usual incarnation, declares Geppetto his papa and joyfully goes about discovering/destroying their house.

Geppetto is at first a little horrified by this wooden creature, particularly when a talking cricket hops out of a hole in the wood to verify Pinocchio’s (voice of Gregory Mann) story. But quickly Geppetto, Pinocchio and Sebastian the cricket (voice of Ewan McGregor) form a little family. That family is not terribly well accepted by the outside world, this being a very conformity-focused Italy in the increasingly fascist time of Mussolini. Local fascist muckety-muck Podesta (voice of Ron Perlman) says that Pinocchio must go to school to learn discipline, and thus begins the string of events that leads to Geppetto, Pinocchio, Sebastian and a surly monkey (voice of Cate Blanchett) ending up in the belly of a large fish.

This movie hits all the usual points: Pinocchio being sent out into the world with nothing but a cranky cricket to guide him, then him being tricked into becoming a performer for Count Volpe (voice of Christoph Waltz), a long separation between Pinocchio and Geppetto and Pinocchio falling into the clutches of yet another scammer who plays on boys’ worst instincts. Only in this case the scammer is Podesta, who takes Pinocchio and his own son Candlewick (voice of Finn Wolfhard) not to the amusement-park-ish Pleasure Island to be turned into a donkey but to a fascist military school to become cannon fodder for the Italian fatherland.

All this imagery — with the joyful and innocent Pinocchio sort of stumbling through the increasingly dark Italy — is extremely well done. The animation here is of the stop-motion variety (according to Wikipedia) and the characters have a very tactile, dimensional, puppety look. We can see the wood grain and knots in the pine that make up Pinocchio, who at times has almost a “wooden stick insect” appearance. We see the whiskers in Geppetto’s beard and mustache, which have a thick look, like “hairs” that have been carved and painted. The Italian village manages to look both like a physical space and fantastical, with the sunniness of the exteriors balanced by the menace of the fascist imagery in the posters in the town square. It is all exceedingly well done — so well done that I think it tips over into the scary frequently. Common Sense Media pegs this for age 11 and up and I would say — with the war, the death, the sadness and the frequent peril of Pinocchio — yeah, at least that. Maybe more like 12 or 13. Even the Swinton-voiced “blue fairy” character, who sort of looks like a human moth ancient godlike character with two sets of wings dotted with eyes, is at the very least unnerving.

I feel like this Pinocchio has plenty to delight fans of animation as a form and of Guillermo del Toro as a visual storyteller but isn’t exactly my choice for young-kids family movie night. B+

Rated PG, according to Netflix, where it is streaming. Directed by Guillermo del Toro with a screenplay by Guillermo del Toro and Patrick McHale, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is an hour and 56 minutes long and distributed by Netflix.

Emancipation (R)

Will Smith plays a man escaping Confederate captivity in Emancipation, a movie by director Antoine Fuqua.

Post-Emancipation Proclamation but mid-Civil War, Peter (Smith) is enslaved along with his wife, Dodienne (Charmaine Bingwa), and their children on a Louisiana cotton plantation when he is taken to do work on the Confederate army’s railroad. As hellish as the conditions on the plantation are, the prison camp Peter is taken to is even worse, with the heads of men who attempted to escape displayed on pikes. The captors seem to be significantly more invested in torturing the men they’re holding than in the war effort and seem to be on the verge of murdering Peter when a brief distraction allows him and a few other men to get away. The men run toward the snake- and alligator-filled swamp that stands between them and the Union Army, where they have heard that they will be recognized as free, thanks to the Emancipation Proclamation.

On the trail of the escapees are Jim Fassel (Ben Foster) and two fellow bounty hunters. For a good part of the movie, we get a chase between Fassel and his stupid dogs and Peter, who attempts to use the rough terrain of the swamp to his advantage.

For me, this movie frequently suffered from what I think of as Gangs of New York syndrome, where a wobbly central story sits in the middle of a fascinating and well-rendered history. The stories about how people contemplated freedom versus what could happen to them and their family if they tried to reach a safer harbor are interesting. The decisions people made, how they held themselves and their families together while enslaved — how Dodienne kept her children with her, how Peter drew from a deep well of faith — are solidly engrossing stories. But the movie too often turns its focus to other stuff — like the chase between Fassel and Peter or, even less interesting, Fassel and his motivations.

To this unevenness, add Will Smith’s sometimes strong, sometimes wobbly performance. Sometimes it is really affecting; he gives us a man with a singular purpose — getting back to his family — but a lot of hurdles to achieving that, who has to negotiate with both enemies and allies, neither of whom really have his interests at heart. Other times, I feel like I’m just watching Will Smith giving a very performance-y performance, jammed into some very dark history.

I think ultimately that history and the very arresting way it’s shot, largely in black and white with these very artful wisps of color, make Emancipation worth watching. B-

Rated R for strong racial violence, disturbing images and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Antoine Fuqua with a screenplay by Bill Collage, Emancipation is two hours and 12 minutes long and distributed by Apple TV+, where it is streaming.

Featured photo: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (PG)

At the Sofaplex 22/12/08

The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (TV-14)

Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista.

And in addition to Quill (Pratt) and Drax (Bautista) we get Nebula (Karen Gillan), Kraglin (Sean Gunn), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Groot (voice of Vin Diesel), Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper), Cosmo the Russian cosmonaut dog (voice of Maria Bakalova) and, as the credits say, “introducing Kevin Bacon.” The gang decides Bacon, the awesome hero of Quill’s pre-space Earth memories, would be the perfect gift for a still-bummed-about-lost-Gamora Quill, especially since this happens to be the Earth season known as Christmastime. The Guardians retro rock vibe meshes well with some low-fi elements and the satisfying selection of modern rock Christmas music. The overall tone of this brisk 40-ish minute special is exactly the right mix of goofy (blessings to the very game Bacon), Marvelly and sweet. B+ Available on Disney+.

Spirited (PG-13)

Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds.

Ferrell and Reynolds work on exactly the level they should in this breezy musical riff on A Christmas Carol that feels like the spiritual descendant of 1988’s Scrooged, with Clint Briggs (Reynolds), labeled an unredeemable jerk by Jacob Marley (Patrick Page), as the focus of a Christmas-Carol-ing. Clint is a PR guy whose whole shtick is creating conflict and ruining lives to help his clients. To the Ghost of Christmas Present (Ferrell) that makes him a perfect candidate. His bad actions touch a lot of lives and he offers a much-needed challenge. But, despite the year of planning that goes into the project, the night doesn’t go as planned. For starters, Past (Sunita Mani) and Clint hook up and she exits his look-back early, because awkward. When Present steps in, he is irritated by Clint, particularly by how Clint has him questioning matters from his own life. Not helping is the fact that Present has a crush on Clint’s second-in-command, Kimberley (Octavia Spencer), who can see and talk to Present.

Spirited is cute, in the best way. It is fun to watch; there are some well-used cameos and a nice running joke about spon-con, and the songs are thoroughly enjoyable despite any lack of expertise by the actors called on to sing. B+ Available on Apple TV+.

The Hip Hop Nutcracker (TV-PG)

Cache Melvin, Dushaunt Fik-Shun Stegall.

A teenage Maria-Clara (Melvin) enjoys the start of a young romance with the Nutcracker (Stegall) while trying to rekindle the romance between her mom (Allison Holker) and pop (Stephen Boss) at a neighborhood block party on New Year’s Eve in this 44-minute remix reworking of the Nutcracker ballet. Toymaker Drosselmeyer (Comfort Fedoke) is still bringing the magic but this time the Land of Sweets is a dance club in a nonspecific back in the day when Maria-Clara’s parents first met. The staging is a fun way to play around with the familiar story, and the blend of classical ballet (including a short cameo from Mikhail Baryshnikov) with hip-hop dance is beautiful and technically impressive — something the special takes care to really let you see. If you like a good riff on a holiday standard, this fits the bill and I feel like it is a good way to introduce kids who might have only meh interest in standard ballet to the music and story elements. B+ Available on Disney+.

A Christmas Story Christmas (PG)

Peter Billingsly, Julie Hagerty.

Ralphie, the boy pining for a BB gun at Christmastime in 1940, is now Ralph, married to Sandy (Erinn Hayes), with kids — Mark (River Drosche) and Julie (Julianna Layne) — and living in Chicago. When his mom (Hagerty, taking over from Melinda Dillon, who played the mom in the 1983 A Christmas Story) calls to tell him his father has died, Ralph decides to take his family back to his Indiana town to spend Christmas with her in his childhood home. His mom insists that the family not be gloomy — Dad would have wanted us to have a great Christmas, she tells him. But Ralphie is not sure he can live up to the gold standard for Christmas celebration set by his dad. He also has an approaching deadline — he has spent the year trying to make it as a writer and finding no takers for his 2,000-page sci-fi novel.

This movie has cute moments featuring cast members of the original movie. But it is long and wearingly eager. Be Nostalgic! Feel the Holiday Cheer! Oh, That Ralphie! I would say, “It’s fine to have on while doing your holiday tasks,” but the original is available on the same streaming service, so why bother with this so-so imitation? C+ Available on HBO Max.

Violent Night (R)

Santa Claus gets bloody in Violent Night, an entertaining oddity of an action dark comedy holiday movie that is, despite a lead-character moppet and lots of Christmas Magic, the hardest of hard Rs and decidedly not for kids.

But also, were it not for the skull-crushing (accompanied by real A+ foley work) and the gushing fountains of blood, this is kind of a sweet and sentimental movie about family and Christmas. Very ew but also awww.

Young Trudy Lightstone’s (Leah Brady) Christmas wish is for her estranged parents, Linda (Alexis Louder) and Jason (Alex Hassell), to get back together. They sort of do so for Christmas at the heavily armed and protected compound of extremely wealthy grandma Gertrude Lightstone (Beverly D’Angelo), Jason’s mother. Trudy worries that Santa won’t know what she wants because Jason never took her to visit him. To make up for this, Jason finds an old walkie-talkie and gives it to Trudy, telling her it’s a magic device that will let her talk to Santa.

Little do any of them know that at that moment Santa Claus (David Harbour) is drowning his sorrow about the greed and faithlessness of the world with many beers. When he gets to the Lightstone mansion, he brightens at the homemade cookies Trudy has left for him and even more at the nearly 90-year-old whiskey he finds at the bar. He’s enjoying his treats while relaxing in a massage chair when he hears gunfire.

That would be Mr. Scrooge (John Leguizamo) and his band of Christmas-theme-code-named hired guns attacking the Lightstone compound. They take the family hostage to raid the safe that they’ve learned contains hundreds of millions of dollars in cash. Trudy uses her walkie to call Santa for help, and Santa, because he’s just killed a Scrooge henchman and now has his walkie, answers.

As it turns out, before he was Father Christmas, Santa was a giant-hammer-wielding Viking. Trying to help the true-believer Trudy rekindles both Santa’s Christmas spirit and his Viking bloodlust, and Harbor does a good job at selling both. Equally fun (and I think having fun) is D’Angelo, who is great as a hard-driving businesswoman with a mostly awful family. The mix of petty rich people, a plucky kid (Trudy has just seen Home Alone and took some notes), a bunch of “like pirates but dressed as elves” bad guys and the tenderhearted Viking Santa somehow works.

Violent Night doesn’t feel like a new holiday classic, but it is a tart little kick that somehow still brings some Christmas-y cheer. Cheer and gore. B

Rated super R for strong bloody violence, language throughout and some sexual references, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Tommy Wirkola with a screenplay by Pat Casey and Josh Miller, Violent Night is an hour and 52 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Universal Studios.

Featured photo: Ralph Fiennes in The Menu.

At the Sofaplex 22/12/01

Tár (R)

Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant.

Lydia Tár (Blanchett) is the conductor of a symphony in Berlin. She has professional success; a large apartment; a child with her wife and the symphony’s first violinist, Sharon (Nina Hoss); a book about to hit shelves, and a much-awaited recording of a Mahler symphony in the works. But behind all of this are the increasingly desperate emails from a young woman Lydia had some sort of relationship with and has now blackballed from work with other symphonies. Her assistant Francesca (Merlant) seems aware that this relationship has the potential to do real damage (there are regular suggestions that this relationship is not the first of its kind) but Lydia pretends not to be aware of the mounting darkness — nor does this gathering storm stop her from pursuing a new young musician in the symphony.

The movie is very clever in the way it puts all the Bad Man behavior in this female character. And I find it interesting how it shows us the power dynamics, the fragile self-esteem, the carelessness and the selfishness but not the sex. We’re seeing the wreckage, not the crash, and Blanchett does great things (particularly with the way she uses her voice and with small gestures) as the person walking through the scene and trying hard to stay convinced that they didn’t cause the disaster. Truly, Blanchett is the movie, and I can see why Oscar predictors have been labeling hers as the performance to beat this year. The movie is long with deliberate, not-at-all speedy pacing but Blanchett makes the destructive Lydia impossible to look away from. A Available for rent or purchase.

Causeway (R)

Jennifer Lawrence, Brian Tyree Henry.

Lynsey (Lawrence) is recently home from military service in Afghanistan, where she suffered a traumatic brain injury, and has had to relearn basics like walking, holding things and sleeping without spiraling into panic. James (Henry) is a mechanic she meets when her family’s truck needs work. Both Lynsey and James have lived in New Orleans all their lives; both have suffered familial tragedy in the city, which led Lynsey to run to the Army and James to stay put.

Joe Reid and Chris V. Feil, hosts of This Had Oscar Buzz, frequently talk about “friendship cinema,” which this very much is — a movie where the development of a non-romantic relationship is the heart of the story. Lynsey and James find in each other something Lynsey isn’t getting from her mother (Linda Emond), with whom she is staying while she tries to recuperate, and that James can’t get from his empty house. And both Lawrence and Henry are bringing so much unsaid to their performances, so much we aren’t specifically told about their characters but can understand from what they do with their eyes or the way they smile. Causeway is a calm surprise of a movie built on these standout roles. A- Available on Apple TV+.

The Wonder (R)

Florence Pugh, Toby Jones

Pugh is an English nurse hired to go to mid-1800s Ireland to report on the case of Anna O’Donnell (Kila Lord Cassidy), an 11-ish-year-old girl who appears to be healthy despite, as her family claims, not eating for more than four months. A group of men in this small, very religious village including the local doctor (Jones) and priest (Ciaran Hinds) have called in Nurse Elizabeth Wright (Pugh) and a nun, Sister Michael (Josie Walker), to watch Anna and report what they observe. Wright thinks this is all nonsense — as do a good number of the townsfolk — but Anna seems sincere in her belief that she is existing only on manna from heaven and has attracted quite a bit of attention for what people seem to believe is a kind of saintliness.

It doesn’t take a psychologist to make some guesses about what might be in the intersection of a “miracle” for a young girl deeply invested in the stories of female saints, denial of food by a tween and a recent family death. But the journey of Wright finding out what is behind this supernatural-seeming happening is nonetheless captivating. The men in the story have some personal gains to protect — the religious members of the town want a saint; the doctor thinks Anna might be the beginning of some scientific discovery (for him to make, of course); William Byrne (Tom Burke), a journalist from London who has his roots in this village, is chasing a story. Wright may have limited agency and some personal baggage but she is determined to figure out what’s really happening and, eventually, find a way to keep a girl from starving to death for dumb reasons. Pugh makes this investigation compelling. B Available on Netflix.

Armageddon Time (R)

Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway.

This movie about Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), a tween from a Jewish family growing up in 1980 Queens, has a very novella, moment-in-time feel. Paul and public school classmate Johnny Davis (Jaylin Webb) are fast friends with a real George-and-Harold energy (for those who know their Captain Underpants), with Paul having a love of drawing and both of them disliking school and very much liking goofing off. The consequences of their goofiery are not equal, though — Johnny, one of the few Black kids at the school, seems to get punished harshly whether he’s done something or not. One particular misadventure has Johnny, who is cared for by a grandmother in poor health, dodging foster care officials while Paul is sent to his older brother’s private school to set him straight.

Surprisingly to Paul, the advice to his parents —Esther (Hathaway) and Irving (Jeremy Strong) — to send him to the tonier school came from Esther’s dad, Paul’s beloved grandpa (Anthony Hopkins). Having struggled against antisemitism throughout his life, Paul’s grandpa tells him to take the opportunities he gets. But he also urges Paul to stick up for the non-white kids that the students at his new private school disparage; be a mensch, he tells him.

The movie has its compelling moments, with characters like his mother, his often angry father and his grandfather often presented to us from his kid’s-eye-view of them. But the pieces of this movie don’t always hang together. Each of the adult characters, while well-performed, feel like they’re working at slightly different frequencies. Armageddon Time isn’t bad but it lacks a certain clarity. B Available for rent or purchase.

See How They Run (PG-13)

Saoirse Ronan, Sam Rockwell.

In 1950s London, Inspector Stoppard (Rockwell) and Constable Stalker (Ronan) investigate the murder of Leo Kopernick (Adian Brody), an American director tasked with turning Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap into a film. As in any English country house murder, there are an assortment of potential suspects with an assortment of connections to (and disagreements with) the victim. Eager and slightly star-struck Stalker and uninterested, world-weary Stoppard make an odd-couple pairing as they interview the various players — an ego-filled star (Harris Dickinson), an ego-filled writer (David Oyelowo), the play’s no-nonsense producer (Ruth Wilson), the potential producer of the movie (Reece Shearsmith) and his mistress (Pippa Bennett-Warner) — and try to figure which of the many reasons for wanting Leo dead actually moved someone to murder.

This movie has all the trappings — in how it’s shot, in the very Character-y characters, in its wry dialogue — of a buoyant murder mystery. But somehow it’s missing the bounce, the spark that would make it the kind of fun it seems to want to be. See How They Run seems to be aiming for “Knives Out but cozier” but instead it’s merely inoffensive and mildly pleasant. B- On VOD and HBO Max.

The Menu (R)

The Menu (R)

Diners at an exclusive, multi-thousand-dollar-per-diner restaurant realize their evening is about more than foams and locally sourced seafood in The Menu, a thriller that’s probably more cute than clever but does leave you hungry for a really good [spoiler alert].

Let’s just say the food item in question isn’t quite the Chef grilled cheese sandwich but it’s in that vein and I will be thinking about it long after I stop thinking about the rest of the movie.

Hawthorne is the kind of restaurant that patrons have to wait months to get a reservation for and then can get to only by taking a boat out to a secluded island where only a dozen customers are served per night. Before even getting to the restaurant, front-of-house manager Elsa (Hong Chau) takes the diners on a tour of the island and the restaurant’s gardens and chicken coop and smokehouse — the base camp of bull—- mountain, as Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) observes. Of all the guests, she is the least impressed by all the artisanal nonsense of the restaurant. And she’s the date of the guest who is most obsessed with the idea of each dish’s umami and presentation and Instagramability, Tyler (Nicholas Hoult). She is not, we quickly understand, the date he was supposed to bring, and when she and another guest, older man Richard (Reed Birney), recognize each other and then pointedly look away from each other, we can guess pretty quickly how she came to be with Tyler. Richard is there with his wife, Anne (Judith Light). Other guests include three finance bros (Mark St. Cyr, Arturo Castro, Rob Yang); a restaurant critic (Janet McTeer) and her editor (Paul Adelstein); a past-his-prime movie star (John Leguizamo) and his assistant (Aimee Carrero), and an older woman (Rebecca Koon).

Chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) commands great respect — or something — from his kitchen staff, who snap to attention and “yes, chef” him loudly when he gives an order. The dishes come out, one by one, each with a story (and accompanying title card), and each one gets a little more conceptual and insane than the next. When a taco course comes out featuring a chicken thigh with small scissors stuck it (to go along with a story about Slowik stabbing his abusive father in the thigh) and tortillas laser-printed with the guests’ various misdeeds, the guests realize that the uneasiness they’ve felt all evening was the correct emotion.

What if Jigsaw from Saw went to culinary school and started to take food really seriously while still wanting to mess with people — is what I’m getting from this movie. Yes, the title cards are funny and there are a few genuine laugh-out-loud moments, often juxtaposing the la-di-da nature of foodie talk with menace or outright violence. But the customers are more monied sadsacks than monsters and the kitchen staff come off as either either dead-eyed cult members or wild-eyed lunatics. Which, fine — but the movie spends a lot of time on speechifying and seeming to have characters believe they’re making a point about class and the shallowness of high-end foodie culture. The movie acts like it’s saying something but really every statement of purpose boils down to “people suck,” which kind of takes the air out of that part of the movie and makes it feel more like window dressing to the suspense than a clever message. It is, as Paul Hollywood would say poking his thumb into these sections of the movie, underbaked.

We are also boxed in to only rooting for Taylor-Joy (well, maybe her and Judith Light, who is able to do great things with the tiniest of looks or motions). This is by design but the movie doesn’t give her much more than “Girl You Root For” as a character or personality. Fiennes, as the Big Bad, doesn’t get a whole lot more than that — his character basically delivers Chef Julian’s whole deal during one of many pre-course monologues — but he does seem to be having fun with this Great Man gone off the rails.

For all this, I enjoyed The Menu — it’s gleeful about its different kinds of villainy and really relishes, ha, sending up needless extravagance and foodie culture. B

Rated R for strong/disturbing violent content, language throughout and some sexual references, according to the MPA at filmratings.com. Directed by Mark Mylod and written by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, The Menu is an hour and 47 minutes long and distributed by Searchlight Pictures in theaters.

Featured photo: Ralph Fiennes in The Menu.

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