Category: Film Reviews by Amy

Yes Day (PG)

Jennifer Garner stars in Yes Day, a delightful family comedy about wacky hijinks on a day when kids pick the fun.

Or put another way, Jennifer Garner plays a mom in a waking nightmare of a horror story about a lady going through some stuff personally and professionally who is bullied by her family into participating in some internet nonsense to prove she can still loosen up and have fun — you know what would be fun how about someone else do the laundry for a change, dishes don’t wash themselves, don’t want to see Mom erupt in a rage volcano when she steps on a Lego how about you PICK UP THE LEGOS.

It is possible this movie touched a nerve.

When the Torres children — young teen Katie (Jenna Ortega), tween Nando (Julian Lerner) and young Ellie (Everly Carganilla) — complain that their mom, Allison (Garner), always says “no” to everything they want to do, she makes a deal with them. If they approach their kid duties (chores, homework) with more gusto, they will earn a Yes Day, a 24-hour period where the parents won’t say no to any of their plans or desires, within legal, geographical and financial limits. (Their “mom says no” complaints are documented both in a haiku Katie writes for school and a movie Nando makes calling his mom a dictator for, among other things, losing her cool when she steps on Legos.) And even though that sounds exhausting, Allison approaches the day with excitement because it means spending non-nagging time with her family, most significantly with independence-seeking Katie and with work-absorbed husband Carlos (Edgar Ramírez). Allison, a former sky-dive and backpack-the-world type, is also under some stress outside the home as her attempts to reenter the workforce have not been successful.

A lot of cute giant ice cream sundae-eating and paintball-ish game-playing ensues. The actors here have good family chemistry, with Ortega believably walking that teen line between having fun with siblings and parents while still wanting to do mature things with her friends, and the other kids turning in cute but not cloying performances. Ramírez turns in a completely fine “likeable dad” performance, even if his character gets the least to do of the bunch. Perhaps because of movies like Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and her Capital One ads, I’ve come to think of Garner more as a mom character than as her Alias action hero but here she reminds you can she can pull off physical comedy and action-y moments as well as more sitcom-y moments of humor.

Even with a side plot involving Katie and her plans to go to a music festival with some friend’s cousin and some older-dude friends, the movie is basically focused on wholesome goofiness. Wholesome goofiness and carpet-destroying foam — but I don’t think everybody who watches this is going to spend quite as much time thinking “how are they going to get that out of the car upholstery” and “does homeowners insurance cover that” as I did. But then maybe that’s a sign that I need a Yes Day. (No.) B

Rated PG for some rude and suggestive material, and brief language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Miguel Arteta with a screenplay by Justin Malen (based on the book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld), Yes Day is an hour and 26 minutes long and is available on Netflix.

Cherry (R)

Tom Holland plays a young man who falls into addiction in Cherry, a movie directed by Russo brothers Anthony and Joe of Marvel movies fame.

Specifically, they directed the Captain Americas Winter Soldier and Civil War and two Avengers — Infinity War and Endgame.I mention this because it’s hard not to watch this movie as “Anthony and Joe Russo show they can do something not Marvel” or maybe as “Anthony Russo and Joe Russo bring popcorn movie flash to a downbeat story.”

We first see Holland, whose character isn’t called by name in the movie, as he prepares to rob a bank, explaining his actions to us in narration that is weaved through the movie. The bank robbery serves as bookends to his short (in years) life story, starting when he is aimlessly attending college and meets Emily (Ciara Bravo), the girlfriend who quickly becomes his wife, through a stint in the Army and into his post-Army years of PTSD, heroin addiction and crime.

The bare bones of Cherry are a thoroughly depressing story that the movie manages to add humor (dark humor) to and that is warmed up by Holland, who I think does an above average job as a kid who seems a little bit like he’s blown by the wind through his life.

Bravo, whose Emily feels more like Holland’s character’s projection of her than she does like a fully formed person, feels sort of sleepy throughout. Their relationship is one of the cores of this movie but her wispiness prevents us from ever really understanding why she stays with Holland or why the relationship is so important to him.

I wasn’t bothered by the movie’s general storytelling showiness, all strange comic/tragic asides, stylized shots and fourth-wall-breaking narration. Perhaps at a runtime shorter (significantly shorter) than two hours and 22 minutes the style of the movie and the general solid-ness of Holland’s performance would be enough to keep things moving and to make the movie’s points (assuming the elements about the military, the war, careless opioid prescription and the socioeconomics of a gray-looking Cleveland are points the movie’s trying to make and not just, like, story-telling accessories). But you feel this movie’s lengthy runtime and it doesn’t always provide you with a good reason why you are lingering in this or that moment. As a result, a lot of the more stylish elements end up feeling like padding.

Cherry isn’t a bad movie but the result of all this moviemaking style put on a relatively thin story is that you feel like you’re getting about four inches of elaborate frosting on one inch of cake. C+

Rated R for graphic drug abuse, disturbing and violent images, pervasive language and sexual content, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo with a screenplay by Angela Russo-Otstot and Jessica Goldberg (from the novel Cherry by Nico Walker), Cherry is two hours and 22 minutes long and is available on Apple TV+.

Featured photo: Yes Day

Raya and the Last Dragon (PG)

Awkwafina voices a dragon and Kelly Marie Tran voices a warrior in Raya and the Last Dragon, a beautifully animated Disney movie in theaters and available via Disney+.

Similar to Mulan, this movie is available for an extra fee to Disney+ subscribers: $29.99 to see the movie before it becomes available to all subscribers on May 4. The fee allows you to watch it as many times as you like, something my kids took full advantage of this weekend.

The movie is set in the fictional land Kumandra, which feels like it is to Southeast Asia what Frozen’s Arendelle is to northern Europe. As Raya (voice of Tran) explains, Kumandra was once a land of harmony and dragons. But smoke creatures called the Druun sucked away much of the life from the land and turned people and dragons to stone. Sisu (voice of Awkwafina), the final dragon, used the last of her powers to create a gem that was able to banish the Druun and un-stone the people — but not the dragons.

The people responded to this brush with annihilation by fighting with each other over the gem and breaking into five kingdoms — Fang, Talon, Spine, Tail and Heart. Heart guarded the dragon gem, which caused mistrust in the other four kingdoms, who were constantly at odds with each other.

Thus is the state of things for centuries until Heart’s Chief Benja (voice of Daniel Dae Kim) tries to get all the kingdoms to come together. He has trained his daughter, Raya, to be a warrior who protects the dragon gem but also has tried to convince her that a rebuilding of trust between the five groups is necessary for the long-term survival of all people.

Naturally, Raya’s first attempts at trust — she thinks she’s found a friend in fellow dragon-fan Namaari (voice of Gemma Chan), the daughter of Fang leader Virana (voice of Sandra Oh) — do not go great. The dragon gem is cracked (with each group grabbing a piece) and the Druun are set loose upon the land again (and return to their turning-people-into-stone ways). Raya ends up on her own, out in the wilderness. (Raya and Namaari are maybe tweens or young teens during this flashback and six years older during the movie’s present day.)

After years of questing, Raya finds Sisu, who reawakens and admits that while she may be the “last” dragon she wasn’t really the “best” dragon, skills-wise. Raya and Sisu decide to undertake another quest: to find the pieces of the dragon gem, each of which contains a magical power from Sisu’s more powerful siblings, and bring them together to give Sisu the power to defeat the Druun (and bring back the people and dragons turned to stone and just generally save the world). Along the way, Raya gathers a crew: kid chef Boun (voice of Izaac Wang), baby pickpocket Noi (voice of Thalia Tran) and her hench-monkeys, and Spine warrior Tong (voice of Benedict Wong). Trailing this group are Namaari and her army. Fang is very determined to pursue a dragon-gem-as-deterrent-weapon policy and seeks to control more of the gem pieces.

Raya and the Last Dragon is absolutely beautiful to look at with some lovely world-establishing in its creatures (the colorful dragons, Raya’s armadillo-y pet), in its landscapes (which vary by kingdom), and in its mythology. Disney animation continues to wow with how it executes little details, such as how it renders water (which here behaves in all sorts of magical ways around dragons and their power). There is also something very Marvel-esque in the way it presents some of the action and the establishing shots, and in how the team came together (I got some serious Guardians of the Galaxy vibes at times).

The score is also very beautiful with melodies that really add some extra oomph to more emotional moments. This movie just missed this 2020’s Oscar contention cutoff (extended until Feb. 28 for the April awards) but I fully expect both this movie and its score to be in serious awards consideration next year.

I saw this movie several times throughout the weekend and while my initial reaction was to wonder if all the questing and history of Kumandra crowded the characters and their emotional arcs, I found that I appreciated this movie’s story-telling and rich world-building more with each viewing. These are solid characters; Raya, Sisu (who is sometimes a dragon and sometimes an Awkwafina-esque human) and Namaari all get interesting arcs that help examine the movie’s themes of trust and how a society at odds can find a way to work for the greater good and the difficulties of doing so. (Add this movie to the list of movies bringing me back to The Good Place and its “what we owe to each other” ruminations.) Even the supporting players (the con-artist baby and her monkeys, the Drax-like Tong, the cautious Virana) get enough space to add something to the emotional fabric of the story. It’s sophisticated stuff — delivered with visuals that look great no matter the size of the screen you’re seeing them on and in a kid-friendly way with the right amount of funny baby and animal antics. A

Featured photo: Raya and the Last Dragon (PG)

Minari (PG-13)

A Korean-American family seeks a path to financial security in rural Arkansas in Minari, an excellent family drama.

While the movie feels like it is telling this story from the point of view of David (Alan Kim), the elementary school-aged youngest child of the Yee family, we get a good glimpse at the inner lives of all the family members. Mom Monica (Yeri Han) is horrified when her husband, Jacob (Steven Yeun), pulls up to the family’s new plot and presents her with a rickety-looking trailer sitting in a field. They have moved from urban California to very rural Arkansas in what seems like the early 1980s to chase Jacob’s dream of having a farm. Specifically, he plans to grow Korean vegetables and sell them to businesses in Korean communities in regional cities, like Houston or Oklahoma City. We get the sense that Jacob (who, like Monica, has immigrated from Korea; the kids seem to have been born in the U.S.) has some experience with farming but not nearly enough experience with convincing Monica of his plan. To pay the bills while he starts his farm, the couple works, as Jacob complains at one point, staring at chicken butts all day — that is, they sort the male and female chicks. David and older sister Anne (Noel Kate Cho) seem to adapt to this new environment, amusing themselves by poking around the family’s land or watching TV while drinking Mountain Dew.

When Monica’s not worrying about their financial precariousness, she is worrying about David, who has a heart murmur and has been told not to run or do the strenuous kid stuff he naturally wants to do. Their new home is an hour away from the nearest hospital, a fact that adds to Monica’s worries.

When the threat of a tornado nearly breaks the wound-tight Monica, Jacob tries to placate her by telling her to bring her mother to live with them. Monica seems embarrassed to have her mother see her family’s circumstances but Grandma, Soon-ja (Yuh-Jung Youn), treats the whole situation as kind of a hoot, teaching David to play a Korean card game and swear in Korean, watching American wrestling and planting minari in the wild near a pond on the property.

This is such a relatable family and such a relatable story — the dad who needs to succeed beyond his nine-to-five, the mom who feels the weight of her kids’ safety and well-being, the kids torn between their American culture and their parents’ culture, the fish-out-of-water can-we-make-the-best-of-it-or-will-this-break-us scenario. I felt like I knew these characters very quickly and could see all the perspectives and life experience that went into their reactions and decisions. Monica and Jacob have several fights where you can see both sides and can empathize deeply with both of them. Han and Yeun do absolutely excellent work to show us everything about what their characters are thinking or fearing with just a look or a small gesture. The surrounding actors do good work too — Kim is so believable as David, with the exact right amount of kid fear, kid adaptability and kid mischievousness. Youn as the grandmother is also fantastic — you’re not a real grandma, David complains, which Soon-ja gleefully takes as a compliment.

The movie is also shot beautifully — you can see why Monica is aghast that this creaky trailer is the family’s new home but the movie also shows us the home and land in the same light Jacob sees it, his garden of Eden he says, only half joking, at one point.

Minari isn’t just another awards-season movie that deserves its praise; it’s a standout movie that completely immerses you in a family’s life. A+

Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and a rude gesture, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Lee Issac Chung, Minari is an hour and 55 minutes long and distributed by A24. It is available for rent.

Featured photo: Minari

Nomadland (R)

Frances McDormand gives one of the year’s great performances in Nomadland, a movie based on the non-fiction book by Jessica Brueder.

The two most common scenes in this movie are McDormand’s Fern talking to people in what feel like actual conversations people are just having with McDormand herself, and Fern by herself enjoying the beauties and working through the difficulties of life as a nomad. Fern became a nomad — specifically, a nomad who lives in a van and travels from one seasonal job (Amazon warehouse) to another (a harvest) — after, basically, losing everything. Her beloved husband died after a painful illness and her town essentially died when the factory employer closed and kicked the workers out of the company housing.

Shorn of everything — her possessions are in a storage locker, she even cut her hair we’re told — Fern packs up a few of her most precious things and heads out. First, she stays at an Amazon-paid-for RV lot while she works packing things at some massive distribution center. Later, we see her follow new friend Linda May to a job as a park host at another RV/campground near a national park. Fellow nomad Dave (David Strathairn, one of the few other people not essentially playing themselves here) is a worker at the park and helps hook Fern up with a job at Wall Drug (a tourist attraction in South Dakota). Dave takes a shine to Fern; she maybe likes him too. They’re both awkward as heck in their flirting but we also get the sense that Dave is an attachment Fern is not ready for.

According to posts on the Nomadland Twitter account, several of the people McDormand’s Fern meets along the way — including Swankie, Linda May and Bob Wells — are essentially playing themselves and had their stories told in the book. I think this approach helps to ground this movie and keep the story focused on Fern and her life, rather than letting it spin off into thinkpiece territory. Fern is working through grief and dealing with a life turning point when we first meet her and that makes her story (and all the socio-economic aspects to it) all the much more layered and meaningful.

I realize that projecting soul-deep authenticity is sort of a baseline of any McDormand performance but she really does knock it out of the park here. I cared about Fern, and the movie makes us understand why she makes the choices she does and empathize with them.

And on top of this, the movie is beautiful — beautiful to look at (so many shots of the western and midwestern country) and beautiful to listen to, with a really excellent score. Definitely add Nomadland to your awards season must-watch list. A

Rated R for some full nudity, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Chloe Zhao with a screenplay by Zhao (from the book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder), Nomadland is an hour and 48 minutes long, is distributed by Searchlight Pictures and is in some theaters and available via Hulu.

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (PG-13)

Two teens are stuck in one of those Groundhog Day/Edge of Tomorrow-time loops in The Map of Tiny Perfect Things.

We enter in the middle of Mark’s (Kyle Allen) time-loop experience. He knows all the beats of this one day he’s been living over and over. Currently, he is using his knowledge of when and where everything happens, down to the second and the milimeter, to get the attention of a specific girl who always falls into the water at the neighborhood pool after getting hit by a beach ball. That is, she falls in if Mark isn’t there to catch her (and sometimes if he is; playing it cool takes a lot of do-overs).

But one day, instead of Mark catching the girl after the ball hits her, another girl walks by and swats the ball away. This new girl’s sudden appearance and the way she looks at and runs away from Mark makes him pretty sure that she, too, is in the loop. After a few “days” of looking, Mark finds and meets Margaret (Kathryn Newton). They are, as she says, marooned on this island together, so they hang out and become friends, even creating a project to map all of the little awesome moments (a guy getting pushed out of the way of bird poop, an eagle grabbing a fish, a girl showing up all the lesser skaters at a local skateboard hangout) that happen during their one day. But every evening Margaret mysteriously leaves him, and Mark isn’t sure how to turn these regular hangouts into something more. Or how to even have something more when he can never move forward.

Unlike other timey-wimey movies, Mark actually has a good group of people around him that he can lean on. We see him interact with his dad (Josh Hamilton), his sister (Cleo Fraser) and his best friend (Jermaine Harris), who don’t know about the “one day over and over” thing but are still able to help him work through some things. It’s all very sweet and allows the movie to examine the regular teen clash of emotions of wanting to grow up and also not being ready to move on. Newton in particular stands out as being a solid up-and-comer; I liked her in the recent Freaky and this movie similarly shows her skill with blending drama and humor, silliness and genuine emotion. B+

Rated PG-13 for brief strong language, some teen drinking and sexual references, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Ian Samuels from a screenplay by Lev Grossman, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things is an hour and 38 minutes long and is distributed by Amazon, where it is available on Amazon Prime.

Featured photo: Nomadland

Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (PG-13)

Everybody is wonderfully game in the delightfully silly Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, a movie co-written by Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, the writers of Bridesmaids.

Comparatively, Bridesmaids played it straight. Barb and Star goes all in on its weirdness.

Barb (Mumolo) and Star (Wiig) are poofy-haired besties whose favorite flavor is “plain,” whose wardrobe is built on culottes and who work together at a Jennifer Convertibles in Nebraska. When their store is closed and they are kicked out of Talking Club (run with an iron passive-aggressive fist by a woman played by Vanessa Bayer, so well used here as so many of the movie’s supporting roles and cameos are), Barb and Star decide to throw caution to the wind and go on an exotic vacation — to the middle-aged-vacationer-friendly Vista Del Mar, Florida. They end up at a hotel with a real “cruise ship but on land” vibe and, during their first night, end up at the bar sharing a giant hallucinogenics-containing scorpion bowl with Edgar (Jamie Dornan). Edgar is drowning his sorrows over his would-be girlfriend, Sharon Gordon Fisherman (also Wiig, looking very “Dr. Evil meets 2013’s Snowpiercer” but chic). Sharon won’t become an “official couple” with him until after he helps her release a swarm of genetically modified mosquitoes meant to kill the residents of Vista Del Mar because they were mean to Sharon when she was a kid.

Other things that happen in this movie: A character has a conversation with a crab. Andy Garcia shows up in a cameo, still in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again! mode. A human cannon serves as a significant plot point. Dornan shows an almost superhuman lack of vanity (there’s a power ballad! on a beach! I have never liked him more than I do here).

I did wonder, occasionally, if this movie was being cruel to Barb and Star, if it was punching down at these ladies with their haircuts and their general middle-ness. But I don’t think it is, ultimately. Through all the silliness, Wiig and Mumolo, who seem to be having such a sunny great time here, give these characters a core that includes general decency and their deep love and friendship for each other.

Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar is great goofy fun and I highly recommend it. B+

Rated PG-13 for crude sexual content, drug use and some strong language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Josh Greenbaum with a screenplay by Annie Mumulo & Kristen Wiig, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is an hour and 47 minutes long and is distributed by Lionsgate. It is available to rent.

Judas and the Black Messiah (R)

Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield do standout work in Judas and the Black Messiah, a movie about the real-life activism and death of Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party.

In the late 1960s, Bill O’Neal (Stanfield) is arrested after a rather inventive car theft and given a choice by FBI agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons): prison time or becoming an informant for the FBI. Bill picks not-prison and is sent to join the Black Panther Party in Illinois, where Fred Hampton (Kaluuya) is the Illinois party chairman. As Bill finds his way into the party and Fred’s inner circle, he sees Hampton attempt to unite different social-political factions in Chicago to work for similar goals, largely related to poverty and police brutality.

We also see the charismatic Hampton begin a relationship with Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback), now known as Akua Njeri. They try to build a life of activism together while the FBI relentlessly pursues Hampton and the Panthers however they can.

Judas and the Black Messiah shares some of the same historical space as fellow award-season hopeful The Trial of the Chicago 7. But where that movie was filled with big Aaron Sorkin speeches and cutesy Aaron Sorkin character notes, this movie feels like it is about real people with real motivations and personalities. There are little moments, particularly with Kaluuya and Fishback as Fred and Deborah, where you feel like you’re watching a fully-formed person wrestle with not just Big Political Ideas but with what those ideas mean to them and the course of their life. Stanfield makes you feel O’Neal’s uncertainty about what he’s asked to do by the FBI and his growing difficulty of balancing what seems like a genuine respect for Hampton and the aims of the Black Panthers with his willingness to help Mitchell (and his desire to stay out of jail).

This is a well-told story filled with strong performances about a slice of history the movie makes feel fresh and relevant. A

Rated R for violence and pervasive language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Shaka King with a screenplay by William Berson and Shaka King, Judas and the Black Messiah is two hours and five minutes long and distributed by Warner Bros. It is in local theaters and on HBO Max until mid-March.

Featured photo: Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

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

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)

The White Tiger (R)

A young man from an impoverished town in India tries to grab his piece of his country’s bright economic future in The White Tiger, a new movie on Netflix.

Balram (Adarsh Gourav) has seen his ambitions crushed all his life. As a child, he loses a chance to go to a good school on scholarship when his grandmother (Kamlesh Gill) forces him to go to work. Later, the social caste system keeps him literally on his knees when dealing with his new employer (Mahesh Manjrekar), who is treated as something of a feudal lord of Balram’s village. Balram heads to the city to serve as a driver not for the man or his horrible oldest son, the Mongoose (Vijay Maurya), but for his more Western-cultured second son, Ashok (Rajkummar Rao). Ashok went to school in America and seems queasy about issues surrounding the way wealthy people treat the people who work for them. Pinky (Priyanka Chopra), his Indian-born but American-ized wife, seems even more uncomfortable with it. Their discomfort does not, however, always translate into being better employers. Nor does Balram always know what to do with himself in their monied urban environment, where he constantly feels his lack of worldliness and simmers with anger even as he is also hungry to find a way into this life. Add this to the fact that his family back home still gets most of his paycheck — their very survival even becomes his responsibility once his employers use them to coerce him into a ruinous decision — and it seems that no amount of eager hard work will allow Balram to get ahead.

Which is, of course, the point. This movie has a lot of the same elements about the grind of poverty as Parasite, but presents them bleaker, if that’s possible. Balram comes to the decision that he basically has no choice but to do things he finds unethical or even immoral; the system doesn’t allow him to be a good person and survive. There is also a fair amount about the idea of being a servant versus an employee; what is the difference between an economic system that allows someone to be employed and one that requires servitude in what again reads as a more feudal sense? All this is presented with humor, bleak humor, but humor and an engaging storytelling style (this movie makes a narration frame and some time jumps work) and a strong performance from Gourav that pulls you in. B+

Rated R for language, violence and sexual material, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Ramin Bahrani with a screenplay by Bahrani (from the novel by Aravind Adiga), The White Tiger is two hours and five minutes and is available via Netflix.

Some Kind of Heaven (NR)

Retirees enjoy a new carefree chapter of their lives — maybe — in Some Kind of Heaven, a documentary about four people living at The Villages in Florida.

“An endless cruise with everybody from high school” — what is your response to that statement? If you think “woo-hoo sign me up for the Jimmy Buffett margarita parties,” The Villages, the pre-planned retirement community that seemingly features every kind of amusement in a sort of large outdoor mall/golf course-like setting, might be for you. If it sounds like the kind of “heaven” that you and your philosophy professor buddy figure out is actually The Bad Place, then this movie will reinforce that reaction.

It follows four people living (sort of) at The Villages. The “sort of” is because of Dennis, who is about 80 and lives out of his van. He has come to The Villages with no permanent address and hopes to meet a woman with some money to live with.

Barbara is more organically looking for companionship; she moved to the Villages with her husband, who later died. She seems like she wishes she could return to her home in Massachusetts but as it is she has to work for a Villages medical office to make ends meet. She is just barely starting to get “out there” again, when we first meet her.

Anne and Reggie, a long-married couple, are still together — for better or worse. Anne seems to be left largely alone by Reggie, who throughout the documentary seems to be in the middle of some kind of serious, needs-medical-help episode. (Late in the movie he says an MRI discovered he’s been having small strokes.) He seems to be having delusions (which the movie seems to suggest are either caused by or made worse by recreational drugs he takes) and is making some pretty terrible life decisions, such as choosing to represent himself when he’s facing cocaine possession charges. Reggie rambles on about his spiritual journey and his newfound freedom but Anne goes from looking scared for him to seeming near the point of bubbling over with rage.

Generally, the men depicted here seem to have it better than the women — Dennis is able to float by for a good while and we meet a man whom Barbara likes and who seems to be having a truly great, carefree time. The movie doesn’t get into the gender dynamics of The Villages that much and I wanted to see more. What we’re left with is a “guys get to be 18 again, women have to put up with it” sense of the situation that may or may not reflect any kind of reality. There are a lot of “what about people with some different kind of life experience” or “Villages residents who are 80 versus Villages residents who are 55” questions I had that this movie doesn’t address. It doesn’t have to, necessarily, but since it does seem to want to be making a larger statement about the community, not just the central people, I did want more about the Villages society. There are times when it just feels like you’re watching four people’s misfortunes rather than getting a glimpse at a specific world.

Those stories are very engagingly told. I feel like we get to know Barbara the best and she was the one I found myself cheering on. She seems the least delighted by the Villages as a concept, with its fakey Spanish colonial facades and its million social clubs. Though I could see how this could come off as a purely negative look at the Villages, I feel like this documentary does show people enjoying their lives there and the return-to-college, eternal-tropical-vacation feel of the place. It does seem to be a kind of heaven even if it clearly isn’t everybody’s. B

This movie doesn’t appear to be rated. Directed by Lance Oppenheim, Some Kind of Heaven is an hour and 21 minutes long and is distributed by Magnolia. It is available for rent (including via Red River Theatres virtual theater).

Featured photo: The White Tiger

Promising Young Woman (R)

Carey Mulligan plays a woman who can’t move on from the wrong done to her friend and the resulting devastation in Promising Young Woman, a dark, occasionally darkly funny, brutal revenge thriller that is expertly well made.

Promising Young Woman is so much more emotionally torturous than comes across in the trailers, which highlight the revenge element but serve it up with dark humor. While it does have dark humor, actually seeing the story play out and knowing the characters, makes everything so much grimmer. I’ve read and heard lots of commentators point this out but it’s worth really highlighting this fact now that the movie is available for home viewing. (I believe this movie is still in area theaters as well.) Be warned: This is not a “bad-girl” funny good time.

That said, this is also an exceptionally well-made movie. It is surgical in its writing; every line has a point. It looks great; so much care has clearly been taken with every shot and with where characters are in the frame and where the movie is directing you to look. I was amazed with how it is all staged and how everybody is costumed and how that all works into what is being conveyed with each scene.

And the performances are strong. Carey Mulligan brings a lot of layers to Cassie, a 30-year-old woman who is stuck in her grief. During the day, Cassie is being her “real” self — but with a wall of dry humor and disinterest to keep people at arms length.

At night, Cassie goes out as someone else. She’s made up and dressed up and nearly-falling-down drunk. Or really “drunk,” because the unsteady walk and halting speech are just an act. Eventually, some Nice Guy (played by Adam Brody or Sam Richardson or Christopher Mintz-Plasse) comes over to “help her,” to “protect her from those jerks.” This seems to eventually involve taking her to their house, offering her more intoxicants and starting to make out with her, or really make out on her because she doesn’t engage. And then, suddenly, she soberly looks them in the eyes and asks them what they think they’re doing, to their absolute terror.

Cassie does this in the name of Nina, her best friend from childhood through their time in medical school. We learn piece by piece that something terrible happened to Nina, who is always talked of in the past tense. The terrible thing — which the movie makes clear involved sexual assault even before we know the details — has traumatized Cassie too. She lives with her parents (Jennifer Coolidge, Clancy Brown), who seem supportive but also scared and sad for their daughter. She works at a coffee shop and won’t even consider the promotion offered by her kind boss (Laverne Cox). And she has no contact with any other friends or anybody from school, at least until Ryan (Bo Burnham) comes into the shop and, after some chat, asks her out. She is wary with him too but slowly starts to wonder if maybe he really is a nice guy and maybe there could be more to her future.

This movie is written and directed by Emerald Fennell (known, as an actress, for roles in Call the Midwife and The Crown). This is her first feature-length movie, which makes the excellence in execution seem all the more extraordinary. I heard somebody on a podcast (maybe This Had Oscar Buzz) compare her to Jordan Peele and his initial outing Get Out and I thought of that comparison while watching the movie. There is a similar thoughtfulness and preciseness in both movies. It’s rare to see someone completely ace their first outing the way Peele did and Fennell does here. I don’t know that I’ll ever bring myself to watch this movie again but I can’t wait to see what she does next. A

Rated R for strong violence including sexual assault, language throughout, some sexual material and drug use, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman is an hour and 53 minutes long and is distributed by Focus Features. It is in local theaters and available for rent.

One Night in Miami (R)

Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown hang out together after Ali’s fight with Sonny Liston in One Night in Miami, a movie based on a play of the same name and directed by Regina King.

You can still feel the play in elements of this movie, which is largely made up of the four men hanging out in a hotel room, talking and arguing. Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir); Muhammad Ali, still going by Cassius Clay (Eli Goree); football player-turned-actor Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) and singer Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) gather in Malcolm’s room after the fight in 1964. The plan is to have a party but Malcolm offers only vanilla ice cream and conversation. Cassius is on the verge of announcing his conversion to Islam. Malcolm seems proud but also conflicted — he is in the process of making a break from the Nation of Islam. Jim has recently shot his first movie and seems to be considering leaving the NFL. Sam is preparing for a show at a venue where he previously bombed — and working on some new music. The friendship of these men is strong but the momentum of their own careers and their various approaches to the civil rights movement are points of friction between them.

To some extent the movie at its core is “just” conversation, but it’s engrossing conversation between people who feel multidimensional, with more layers than just “history’s Malcolm X.” We see just enough of these men’s lives to get a hint of what they’re bringing into the room, their hopes, their insecurities, what things inform their point of view.

The performances here are stellar across the board but I will admit that my eyes kept landing on Odom and his take on Cooke. He plays Cooke as someone who is canny about his profession and how to make it make money for himself and for other African American artists but he still has those desires to say something more through his songs. Maybe Hamilton just sort of taught me to look for “guy working at several levels” from Odom but I feel like he’s doing it again here and it pulls his Cooke to the center of the story even if Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali have the bigger personalities. A

Rated R for language throughout, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Regina King with a screenplay by Kemp Powers (who also wrote the play), One Night in Miami is an hour and 54 minutes long and is distributed by Amazon Studios and available via Amazon Prime.

News of the World (PG-13)

Tom Hanks plays the Tom Hanks character who is unexpectedly tasked with bringing an orphan to her distant relatives in post-Civil War Texas in News of the World.

This is basically Hanks’ Greyhound if you replace “get convoy of ships to the U.K.” with “get little girl to the Texas Hill Country” and “outrun Nazi submarines” with “outrun Old West-y villains.”

I mean that in the best way; I liked Greyhound. Here as there, Hanks is a man who calls on his quick thinking and basic decency to complete his hero’s journey. Is chicken parm the most inventive dish in the world? No, but few things are better than a really good chicken parm. Hanks is serving up some very classic cuisine and doing it expertly.

Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Hanks), mostly just called Captain, was once a Confederate soldier but he seems very “bind up the nation’s wounds” for some “just and lasting peace” about the whole thing. Now, 1870-ish, he travels the Texas countryside and reads newspapers to audiences who pay a dime a person for this in-person Walter Cronkite action. Captain is lively but down the middle with his news reading, not allowing meetings to turn into anti-federal-troops gripe sessions, for example.

While on the road, he comes across a wrecked wagon and an African American federal agent who has been lynched — which, the movie makes clear, Captain finds appalling. He figures out that the man was tasked with transporting Johanna (Helena Zengel), the young blonde girl hiding nearby, who had been living with the Kiowa tribe. When the Kiowa were forced off their land, Johanna’s Kiowa parents were killed and Johanna, who only knows her name as “Cicada,” found herself orphaned for a second time. She lost her biological parents as a young girl when their settlers’ village was raided. She doesn’t appear to retain any memory of that life — or of being called Johanna — and doesn’t speak English.

Captain tries to turn her over to the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the next town but he’s told that the agent won’t be back for months. Eventually he agrees to take her on the several weeks’ drive south to find a biological aunt and uncle. Along the way they encounter various people who want to kill (or in Johanna’s case, kidnap) them, but Captain’s Hanks-y cleverness helps them deal with dicey situations. To pay for their journey, he continues his news-reading work, with Johanna collecting dimes from the crowd and learning to enjoy his stories.

There is nothing surprising here but everything here is done really well. Zengel is a solid child actor, communicating a lot with her face. Hanks, of course, is top notch, turning in the high-quality performance that seems like rote for him but is really the demonstration of extraordinary skill. Director Paul Greengrass is able to show us a country still mired in all kinds of conflict and aware of what our modern opinions will probably be without turning Captain into some kind of anachronistic saint. Even when the movie veers into “OK, this is a bit much” it is able to pull off the sandstorms and the town full of weird and violent separatists thanks to the skill of everybody involved. B

Rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, thematic material and some language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Paul Greengrass with a screenplay by Paul Greengrass and Luke Davies (from a novel by Paulette Jiles), News of the World is an hour and 58 minutes long and distributed by Universal Studios. It is playing in local theaters and available for rent.

Featured photo: Promising Young Woman (R)

A jazz musician winds through the life of a woman who loves him in Sylvie’s Love, an almost miraculously good romance on Amazon.

This movie is beautiful to look at, beautifully romantic, sweet and joyful. For whatever reason, romances that are this straightforwardly romantic without any dressing up of comedy or tragedy or whatever are so rare that it feels like something of a miracle that this exists at all, and that it exists in an accessible way, and not as some released-and-it-disappears indie.

Sylvie (an excellent Tessa Thompson) is a young woman who seems to just radiate energy and possibility, living in Harlem in the late 1950s. Her mother, Eunice (Erica Gimpel), literally uses Sylvie as an example of poise to the young girls at the etiquette school she runs, but Sylvie loves music and television and hangs out with her father, who goes by Mr. Jay (Lance Reddick), at his record shop where she can have access to both. She’s engaged but the movie suggests that the engagement was more a way to placate her mother when Eunice thought Sylvie had gone too far with a boy than the result of a desire to be married. What really gets Sylvie beaming is television and the desire to work as a producer, a dream that seems far-fetched for a Black woman in the mid-century, as her father says, but TV is her passion nevertheless. Well, television and Robert Halloway (Nnamdi Asomugha), a talented young saxophonist who takes a job at the record store to hang out with Sylvie. Though she’s engaged and he is friendly with a girl angling to be a girlfriend at the club where he plays with a jazz quartet, the two are drawn to each other.

The romance of Sylvie and Robert doesn’t go smoothly and part of what makes this movie work is that we can believe both in the depth of their love and in the reality of the things that keep them apart. The movie starts in the early 1960s and then jumps back five years and then moves forward. We see these two people love each other while pursuing life goals that they also love. It’s all so kind, gentle, sweet, beautiful — not words that maybe sound like you should be pumped to see this movie but it is such a warm and rosy story that it is a nice world to be in for a while. The movie has an almost old-fashioned romance movie feel, like something you might see from the late 1950s or early 1960s, but without the overtly stylized showiness of a Mank.

Thompson is one of those actresses I don’t think I’ve ever disliked in a movie but she really is a delight here. She is able to convey strength and confidence even in moments where her character doesn’t fully know the right answer. Likewise, Asomugha is able to sell us on both his character’s devotion to Sylvie and all the decisions the character makes that pull him away from her. And they create a kind of glow around themselves as a couple.

The movie also has some strong supporting performances, including from Eva Longoria, who seems to be having a lot of fun as the wife of one of Robert’s bandmates.

Sylvie’s Love is a bottle of Champagne, a box of chocolates and a bouquet of roses — a perfectly executed romance classic. A

Rated PG-13 for some sexual content, and smoking, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Eugene Ashe, Sylvie’s Love is an hour and 54 minutes long and is distributed by Amazon Studios and available via Amazon Prime.

Featured photo: Sylvie’s Love