Author: Amy Diaz

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

Kiddie Pool 21/02/18

Family fun for the weekend

Vacation week fun

Let the kids explore hands-on exhibits that show the science behind motion, light, space exploration, the ocean, human genetics and more at the SEE Science Center in Manchester (200 Bedford St., 669-0400, see-sciencecenter.org), which is open daily for the remainder of this week through Feb. 28. Visitors can reserve morning or afternoon sessions in advance, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. or 2 to 5 p.m. Pre-registration, either via the website or by phone, is required as capacity for each session is limited. Admission is $9 per person ages 3 and up.

While the hours at theChildren’s Museum of New Hampshire (6 Washington St. in Dover; children’s-museum.org, 742-2002) are still limited (Thursdays through Saturdays, 9 to 11:30 a.m. or 1 to 3:30 p.m.) and all visitors must pre-register online, the museum’s website is full of fun activities to keep the kids busy during vacation. There’s a Books Alive literacy program that includes videos of book characters who visit during storytime (Pete the Cat makes an appearance!) as well as craft activities related to the books and characters. It’s also Dental Health Month at the museum, and there are videos related to that, as well as hands-on activities for those who visit in person. Admission is $11 for adults and children over 1, $9 for seniors 65+, and free for museum members and children under 1.

Socialize and exercise

Every Friday from 10 to 11 a.m. the Health Club of Concord (10 Garvins Falls Road, 224-7787) hosts a free Parent and Me Play Date that’s open to the public. Get together with other parents in a safe and fun environment and socialize or just relax while your children play. The next play date is happening Friday, Feb. 19. The club also offers a free kids Zumba class on Thursdays at 10 a.m. when a parent attends the adult Zumba class at 9 a.m. on that day ($15 for non-members; free child care during the adult class). Visit healthclubofconcord.com.

At the Sofaplex 21/02/11

Locked Down (R)

Anne Hathaway, Chiwetel Ejiofor.

A couple stuck in lockdown in London eventually plan a half-baked diamond heist in a movie that is just so much more pie crust scraps than pie.

Paxton (Ejiofor) and Linda (Hathaway) have broken up but are still stuck living together in the same (really pretty, with multiple stories and a garden) London townhome early in the pandemic. Linda, an American, is working remotely at her job as a luxury goods executive and Paxton has been laid off, I think, from his usual job as a delivery driver. After a lot of unnecessary shagginess, we get to the action, which is that Linda has to assist with the pack-up of high-end clothes and accessories from Harrods, which is locking away all its goods during this quarantine era. One of the items she is charged with packing up is a very large diamond that has been sold to a Bad Person and is going to be sent to a vault in New York City where it is unlikely to be even looked at for decades. Coincidentally, Paxton has been tasked by his old employer to help transport these items.

According to the little sneak peek of this movie on HBO Max, the film was not only made in a house with minimal crew during Covid (actors like Ben Kingsley, Ben Stiller, Stephen Merchant, Mindy Kaling and Dulé Hill appear in Zoom or FaceTime sequences) but filmmakers were given access to the inner workings of the closed Harrods. But this gem of a setting doesn’t show up until the last 30 minutes. That’s 90 minutes of not-heisting in this heist movie.

Somewhere here is 72 minutes of a tight, light, fun movie of the “heck, let’s make something” style of Covid-era creation. But way too much time is spent underlining the unhappiness in Paxton and Linda’s relationship and the crazy-making state of being locked down (which, and this won’t be true in 10 years but it is true now, movies don’t need to explain; like, we’re here, we get it). C+ Available on HBO Max

Bliss (R)

Owen Wilson, Salma Hayek.

Wilson is either a man experiencing drug addiction and mental illness or a volunteer caught in an experiment in this odd sci-fi, I guess, movie. Wilson plays Greg, a man who has recently, in his words, messed up his marriage and is spacing out at work but still tries to convince his grown daughter, Emily (Nesta Cooper), that he is OK. But then a meeting with his boss goes fatally wrong and Greg runs to a bar, where he meets Isabel (Hayek), a woman who seems to have the power to move things with her mind. She claims that the world and most of the people in it are not real but that Greg is real and, like her, can manipulate objects after popping some yellow crystals. He stays with her in her tent under the underpass and together they grift food and get into petty trouble. When his faith in her claims about “simulations” and “crystals” starts to falter, she takes him back to the “real” world, which unlike the “simulation” (basically this world, with its pollution and income inequality and muted gray color scheme) is a brilliantly colored place of universal wealth, a healthy environment and so much happiness it’s turned people into ungrateful jerks. There, Isabel is actually a doctor who has developed the Brain Box, a device that sends people to the unhappy simulation existence so they can see how lousy things could be, to appreciate what they have. Greg is her boyfriend or husband or whatever and together they live in a beautiful house, like the one he’s been sketching during his “life” in the simulation. “Real” life is perfect and Greg never wants to leave — but he can’t shake thoughts of his children back in the simulation.

I’m not totally sure what this movie is doing, if it’s trying to say something about the state of our world, how it feels not be able to trust your own perceptions, or something about the reason people fall into addiction. Whatever it’s doing, Bliss is not doing a great job of it. It also never made me care about the central characters of Greg and Isabel. Ultimately, I didn’t really care which world was real; I was just happy when the movie was over and I could leave both of them behind. D Available on Amazon Prime

Palmer (R)

Justin Timberlake, June Squibb.

Palmer (Timberlake) is released from prison and returns to his small hometown to live with his grandmother, Vivian (Squibb), and try to start over in life. The small town-ness makes that extremely difficult — everybody knows his trajectory from promising high school quarterback to man who took part in a burglary that went bad. But his grandmother’s reputation in her church also helps to get him his job as janitor at the local elementary school.

Vivian is strict with Palmer but a giving person; when Shelly (Juno Temple), the woman renting a neighboring trailer from Vivian, takes off, Vivian watches Sam (Ryder Allen), her elementary school-aged son. Sam is sweet and happy despite his family turmoil and loves all things fancy, especially a cartoon princess show and its costumes and toys. This makes school difficult for him but he is confident in his personality and his interests, despite the bullying from kids and some adults — and he has a caring teacher in Miss Maggie (Alisha Wainwright).

When Vivian dies, Sam is basically left alone. Though Palmer initially plans to send Sam to child services, his own childhood experiences with family upheaval lead him to agree to take care of Sam while they wait for Shelly to return. Palmer, Sam and to some degree Miss Maggie, who sort of hovers on the edges (initially, it seems, to make sure Sam is all right but later because, you know, Palmer is played by Justin Timberlake), become a kind of found family, with Sam and Palmer helping each other to find some stability.

For all that this movie has some grim and violent moments, it is a kind and gentle story — but sweet fancy molasses, is it slow. You know the joke that goes “I spent a year in [some boring place] one weekend”? Palmer is the movie version of that. It goes exactly where you think it will but it takes so very long getting there. This movie sets the scene just fine but then hangs around making sure “Do you get it? Do You GET IT?” an unnecessarily long time and it does this repeatedly. You could cut a good 30 minutes out of this movie and lose nothing. B- Available on Apple TV+

Malcolm & Marie (R)

The Little Things (R)

A couple argue in Malcolm & Marie, a movie somewhat reminiscent of the talky (if mannered) indies of the 1990s.

Did you like your Clerks and your Blue in the Face-type movies? This is slicker than those but there is something in it that reminds me of them. Like those movies (with their backstories of being funded by credit cards), this one leans on dialogue in part because of behind-the-scenes constraints. According to media reports, Malcolm & Marie was made during Covid times. So while multiple characters — an actress, past girlfriends, a “white lady from the LA Times” (who becomes a stand-in for all film critics) — and a big fancy party are in the narrative mix, on screen there are only two people at one location.

Malcolm (John David Washington) is a filmmaker ecstatic after the premiere of his new movie. He is so giddy that it takes him a while after he and his girlfriend, Marie (Zendaya), return home to notice that she’s mad. We learn that while introducing the film at the event, Malcolm thanked all the people involved in the film but not Marie. And, in the hours since, the lack of a thank you has become A Whole Thing.

Thus this relatively spare setup digs into relationship stuff, relationships-in-a-Hollywood-environment stuff, ideas about the art of film, ideas about the criticism of film, stuff about who gets to make art with whose life experiences. Has that description made you say “ugh, pass” or “OK, tell me more”? I feel like if you have a low tolerance for this much self-conscious, very movie-scripty talkiness, Malcolm & Marie may not entirely win you over. But I found all of this self-aware movie-ness kind of charmingly spunky even when it’s being A Lot.

Washington joins his father (Denzel Washington) in that group of actors who I just enjoy watching, no matter how good or flawed or adequate the scene they’re in is. He’s fun here and seemingly having fun and also turning in an engaging performance that at times maybe feels a little like an audition for a better movie but it was thoroughly watchable. Zendaya is often fine but not always able to match the heft that Washington brings to a scene, a state exaggerated by the way her character is written and their age difference (Zendaya is 24 and Washington is 36). I’m not sure how much older the movie wants us to believe Malcolm is than Marie or how we’re supposed to think that plays in to their relationship. In a movie so all about who is telling whose stories and why, it’s an oversight that gets in the way.

So, yeah, there’s a lot of talking about what we’re talking about. And it’s not a relaxing good time to watch couples fight. The setup does occasionally border on stagey and the movie continues for a few minutes past the point of its natural ending. But I had enough nostalgia for this kind of chatty movie and Washington delivered enough moments of a fun performance that I had a better than average time. C+

Rated R for pervasive language and sexual content, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Sam Levinson (son of Barry, and this movie about a movie-maker takes on a whole new entertaining layer when you know that), Malcolm & Marie is an hour and 46 minutes long and is available on Netflix.

Featured photo: Malcolm & Marie

Kiddie Pool 21/02/11

Family fun for the weekend

L.O.V.E. bingo

Have a sweet Valentine’s Day celebration at Chunky’s Cinema Pub. The theater is hosting family-friendly Theater Candy Bingo on Saturday, Feb. 13, at 6 p.m. at its Manchester location (707 Huse Road) and its Pelham location (150 Bridge St.), and on Sunday, Feb. 14, at noon at its Nashua location (151 Coliseum Ave.). It’s traditional bingo with a little more heart — each round will feature Valentine’s Day patterns, like a heart shape and Xs and Os, and there will be Valentine’s Day-themed prizes for the winners, along with traditional boxes of theater candy. Purchase a ticket online to reserve a spot; for $4.99 you get a ticket and a box of Chunky’s theater candy. Turn in your candy to the host to get a bingo card and play a few rounds to try to win back that candy and more. Visit chunkys.com.

Skate outside

Local cities and towns have outdoor ice skating rinks that are free and open to residents and non-residents. The rinks may be open on and off, depending on the temperatures, so call or check the city’s or town’s website or social media before you go. Here are a few local rinks to check out:

• Bow Town Pond, 3 Bow Center Road, Bow, 223-3920, bow-nh.com.

• Concord has three public rinks: Beaver Meadow Pond, 1 Beaver Meadow Dr.; Rollins Park, 116 Broadway St.; and White Park Pond & Hockey Rink, 1 White St. Call 225-8690 or visit concordnh.gov. When open, hours are daily from dawn to dusk.

• Dorrs Pond, 56 Hooksett Road, Manchester, 624-6444, manchesternh.gov. When open, hours are daily from dawn to dusk.

• Ice Skating Rink at Watson Park, 441 Daniel Webster Hwy., Merrimack, 882-1046, merrimackparksandrec.org. When open, hours are daily from dawn to 9 p.m.

• Kimball Lake, 47 Kimball Lake Road, Hopkinton, 746-8263, hopkintonrec.com. When open, hours are daily from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

• Nashua has two public rinks: Jeff Morin Fields at Roby Park, 126 Spit Brook Road (when open, hours are daily from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. for general skating, and from 8 to 10 p.m. for hockey) and Four Corners, behind Holman Stadium, Sargent Avenue (when open, hours are daily from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and 6 to 10 p.m. for general skating, and before 11 a.m. and between 4:30 and 6 p.m. for hockey). Call 589-3370 or visit nashuanh.gov.

At the Sofaplex 21/02/04

Finding ‘Ohana (PG)

Kea Peahu, Alex Aiono.

Pili (Peahu), a geocaching champion, sets out on a real treasure hunt to help pay her family’s bills in this adventure-packed kid-friendly movie set in Hawaii.

Pili, 12, and her brother, Ioane (Aiono), an older teen, have come to Hawaii with their mother, Leilani (Kelly Hu), to visit their grandfather, Kimo (Branscombe Richard), who is recovering from a heart attack. The visit is their first one back to the family home since the kids were little and their father, who was in the Army, died. Leilani is frustrated to find that Kimo has a slew of bills that need paying, Pili is disappointed that she had to forgo a summer at geocaching camp and Ioane is all teenager-y about the lack of Wi-Fi — though he perks up a bit when he meets girl-teen Hana (Lindsay Watson). Pili is drawn to a journal she finds and a story her grandfather tells her about a long-ago explorer and some hidden treasure. She sets out with new buddy Casper (Owen Vaccaro) to find the mountain where a series of clues from an old journal should bring her to what she’s hoping is enough olden-days pirate-y gold and whatnot that she can pay her family’s bills without their having to sell their Brooklyn apartment (and possibly leave their city lives behind).

Mixing the best parts of The Goonies, the Indiana Jones sense of adventure and some Drunk History-style storytelling, Finding ‘Ohana is plucky fun with moments of well-executed family drama that manages to pretty seamlessly flow with the comedy and action. Other than some kissy business with the teens, the movie feels pretty older-elementary-schooler-friendly without being a chore for adults to sit through (it is just self-aware enough about its Goonies-ness to be charming in its nostalgia). B+ Available on Netflix.

Palmer (R)

Justin Timberlake, June Squibb.

Palmer (Timberlake) is released from prison and returns to his small home town (in, I think, Louisiana) to live with his grandmother, Vivian (Squibb), and try to start over in life. The small town-ness makes that extremely difficult — everybody knows his trajectory from promising high school quarterback to man who took part in a burglary that went bad. But his grandmother’s reputation in her church also helps to get him his job as janitor at the local elementary school.

Vivian is strict with Palmer but a giving person; when Shelly (Juno Temple), the woman renting a neighboring trailer from Vivian, takes off, Vivian watches Sam (Ryder Allen), her elementary school aged son. Sam is sweet and happy despite his family turmoil and loves all things fancy, especially a cartoon princess show and its costumes and merch. This makes school difficult for him but he is confident in his personality and his interests, despite the bullying from kids and some adults — and he has an understanding teacher in Miss Maggie (Alisha Wainwright).

When Vivian dies, Sam is basically left alone. Though Palmer initially plans to send Sam to child services, his own childhood experiences with family upheaval lead him to agree to take care of Sam while they wait for Shelly to return. Palmer, Sam and to some degree Miss Maggie, who sort of hovers on the edges (initially, it seems, to make sure Sam is all right but later because, you know, Palmer is played by Justin Timberlake), become a kind of found family, with Sam and Palmer helping each other to find some stability.

For all that this movie has some grim and violent moments, it is a sweet and gentle story — but sweet fancy molasses, is it slow. You know the joke that goes, “I spent a year in [some boring place] one weekend”? Palmer is the movie version of that. It goes exactly where you think it will but it takes so very long getting there. This movie sets the scene just fine but then hangs around making sure, “Do you get it? Do You GET IT?” for an unnecessarily long time and it does this repeatedly. You could cut a good 30 minutes out of this movie and lose nothing. The slow-pokey-ness of the pacing and the needless repetition of story points (that Palmer’s old friends are jerks, Shelly is a mess, Sam is bullied) cut into the impact of Timberlake’s basically average to above average performance and Allen’s realistic-kid-like performance as Sam. B- — Available on Apple TV+

Penguin Bloom (TV-14)

Naomi Watts, Andrew Lincoln.

Sam Bloom (Watts), an athletic Australian mother of three sons, becomes paralyzed from the bra-strap down during an accident on a family vacation. Months later, the family is still having a hard time coping: Sam is depressed, her oldest son Noah (Griffin Murray-Johnston) feels guilty about how the accident happened, Sam and her husband Cameron (Lincoln) haven’t figured out how to relate to each other and her younger sons, Rueben (Felix Cameron) and Oli (Abe Clifford-Barr), are just generally sort of missing their withdrawn mother. But then they find a young black-and-white magpie on the beach and name her Penguin. The bird and Sam’s role caring for the bird give the family something new and hopeful to coalesce around and help Sam find her way out of her grief.

There isn’t much to this movie, which is based on a true story. It is a pleasant movie with a palatable amount of inspirational storytelling. The Bloom family Australian home has a casual beach feel — which is sort of fun to look at, in an interior design magazine way, and consider things such as how machine washable all the upholstery looks (which feels accurate for a house with three young boys) but how uncluttered the house is (which feels more aspirational than realistic). Nobody’s performance is horrible. And … the bird is cute. There are worse things to fold your laundry to. B Available on Netflix.

The Dig (PG-13)

Carey Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes.

Edith Pretty (Mulligan) hires excavator Basil Brown (Fiennes) to help her unearth archaeological finds in a field on her property in this movie based on a true story of a true dig in Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, England.

The work was sort of a pet project of hers and her late husband’s. He didn’t live to see the uncovering of whatever is hiding in the large and centuries-old mounds in their field and now she has learned she doesn’t have long to live either. The project is also happening as the British Museum is securing all of its treasures elsewhere and another dig is rushing to finish excavation on a Roman site before the country plunges into war with Germany — this is summer 1939 and everybody knows they are weeks away from their world changing.

The Dig starts off as a slow look in on a Downton Abbey-ish world — Edith dresses for dinner by herself at the large country home tended by several servants. She and Brown slowly form a sort of friendship over their excitement about the dig and their desire to keep bigger museums and organizations from taking over. It’s interesting — the process of uncovering what they eventually realize is an Anglo-Saxon ship — but it is also a bit pokey with a lot of character beats that seem to go nowhere. About halfway through, we meet several new characters including Edith’s RAF-bound cousin, Rory (Johnny Flynn, the Mr. Knightley of 2020’s Emma), and a husband-wife archaeologist duo, Stuart Piggott (Ben Chaplin) and Peggy Piggott (Lily James). They add a welcome bit of soapiness to a movie that then becomes surprisingly story-filled and emotionally affecting in the final 30 or so minutes. The Dig is a nice bit of drama based on real history — if you can stick with it. B Available on Netflix.

The Little Things (R)

The Little Things (R)

Three difficult loners find themselves in each other’s orbit during the investigation into a serial killer in 1990 Los Angeles in The Little Things, a pretty standard midwinter thriller movie.

In the mix with horror movies, the occasional goofy comedy and, in February-ish, romance-y movies, the early part of the year usually tends to bring sort of procedural, man-on-the-hunt-for-enemy movies. Sometimes the enemy is the human trafficking organization that kidnapped the guy’s daughter (Taken), sometimes it’s wolves (The Grey). Sometimes it’s a woman on the hunt (Miss Bala). These low-pressure movies fill the space around the Oscar releases that are still coming into theaters during these weeks that, in normal times, are the thick of awards season. And even though everything about movies and awards is all haywire right now, The Little Things still feels like it’s meeting the need for a “police-y thriller starring an older but still credible-as-action-hero actor.”

In this movie, that actor is Denzel Washington, playing sheriff’s deputy Joe Deacon, called “Deke.” He works in the Bakersfield area now but was once an L.A. County sheriff’s detective. He’s sent back to L.A. to pick up some evidence and so we get to see him interact with old friends and coworkers who are basically not happy to see him. He was one of those great but difficult detectives and he left under … circumstances.

He bumps into Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), a rising star detective who also seems pretty difficult. Baxter is tightly wound and cocky — and under a lot of stress as he is the lead investigator in a serial killer case. A handful of women have been found murdered with similar patterns to the violence and state of the bodies.

Aspects of those cases remind Deke of a never-solved case featuring murdered women from his days in Los Angeles, a case that seems to have led to, as we’re told, a divorce and a heart attack and his move to a new city. Because Baxter has heard impressive things about Deke’s investigative abilities and because Deke is still obsessed with that old case, the men eventually start working to solve these new murders together.

Which is how loner number three enters the picture: Albert Sparma (Jared Leto). Even if he never killed anyone, Albert would be described as a “creepy serial killer type.” Violent crime seems to be, whether he actively participates in it or not, a hobby he has really gotten into, with his books on famous serial killers past, his active-at-all-times police scanner, his gross response to seeing crime scene photos and his whole “I am a serial killer” vibe. He is de-Li-ghted when Deke and Baxter take an interest in him. Are they going to Break The Rules in pursuit of him? Would I have ordered a large popcorn and said “heck, why not” to at least a small amount of butter?

You can currently see this movie in theaters or you can make your own popcorn and watch it on HBO Max through Feb. 28. And, sure, go ahead, watch it. This movie is fine. I’ve seen worse things in winter movie viewing. Would I recommend building a whole move night around it? Maybe not; the extremely “what you’d expect” story beats and the general “it’s a grim world out there” perspective of this movie doesn’t exactly add up to anything fresh or surprising. The movie is unnecessarily over two hours long and needed to either shave off a good 30 minutes or add some kind of more substantial subplot to justify its length.

The movie comes off, I think, as generally better than it is because of the lead actors. I could probably watch a made-weary-by-the-job Denzel Washington pick up dry cleaning and search for a missing library book and would find it at least medium-compelling. Rami Malek is every young cop character ever trying to balance the bleakness of the job with a sunny home life. He plays Baxter with just enough weirdness that it gives the character a twitchy edge. Leto feels like he’s at least having fun, throwing All The Acting at his role.

If that doesn’t sound like much of a recommendation it’s because it’s not — it’s more like “if you are already paying for HBO Max and can basically see this movie for free there’s no specific reason to avoid it.” In a normal time, this movie probably would have come and gone with little notice and become a thing you could snooze to on cable six months later. (It was the No. 1 movie in theaters last weekend, according to media reports.) But, hey, silver lining I guess, now you can fall asleep at the slow parts or give up at one of the umpteen flashbacks that very slowly unfurl Deke’s Bad Thing that Happened Back When all from the comfort of your own home. C+

Rated R to violent/disturbing images, language and full nudity, according to the MPA on filmratings.com Written and directed by John Lee Hancock, The Little Things is two hours and 7 minutes long and distributed by Warner Bros. It is available on HBO Max through Feb. 28.

Featured photo: The Little Things (R)

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