Author: Amy Diaz

Going Varsity in Mariachi (PG)

The mariachi band of Edinburg North High School in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas struggles in the 2021-2022 school year to continue the school’s legacy of high-scoring teams at mariachi competitions in this thoroughly charming documentary. In the tradition of great sports stories, the team here is facing some challenges. This is the first fully in-person school year since Covid with all the everything that came with that, the team has a lot of younger or less experienced members and even longtime coach Abel Acuña is struggling with burnout. We get the story of individual kids — the hyper competent Bella, Abby who dreams of a future teaching mariachi, Drake who is sort of figuring himself out but finds that mariachi deeply matters to him. But we also get a wider story of how and why mariachi has become such an important part of the south Texas high school experience. This is a charming, absolutely winning doc. AStreaming on Netflix

Daughters (PG-13)

It’s hard not to start redesigning the American carceral in your head while watching Daughters, a documentary recently added to Netflix. The focus of the story, though, is not The System but a small group of girls, who range in age from just about elementary school through teens, and their incarcerated dads. Born from a program aimed at building up Black girls’ confidence, the Date With Dad program requires the dads to attend 10 weeks of classes before an in-prison dance with their daughters. For a few hours, the dads, dressed in suits, get to hug, dance with and talk to their daughters in person — often the first time that’s happened in years due to limited in-person visits.

The process of working up to the event seems to give the dads new perspectives on their roles in their children’s lives; the dance itself seems to emotionally devastate everybody, driving home to the men how important it is for their children that they get home and stay home. Title cards explain that 95 percent of the men who have participated in the program over the past 12 years and been released have not returned to prison. You can feel the ripples into the past (the men discuss and consider their relationships with their fathers) and into the future, as these smart, capable young girls struggle with their fathers’ absences. The star of the doc is Aubrey, a very bright, very ambitious girl when we meet her at 5 years old who is trying to stay connected to her father. It’s a sweet gut-punch of a movie. A Streaming on Netflix.

Uglies (PG-13)

Joey King, who is, we’re told, a real uggo in a shiny future dystopia, eagerly awaits the plastic surgery that every 16-year-old in her post-climate-apocalypse society receives in this movie based on a YA book by Scott Westerfield. I realize that “people in their natural state aren’t ugly” is part of this movie’s whole deal but it’s hard to take seriously the idea that this cast of “teenagers” (i.e. twentysomethings with perfect skin) who would look at home in high-end perfume ads are awkward normies in need of improvement. Nevertheless, that physical perfection will lead to perfect civic harmony is what their society, which is maybe run by a scientist played by Laverne Cox (who is at least having some fun here), has taught these kids. So Tally (King) is psyched to join her friend Peris (Chase Stokes) in the city where the newly prettified people go for a life of neverending parties. But then she meets fellow “uglie” Shay (Brianne Tju) and learns about the Smoke — a wilderness settlement of unsurgeried “regular people” led by David (Keith Powers), a revolutionary hottie.

Uglies feels like a copy of a copy of teen dystopia stories like the Divergent and Delirium book series. I feel like there was a way that this movie, with its beautiful movie stars made “regular” mostly with bad wigs, could have had some fun. But it’s too by the numbers and too focused on delivering unnecessary world-building exposition that ultimately doesn’t help the whole thing make sense. C Available on Netflix.

Rebel Ridge (TV-MA)

Giving Jack Reacher vibes, Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre) is an ex-Marine who travels light and finds himself in a fight with the police department of a small Louisiana town after two cops knock him off his bicycle and take the $36K in cash he was carrying in part to bail his cousin out of jail. Aggressive asset seizure and high bails for minor crimes are part of the townwide corruption scheme led by police chief Sandy Burne (Don Johnson) but Terry isn’t initially super concerned with this; he’s just trying to keep his cousin from ending up in the same jail as the men his cousin testified against a few years earlier. But of course, the police don’t realize they’re up against a man with a particular set of skills, and Terry — with help from courthouse clerk/future lawyer Summer (AnnaSophia Robb) — is soon putting his military training in violent if non-lethal problem solving to use.

Unlike Reacher, Rebel Ridge is a bummer. It’s a depressing slog through racism and corruption where even the “good people” are more or less powerless to do anything — though exactly why they’re powerless doesn’t entirely make sense. The movie isn’t smart enough to truly examine the serious issues it’s dealing with nor is it enough fun to make you want to excuse it. And it’s way too long. C Available on Netflix .

Greedy People (R)

Will (Himesh Patel) and Terry (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), newly partnered police officers in a South Carolina island town, cover up one accidental death with a conspiracy that racks up a body count and threatens to set them against each other. Will and his pregnant wife, Paige (Lily James), are new to town. On his first day of work, Will’s attempt to follow up on a police call ends with the death of Virginia Chelto (Traci Lords), wife of Wallace Chelto (Tim Blake Nelson), the town’s wealthiest man. For reasons that don’t entirely hold up, Will and Terry decide that the only way out of this situation is to stage a robbery — which includes taking the many stacks of cash they find in the house. The scheme snowballs and pulls in Chelto’s secretary/mistress Deborah (Nina Arianda), a sketchy masseuse (Simon Rex), his mom (Neva Howell) and men known as The Irishman (Jim Gaffigan) and The Colombian (José María Yazpik). Only Will and Terry’s supervising officer (Uzo Aduba), who is herself going through it, seems to suspect something bigger is going on.

Greedy People never quite gets the mix of “dark” to “comedy” right in this dark comedy — is it a thriller with a few notes of silliness or a comedy with some sinister moments? The movie doesn’t decide and as a result the solid cast doesn’t always feel well-used. C+ Available for rent or purchase.

Trap (PG-13)

M. Night Shyamalan wrote and directed this reverse-heist-type thriller that is goofier than it realizes but more fun than its one-trick trailer makes you think it will be. Josh Hartnett plays Cooper, the Dad-est Dad to ever use slang wrong and ask about daughter Riley’s (Ariel Donoghue) rocky relationship with some former friends. They are attending a Taylor-Swift-ish girlie’s pop concert — Lady Raven, played by Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka Shyamalan — where Cooper notices an extremely heavy police presence. He chats up a merch vendor and learns that it’s all in service of catching vicious serial killer The Butcher, whom they believe will be at the concert. And they are right because Cooper is The Butcher (spoiler but not really; the trailer gives it away). Without tipping his hand to the unknowing Riley, Cooper MacGyvers his way through the concert to try to find out what security measures are in place and what they know about him — very little, in terms of his appearance, but a lot about his psychology thanks to a profiler played by Hayley freaking Parent Trap Mills, which is quite awesome.

Trap does not stand up to even a little bit of thought about the “but why”s of it all, but it has moments of dark fun and Hartnett is clearly having a good time juggling Mr. Happy Normal Guy with unhinged psychopath. B- Available for rent or purchase.

Longlegs (R)

FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) helps to track a serial killer who she seems to have some sort of connection to in this vibesy horror movie. Actually, Longlegs (Nicolas Cage), as the possible killer calls himself in coded letters to the police, doesn’t personally himself kill anybody. But little notes found at crime scenes have FBI agents Carter (Blair Underwood) and Browning (Michelle Choi-Lee) pretty certain he is somehow involved in what otherwise appear to be family annihilation murder-suicides. Harker is brought into the investigation when she shows herself to have, er, good hunches? Her abilities are rated by the FBI as something more than an educated guess if not quite psychic-ness. After viewing all the case files, she heads home to work on decoding Longlegs’ letters — a task made easier when he apparently breaks into her home and leaves a sort of rosetta stone to his code. I think one of his notes is just “down low, too slow” which is funny but also stupid and what’s the point of the code again?

Look, there are few things as ham-on-cheese-on-yet-more-ham than Nicolas Cage, made up to look like some kind of Norma Desmond-meets-Willy-Wonka nightmare, whisper sing-song-voice saying “hail, Satan,” but all of that seems to be happening in a separate movie from the grim, gray investigation plus childhood trauma movie that the rest of the cast is in. Monroe in particular is so grim and affectless that I found myself having a hard time paying attention to her character. This movie hits for me about half the time and even then it’s a see-saw between “old-fashioned investigative tactics” and “evil dolls,” “profiling the method of the killer” and “the actual Devil.” C+ Available for rent or purchase.

The Deliverance (R)

Lee Daniels directs this horror movie where we start off thinking the big evil might be generational traumas and the systematic stresses of poverty but nope, it’s a literal demon. Ebony (Andra Day) has moved her three children into a house with her mother, Alberta (Glenn Close, chewing it up), so Ebony can help Alberta with her cancer treatments and Alberta can help Ebony with her kids. Everybody’s doing a terrible job — Ebony is a caring mother but also verbally and physically abusive with her kids and can’t let go of the hurt Alberta caused by being that way with her (among other childhood traumas). Social worker Cynthia (Mo’Nique) is pretty sure it’s time to remove Ebony’s kids from her home — and that’s before they start acting super weird and the youngest son shows signs of possession. And then Bernice James (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), who had been skulking around the home, shows up to tell Ebony that her house is also home to some kind of ancient evil and maybe Bernice can help her with a “deliverance” — a Pepsi to the Coca-Cola of exorcism, I guess.

The often “is this problematic?” first chunk of the movie with its focus on societal ills really takes a hard left turn into “Demons!” in a way that the movie does not know how to smooth together or connect with anything but the most obvious “this is a metaphor” duct tape. I appreciate what it’s attempting to do but The Deliverance doesn’t make all of its ideas work in a way that feels coherent. Glenn Close’s character, for instance, really makes the most of her high gothic Hillbilly Elegy-with-extra-cheese performance but it often feels like it’s happening in another movie. C Available on Netflix.

Immaculate (R)

American nun Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney) finds herself “immaculately” pregnant in this movie where you could probably edit in scenes from The First Omen and I wouldn’t notice. When Cecilia comes to the secluded nun retirement nursing home in Italy, she barely knows the language and is just that day taking her religious orders. She has a roomie with an older sister vibe, Sister Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli), who smokes and is maybe the first person to suggest that they bail on this sketchy place when odd things start to happen (such as, for example, the pregnancy).

Sweeney is perfectly good at walking the line between being a wide-eyed innocent and being not so wide-eyed that she can’t still pull off some of the Final Girl action. The overall plot and the movie’s ultimate villain are all bonkers — so much so that I wished we got more of that bonkers, bigger and earlier, and spent less time walking around ye olde Italian convent with the spookiness just out of view. C+ Available for rent or purchase and streaming on Hulu.

The Union (PG-13)

Halle Berry is Roxanne Hall, a spy for a blue-collar spy organization called The Union — they aren’t Yale know-it-alls, boss Tom Brennan (J.K. Simmons) explains, they’re people who come from backgrounds where they know how to get things done on time and under budget. When all U.S. agents, law enforcement and military have their identities burned, Roxanne needs help getting back the hard drive with that info before it gets into the wrong hands (just don’t ask questions about all of this). The first trustworthy person who comes to mind? Mike McKenna (Mark Wahlberg), her high school boyfriend who still lives in their New Jersey hometown and now works construction, welding stuff and working on beams high in the air — which becomes one of his particular skills when he is recruited/kidnapped into working for The Union.

The cast here is fine — we also get Jackie Earl Haley, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Evil’s Mike Colter — and the movie is on paper the correct blend of dumb and action. But there is also a flatness, like the movie wasn’t entirely sure what to do after it came up with its concept and anchored its stars. Meanwhile, those stars, Wahlberg and Berry, have a good buddy relationship, one perhaps best portrayed in what I’m pretty sure, based on the “Rock ‘N Jock B-Ball Jam” shirt Wahlberg is wearing, are real photos of the two in the 1990s, when various internet stories say they met. I wish the movie — with some smarter writing, and a Berry-Wahlberg mix that was a little heavier on the Berry — could have found something better to do with it. C Streaming on Netflix.

Young Woman and the Sea (PG)

A mild but solid movie, Young Woman and the Sea is tailor-made for post-Olympics-summer viewing, specifically to be watched with a young athlete/athletics-appreciating kid. Based on the real life of swimmer Trudy Ederle, it shows progressive-for-early-20th-century mom Gertrude Ederle (Jeanette Hain) insist that her young daughters Trudy (Daisy Ridley as an adult) and Meg (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) learn how to swim, even though swimming isn’t good for girls and our delicate girl bodies or something. Her stubborn husband Henry (Kim Bodnia) initially refuses to give her the money for their lessons. Gertrude makes her own money and pays for their lessons at the girls-only pool next to a boiler room, and eventually Trudy and Meg both learn to swim, with Meg becoming such a strong swimmer that she starts to win competitions. Trudy proves herself to be even better and finds herself on the Olympic team for the 1924 Paris Olympics — though in a pre-Title IX world the female athletes had terrible accommodations and no ability to train on the long sea voyage to France. After underwhelming at the Olympics and facing the prospect of arranged marriage to some employee of her father’s at the family butcher shop, Trudy decides to attempt another challenge: swimming across the English channel.

This is fairly standard sports movie stuff — thrill of victory, agony of defeat, women can do sports — but it’s made from quality material and it makes for a good low-effort, family-friendly watch. B- Available on Disney+.

The Instigators (R)

Matt Damon and Casey Affleck are two thieves who participate in a poorly planned heist in this sparkless Apple TV+ movie.

Rory (Damon) and Cobby (Affleck) are part of a crew led by Scalvo (Jack Harlow), an idiot. Besegai (Michael Stuhlbarg), a person who clearly hasn’t considered the uncertain nature of electoral politics, has hired them — at the behest of yet another layer of criminals — to rob the certain-to-be-stuffed-with-graft-money safe of the reelected mayor of Boston (Ron Perlman). Every detail about the heist, from the route into the hotel to the number of civilians they’re likely to encounter, has been meticulously planned, they’re told. But, of course every one of those details is pretty much wrong and the plan quickly goes off the rails. Rory and Cobby are soon on the run from a massive amount of law-enforcement as well as a fixer (Ving Rhames) looking to steal back something more precious than money.

The Instigators has some good ideas and a good cast (which includes Hong Chau as Damon’s character’s therapist) and plenty of fun with the Boston of it all, but like many an Apple property, it feels inert. You can see where the money has been spent and what the plan is, but all the quality ingredients fail to come together to create a tasty dish. C+ Streaming on Apple TV+.

Jackpot! (R)

The premise of Amazon Prime Video’s Jackpot! is darkly cute and makes more sense to me than, say, all of the Purge movies ever did: After a mid-2020s great depression, California creates a grand lottery. When a winner is picked, that person’s name is broadcast across the state, and if you can find and murder that person in a 12-hour period after their win you get the money. If they make it through alive they get the money. Murder of that one person is legal but guns are off limits.

When Katie (Awkwafina) accidentally plays and wins the lottery, she finds herself having to use her stage-fighting skills to fight off all the Los Angeles denizens looking to kill her and take her ticket. She agrees to let Noel (John Cena), a sort of professional lotto-winner bodyguard, help keep her safe in exchange for a percentage of her billion-dollar win.

The premise is fine and Awkwafina and Cena have nice buddy chemistry but the movie doesn’t go as big or as silly as it needed to to make this the R-rated action comedy it was clearly trying to be. C+ Amazon Prime Video

Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1

Kevin Costner co-writes, directs and stars in the expansive Western Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1, what feels like a three-hour TV pilot.

And who knows how this will shake out — with Chapter 1 not a box office hit and now available in premium VOD and Chapter 2 pulled from the August release schedule, maybe you will be watching this alleged four-part movie only on the small screen.

We meet what feels like a million characters, many of whom are dudes with beards or blond ladies, most in dust-covered brown get-ups, so it can be hard at times to follow which beard-dude’s story we’re watching. Generally, we are following the beginnings of the American settlement of Horizon, a town (which Wikipedia tells us is in Arizona) that we see a surveyor laying out plots for as the movie opens. The next look we get at the surveyor and his family is when another dude shows up to find their fly-covered remains and bury them. Sometime later, we meet a group of people who have created a mostly tent-filled town of Horizon across the river from the graves of the surveyor family. The characters who will matter most from this group are Frances Kittredge (Sienna Miller) and her young-teen-ish-aged daughter Elizabeth (Georgia MacPhail). The town is attacked and burned to the ground by Apache warriors, who don’t love all these settlers “discovering” and moving onto the land they have been and are currently living on. Survivors of the attack include the Kittredge ladies as well as Russell (Etienne Kellici), a kid who escapes to get the army at a near-ish-by fort. Thus do we meet First Lt. Trent Gephardt (Sam Worthington) and Sgt. Major Thomas Riordan (Michael Rooker), who take a particular shine to the grief-stricken Kittredge family.

Meanwhile, Lucy (Jena Malone) has apparently been terrorized by some man whose child she bore. She shoots him and takes the baby and runs and then his extremely awful adult sons are sent to find them. During her life on the run, Lucy shares a house and child care duties with Marigold (Abbey Lee), a, uhm, professional freelance fancy lady who tries to woo potential customer Hayes Ellison (Kevin Costner). Stuff happens involving the terrible sons after Lucy, and Hayes, Marigold and Lucy’s baby end up on the run together.

The movie gives the Apache a storyline, with Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe), the head of the raid on Horizon who wants to fight to get the settlers off their land, facing off against Tuayeseh (Gregory Cruz), the tribal elder who would prefer to just stay off the white settlers’ raiders all together.

And there’s a whole plot involving Russell, who joins up with a posse looking for the Apache that destroyed Horizon or, if they can’t find them, basically any Native Americans they can take their anger out on (and also collect bounty for killing).

And and we meet a wagon train which I guess, based on the cast list on Wikipedia, includes more Kittredges but the movie is more focused on snooty British wagoneers Juliette (Ella Chesney) and Hugh (Tom Payne), who are a real headache for the, like, mayor of the wagon train, Matthew Van Weyden (Luke Wilson playing a Luke Wilson character).

There are oodles of other side characters and small performances by actors you know, including Danny Huston as an army muckety muck who delivers the speech about people making it in the West — if they’re clever enough, tough enough, mean enough, etc. That speech is the movie’s mission statement and it works fine in the trailer but feels particularly “stop and watch me orate” in the movie. One other “yeesh” acting moment of note is when the movie makes Russell, a child, do some “oh the humanity” stuff near the movie’s end. It’s just asking an unfair amount from a kid actor who has been basically fine up until then.

Look, there are few things more cinematic than the expanse of the American West. Throw some people on horseback riding through it and you almost don’t need an actual story. I understand the basic appeal of a movie that looks at the whole messy history of American westward expansion and all that that entails set against the backdrop of beautiful desert, mountain and plains scenery. But this movie is just a big bucket of plot water spilled all over everywhere that does not even come together in the end. What we get in the movie’s final moments is a chunk of scenes that feel like a “this season on Horizon” clip package giving us a sense that all of these people are headed to (or back to) Horizon. But even that is vague and vibesy with a lot of Costner about to draw on some fellow gunslinger or ladies in updos looking wistful.

In 2022 Tara Ariano wrote a piece for Vanity Fair headlined “5 Signs Your TV Show Should Be a Movie.” Horizon has the exact opposite problem, smooshing half a season of a clearly-should-be-a-TV-show into something that barely reads as a movie. C+ (the + being largely for cinematography) Available for rent or purchase.

Babes (R)

Pamela Adlon directed and Ilana Glazer co-wrote (with Josh Rabinowitz) this tale of longtime buddies facing life and children in Babes, which stars Glazer and the always awesome Michelle Buteau.

We meet Dawn (Buteau) and Eden (Glazer) as they get together for a 9 a.m. movie screening on Thanksgiving, a longstanding tradition. Dawn is heavily pregnant with her second child and seems to be in the earliest stages of labor but figures she has hours to go before any serious birthing begins. She does not, which is how Eden ends up attending the birth of Dawn’s second child. Afterward, Eden attempts to get Dawn and her husband Marty (Hasan Minhaj) something to eat but is then barred from reentering the maternity ward because it is after hours and she’s not technically family. All of which explains how Eden finds herself on a long subway ride on Thanksgiving day with over $400 worth of sushi. She ultimately shares the sushi with fellow passenger Claude (Stephan James), an actor also returning home to Eden’s Astoria neighborhood after a day of shooting a Martin Scorsese film. Over sushi, their meet-cute becomes a friendship which becomes an invitation to Eden’s apartment which becomes a special evening-into-morning for both of them. How special Eden learns later when she finds out she is pregnant.

Meanwhile, Dawn is struggling with breastfeeding and the family readjustments that come with having a new baby — her preschool-age son has decided he wants to be a baby again, and her beloved nanny has been hired away, making Dawn’s return to work difficult. As Eden leans on Dawn throughout her pregnancy, Dawn seems increasingly incapable of handling Eden’s neediness and is maybe slipping into some kind of postpartum depression.

Gestating and caring for babies and young children is messy and exhausting and leaves little room for things like friendships or personal sanity, seems to be the movie’s operating principle, which is extremely accurate. And this is portrayed here with both truthfulness and fondness for motherhood, the blend of which I feel like I still don’t see enough. Motherhood fundamentally changes everything and Babes does a good job of showing what that means for a friendship — not so much that it ends or fades but has to go through its own kind of messy growth process to continue. It also does a good job of just showing the grind of it all, especially through Dawn’s story, which includes her attempts to balance work with child care and her relationship with Marty and their financial stability. It’s an honest snapshot of all the emotional highs and lows delivered with enough laughs that I found the whole thing very charming with a friendship tale that is genuinely sweet. B+ Available for rent or purchase.

Unfrosted (PG-13)

Jerry Seinfeld directed and co-wrote Unfrosted, a Netflix movie about the making of Pop-Tarts that was recently nominated for a best TV movie Emmy.

This comedian make-work project full of dozens of Seinfeld-friend cameos features very few true facts — one is that cereal heiress Marjorie Post built Mar-a-Lago (American history is weird!). It is a gleeful riff on the 1960s as told through the lens of a Kellogg/Post war for breakfast dominance — all milk men and Cold War and space race and Mad Men. It is deeply stupid and, if you like this sort of thing, laugh-out-loud enjoyable.

Seinfeld, who continues to really just play himself, is a Kellogg corporate man tasked with beating Post to their latest invention, some kind of shelf-stable pastry item. On team Kellogg are also Jim Gaffigan, Melissa McCarthy and Hugh Grant as an increasingly unhinged classical Shakespearean actor who earns a living as Tony the Tiger. Amy Schumer and Max Greenfield are on Team Post. Christian Slater shows up as part of the milk man racket, which is run by Peter Dinklage. When Grant’s character eventually leads food mascots on a riot they are joined by Snap, Crackle and Pop — Kyle Mooney, Mikey Day and Drew Tarver, respectively.

I could have lived without the Jan. 6 callbacks of that scene but otherwise this movie is entirely cartoony nonsense frosted with Seinfeldian love of irrelevant minutiae. I realize people have all kinds of feelings about present day Seinfeld — if that is you, no worries. You’re not missing a great cultural artifact with this one.

But if you are basically fine with Seinfeld and enjoy whimsical dumbness, Unfrosted is a corn syrup-y treat. B Available on Netflix.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (R)

Eddie Murphy rides again as Detroit police detective Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.

This Netflix release clears the low bar of feeling like a real movie and offers the added bonus of genuinely enjoyable-to-watch (for the most part) movie star Eddie Murphy along with some 1980s nostalgia and some tolerably fun action. Axel is called out to Beverly Hills by old pal Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), a retired detective now working as a private investigator. Billy has been working on one of his old cases and asked Axel’s daughter Jane (Taylour Paige), a defense attorney, to take the case of a man he believes was wrongfully accused of murdering a police officer. Billy had been investigating the officer and believed he might be part of a bigger conspiracy. Now Jane is facing threats from muscle-y bad dudes if she doesn’t drop the case. Axel heads west but when he arrives Billy is nowhere to be found. Though Axel and Jane have a difficult relationship, they eventually team up.

Along the way, there are jokes and cameos (John Ashton, Bronson Pinchot, Paul Reiser) and a light romance plot involving Jane and her ex, police detective Bobby (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who is of course working the same case. It’s all perfectly fine — better than it would be if just some regular old Netflix players were doing the same plot, not as good as if we were approaching new material. (I’m pretty sure I saw Beverly Hills Cop back in the day but I don’t really remember it or have strong feelings about the franchise.) But if you liked the original, I don’t think this outing is an embarrassment. Murphy brings more spark, more “I am willing and reasonably happy to be here” to this than Will Smith and Martin Lawrence did to their recent Bad Boys entry. Kevin Bacon shows up to turn in a villain performance that probably didn’t strain anything to give but that he also seemed to be having a loose good time with. It is a surprisingly not-bad meal at a middling restaurant and you leave a little more satisfied than you expected to be. B-Available on Netflix.

The Exorcism (R)

Russell Crowe plays a troubled actor playing a troubled priest in this meta demon horror movie that needs to be more fun.

Anthony Miller (Crowe) is a one-time action star trying to recover from addiction to alcohol and drugs, repair his relationship with his teenage daughter Lee (Ryan Simpkins) and perhaps even forgive himself for abandoning his late wife as she was struggling with cancer. He is also trying to repair his career and to that end takes a role playing a priest in a movie that is sort of positioned as a The Exorcist remake. The role is available after the mysterious death of the actor who previously played the role. Director Peter (Adam Goldberg) makes it clear that hiring Tony is a risk for him but Tony just wants to work again. Which is perhaps why Tony doesn’t immediately realize that playing a priest, with the collar and prayers and all, might dredge up some undealt-with traumas from his childhood as an altar boy in a church notorious enough that Peter had heard about it on the news.

Lee accompanies Tony on set and so she sees him struggle both at work (with remembering lines and delivering whatever “broken man” pathos Peter is looking for) and at home, where she finds him creepily sleepwalking and reciting weird stuff in Latin. The movie’s consultant priest Father Conor (David Hyde Pierce) initially tells Lee her father’s difficulties are of an earthly nature and he, a psychiatrist, will talk to him. But then Father Conor pulls out ye olde booke of demon etchings and whatnot, suggesting that Tony’s troubles might not be entirely psychological.

I mean, we eventually move to the deep voice and the extraordinary physical abilities so the “is he having a breakdown from trauma or is he possessed” question is answered pretty definitively. Which is fine — in a movie called The Exorcism you’re expecting a demon. I was also intrigued with the elevator pitch of “an exorcism movie causes a possession in a cast member” — “intrigued” sounds more high-minded than the “ooo, this looks like goofy fun” reaction I had to the trailer. But this movie is too sad to be goofy fun and too uneven to really work on any other level. Goldberg’s smarmy director is built for the fun version of this movie, swinging from exasperated at Tony to sadistically poking at his traumas to try to get a better performance. Lee, Father Conor and Blake (Chloe Bailey), the actress playing the possessed girl in the movie, feel like they’re in some different more straightforward possession movie aimed at teens. Crowe is giving just the saddest man on Earth as Tony — even when the demon possession really kicks in. Russell Crowe seemed to have way more fun in last year’s The Pope’s Exorcist, which is where I recommend turning if what you’re looking for is a good time with Crowe in a priest collar yelling religious stuff at a demon.C Available for rent or purchase.