Author: Amy Diaz

Don’t Worry Darling (R)

A sunny mid-20th-century suburb has a dark side, obviously, in Don’t Worry Darling.

Alice (Florence Pugh) and Jack Chambers (Harry Styles) are a blissful-seeming young couple living in a Palm Springs-like desert town full of beautiful mid-century ranches, palm trees and other blissful-seeming couples, including Alice’s neighbor and best friend Bunny (Olivia Wilde, who also directed) and her husband Dean (Nick Kroll), that they regularly hang out with for cocktails and cigarettes. When Alice rushes to greet Jack at the door after his day working for the secretive Victory Project, he is delighted to see her and not just because she has a drink for him in her hand and a steak on the table.

But there is some fraying in the pastel fabric of this company town. What is the Victory Project, the place the husbands leave for in a herd of Cadillacs driving into the desert every morning? Is it top-secret weaponry, as one wife speculates? And why is big boss Frank (Chris Pine) such a creepy cult leader about not just whatever they’re doing out there but the town itself? Alice starts to really consider these questions after her friend Margaret (Kiki Lane) cracks up and loses her young son out in the desert — with Alice’s questioning much to the dismay of Jack, who seems to be on the cusp of big advancement.

Don’t Worry Darling is both better and worse than you probably think it is. You may have heard about this movie’s behind-the-scenes drama (Vulture has a whole roundup if you want to spare yourself the Googling; the Olivia Wilde/Harry Styles stuff, the various actor kerfuffles). All that and the intense coverage of it prepared me for a mess, which this movie isn’t. But, as a fan of Booksmart, Wilde’s first directorial outing, I was also hoping for something with that movie’s charm and cleverness, which this movie doesn’t have. So let go of all your expectations, is I guess what I’m saying.

Pugh does a good job of giving us both the around-the-edges wariness of living in a too-perfect paradise and the increasing anxiety of a person afraid that they’ve been caught in a really dangerous trap but can’t convince anyone else of that. She is highly watchable even when the story doesn’t exactly hold together or seems to be fluffing up the demonstrations of dread because it doesn’t have a lot else to do. It’s clear early on that there’s going to be a “Thing” about this desert oasis. But the movie takes a while to reveal the Thing and then doesn’t do much beyond deliver that (kinda predictable) revelation. Even if you can just go with what’s happening and don’t ask questions about the mechanics (though I couldn’t help but nitpick the mechanics), the delivery of the Thing isn’t sleek enough to smooth out all the bumps, from “wait, what?” plot elements to the performances (Styles doesn’t give much until the movie’s final moments, Wilde feels a notch out of phase with the rest of the movie but Pine seems to be digging into his weirdo character with two spoons). Don’t Worry Darling feels like it’s stalling more than building tension and then hurries through what feels like the important bits, perhaps because it wants us to focus on the message and themes about this woman in a very stylish cage more than some precisely constructed story. I feel like this movie would have been stronger if it could have delivered both. C+

Rated R for sexuality, violent content and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Olivia Wilde with a screenplay by Katie Silberman, Don’t Worry Darling is two hours and two minutes long and is distributed in theaters by New Line Cinema.

Featured photo: Don’t Worry Darling.

The Woman King (R)

Viola Davis makes a serious play for a second Oscar win in the action-drama The Woman King, which is set in early 1800s West Africa and based on the real Dahomey army of female warriors called the Agojie.

Nanisca (Viola Davis) is the general of the Agojie and a member of Dahomey King Ghezo’s (John Boyega) council. Ghezo being a relatively new king, Nanisca seems hopeful that he can be persuaded to end the country’s participation in the slave trade with the Europeans. She is also helping the king to fight a war with the Oyo empire, which has demanded tribute from Dahomey for many years. She becomes particularly intent on bringing down the Oyo when she sees that their new general is Oba Ade (Jimmy Odukoya), one of the men who had captured and raped Nanisca decades earlier.

Meanwhile, young woman Nawi (Thuso Mbedu) does not want to wind up in the abusive marriage her father arranges for her. Always somewhat in awe of the passing Agojie, Nawi is dumped at Ghezo’s palace by her father and the Agojie take her in to join a class of new recruits. The recruits are from a mix of backgrounds, including some who were taken prisoner during a recent raid to free Dahomey people held by Oyo and their allies Mahi. If you make it through the training, mentor types like the bad-ass Izogie (Lashana Lynch) and Nanisca’s second in command Amenza (Sheila Atim) reinforce to the recruits, your background won’t matter and you’ll be Agojie. Nawi isn’t exactly a “fall in line” type but she badly wants to be part of this powerful group of women.

One could argue that some of the twists of the personal stories of Nanisca, trying to navigate court politics, and Nawi, who meets and has a sort of flirtation with half-Dahomey Brazilian Malik (Jordan Bolger), can border on the soapy. And one might feel tempted to get all “well, actually” about some of the historical elements and the gratifying but wish-fullfill-y turns the story takes. But I am not that one. To borrow one of critic Joe Reid’s oft-used terms of affection, this movie is rad: Davis with her blend of weariness and determination is rad, Mbedu is rad, all the ladies of the Agojie are rad but particularly Lynch and Atim (Lynch is having a rad career that includes playing Carol Danvers’ friend and colleague Maria Rambeau in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Nomi, a 007, in No Time to Die). This world isn’t some made-up utopia; the women here all deal with various patriarchal restraints. But the Agojie also get to be confident and self-assured, and not in some girl-boss-y way but like the battlefield tested warriors they are. Instead of male gaze of these strong women, the movie (directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood) shows them in a kind of sisterly appreciation light and we get to be dazzled by their relationship with each other and their Wonder Woman-likeathleticism (there are some real Themyscira moves in their fighting style, which, along with Black Panther’s whole Dora Milaje, suggests that comic books owe a lot to this slice of history). I know I should scrape together some kind of intellectual read on this movie but where I’m at: The Woman King is rad and you should see it. For my part, I can’t wait to see it again. A

Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, some disturbing material, thematic content, brief language and partial nudity, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood with a screenplay by Dana Stevens and Maria Bello, The Woman King is two hours and 15 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Tristar.

Confess, Fletch (R)

The frequently barefoot, occasionally overconfident but basically capable detective-ish Fletch investigates the theft of paintings and gets himself tangled in a murder in Confess, Fletch.

Irwin M. Fletcher— Fletch (Jon Hamm) to his friends, enemies and frenemies — has been hired by an Italian count, the father of Angela (Lorenza Izzo), to find some paintings (Picassos and the like) stolen from him. As Fletch meets with Angela to give her an update on his progress, he learns that the Count has also been kidnapped, with his kidnappers demanding the Picasso for his safe return. Angela fears that her father is already dead and tells Fletch that her stepmother, the Countess (Marcia Gay Harden), is probably behind it. Fletch has information that two of the stolen paintings have already been sold and travels to Boston to follow up. But when he arrives at the posh apartment Angela has rented for them, he finds a woman dead in the living room and himself the most obvious suspect. Though police detectives Monroe (Roy Wood Jr.) and Griz (Ayden Mayeri) try to dissuade him, Fletch investigates the murder and the art theft, which he comes to believe are related.

“Goofy Bond” is how something I read described this movie — which I took as a selling point — but for me the goofiness frequently felt off. Or maybe it was a specific temperature of goofiness that I just had a hard time acclimating to. Hamm is good at goofy comedy and good at straight-faced comedy (which is what I choose to believe he’s doing in Top Gun: Maverick) but Fletch is an oddball mix of the two that I didn’t really warm to until about halfway through the movie. It’s fine, but not strikingly silly or delightfully weird. There are bits of comedy business where I thought “ha, nice” but didn’t actually laugh out loud. I like many of this film’s characters — Wood and Mayeri have nice comedy-crime-solver chemistry with each other and with Hamm; John Slattery shows up at Hamm’s one-time newspaper editor and adds a note of tartness — but even with solid actors doing solid work this movie never heats up past a simmer.

I don’t know that “Confess, Fletch: You’ll grow to appreciate its slightly-better-than-average-ness!” is the review you’ll see on any movie posters, but here we are. B-

Rated R for language, some sexual content and drug use, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Greg Mottola with a screenplay by Zev Borrow and Greg Mottola, Confess, Fletch is an hour and 38 minutes long and distributed by Paramount Pictures in theaters and via VOD.

Featured photo: The Woman King.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (PG)

Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp bring the shoe-wearing shell of their early 2010s short films to a feature-length story with Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.

Seashells Marcel (voice of Slate) and Nana Connie (voice of Isabella Rossellini) live in a house that is now an AirBnB but was once the home of a couple. When the couple separated, the man quickly packed, dumping the contents of his sock drawer into his suitcase — the sock drawer unfortunately having been the safe room for Marcel’s family of shells and other small googly-eyed items. Marcel shows off the innovations he and Connie have made now that they live in the house by themselves to Dean, a documentary maker who has moved in after his own breakup. The videos they shoot of the sweet Marcel and his kind grandmother earn Marcel internet fame, for better (Connie’s hero Lesley Stahl wants to interview them) and worse (people showing up at the house to take selfies). It also introduces the idea that this fame may help Marcel track down his lost community.

Relationships, grief, change, family — yes, Marcel is a soft-voiced lo-fi craft project, but this movie goes to some deep places and has him (in a way that is both simple but very well-developed) deal with some big issues. And it’s fun, full of charming visuals of shell-sized Marcel traveling via tennis ball and Connie sleeping, grand dame style, in a makeup compact inside a jewelry box. Short and sweet (without end credits, the movie clocks in at less than 90 minutes) Marcel is a thorough delight. A

Rated PG for some suggestive material and thematic elements, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Dean Fleischer-Camp with a screenplay by Dean Fleischer-Camp, Elisabeth Holm, Nick Paley and Jenny Slate, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is an hour and 30 minutes long and is distributed by A24 in theaters and for purchase via VOD.

Prey (R)

The Predator franchise gets a fun new entry with Prey, which takes us to a Predator’s hunting trip to Earth in 1719 in the northern Great Plains.

When Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young Comanche woman who is a good tracker and has solid healing skills but really wants to be a hunter, first sees what we know is a Predator spaceship, she takes it as a sign that she’s ready to prove herself on a hunt. In this particular case, she and the young men from her tribe, including her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers), are hunting a mountain lion. But Naru quickly becomes convinced that something else is out there in the forests and grasslands, something bigger than a bear and with the ability to skin a snake. Naru has to convince the dismissive boys that she is worthy of being with them and that she knows what she’s talking about when she measures footprints and estimates the size of the being that must have made them.

Midthunder is often carrying scenes on her own, making squinting into the woods or tensing at a light rustle suspenseful enough to keep your attention glued to the screen. She does an excellent job of making Naru a believable person — both capable and scared, eager to prove herself and occasionally uncertain. We can believe that Naru, who might not have the alien’s strength and size but does have knowledge of the field of play, can put up a real fight against the Predator. I found myself thinking that this movie, with its mountain lion hunt and its introduction of the boorish (but well-armed) French traders who have started to invade the land, could have been a cracking thriller even without the Predator aspect, but the folding of Predator lore into a more Earth-bound story works. It has vibes of the highly enjoyable 2004 Alien Vs Predator, with a game-sees-game aspect to the human-Predator faceoff. A

Rated R for strong bloody violence, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg and written by Patrick Aison, Prey is an hour and 39 minutes long and is distributed by 20th Century Studios via Hulu.

Featured photo: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.

Three Thousand Years of Longing (R)

Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba tell each other stories in Three Thousand Years of Longing, a vividly realized bittersweet fairy tale for grown-ups.

Literature professor Alithea (Swinton), who describes herself as content in life and alone by choice, travels to Istanbul to talk narratives with other academic literature types. Stories and mythology aren’t just a professional pursuit for her; early on we see her spot otherworldly beings in the airport and lecture hall and later we learn that she had a long childhood friendship with a boy who wasn’t quite there but also was something more than imaginary.

Perhaps this makes her the perfect person to unleash a djinn when she cleans a small bottle she has purchased as a souvenir. The Djinn (Elba), who is at first giant but makes himself more Elba-sized to better blend in with humans, is desperate for her to make three wishes. Three wishes will free him from being tethered to the bottle and this realm and he will be able to return to the land of the djinn. But Alithea is well aware of the monkey’s paw-like effect of making wishes. It never works out, not in any story, she tells him. I’m not that kind of djinn, he tries to convince her. In the process of arguing with each other over the wisdom of making wishes and how it can be done without leading to disaster, the Djinn tells Alithea his story, which starts during his long-ago infatuation with his half-djinn cousin Sheba (Aamito Lagum), his imprisonment in a bottle and the times when he attempted to be released.

Alithea meanwhile explains her life as a person who is “solitary by nature” and how it has led her to look for emotional connection through stories.

Well past the halfway point of this movie I realized that most of the present-day action takes place in a hotel with robe-clad Swinton and Elba just talking to each other. I mean, just on its face, there are worse things in the world than Swinton and Elba just hanging out. But I also liked how their conversation about the nature of stories weaves in and out of these sumptuously lovely flashbacks to the Queen of Sheba’s palace and the court of Suleiman the Magnificent. It’s the tart note that brings balance to the richness of the fairy tale-inflected historical settings and magical visuals.

Three Thousand Years of Longing feels like the sort of movie where if I picked apart the story (particularly its final third) I’m not entirely certain it would all make sense but as a whole it hangs together so nicely and is such a pleasure (at times a sort of melancholy pleasure) to sit through that I’m also not inclined to pick it apart. It’s beautiful, sweetly nerdy (one person’s heartfelt desire is to, basically, know more STEM) and has a kind of mature kindness.

Or, if that sounds “blah,” it has shimmery magic, the delightful Swinton telling off some racist neighbors and an otherworldly Idris Elba. And, with spiritual cousin Everything Everywhere All At Once, it proves that badass fantasy can revolve around the emotions and adventures of middle-aged ladies. B+

Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity and brief violence, according to the MPA on filmratings. Directed by George Miller and written by George Miller & August Gore (based on an A.S. Byatt short story called “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye,” Three Thousand Years of Longing is an hour and 48 minutes long and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures.

Featured photo: Three Thousand Years of Longing.