Author: Amy Diaz

F9 (PG-13)

Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto gets even more reason to talk about family in F9: The Fast Saga, a rather slow entry in this “what if James Bond were a muscle car” franchise.

Dom (Diesel) and his wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) are living off the grid. They are raising Dom’s young son, Brian (played by Isaac Holtane and Immanuel Holtane), and they don’t even have a phone (really?), so when old work buddies/Toretto crew “family” people Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridge) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) need to talk to Dom and Letty, they have to drive to the couple’s farm. (What do they farm, you ask? As far as I can tell, fancy guns and old vehicles.)

The trio arrives to tell the couple about a downed plane and an emergency communication, both involving Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), the shadowy government guy from previous movies, and Cipher (Charlize Theron), a villain from the previous movie who was being transported in Mr. Nobody’s plane. Also being transported in that airplane, which seems like a super terrible idea, was part of a potentially society-destroying weapon, which means that when the plane is run out of the sky the baddies involved can collect both a piece of the weapon and a possible ally.

After some “I can’t get involved, I’m a parent now” from Dom, he eventually decides to join Letty in joining the crew to help Mr. Nobody. They head to the spot in Mexico where the plane went down but before they can learn too much about what happened, a local military force shows up. In the midst of what turns into a shootout car chase, another set of bad guys arrive, this one featuring a face Dom recognizes: Jakob (John Cena), his long estranged younger brother.

The Dom vs. Jakob battle serves as the center of this movie, and forces us to flash back to 1989 to the brothers as young men (teens? 20somethings?). The movie spends a lot of time on their relationship and how it formed the kind of adults they became and how Jakob suffered when Dom shunned him because “the worst thing you can do to a Toretto is take away his family” — blah blah blah, it’s a lotta chat that really takes the time away from the good stuff, like a scene in the present day where Sean (Lucas Black), of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift fame, straps a rocket engine to a car or a scene where some of our heroes are driving on a rope bridge after one side is cut.

Other things happen: As has been spoiled all over the place, Han (Sung Kang), who died in Tokyo Drift (the third movie) and then appeared in the next three movies of the franchise (because time, like gravity and physics in general, works differently in the Fast & Furious movies), returns here. Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), who has been out of the franchise since the real-life death of Paul Walker and the retirement of his character Brian (to whom Mia is married), returns. This movie’s biggest star is probably the concept of magnetism; the movie has some fun with giant magnets in its various fight and chase scenes. An element of the final showdown involves space, which was great.

Yeah, I said space.

This may not be a popular opinion in the Fast & Furious community but I think these movies need at least a little action star power in the form of a Dwayne Johnson or a Jason Statham (the latter of whom was apparently in a post-credits scene that I did not stick around for because this movie is two hours and 25 minutes long and just enough with all that post-credits business, man). When Helen Mirren shows up to reprise her role as Queenie Shaw, mother of Statham’s Deckard Shaw character, you can see the difference between a strong screen presence having a good time hamming it up in these movies and the, uhm, not-exactly-master-thespians (at least, as this franchise presents them) in the main roles just sort of earnestly presenting some really silly dialogue. John Cena, who can be fun, isn’t given much room to play here; he frequently comes off as just sort of wooden until the movie’s final act. Theron really feels more like a guest role — it’s like even the movie realizes its bad guys aren’t that exciting and so it tries to dress things up with a little Cipher, all hissing insults and wacky hair.

Without big fun personalities having a big fun silly time and spreading that joy to you through the screen, you’re left with time between big action set pieces (which are the movie’s true big stars) to ponder the oh so many things that don’t make sense or aren’t explained or may have been explained in the last movie but no character details from the last movie are as memorable as the scene with a submarine-related car chase. Things like: Does the 1989 flashback mean that Dom is in his 50s? Actually, how old is anybody supposed to be? Is this really how magnets work? Is that really how space works? How does time work in this movie?

F9 isn’t the sort of movie that should leave room for you to ask any hole-poking questions while you’re watching it. But the length — much of which goes to the Dom/Jakob relationship, which I was never all that interested in —really bogs the movie down where it should be light and zippy. A merciless editor needed to get in there and slice a good 45 minutes of story. Depending on how you count it, this movie has like three villains and that is at least one and a half villains too many.

I wanted to enjoy F9; I have been looking forward to it for months. But too much of its runtime featured me impatiently waiting through all the yammering. I wanted more fast, more furious and less of the franchise flotsam. C+

Rated PG-13 for sequences of (totally, delightfully improbable) violence (including so much shooting where nobody hits anything) and action (magnets! space!), and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Justin Lin with a screenplay by Daniel Casey & Justin Lin, F9: The Fast Saga is two hours and 25 unnecessary minutes long and is distributed by Universal Studios in theaters.

All the Fast

F9 wasn’t my favorite Fast and Furious movie but I am no less a fan of the overall franchise (heck, I’ll probably even watch this one again some day and enjoy it even more, freed of the whole “F9 is bringing back movies” thing).

So where can you find all the previous Fasts and Furiouses?

The eight-film collection — which includes a bunch of extras such as the 2009 short film Los Bandoleros — is for sale on iTunes for $69.99 for the bundle (as with everything mentioned here, this is as of June 28). You can get physical DVDs of that same grouping of movies for between $34.96 and $62.99, depending on the format, from Amazon. Even better, you can also buy a physical copy of the nine-movie set, which includes Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw (a spinoff that is just a chef’s-kiss perfection-level example of this series at its least serious), for $52.99 for the Blu-ray. On its own, Hobbs & Shaw sells for $9.99 on iTunes.

In addition to buying or renting, where can you see the movies individually (preferably for “free” with a subscription service you already have)?

As of earlier this week, The Fast and the Furious, the 2001 first movie in the series, and 2 Fast 2 Furious, the 2003 second movie (and only Fast film not to include Vin Diesel’s Dom) are both currently available on HBO.

2006’s Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, which features neither Paul Walker’s Brian O’Connor or (in any significant way) Diesel’s Dom, but does have characters who factor in to F9, currently appears to be just available for rent or purchase.

The key characters from the first movie are all back together for Fast & Furious, the 2009 fourth movie, which is really when the series starts to hit its stride (and where Gal Gadot joins on). I recently caught a few minutes of the super fun early scenes of this movie (Dom and his crew steal gas from a tanker truck while it travels at high speed; Brian crashes through several windows chasing a bad guy) on some basic cable-type channel. It also appears to be only available for rent or purchase but Fast Five, the 2011 movie that introduces Dwayne Johnson’s Hobbs, is currently available on Peacock for free.

Fast & Furious 6 from 2013 brings back a character who died in an earlier movie, as well as introducing the London-based Shaw family (in the form of Owen Shaw, played by Luke Evans). Roku says this entry is available from Peacock with a subscription as well as TNT, TBS and TruTV (all with subscriptions or cable service).

Furious 7 from 2015 brings in Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw and sends off Walker, whose real-life death leads to the retirement of the Brian character from The Life. This is also the movie where a car drives from one skyscraper into another skyscraper way up in the sky in Abu Dhabi. I’m not going to try to argue that it is the best moment in film but, like, it’s on the list. Pretty high. You can see this movie on Hulu with a Live TV subscription or, according to Roku, with a cable provider login to FXNow.

The Fate of the Furious (the eighth film, from 2017) is poetry — you get Helen Mirren as mum to Statham’s character, the beginning of a beautiful frenemyship between Statham and Johnson’s character, a superbly well-choreographed fight scene involving a baby, a car chase involving a submarine.

As with Fate, Fast and Furious: Hobbs & Shaw (a sidequel from 2019 with more Johnson, more Statham, more Mirren, Idris Elba and Ryan Reynolds plus the Oscar-nominated Vanessa Kirby) doesn’t appear to be available on a streaming service, only for rent or purchase. But I greatly enjoyed it and these last three movies — Hobbs & Shaw, The Fate of the Furious and Furious 7 — might be my favorites of the franchise and would make a great dumb and fun triple feature.

All the more reason to shell out for the whole package.

Featured photo: F9

Luca (PG)

A young sea creature explores land and makes friends in Luca, an animated Pixar movie about a lot of things that I would lump in the “growing up” category.

I think Luca might be part of a good double feature with Inside Out, another Pixar movie about moving from little kid to an older and more aware phase of life. Where that movie was focused on the internal mechanics of that process — what does it feel like to grow and change and accept sadness and bittersweetness as part of life — Luca feels more like the external mechanics of growing up, learning to take chances but also take care of yourself, be a part of your family but still separate from your family, find friends who share your values, stand up for what you know is right and make things right when you make a mistake. How to approach and operate in the world feels like the broad ground covered in Luca.

Luca (voice of Jacob Tremblay) is a young sea creature (picture a water dragon crossed with a sea monkey but in bold tropical colors) who lives with his family in the bright sapphire-blue waters off the Italian coast. He spends his days herding the family’s flock of sheep-like fish — at least that’s what his mother (voice of Maya Rudolph) and father (voice of Jim Gaffigan) think he’s doing. His grandmother (voice of Sandy Martin) sees the gleam of curiosity in his eyes when she tells stories of visiting the human town on land where sea creatures, when dry, transform to look like people.

When Luca finds a few human items that have fallen off a fishing boat, he is intrigued. He meets Alberto (voice of Jack Dylan Grazer), a fellow kid sea creature and collector of all manner of human stuff. Hesitantly, Luca follows Alberto to the surface. After Luca gets the hang of walking with legs, he and Alberto spend time hanging out on a small island where Alberto lives, building rickety but (briefly) ride-able Vespa-like contraptions and dreaming of the day when they can get a cherry-red scooter and ride off together to see the world.

Soon, however, Luca’s parents find out what he’s been doing and they’re terrified and angry — humans have a long history of killing sea creatures, and land is no place for someone like Luca, who turns blue and green anytime water splashes on him. To keep him safe, they say, they’re sending him to the deep with weird, see-through uncle Ugo (voice of Sacha Baron Cohen).

Luca is definitely not interested in a life eating passing bits of whale carcass and listening to Ugo’s stories in the dark, so he takes off. He and Alberto decide to go where they’re certain Luca’s parents will never look — the human town.

The human town, which is called Portorosso (on, as the Disney Wiki explains, the Italian Riviera; circa, based on music and television snippets, maybe 1950s-early 1960s?), is a bright and sunny place with a disturbing amount of fish-spearing imagery. The boys get a glimpse of a real Vespa, a thing of beauty owned by the boasting, bullying teen Ercole (voiced by Saverio Raimondo). Ercole turns his viciousness on Luca and Alberto when a ball Luca kicks accidentally hits Ercole’s scooter. Before Ercole can dunk them in the town fountain (which would make their sea creature secret visible to all), they are rescued by Guilia (voice of Emma Berman), a plucky red-haired girl who is Ercole’s fiercest competitor in an annual triathlon. Guilia has never won, in part because she has always competed alone in the swimming/pasta-eating/biking competition and tends to spend the bike ride puking, but she is determined to end Ercole’s reign of kid-terror.

The race comes with prize money — money, as Alberto and Luca figure out, that can be spent on a not entirely decrepit used Vespa — and the three kids decide to team up and work together to try to beat Ercole.

Luca is a truly beautiful movie with lots of bright sunny colors, both in the rendering of the sea creatures and in the richly illustrated vacation poster settings. It’s fun — with a sense of adventure and a kind of boisterousness that isn’t Peter Rabbit 2-style jokey but does keep the energy up. Luca’s thoughtfulness doesn’t weigh down its funness.

And there is a lot of deeper thinking going on here. As much as the blowhard Ercole is the movie’s main antagonist, the movie’s true villain is probably something like fear — fear of people who are different, fear of the unknown, fear that keeps you from standing up for someone. Learning how to deal with different types of fear and how to respond is the real quest that Luca goes on. He easily faces the parent-instilled fears of going to the surface, but other kinds of fears prove harder to navigate. There is also a bit about learning to be yourself and make decisions for yourself, not just following what parents or friends want but also figuring out how to make your own way while still keeping your parents and friends close. It’s a lot of stuff, some of it rather subtle, to be happening in one cartoon that’s not quite two hours long, but I feel like Luca does a good job of setting the scene for the things it’s putting out there for moviegoers to consider (moviegoers of all ages; as much as Luca and Inside Out are about kids, I always feel like there’s a good bit to consider for parents as well). The movie leaves you with good feelings and plenty to talk about without presenting pat answers to big “how to live life” questions.

Luca feels like a more subdued kind of Pixar movie than, say, the big extravaganza-like franchises of Toy Story or Cars. But it has that quality of a really good storybook, with lots of elements that will stick with you long after the movie is over. A

Rated PG for rude humor, language, some thematic elements and brief violence, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Enrico Casarosa with a screenplay by Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones, Luca is an hour and 36 minutes long and distributed by Walt Disney Studios on Disney+.

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard (R)

Remember that Ryan Reynolds/Samuel L. Jackson/Salma Hayek movie from 2017? It was an action comedy that used shooting and swear words in a way that felt like they were placeholders for dialogue nobody got around to writing? Vaguely? Well that movie was called The Hitman’s Bodyguard and now it has a clunkily named sequel: The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard.

And now I know I’m really back at the movies. For other films I’ve seen at theaters since March 2020 I was often at least as aware of my surroundings as I was of the movie itself. Or the movie I was watching was loaded with some kind of “the movie that will save cinema” importance. But with this movie, with this gloriously not-quite-good-enough-to-be-mediocre movie, I was just in a theater, frequently bored and regularly checking my watch. What, it’s only been five minutes? Sigh. And, just like that, a bit of normality returns.

That the 2017 first film (in what I really hope isn’t a franchise) was sorta half-baked and leaned too much on general loudness is something I only remember because I recently reread my review. I don’t think this movie expects you to remember all that much about plot or character. Generally: Michael Bryce (Reynolds) is a Type A bodyguard who lost his license and top shelf status due to the assassination of a client by Darius Kincaid (Jackson), a top-flight hitman. For convoluted reasons, Bryce (in the first movie) had to protect Kincaid so he could testify in a war crimes trial. Sonia (Hayek), Darius’s wife, is a con woman and just sort of loud and big in a way the movie clearly finds hilarious.

Here, a despondent Michael, still unable to regain his bodyguard license, is advised to take a violence-free sabbatical and therefore goes to Italy to relax by the ocean and think self-affirming thoughts. It’s there, with his eyes closed and noise-canceling headphones keeping out the sound of bullets flying and people screaming, that Michael is found by Sonia. As she’s chased by, er, I forget who exactly, she grabs Michael and drags him along with her. Darius has been kidnapped and she wants Michael’s help finding him. Micheal doesn’t want to help and is determined not to handle any guns or perpetrate any violence but he eventually goes along.

Meanwhile, discount Bond villain Aristotle Papdopolous (Antonio Banderas) is trying to steal the information that will allow him to plunge all of Europe — except for Greece — into chaos by destroying its power grid. Interpol, in the form of a Boston detective (or something? He mentions Boston a lot, it’s weird) named Bobby O’Neill (Frank Grillo), is trying to chase down the group behind an attack on the power grid in Croatia, which was a sort of demonstration for Aristotle. When Darius gets mixed up with (and then kills) someone O’Neill was using as an informant, O’Neill uses the threat of arrest to force Sonia, Darius and Michael to be part of a sting to capture a MacGuffin that will lead them to Aristotle.

This movie doesn’t take itself all that seriously and occasionally leans in to the absurdity of its characters and story just enough to have a moment of cleverness or genuine (stupid but enjoyable) humor. A lot of other times, though, it just hangs a whole scene on, like, Samuel L. Jackson’s laugh or Salma Hayek spinning off in high-energy anger. This movie’s three leads are very much reduced to their one or two character actions — Hayek is basically a violent tornado or weirdly trying to be motherly, Jackson is being “a Samuel L. Jackson character” and Reynolds is doing a flatter, more anxious turn of his Deadpool patter. You get the sense that somebody wanted to shoot a movie in Italy and then this sequel was sort of reverse engineered from there. This movie has car chases and characters shooting at people in helicopters and yet it frequently feels slow; it’s only an hour and 39 minutes long but it often feels like it is just grinding through those minutes like a weak blender through large chunks of ice and frozen strawberries, never quite making it to smoothie territory. C-

Rated R for strong bloody violence throughout, pervasive language and some sexual content, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Patrick Hughes with a screenplay by Tom O’Connor, Brandon Murphy and Phillip Murphy, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is an hour and 39 minutes extremely long and distributed by Lionsgate.

Featured photo: Luca

In The Heights (PG-13)

A group of longtime friends and neighbors chase their various dreams In The Heights, the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first big hit Broadway musical.

Unlike last summer’s Hamilton, which was a filmed version of the stage production, this movie takes us into Washington Heights with characters walking through a (mostly) real world (with occasional forays into delightful fantasy).

Usnavi (Anthony Ramos) owns and operates a bodega but dreams of the day when he can move to Dominican Republic, where his late parents were from, and own a bar on the beach. He employs his teen cousin Sonny (Gregory Diaz IV) and lives with Claudia (Olga Merediz), whom he and everybody in the neighborhood call Abuela, though she’s not technically his grandmother. When it seems like his dream might become a reality, he considers taking both Sonny and Abuela with him.

But of course leaving Washington Heights would mean leaving Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), the girl he’s known forever but still doesn’t seem to know how to get up the courage to ask out. Vanessa also has her leaving-the-neighborhood dreams, in the form of an apartment downtown and a career involving fashion. For now she works at a local salon (with characters played, delightfully, by Stephanie Beatriz, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Dasha Polanco).

Vanessa’s friend Nina (Leslie Grace) has moved outside the Heights. She’s home for summer after her first year at Stanford and even though her college career is the pride of the neighborhood she is torn about returning to school the next year. She didn’t feel welcomed or like she fit in there.

Nina dropping out would break her father Kevin Rosario’s (Jimmy Smits) heart, especially since he sold part of his taxi business to pay for her tuition. But her living nearby would suit his dispatcher Benny (Corey Hawkins), Nina’s high school sweetheart, just fine.

And to all this inner turmoil and drama add a crushing heat wave that eventually snuffs out the power neighborhood-wide.

I’m not the first critic to observe that after the last year and a half out here in the real world (or, I guess, stuck inside here in the real world), the world of In The Heights with its packed dance floors and street parties and people hanging out with each other feels like a color-saturated peek at some glorious forgotten existence. If you’re not quite ready to squeeze into a space at a bar, perhaps viewing In The Heights in a theater with other humans is a good reentry outing. Or you could watch it at home on HBO Max until July 11. Or both! (I didn’t immediately watch the movie again after the first viewing but I guarantee between the time I write this and the time you read it I will have seen at least parts of it several more times.)

I won’t pretend to have any objective chill about this movie. I’ve been excited about it since I first saw the trailers a hundred years ago in the pre-pandemic times and I was excited when I sat down to watch it and I was excited throughout. This movie is great fun. It is jam packed with music and dancing thoroughly soaked with Latin and hip-hop influences. Even though this is a movie with a fairly high number of core characters, everybody has the space to create a relatively fleshed out person with a mix of motivations and desires and complexities. And, though the movie clocks in at nearly two and a half hours, it all feels like two and a half hours well spent. (And if the movie wanted to slow down to spend more time showing us the arroz con pollo, pasteles and the rest of the dinner spread at a big set-piece party in the middle of the movie, I wouldn’t have minded that either.) Even when the movie wanders into slightly syrupy territory the charm of the whole endeavor keeps the train from ever jumping the track.

Is this movie perfect? If it’s not, it is at least perfectly suited to my entertainment needs at the moment. Does it have flaws? Probably, but I was too busy being delighted to really take note of them. I’ll go watch it a couple dozen more times and let you know. A

Rated PG-13 for some language and suggestive references, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Jon M. Chu with a screenplay by Quiara Alegría Hudes (from the musical with a book by Hudes and music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda), In The Heights is two hours and 23 minutes long and is distributed by Warner Bros. in theaters and on HBO Max.

Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway (PG)

Peter Rabbit and friends get up to more mischief while their human caretakers are just as weird as ever in Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, a live-action movie filled with animated animals.

Bea (Rose Byrne), the painter who acts as a gentle and forgiving surrogate mother to a bunch of animals living in the country including Peter Rabbit (voice of James Corden), marries Thomas McGregor (Domhnall Gleeson), the slightly unhinged nephew of the late, grumpy Mr. McGregor of “Mr. McGregor’s garden/rabbit-pie-maker” fame. After a to-the-near-death battle during the last movie, the younger McGregor and Peter have made peace, even if Peter imagines giving Thomas a few rabbit feet to the face at the idea of his being Peter’s new father figure and Thomas keeps mentioning to Bea how nice it would be to have some human children.

Thomas is nevertheless supportive of their animal-filled life and is even helping Bea self-publish her book about Peter and his siblings — Flopsy (voice of Margot Robbie), Mopsy (voice of Elizabeth Debicki) and Cottontail (voice of Aimee Horne) — and his cousin Benjamin Bunny (voice of Colin Moody). Peter enjoys the fame that comes with being the star of a locally beloved children’s book but he’s not so sure how he feels about being called the naughty or mischievous one. And when big-time publisher Nigel Basil-Jones (David Oyelowo) says Bea’s books could be bestsellers but might she consider painting Peter as more of a Bad Seed, Peter becomes even more uncomfortable with how he’s perceived. While Bea is initially concerned that her bunnyverse will become fodder for some hipped up movie made by an American director (one of this movie’s many winks at itself), she eventually follows Nigel’s suggestions to put the bunnies into more bankable clothes (jeans, high tops) and adventures (space). After all, his other client, who wrote a children’s book about a butterfly, is doing great with his amped up skateboarding butterfly books. Bea’s willingness to compromise isn’t all about earning herself a publishing-house-gifted sports car; she also wants to use the money to preserve even more land for her animals to frolic in, with said frolicking demonstrated by Thomas in a scene that really helps to highlight what a delightful oddball his character is.

Honestly, I could watch a whole movie just about the tightly wound but deeply in love and approval-seeking Thomas and the earnest but kooky Bea. Gleeson and Byrne have great weirdo chemistry and they are both fun characters in their own right.

Of course, this is a movie for kids, so we get bits of these people, probably as a little treat to me and the other adults bringing their kids to this movie, sprinkled in all the animal hijinks. And those are fine too. I feel like the 2018 Peter Rabbit had more murder in everyone’s hearts — Peter and friends trying to kill the new McGregor, McGregor trying to rid his garden of all the animals. Here, it’s more about everyone adjusting to each other or figuring out their roles in this new circumstance. What this means for the movie is more cartoony silliness but less threat of actual harm, which makes the movie more fun overall. My older elementary-school-aged kid had a good time with the movie and laughed out loud several times — as did I, and occasionally we both laughed at the same parts.

During a trip to the city, Peter meets a rabbit who is even more of a grifter named Barnabas (voice of Lennie James). This sets in motion a whole heist sequence that is fun and keeps the energy up in the movie’s second half.

I think Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway improved on the first movie, making this kids property more parent-friendly and easily enjoyable. B

Rated PG for some rude humor and action, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Will Gluck with a screenplay by Will Gluck and Patrick Burleigh (based on the stories and characters from Beatrix Potter’s books), Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway is an hour and 33 minutes long and distributed by Columbia Pictures. It is currently in theaters.

Featured photo: The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (R)