Category: Film Reviews by Amy

Friends contemplate a green card marriage in The Wedding Banquet, a remake of the 1993 movie by the same name which was directed by Ang Lee and yet isn’t available on streaming or VOD as far as I can tell? Get on that, some streamer.

Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone) have run through their savings and possibly most of their credit attempting to conceive via IVF for Lee. Maybe Angela, the younger of the two women, should try next, Lee suggests after the second round doesn’t result in a pregnancy. But this idea gets Angela all knotted up in her difficult relationship with her own mother and parenting fears.

Meanwhile, Korean artist Min (Han Gi-Chin) proposes to his long-term boyfriend Chris (Bowen Yang), who lives in Lee’s garage and is Angela’s longtime friend. But Chris, already reluctant to commit to anything (Min, finishing his dissertation) takes umbrage at the fact that Min’s proposal comes immediately after a conversation with Min’s grandmother Ja-Young (Youn Yuh-jung) where she tells Min there will be no more visa extensions and that it’s time for him to come home to Korea and run his family’s business. Chris loves Min but feels stressed about the prospect of marriage even if it’s the only way to keep Min in the country. Chris also knows that marriage won’t be as easy for Min as he claims; Min’s grandfather will disinherit and cut off the wealthy Min if he finds out Min is gay.

While talking with Lee, Min comes up with a plan b: he’ll give Angela and Lee the money they need for another IVF round if Angela will marry him. Min will get to stay in America, Chris will get more time to figure out where their relationship is going, Min’s grandparents will get to believe that he is married to a woman and Angela and Lee will get a chance at a baby. Even Angela’s mother May (Joan Chen), now a literal PFLAG award winner but once someone who had a hard time with Angela coming out, is willing to just go with the marriage if it means there’s a shot at a grandchild. But can Min convince Ja-Young to let him stay in America (without cutting him off) when she shows up to meet Angela?

The story takes some not entirely unexpected twists, which I won’t spoil but I will say that Ja-Young knows what’s up from the jump and this gives the movie something of a grounding in reality. We don’t have to bother with a bunch of Three’s Company secret-hiding silliness and instead get to spend time with the emotions of this gentle dramady. All the actors here are better than the at times too-pat material but the talents of the core six actors help carry the story off. In a world where actual couple Chris and Min can just legally marry, it could feel like extreme movie logic keeping them from doing so but the emotions of the characters and ultimately the premium they put on family in all its forms help all the movie’s choices make sense. B Available for rent or purchase.

Mom-frienemies played by Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively reunite in Another Simple Favor, a sequel to the 2018 movie that lives in a more darkly fantastical world.

Stephanie (Kendrick), mommy vlogger, true crime lady and author, is shocked to see Emily (Blake Lively), the mysterious mom who faked her own death (among other crimes) in the first movie, return after years in prison. When Emily asks Stephanie to be her maid of honor for her upcoming wedding in Capri, Stephanie is pretty sure chic Emily is just taking her to a foreign country to make it easier to get away with revenge-murdering her. But Emily pleads/threatens a lawsuit and Stephanie’s book agent (Alex Newell) says this is excellent sequel material, so Stephanie agrees to go.

Emily’s Italian wedding is as fashion-forward and drama-filled as expected: fiance Danté (Michele Morrone) is the sexy and wealthy scion of a mob family whose rivals he is trying to make peace with at his wedding; Dante’s mother (Elena Sofia Ricci) hates Emily and brings in Emily’s unhinged mother (Elizabeth Perkins) and Emily’s odd aunt Linda (Allison Janney) to needle her; Emily’s ex-husband (Henry Golding) deals with court orders to bring her son Nicky (Ian Ho) to the wedding by staying very drunk, and Stephanie is pretty sure every drink Emily hands her is potentially poisoned. And all of that is before the first person is murdered at this multi-murder affair.

Like the massive sun hat or feather boa robe that Lively’s character sports in this movie, Another Simple Favor isn’t subtle. This is a movie with telenovela-worthy plot points and dramatic ridiculousness but just enough pleasant tartness in the friendship/enemyship of Emily and Stephanie to make the whole thing feel frothy and fun without tipping over into too-much-ness territory. Kendrick does allow us to believe that her character has grown in the ensuing years and Lively is, as always, perfect for this grown-up Gossip Girl-ness. B Streaming on Prime Video.

Drop (PG-13)

A woman on a first date — a first date after years of an abusive marriage and the aftermath as a single mom — finds herself terrorized by an anonymous person via her phone’s AirDrop-like feature in Drop, a well-paced, tense horror-suspense movie.

In the movie’s opening scene, we see Violet (Meghann Fahy) crawl to get away from her violent husband. Years later, she is a therapist, is raising her son Toby (Jacob Robinson) and is preparing for a first date with Henry (Brandon Sklenar). Her sister Jen (Violett Beane) comes over to watch Toby and to suggest Violet change out of her office-blouse attire and into something zazzier for the date. Violet arrives at the fancy restaurant on the top floor of a skyscraper and has interactions with assorted people as she waits for Henry at the bar. Around the time he arrives, she starts to receive “dropped” notifications (but not “AirDropped”; this movie gives its feature a non-Apple-tech name). She ignores a few and then she and Henry break the ice by trying to figure out who in the restaurant may be sending them. But the increasingly insistent messages tell her to check her home security cams, where she sees a masked figure menace her family. The messages tell her not to involve Henry or anyone else and to follow its directions to keep her family members alive.

Drop does a good job of showing us Violet’s state of fear and aloneness, one that recalls the way she felt in her previous abusive relationship. It also gives us a relatively realistic, non-superhero woman trying to figure out how to save her kid and all the others the messenger threatens with the limited resources she has. Drop is tense and well-paced. B Available for rent or purchase.

Nonnas (PG)

Vince Vaughn dials down the Vince-Vaughn-ness to play Joe Scaravella, a man who opens a restaurant dedicated to preserving the art of grandma cuisine, in Nonnas, a Netflix movie based on a real guy and his real grandma-centric restaurant in Staten Island.

After the death of his mother, Joe (Vaughn) decides to take the insurance money and use it to open Enoteca Maria, a restaurant that will attempt to recreate the food and the vibes of his mom’s and grandma’s Italian cooking. He hires as his cooks grandmas and women of grandma age — pastry and dessert maker Gia (Susan Sarandon), former nun Teresa (Talia Shire) and two grandmas with differing opinions about from whence hails the best Italian cuisine, the Sicilian Roberta (Lorraine Bracco) and the Bolognese Antonella (Brenda Vaccaro). Making the restaurant happen requires the assistance of childhood friend Bruno (Joe Manganiello) and Bruno’s wife Stella (Drea de Matteo). Desperate to keep this part of his mother’s memory alive, Joe pours all his time and money into trying to get the restaurant to work — though he does have a little energy left over to try to rekindle a relationship with decades-ago prom date Olivia (Linda Cardellini).

But the rom is pretty light in this movie that is mostly about the comedy of being a guy with no experience opening a restaurant with very opinionated Italian-American ladies. The titular nonnas and the food they make is the real focus here and the movie does a serviceable job of giving the ladies (and loads of hunger-inducing dishes) a chance to shine. C+ Streaming on Netflix.

A Working Man (R)

Jason Statham is a working man in A Working Man, a movie that is basically “what if Taken but The Beekeeper.”

This movie isn’t quite as good as either of those, but it’s pretty solid for when you want some smooth brain Jason Statham nonsense where he is basically playing, straight-faced, his “this arm has been ripped out completely and reattached with this arm” character from Spy. Levon Cade (Statham) is a construction worker but he was a super skilled commando guy in the British military. His employers — Joe Garcia (Michael Peña) and wife Carla (Noemi Gonzalez) — and workers alike admire and trust him and, a girl-dad himself, Levon promises college-age Garcia daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) that he’ll always have her back. So naturally, during a night out with friends, Jenny goes missing. Joe begs Levon to find Jenny. With some burrowed weaponry and information help from Army buddies, Levon sets out to find her.

Ultimately the bad guys Levon must fight, moving up the echelons in the Bad Guy corporate structure, are Russian mafia types. Well, “Russian” in the sense that maybe the movie doesn’t know the difference between “Russians” and “vampires.” If you told me that actually all the bad guys, particularly the head don with a silver skull on the top of his cane, were vampires, it would track and still work — like it’s always night? And the menace is very theatrical? Jenny also proves herself to be no slouch in the kidnapping victim department — always with a plan to outwit her captors and a sassy comeback when she can’t.

This movie is fine and fun — not as “yippee!” stupid fun as Statham’s The Beekeeper but still dumb, still a good time, still full of violence that straddles the line between “ha!” and “that’s not really how physics works.” B Available for rent and purchase.

A scrappy band of Marvel secondary characters come together in Thunderbolts*, a movie that pretty nicely sells you on the idea of a future of the MCU.

Yelena (Florence Pugh), a former Red Room Black Widow who was the little sister to big sister Natasha “Scarlett Johansson” Black Widow and is still mourning her loss, is sick of working as a covert assassin-type. She finds the work empty and wants something more “public facing,” she tells her boss Valentina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).

And, look, I haven’t done all the homework on Valentina — all the The Falcon and the Winter Soldier business. But to sum up: she is the CIA director (as she was in Wakanda Forever) and she just generally represents all the most cynical elements of both the government and the biotech weapons world. In the latter capacity, she was behind an attempt to create supersoldiers. She also employs several deadly semi-super-assassins, including Yelena, to clean up any inconvenient messes including those made in the attempt to make supersoldiers. Which is why we see Yelena as she parachutes into a lab, kills a bunch of people and blows it up. And perhaps because Valentina is being investigated by Congress, including first-term Congressman Bucky “Winter Soldier” Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Yelena thinks Valentina is on the level when she tells her one last wetworks job and then you can change careers.

That one last job involves following Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) into an extra-fortified vault. Only Ghost was also given one last job, which was to follow Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) into the vault. And Taskmaster was sent after John Walker (Wyatt Russell), the aggro-one-time Captain America, who was in turn offered a clean slate if he took out Yelena. One of them is dispatched before they figure out that Valentina sent them to take each other out and has locked them in an incinerator to take care of the bodies. But Valentina didn’t factor in Bob (Lewis Pullman), the regular-looking dude in scrubs who shows up. Nor did it occur to her that these malcontents with their trauma-filled backgrounds might be able to work together. And she didn’t realize that the limo driver overhearing her conversation about killing Yelena was the Red Guardian (David Harbour), Yelena’s sometimes father figure.

Thunderbolts* has a Bad Guy and a Worse Guy, which is how a cynical Valentina explains the power dynamics of the world to her young assistant (a fun, underused Geraldine Viswanathan). But I think the Big Bad of this movie — in the way that, say, colonialism is the true Big Bad in Black Panther — is despair. As several people in the movie say, the Avengers are gone and are not coming to save the day. The regular humans that are left are like Valentina — power-mad, self-dealing and seemingly actively trying to make the world a worse place. And those that oppose her but can’t seem to make a dent in the ability of her and those like her to stay in power. The Thunderbolts, as they sort of sarcastically call themselves, are all dealing with varying levels of mental exhaustion — the things from their past that they have to carry are too heavy and the road ahead looks similarly hard. What’s the point of any of it, what can you do except, as Yelena suggests, just try to push all that down and maybe drink. But, of course infinite denial is not a great plan — not for regular people and definitely not for those given super serum.

This is kind of weird territory for a superhero movie, especially one tasked with getting us all excited about Marvel movies again, but it works. It’s grittier (without being bleak), looser and smarter than some of those Eternals/Quantumania movies of late that just feel like dreary attempts at replaying the hits. And Thunderbolts*, while given some MCU business to do, does not suffer in the way that, say, Captain America: Brave New World does from the MCU of it all blotting out this specific movie’s story and characters. Its “we’re the ones we’re waiting for” message isn’t bombastic, it’s more just hopeful and determined. The movie delivers genuine emotion — particularly in the relationship between Yelena and the Red Guardian (David Harbour is having the Most Fun throughout this movie) — and some genuine laughs as well as occasional action scenes that have real stakes. I don’t love the reason for the * in the movie’s title or the movie’s final moments that address it, but I had a pretty good time otherwise. B In theaters. There are two post credits scenes, one fun and one setting up future stuff.

Bill Skarsgård picks the wrong car to steal from in Locked, a fun example of simplified concept horror.

Eddie (Skarsgård) is behind on his child support, is behind on picking up his young daughter from school and doesn’t have the cash to pay for all of his van’s repairs. And, as a delivery person, he needs his van to work and pick up his daughter and make money to pay child support. To find the cash to cover repairs, he buys a few scratch-offs, he hits up unreceptive friends to borrow money (most of whom hang up on him) and then he nicks a wallet and starts trying the door handles of parked cars. The movie conveys that he’s not a bad guy per se — his thievery is nonviolent and when he’s barked at by a dog locked in one of the cars, he offers the hot pup some water. Then he sees a sleek SUV that is unlocked. He gets in, admires the car’s very lux interior but finding nothing worth stealing decides to leave. But he can’t; the doors are locked. Attempts to push open, kick out and even hit out the windows with a crowbar go nowhere. He even attempts to take a door apart, ignoring the constant ringing of the car’s built-in phone. Eventually, when attempts to call 911 or get the attention of someone walking by fail, he gives in and answers the phone. I am William (Anthony Hopkins) and this is my car, says the voice. And thus do days begin to pass — William can send an electrical shock through the seats, blast the air conditioner or the heat and play yodeling at full volume when Eddie upsets him. He berates Eddie for committing crimes, he rails against society, he drops information about a daughter who we gather was a victim of something worse than a car break-in. Eddie meanwhile tries everything to escape. He learns the hard way that the car is bulletproof. He eats what little food he has, he runs out of water, he fantasizes about a McDonald’s order. He argues with William about the economic inequality of the city, and pleads with William that he is sorry for his crimes. And he is horrified to learn that William can drive the car by autopilot.

Eddie is no dummy. His arguments with William go to a literary place about guilt and morality while William, a wealthy man and a doctor, is actually pretty “kids these days” and “this city has gone to seed.” Hopkins gives William a touch of Hannibal Lecter — sadistic and amoral even as he’s going on about justice. It’s a solid concept for a movie, well-executed and acted, and offers solid suspense and a kind of “hell is other people” horror. B Available for rent or purchase.

Havoc (R)

Tom Hardy is a cop with problems in Havoc, a movie that is 78 percent shooting.

So much shooting that it starts to take on a “heavy rainstorm” kind of white noise quality. This is Netflix, so if you fall asleep during the scene where one group of bad guys mows down another group of bad guys and then wake up during a scene when a third group of bad guys is mowing down them, you can always rewind. You can also not rewind because the who and why are kind of irrelevant to the point of these scenes, which is shooting.

Homicide detective Walker (Tom Hardy) is every single cliché of a TV or movie anti-hero — estranged from wife and child, living in a cruddy apartment, basically a walking mess of a person. He is mired in trauma from a thing that he and other detectives did that “went too far” and has caused his wife to refer to his offer of help as “blood money.” He grumps his way through his night shift, riding along with officer Ellie (Jessie Mei Li), a rookie who seems to find his Whole Thing off-putting.

Walker and Ellie are called to a massacre at a bad guy hangout where Walker learns that Charlie (Justin Cornwell), son of city developer and corrupt political guy Beaumont (Forest Whitaker), is one of the main suspects. Because of some security footage, the police think Charlie and his girlfriend Mia (Quelin Sepulveda) are responsible for mowing down the head of the local Chinese gang. Unfortunately for Charlie, the dead gang leader’s bad-ass mother (Yeo Yann Yann) also thinks he’s to blame. She and her efficient gang of killers are looking for him so Beaumont, who I guess has many police officers on his payroll, tells Walker to find and safeguard Charlie. Meanwhile, Walker’s fellow group of homicide detectives — played by two guys who aren’t Timothy Olyphant and one guy who is Timothy Olyphant — are also mixed up in the massacre, which is related to a shipment of drugs that were hidden in washing machines, one of which wound up being thrown on a cop car during a chase earlier in the movie.

But I’ve made it sound like there’s a lot of story here when really there are just little wisps of story and whole lots of shooting, with a thousand bullets fired for every one that hits somebody. And all of this is situated in a city that feels like the grimmest version of Gotham but without Batman or any costumed bad guys. And it’s at Christmastime, to make everything feel extra sad.

And yet, Tom Hardy almost, not really but almost, makes a good part of this work. He wears down-at-his-heels hopeless-guy well and makes you feel the guilt that his character drags around. C+ Streaming on Netflix.

Director Ryan Coogler crafts a very good supernatural thriller studded with a few top-shelf musical set pieces — including one all-timer of a chill-inducing music-on-film moment — in Sinners.

After years away in the military (World War I, it’s implied) and in Chicago, twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both Michael B. Jordan) return to their hometown in the Mississippi Delta during what Wikipedia says is 1932. I missed a date title card, if there was one, but the movie makes it clear that we’re in the pre-civil rights era when getting out — joining the Great Migration to the north or west — was the best chance of getting ahead for Black communities. But Smoke and Stack explain to their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton) that the relative freedom of Chicago isn’t exactly as advertised so they have decided to return to the devil they know. They’ve come back with a stack of cash, a truck full of booze and a plan to open a juke joint, which will have its opening night the very same day they buy the old mill where it will be housed from some tobacco-spitting racist.

The day is spent gathering necessities for the big opening. Stack and Sammie buy catfish and a sign from general store operators Bo (Yao) and Grace Chow (Li Jun Li). They hire pianist Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) to perform along with guitarist Sammie, and Cornbread (Omar Miller) to serve as a bouncer. Smoke convinces Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), a sort-of ex who perhaps has otherworldly abilities, to cook for the evening. The night promises possibility — Sammie flirts with Pearline (Jayme Lawson), a woman who might sing at the joint — as well as potential dangers. The way Smoke and Stack are told there’s no Klan in the area makes it clear that the Ku Klux Klan is a present danger. The juke joint’s menu of Italian wine and Irish beer suggests the Chicago gangs that may be the booze’s provenance. And then there’s Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), a woman with a biracial grandfather who appears to be white and had a youthful romance with Stack. She still (angrily) carries a torch even though Stack tries to convince her that they can not be a couple.

But Sammie can almost make all of that seem like distant worry. His playing of the blues goes beyond simply music well performed into the realm of spiritual experience, something that can connect the people in the present to the people and music of the past and future. He conjures an experience that not only gives the people listening a kind of momentary release from themselves but also attracts a man (Jack O’Connell) we first see running, smoldering as the sun sets, to a house on a dirt farm, begging to be let in.

The creature feature elements of this story are well done but what makes them something more than just standard-issue monster movie fare is the way they’re nestled in a setting that feels like a dark fairy tale even though it’s drawn from actual history. When a trio of white musicians comes to the door of the juke joint, they’re dangerous for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with the supernatural. What, then, does it mean for something to be a monster? The movie also spends a fair amount of time thinking about freedom — momentary freedom, a more lasting state of freedom. What does that mean? How is it achieved?

Anchoring these ideas to something human and real are the performances, which are solid across the board. Jordan of course is the standout. This movie isn’t, in the Fruitvale Station sense, a serious drama but, as Jordan did in Creed and Black Panther — two movies where the IP could do most of the work if you let it — he brings gravitas to less-than-grave subjects. He can convey pain, frustration, desire and anger with an economy of gestures and expressions. And he makes Smoke and Stack two different people who can work in concert without always being in agreement.

The real standout of Sinners is the music — how the movie uses it, how it puts it together. One musical scene in particular felt to me like the equivalent of a set-piece action scene in a different kind of movie. It’s Tom Cruise hanging from a plane or Keanu Reeves fighting in a traffic circle. It is the sort of thing that shocks the movie up to a different level and makes it easier to forgive any wobbly bits, not that this movie has many. It’s a kind of precision designed, choreographed sequence that serves as a showpiece and a bit of a demonstration of mission statement for what the movie wants to convey. A
In theaters.