Category: Film Reviews by Amy

Sinners (R)

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.

G20 (R)

Viola Davis is Madame President Bad-ass in G20, which is like Air Force One but radder.

U.S. President Viola Davis — the character’s name is Danielle Sutton but this movie totally supports you thinking “President Viola Davis! Heck yeah! Rock ’n’ roll!” — goes to a G20 summit in South Africa in an attempt to convince world leaders of some plan that supports farmers, particularly in Africa, to end world hunger something something basically she’s being a good guy and we know this in part because British Prime Minister Oliver Everett (Douglas Hodge) is being a real “tut tut well now my dear lady” about it. Meanwhile, she’s dealing with some domestic difficulties — like seriously domestic as her teenage daughter, Serena (Marsai Martin), is sneaking out without her security detail and hacking various systems to do so and just generally being a sassypants in a way that leads to some snide questions from the press. So President Viola Davis decides that Serena and younger brother Demetrius (Christopher Farrar) will accompany her, her husband First Gentleman Anthony Anderson (his character’s name is Derek) and her Treasury Secretary Joanna Worth (Elizabeth Marvel), who was once a presidential rival and has real Hillary vibes, to the summit.

Meanwhile meanwhile, a team of mercenary-types headed by Rutledge (Antony Starr) and his men have infiltrated the security team for the G20 summit. Rutledge has an elaborate plan that goes “something something Deep Fakes something something crash world economy something something cryptocurrency” and also he is bitter about his time in the Australian military during the Iraq war. He takes all the world leaders hostage but in the melee a group manages to escape and hide: President Viola Davis, Secret Service Agent Will Trent (Ramón Rodriguez, his character’s name is actually Manny Ruiz but all I could think is “hey that’s Will Trent from TV’s Will Trent”), the snitty British PM, World Bank lady Elena Romano (Sabrina Impacciatore) and the South Korean first lady (MeeWha Alana Lee), who presents as dignified grandma but is also a bad-ass. They slink around the hotel, getting the drop on various Rutledge henchmen, finding out more about his plan and even rescuing the hotel workers who include two secret agents (Noxolo Dlamini, Theo Bongani Ndyalvane) who help President Viola Davis in her counterstrike plans and about whom her son Demetrius says “you’re from Wakanda” after they balletically take out some baddies.

President Viola Davis starts the evening, pre-hostage-taking, in a stunning tomato-red gown with a cape and some nice heels; later, we get some awesome Buffy the middle-aged Vampire Slayer-style shots of her in sneakers, cape gone, dress torn at the knee for better tactical maneuvering and holding a big ol’ gun. It is chef’s kiss, no notes.

I took zero time to figure out what this movie’s political point of view is, assuming it has one, which it may not; the bad guy plan is unnecessarily complicated, and most of the dialogue is silly or predictable or both. And yet, this movie rocks. It is a total blast for, yes, the fan fiction element of a Viola Davis presidency but also for it just being so much what it is. This is a movie for when you want to watch a person who you believe as a bad-ass do bad-ass things. This is that movie where the Rock fights a building (2018’s Skyscraper), or Gerard Butler does plane (2023’s Plane) or John Wick does anything (all of the John Wicks, 2014-2023). But with Viola Davis. As President. As a serious fil-uhm critic, I think this movie is probably a standard action fare B, maybe even B- for the uncleverness of it all. As a person who watched it and had an excellent time, I think A+, woo-hoo President Woman King! Streaming on Prime Video.

Holland (R)

Nicole Kidman is a strangely square home ec teacher in a suspiciously wholesome town in the thriller/dramady Holland, a movie that doesn’t quite manage to be funny or particularly suspenseful.

Nancy Vandergroot (Kidman) seems like she has an aggressively perfect life with her optometrist/ hobby-train-enthusiast husband Fred (Matthew Macfadyen) and their young son Harry (Jude Hill). But Nancy starts to suspect that Fred’s business trips are just covers for affairs and she gets her work friend Dave Delgado (Gael García Bernal) to help her in a little light PI-ing. But are her suspicions actually a sign of her own unsettled desires, including her obvious attraction to Dave?

I was getting some lady-with-a-screw-loose To Die For energy from Kidman when this movie started and I get the sense that that kind of self-delusion with a dark edge is maybe one of the directions this movie wanted to go with her character. But it goes a lot of other directions with this story too, including one that is super-apparent from the beginning. I think we’re supposed to chuckle at the juxtaposition of the town of Holland, where children learn Dutch dancing and people say “ah sugar” as a form of polite swearing, and the various sins both real and suspected. But the movie treats as dramatic revelations things it basically told us in the beginning and it ultimately makes Nancy kind of a nothing character. I wanted to like this movie for giving Kidman a chance to be kooky. But the movie can’t figure out the vibe it’s going for or the story it wants to tell. C Available on Prime Video.

My Dead Friend Zoe (R)

An Army veteran recently returned to the U.S. from combat abroad is literally haunted by a fallen comrade in My Dead Friend Zoe, a sort of gentle comedy-drama about PTSD from military service.

Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green) stumbles through life, barely participating in court-mandated veteran group therapy run by Dr. Cole (Morgan Freeman) and hitting the road for long runs anytime a situation gets stressful. And through most of her waking hours she is accompanied by Zoe (Natalie Morales), her best friend from her time in the Army. Her dead best friend, as the title indicates. Zoe is mostly there to make snarky comments or bicker with Merit but she also appears to be keeping Merit stuck in a kind of life limbo. Zoe comes with Merit to her grandfather Dale’s (Ed Harris) house to keep an eye on him. Also a veteran, also dealing with stuff, Dale is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and can’t quite manage on his own. Merit’s mother/Dale’s daughter Kris (Gloria Reuben) wants to put Dale in a retirement home and sell his lakeside property to ensure that he’ll have full-time care. Neither Dale nor Merit wants that, but Merit does seem to enjoy meeting Alex (Utakarsh Ambudkar), the retirement home’s director with whom she attempts to go out on a date.

This movie is maybe overly simplistic in the points it’s trying to make but it’s a solid story that gets to issues of friendship and the returned veteran experience that you don’t always see in movies. The chemistry of Martin-Green and Morales is really what holds it together and gives it the charm that makes it worth the watch. B Available for rent or purchase.

The Last Showgirl (R)

Pamela Anderson is a faded dancer in a faded “dancing nudes” show in Las Vegas in The Last Showgirl, a highly watchable movie from Gia Coppola (yes, that Coppola — she is a Francis Ford grandchild).

Shelly (Anderson) is still dazzled by the glamour and showmanship of “Le Razzle Dazzle,” the show she’s been dancing in for some 30 years at a casino in Las Vegas. Not one of the big modern “Adele residency” type venues, we gather — a “dirty circus” has taken the best nights and the Razzle Dazzle is more of a weekday affair at this scruffy locale. The other girls (Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka are the ones we meet) don’t see it with such stars in their eyes — it’s a job, a job for which they are being paid an ever-shrinking amount (and charged back when a costume rips). Eddie (Dave Bautista), the show’s announcer, informs Shelly and the other women that even that will come to an end soon. Shelly, a 57-year-old woman pretending to be a 42-year-old woman pretending to be 37, isn’t sure what to do next and finds that the dance skills and showmanship that made her (at least in her mind) a star might not be enough to carry her to the next thing. Meanwhile, longtime friend, former dancer and maybe gambling addict Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis), a cocktail waitress who is always on the edge of financial ruin, offers a grim look at the even greater instability Shelly could be facing.

Some of the movie’s best scenes are when Shelly is with Hannah (Billie Lourd), her daughter who we gather has been living with another family and who never quite understood the appeal of the job to Shelly. When Hannah sees the show, she just sees a shabby nudie show with a sparse audience that, for all its down-at-the-heels-ness, her mother still put above her. Lourd’s Carrie Fisher (her real life mother) no-nonsense quality really comes through in these scenes, as does her exhaustion with this person Hannah loves and can’t figure out how to live with. Anderson also gives a strong and highly watchable performance. She captures the slow-motion panic and heartbreak of realizing one phase of life is over and trying to figure out what to do next. B+ Available for rent or purchase.

The Life List (PG-13)

Connie Britton tries to fix her daughter’s life from beyond the grave in The Life List.

When makeup company founder Elizabeth (Britton) dies, she shocks her two sons, two daughters-in-law and her daughter Alex (Sofia Carson) by giving one of the daughters-in-law control of the makeup company instead of Alex, who had been working there. Elizabeth’s will requires Alex to find a new job and fulfill the tasks on her “life list,” a list of goals she made as a young teenager. Some of the items are easy — dance in a mosh pit, get a tattoo — and some are harder, like finding love or repairing her fraught relationship with her dad (José Zúñiga). She dumps the goofy boyfriend her mother felt she’d been settling for and begins a relationship with the cultured Garrett (Sebastian De Souza), who should be the love of her life. But what about her fast friendship with her mother’s lawyer, Brad (Kyle Allen)?

Alex gets a cute apartment, cute potential boyfriends are thick on the ground and finding oneself can be done with relatively minimal financial pain due to a general “from money”-ness. The Life List is a nice if slight young adult fantasy but it has little nuggets of slightly more complex family relationships mixed into all the froth. This movie doesn’t try too hard but it also doesn’t ask too much and it is pleasantly fine. C+ Available on Netflix.

Lee (R)

Photographer Lee Miller gets a biopic with Lee.

We get a relatively interesting look at the life of Lee (Kate Winslet), a model turned photographer who we first meet when she is in her 30s in the 1930s, which, ha no she’s not and actually that’s pretty great. I mean, yes, historical person Lee Miller was in her early 30s in the late 1930s, but Kate Winslet the actress is currently 49 and, while she looks great in this 2024 Oscar hopeful, her Lee Miller looks like a woman in her late 40s. A woman in her late 40s living her life as she pleases, having affairs, being professionally ambitious and pushing into combat photography, which is all very rad but just hits differently and makes for a more interesting but not entirely true-to-history character. It heightens the sense that this Lee Miller has lived more of a life than the slice the movie focuses on and there’s always a sense of why aren’t we seeing more of that.

Anyway, Lee, an American, living in London with artist Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård), works for British Vogue during the early years of the war and eventually tries to get herself sent into Europe to cover the Allied army. She finds a way with the American army, even if she’s still told that women can’t attend this press briefing or go on that mission. She does eventually get herself into the field, often in the company of Davy Scherman (Andy Samberg), a fellow photographer. Together they are some of the first American photographers to photograph the horrors of the Holocaust — box cars full of corpses and a concentration camp full of dead, dying and starving people.

Wikipedia her and you learn that Lee took an artistic as well as journalistic approach to her war photography — a “huh interesting” element that the movie only slightly glances at. There is a lot to her life that is of the “huh, interesting” variety — her modeling, her life as part of the Parisian art world, her marriage before Penrose — that this movie either ignores completely or addresses only slightly. There is a lot of telling over showing here, telling us that Lee had to push through a lot of sexist nonsense to do her job, telling us that she had a difficult relationship with the son we see decades later in the film’s very clunky framing device. This is one of those movies where seeing the real person’s photographs at the end of the movie has more of an impact than the narrative the movie creates around them. Both Kate Winslet and Lee Miller deserve better. C+ Available for rent or purchase and streaming on Hulu.

Firebrand (R)

The “survived” final wife of King Henry VIII gets a heroic biopic in Firebrand, a “doubtful but whatever” story about Katherine Parr’s time as queen.

Katherine (Alicia Vikander) is here the politically and religiously (same thing for the era’s purposes) radical Protestant wife of an ailing, somewhat unhinged Henry (a very vanity-free Jude Law). She has become a mother figure to his two youngest surviving children — Edward (Patrick Buckley) and Elizabeth (Junia Rees) — and is supportive, in a politic way, of the English Bible and prayers at a time when Henry has decreed a return to Latin and his daughter Mary (Patsy Ferran) stands by as a possible future queen who supports a full return to Catholicism. Katherine’s goal, it seems, is to keep from being executed for heresy before Henry dies, perhaps even securing a role as young Edward’s regent. She’s perhaps hoping that her impending widowhood would also allow her to marry longtime romantic interest Thomas Seymour (Sam Riley) — not a great guy, usually, in stories about the teen years of eventual Queen Elizabeth, but this movie stays in Henry’s reign.

The movie itself kicks off with title cards that suggest that history involving women might require some wild speculation, and wildly speculate it does. And I am fine with that — Henry and his wives having been riffed on in so many ways and from so many angles it’s fun to see a story that focuses on Katherine, even if it goes a lot of historically dodgy places. Everybody does a credible enough job for this exercise in historical “what if, who knows.” Perhaps this is more an exercise for Tudor completists but it’s an OK time if that’s you. B- Available for rent or purchase and streaming on Hulu.

Featured Image: G20 (R)

I’m Still Here (PG-13)

A woman’s beautiful family life falls apart when her husband is disappeared by the Brazilian government in I’m Still Here, the Oscar-winning adaptation of the true story of Rubens and Eunice Paiva in 1970s Brazil.

Rubens (Selton Mello) was once a congressman but is now an engineer living with his wife, Eunice (Fernanda Torres), and their five children in Rio de Janeiro in a lovely house by a lovely beach. Like, it is all so lovely and sunny and early 1970s beautiful — from the cars to the clothes to the luminous Torres. Her happy children run around like kids on vacation — teen daughters Vera (Valentina Herszage), Eliana (Luiza Kosovski) and Nalu (Barbara Luz) are all about music and records, younger kids Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira) and Babiu (Cora Mora) are all about a small shaggy dog they find on the beach and make the family pet, naming him after Vera’s shaggy-haired boyfriend. But like storm clouds on the horizon of a perfect beach day, the heavy-handed presence of the dictatorship government is everywhere along the edges of their lives. The news is full of talk of abducted ambassadors, military trucks full of troops roll down city streets and Vera and her friends are stopped on the way home from a movie by a checkpoint looking for “terrorists,” a label which seems to indicate anyone with disagreements with the government. We see Rubens accept and hand off envelopes and talk with his friends who seem to be politically aligned with his anti-dictatorship views but the only people in this circle who seem worried are a bookshop-owning family who have decided to move to London and offer to take Vera with them, which Rubens and Eunice agree to.

Rubens and Eunice are just enjoying an afternoon together — playing backgammon, smoking cigarettes in a way that makes even a non-smoker want a drag — when armed men show up. There are no warrants, no papers, no uniforms, just guys with guns saying Rubens has to come with them to give some kind of testimony. He tells Eunice not to worry, that he will be back before dinner, and gets into his car with one of the men. Several of the men stay at their house, searching Rubens’ office and just generally being menacing. Eunice tries to keep things normal for the younger children and sends one of the kids off to spend the night with her friend. But she can’t entirely hide her fear from 15-year-old Eliana, especially when after about a day, the men say Eunice and Eliana need to come with them.

Eunice spends a harrowing 12 days in a jail, seemingly run by the military, being asked about random friends and acquaintences, terrified for her daughter and her husband. Torres does an excellent job of making the Euince who returns home after being released a completely different person than the one who left — her easy smile is gone, the light in her face is replaced by tenseness. It’s a magnificent performance — would I place it above Demi Moore’s The Substance performance, one of the performances nominated along with Torres’ for Lead Actress at the recent Oscars? Maybe not, but I do think I’d rank it higher than winner Mikey Madison. (I’m Still Here did take home an Oscar for Best International Feature Film.)

It’s hard not to weigh the movie against the other Best Picture nominees — it would definitely be in my top three of those 10 films. The movie does an excellent job of juxtaposing the normalness of life — even in a dictatorship kids still adopt stray dogs, families still eat ice cream, the beach is still a mini vacation — with the psychological destruction of Rubens’ absence. It’s not just that he’s arrested, he is thoroughly disappeared, removed from existence by the blank wall of an unaccountable government. They won’t even admit that he was arrested or what happened to him. Eunice initially can’t access any of his/their money because he doesn’t exist even on a death certificate that would make her a widow. The movie shows how a country doesn’t literally need to be at war for existence to become terrifying. A Available for rent or purchase.

Black Bag (R)

Married British spies get tangled up in the sale of state secrets in Black Bag, a well-paced mystery from director Steven Soderbergh.

George Woodhouse (Michael Fasbender) is tasked with finding the fellow spy who sold a thing to the Russians (the thing is a device that causes a meltdown of a nuclear plant). The suspects are friends and colleagues — and his wife, who is also a spy, Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett). He invites the other suspects to dinner: friend/co-worker Freddie (Tom Burke); Freddie’s too-young girlfriend/fellow agent Clarissa (Marisa Abela); James (Regé-Jean Page), who George recently promoted above Freddie, and Zoe (Naomie Harris), James’ girlfriend and a staff therapist who professionally treats/oversees all the suspects. At George’s dinner, a dish dosed to lower inhibitions results in fights all around but doesn’t leave George with a clear answer. As he watches the repercussions of the dinner’s conversations play out, the clues start to point to Kathryn’s involvement. George is such a straight shooter that he once brought down his own father, but what will he do if Kathryn is the one who is in trouble?

Black Bag is solidly acted, coolly funny and wonderfully brisk. For me, there is a sparkle that this talented cast suggested but that the movie didn’t fully deliver on. But this doesn’t make this any less a solid, quietly fun adult thriller. B In theaters.

Snow White (PG)

Disney tries to make a plucky modern hero out of the OG “Some Day My Prince Will Come” Princess in Snow White, a weird mess of an unnecessary live action adaptation of the 1937 animated movie.

First, let’s jump back to the 1937 source material, which I definitely saw years ago but only vaguely remembered as a tale where the heroine’s inciting event is that she’s discovered to be too pretty and her special skill is tidying up. I rewatched it after seeing this new Snow White and it is not quite what I remembered. Animated Snow White, who reads as sort of Clara Bow plus Shirley Temple, and her Prince Charming (we call him that but he doesn’t actually have a name) and the Evil Queen are wafer thin characters presented in a high melodrama. Snow White and the prince meet while singing and decide they are in True Love, a fact that then doesn’t really matter for the story again until the movie’s final moments. Snow White is nearly killed by the Huntsman, who was ordered by the queen to cut out her heart because the queen was jealous of Snow’s beauty, but he tells her to flee instead, and then she runs off into the forest in a panic. You can see in this story the scaffolding on which 2007’s Enchanted built its fairy tale riff — and actually that movie serves as a pretty good live action take on the Snow White story.

But back in 1937, all of this romance-and-jealousy stuff is just setup for what serves as the true heart of the animated movie, which is Looney Tunes-esque woodland animal hijinks and Three Stooges/Oliver & Hardy-ish wackiness of the seven short miners that Snow White encounters when she invites herself into their cottage in the woods. Their vibe is very much “grizzled prospector” and/or less-malevolent Elmer Fudd. Bigger chunks of the movie than I expected are about them Stooge-ily trying to sneak in the house to figure out who is inside or goofing at an outdoor wash bin, doing silly bits with bubbles.

The Snow White of it all — with the red hair band and the weird dress and the getting squirrels to help her do chores — has stuck around through the decades because she’s the central image of the movie and because she’s the most merch-able element (little princess-phase girls still dress up as her) but she’s rather incidental to most of the fun stuff in that movie. The 1937 movie’s whole vibe is very of its time — it’s a fascinating watch for the visuals and the style of comedy but I don’t see why anyone would really want to remake it (other than whole IP machine, of course).

Back to the new live-action movie: here, we get a whole backstory about Snow White (Rachel Zegler), the princess born during a blizzard, hence the name, and beloved child of two benevolent rulers of a happy kingdom. But then, in the grand Disney tradition, good Queen Snow White’s Mom (Lorena Andrea) dies and King Snow White’s Dad (Hadley Fraser) is enchanted with the beautiful, minor-magic-having lady Evil Queen (Gal Gadot). They marry, she convinces him to go fight the Southern Kingdom and then the Evil Queen becomes a dictator who rules by fear and makes bakers and farmers serve as soldiers. Snow White is forced to be her servant for no particular reason, and is also afraid (of the Queen? I think?) and just sort of mopes around feeling bad about the situation.

No handsome prince here, instead she meets a floppy-haired cute guy, Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), stealing potatoes to help feed his merry band of Robin-Hood-esque thieves — but like half-hearted thieves. Did the movie say they were once a theater troupe? Because I was getting real “pop-up production of Midsummer Night’s Dream” vibes off of them.

Once again, the Magic Mirror (voice of Patrick Page) tells the Evil Queen that she is the fairest of them all — which, how is a magical object who can only do that one thing (as the movie specifies) useful? He is basically a yes-man who only gives her the positive poll numbers, until one day he tells her that Snow White is fairer. But in this movie “fair” can mean both “kind and just” and “beautiful” and it seems like Snow White is defined as the first and the Evil Queen is only concerned with the second and what even is the conflict here? But anyway, off to the woods and the woodland creatures and, eventually, the seven dwarfs who are here the most oddly rendered CGI approximations of the animated characters. The slapstick is very secondary to the central story of Snow White, learning to stand in her power or whatever and rescue her kingdom from the tyranny of the Evil Queen who doesn’t seem to have much of a plan beyond “wear pointy jewels and try to be a sassy bad-ass.”

Gal Gadot can’t quite make her villainy fun or interesting. She is no Cate Blanchett, who was such a delicious evil stepmother in the live-action Cinderella, all Bette Davis snarls to accompany her on-point lewks. Gadot’s performance is only wardrobe, and while the wardrobe is nice it’s not enough to carry her through.

Zegler brings something more to Snow White, even if her conflict isn’t well-defined and her character’s motivations and abilities are sort of hazy. Having the seven dwarfs be otherworldly animated beings prevents them from having real personalities or from one really being the strong, comic-relief supporting character this movie probably needed.

Probably because the Snow White story was so thinly drawn in the first movie, this movie brings a lot of ideas to what’s going on and who these people are. But I feel like they’re mostly half-formed ideas. There is a lot of “to what end?” to all of the Evil Queen’s motivations that make her a mess of a character on top of Gadot’s nothing performance. Clearly “make her plucky” was the goal with Snow White but the movie never bothers to give her reasons for her pluckiness. It all feels so overworked, so “let’s please everyone!” that the result is just an unfun slog that probably pleases no one, giving us forgettable copy-of-a-copy songs and no real sense of why we’re watching these people. C- The 2025 live-action Snow White is in theaters. The 1937 animated movie is streaming on Disney+.

Featured Image: I’m Still Here (PG-13)

Mickey 17 (R)

Robert Pattinson plays a man who agrees to be killed over and over again in service to an interplanetary colonization mission in 2054 in Mickey 17, a sci-fi comedy from Bong Joon Ho.

Because he first agreed to participate in some scheme involving macarons proposed by on-the-make friend Timo (Steven Yeun, having fun being wonderfully sleazy), mid-21st-century goober Mickey Barnes (Pattinson) owes a lot of money to a sadistic, well-connected loan shark. He can’t pay so he decides to flee Earth entirely and join a space mission to Niflheim, which is being touted as a, like, big beautiful planet that humanity will populate with the true believers of Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a failed politician who is a mix of petty man-baby and tech weirdo. Mickey agrees to serve as an Expendable — someone whose physical body is scanned and whose mind and soul are downloaded into a backup drive. He does dangerous work, mostly for experiment purposes, like going out in the highly radioactive environment of space to see how long it takes him to die. When he does die from radiation or intentional poisoning to test a new chemical or whatever, a new Mickey body is printed out from a 3D printer that uses the ship’s organic waste as the printing material. His soul is uploaded to it, making him a seamless Mickey with basically all of the previous lives’ memories.

Though being sold as some kind of “pure” paradise, Niflheim is actually an ice- and snow-covered planet that is home to a highly lethal virus and to large, rolly tardigrade-meets-millipede-like creatures. After scientists kill Mickey with the virus over and over to create a vaccine, the humans can set out to explore the planet, which is how Mickey 17, that is the 17th iteration of Mickey, comes to fall through some ice and is left for certain death.

But Mickey doesn’t die. He’s found and rescued by the Creepers, as the people have taken to calling the wormy but rather cuddly creatures. He trudges back to the ship that is still serving as everyone’s home base and learns that he, 17, has been so written off that the scientists have already printed out a Mickey 18, a Mickey 18 who is hanging out in Mickey’s apartment waiting for the Mickeys’ girlfriend, Nasha (Naomi Ackie).

Robert Pattinson really does seem to be having maximum fun with Mickey. I need to stop being surprised by what a great job Pattinson does with playing weirdos. He fully dives in to the Mickeys, who are similar but not quite the same. OG Mickey is twitchy and desperate not to be sawed in pieces by a loan shark. Timo describes Mickey 17 as “the soft one.” Mickey 18 has a hair trigger and is full of righteous, if not entirely focused, rage. Pattinson makes these Mickeys, especially 17 and 18, the two we spend the most time with, distinct oddballs.

Also going big is Ruffalo, who is, however consciously, doing a Trump riff — Trump with a side of Musk and I felt sort of pre-exhausted at the notion that a good chunk of culture for the next four years will likely be wrestling with these personalities. Marshall, setting off to be ruler of his planet, is joined by his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette), a deranged political wife of the old school (the canny member of the pair) who is obsessed with ideas of refined civilization. They are A Lot, these characters, and the movie maybe does more “do you Get It?” with them than it needs to.

Ultimately, Pattinson saves this movie from just being, like, cheap sketch comedy about This Moment We’re In. He keeps the action nicely off-kilter and helps add heart to the story. B In theaters

Featured Image: Mickey 17 (R)

Paddington in Peru (PG)

Paddington and the Brown family go on a quest to find a missing, possibly treasure-hunting Aunt Lucy in the Amazonian jungle in Paddington in Peru, the sweet and perfectly acceptable third entry in the series.

The second Paddington movie was basically family movie perfection — which leaves a lot for this movie to live up to and it doesn’t, quite. The movie in whole is a bit like the character of Mary Brown: Emily Mortimer has taken over the Brown mom role from Sally Hawkins and Mortimer, like the movie, is fine — she just doesn’t quite have the sparkle that Hawkins brought.

The Brown children — college-bound daughter Judy (Madeleine Harris) and teenage son Jonathan (Samuel Joslin) — are mostly busy doing their own things and mother Mary (Mortimer) misses the years of more family togetherness. Marmalade-loving bear Paddington (voice of Ben Whishaw) receives a letter from the Reverend Mother (Olivia Coleman) at the Home for Retired Bears in Peru where his beloved Aunt Lucy (voice of Imelda Staunton) is spending her golden years. It appears Aunt Lucy has become withdrawn and is desperately missing Paddington. He asks the Browns to come with him to Peru to see her and they jump at it — Judy can use a travelogue to help her college essay, Mary gets her family time and her husband/kids’ dad Henry Brown (Hugh Bonneville) decides to take this opportunity to follow his boss’s advice that he take more risks. When they get to the Home for Retired Bears, the Reverend Mother tells them that Aunt Lucy is gone — apparently set off into the Amazonian jungle on some mysterious quest. The family heads to the docks to find a ship to take them up the river to the spot where she’s started her trip and they find Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas), who gets a funny gleam in his eye when they tell them where they want to go. His daughter Gina (Carla Tous) tells him it’s not a good idea for them to go to that part of the river but he overrides her and takes the charter, possibly because his ghostly conquistador ancestor is bullying him into continuing his search for gold. Meanwhile, back at the Home for Retired Bears, family caretaker Mrs. Bird (Julie Walters) is suspicious of how many things the very chirpy Reverend Mother tells her are not suspicious.

Paddington in Peru is lighthearted and fun. Even though the two slightly sketchy characters of Antonio Banderas and Olivia Coleman do not quite equal the one Hugh Grant of the second movie, this movie’s kooky adults mostly embrace the gentle cartooniness of any mischief. I (and my kids) found the movie’s hour-and-46-minute runtime a little longer than it needed to be but overall this is some of the warmer, cozier kid entertainment. B In theaters.

Mufasa: The Lion King (PG)

The photo-realistic version of The Lion King gets a prequel with a wraparound sequel story in Mufasa: The Lion King, directed by Barry Jenkins.

In the sequel bit, King Simba (voice of Donald Glover) and his queen Nala (voice of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter) are preparing for the birth of their new cub, leaving oldest cub Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter) to be watched/entertained by Rafiki (voice of John Kani in his older incarnation, Kagiso Lediga as a younger monkey), Pumbaa (voice of Seth Rogen) and Timon (voice of Billy Eichner). To pass the time, Rafiki tells the story of Mufasa (voice of Braelyn Rankins as a cub, Aaron Pierre as a more grown-up lion), father of Simba and Kiara’s grandfather.

Before he was James Earl Jones, Mufasa was just a little lion cub who got separated from his parents by a flood. When the raging river finally slows, far from his home, he is nearly eaten by a crocodile before another young lion cub, Taka (voice of Theo Somolu as a cub, Kelvin Harrison Jr. when he’s older), and Taka’s mom, Eshe (voice of Thandiwe Newton), save him. Taka’s father, Obasi (voice of Lennie James), is all about Taka’s future as king of the lion pride and doesn’t want this stray nobody around taking up space, I guess to show us where Taka, the eventual Scar, gets his snottiness from. Eshe takes Mufasa in — as long as he stays with the females, Obasi demands — and Taka is delighted to have a brother to play with. As the years go by, Taka and Mufasa remain close buddies, even if Mufasa spends his time learning lady skills like hunting and tracking and Taka learns the dude skills of hanging out and waiting for a challenge. Eventually the Outsiders, as a pride of white lions is known, show up and do offer a challenge. Sensing that his pride isn’t strong enough to defeat the pride of Outsider king Kiros (voice of Mads Mikkelsen), Obasi sends Taka away, to find his own lands to be king of, with Mufasa serving as his protector. But Kiros, seeking vengeance after his son was killed in an earlier battle with Obasi’s lions, continues hunting Taka and Mufasa even after singing a disturbing “I’m going to kill you” song called “Bye Bye” (as in, now I will make you go bye bye) to Obasi and Eshe. Taka and Mufasa decide to head for the Milele, a land of abundance that Mufasa’s parents used to tell him about. Along the way, they meet feisty lady lion Sarabi (voice of Tiffany Boone) and her scout bird Zazu (voice of Preston Nyman) and the younger Rafiki. All set out together to Milele, with the Outsider lions on their various tails.

Throughout the story, Pumbaa and Timon in the wraparound story break in to provide the comic relief — basically doing comedy bits like commercial interruptions in an otherwise mostly laughs-free story. This sometimes breaks the flow but it also, I think, helps hold kid attention, which can wander during segments of Kiros talking about his quest for total domination or Taka’s feelings for Sarabi, who of course has feelings for Mufasa.

It’s all just enough, perfectly fine, unmemorable but inoffensive. The songs are all serviceable but only “Bye Bye” became a kid favorite in my family — the menace of the scene where it’s sung is maybe a lot for younger kids who get what’s going on but for older elementary schoolers who are getting bored I guess the implied violence is welcome. From an adult perspective, the whole endeavor feels kind of tepid. Mufasa is a puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit with The Lion King, Taka’s turn to Scar feels abrupt and motivated by the plot’s need for him to break bad more than anything going on with the character. Likewise, the movie seems to want to deliver a “together, my animal brethren, we can stand up to bullies” message which doesn’t completely snap together with the whole “circle of life” thing which, as Kiros points out, is just a polite way of saying predator and prey. The movie doesn’t feel like a seamless, tonally similar part of the original Lion King universe but it is so beholden to it that it can’t be its own thing either. B- In theaters and available for rent or purchase.

Featured Image: Paddington in Peru (PG)

Conclave for the win?

My annual cheerleading for the Oscars




By Amy Diaz

[email protected]

Go, Oscars! Yay, the movies! Huzzah for a beloved form of entertainment that feels like it’s, you know, Going Through It right now! I will never give up on the Oscars even in what feel like the oddball years like this one where the movies felt fewer and quieter. And thus, when the Oscar telecast begins — Sunday, March 2, 7 p.m., on ABC and Hulu — I will be planted in front of my TV. And here’s what I’ll be cheering for:

• Conclave for the win! Of the nine out of 10 of the Best Picture nominees I’ve seen, Conclave (available for rent or purchase and streaming on Peacock), the stand-out cast movie about cardinals picking a new pope, is my favorite. And it features Isabella Rosselini in, like, three scenes for which she was also nominated in Supporting Actress (and is maybe my fave in that category). If Conclave can’t win, my next pick would be The Substance(available for rent or purchase and on Mubi), featuring Demi Moore’s excellent comic performance as a performer willing to go to sci-fi lengths to stay in the spotlight (Moore definitely being my pick in the Lead Actress category). The other films in the category in the general order of my wanting them to win: Nickel Boys (available for purchase), the tale of two boys stuck at a segregated reform school in 1960s Florida; Wicked(available for purchase), the gem-colored adaptation of the musical; Anora(rent or purchase), a dramady about an exotic dancer and her relationship with the goofy son of a rich, shady Russian family; A Complete Unknown (in theaters), a biopic of Bob Dylan’s early years as a performer; The Brutalist(purchase), the story of an architect trying to recover from World War II; Dune: Part Two (rent or purchase and streaming on Max), a movie about Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya and sand, and Emilia Pérez (streaming on Netflix), a crazy musical that is problematic in multiple ways but might still get Zoe Saldaña a Supporting Actress win. I haven’t seenI’m Still Here yet — a movie about a Brazilian family living through a military coup in the 1970s.

• Make it Sing Sing’s night! Colman Domingo, the standout in my opinion in the Lead Actor category, would be the big win for this movie, which totally deserved but didn’t get a Best Picture nod. The excellent and hopeful story of an acting troupe in Sing Sing Correctional Facility, Sing Sing (available for rent or purchase) is also nominated in Original Song and Adapted Screenplay, where it would also be my pick to win.

• Yay to animation! The Animated Feature category is solid, even if I might have swapped out something — Inside Out 2 (rent, purchase and on Disney+) maybe — for Transformers One (rent, purchase and Paramount+), a surprisingly pretty and smart origin story. My pick here is the sweet, lovely The Wild Robot (for rent or purchase and streaming on Peacock), though I won’t be mad if Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Netflix) or the beautiful, contemplative, wordless Flow (rent, purchase and streaming on Max) takes it. I haven’t seen Memoir of a Snail(rent, purchase and on AMC+).

• Hurray for accessible documentaries and international films! Once upon a time, nominees in what is now the International Feature category would seem to appear from nowhere and then not be available for viewing until deep into the summer. But now, many of those movies and this year’s Documentary Feature nominees — which didn’t include critical faves like the bittersweet Daughters (Netflix), the charming Will & Harper (Netflix), which also deserved a song nomination, and Dahomey(purchase, rent and streaming on Mubi and which is still on my to-watch list) — are available to watch now. In Documentary (confession: these are also on my to-watch list), the readily available nominees are Black Box Diaries (Paramount+), a Japanese journalist’s investigation into her rape accusations; Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (rent, purchase and on Kino Film), about the “U.S. government’s jazz ambassador program in Africa,” according to the film description, and Sugarcane (Hulu), a look at the abuse of children at an Indian residential school in Canada. Porcelain War, about three artists in Ukraine, is at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on Feb. 27 and is slated to screen elsewhere in the Boston area in March. No Other Land does not yet have U.S. distribution and doesn’t appear to be viewable at home in the U.S.; a New York Times story from Feb. 19 said this documentary directed by Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers will self-distribute in U.S. theaters.

In International Feature Film, nominees include Flow, Emilia Pérez and I’m Still Here as well as (also on the to-watch list) The Girl With the Needle (rent, purchase and on Mubi), loosely based on the true story of a Danish serial killer in the early 20th century, and The Seed of the Sacred Fig (rent or purchase), about a lawyer and his family in Iran.

• Let’s hear it for Kieran Culkin. I hope the road trip dramady A Real Pain (rent, purchase and on Hulu) wins for both of its too-few nominations — Supporting Actor (for Culkin) and Original Screenplay. My runner up Original Screenplay might be The Substance or it might be September 5(rent or purchase), about the terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympics and ABC Sports’ coverage.

• Watch Hard Truths! The Mike Leigh-written and -directed Hard Truths (rent or purchase) received no Oscar nominations but it did get a slew of nominations elsewhere, including the Indie Spirit Awards (for International Feature Film). The movie, whose story admittedly can sound like a real bummer (a woman struggles with fear, anxiety and depression in a way that basically throws a cloud over the lives of everyone around her) is actually a great watch with excellent performances, especially from Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Also nominated in Indie Spirit categories but not Oscar are Amy Adams for the dark, funny, early-childhood-grind movie Nightbitch(Hulu); June Squibb for the thoughtful and funny Thelma (rent, purchase and on Hulu); Justice Smith in I Saw The TV Glow (rent, purchase and streaming on Max), what feels like a cautionary tale about rewatching the likes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Janet Planet, nominated for First Feature (rent, purchase and on Max), a great tale mother-daughter tale, and My Old Ass(Amazon Prime), nominated for screenplay, a bittersweet movie about an 18-year-old meeting her decades-older self. None of these movies are Oscar nominated but Oscar nominations are just one list (which you can find via the Oscar landing page at abc.com) among several great lists (Indie Spirit Awards at filmindependent.org and Screen Actors Guild Awards at sagawards.org, to name two) of movies you may have missed and can now catch up on. Yay movies!

Featured Image: Conclave

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