Category: Film Reviews by Amy

DC finally pulls off the right mix of heroism, action and a sense of playfulness in Superman, the James Gunn-helmed reboot.

This Superman (David Corenswet) lives in a comic book-y, without exactly being cartoon-y, world where he is not the Earth’s only Metahuman and where fighting a flying metal guy calling himself the “Hammer of Boravia” is just all in a day’s work. What’s surprising is, as the movie begins, Superman has just lost a fight with the Hammer and is recovering, with the help of the very good dog Krypto (sweet and loyal but not particularly well-behaved), in his icy Fortress of Solitude. While tended to by slightly snarky cape-wearing robots, Superman listens again to the message his parents sent him, baby Kryptonian Kal-El, when they rocketed him off Krypton, about how they love him and are sending him to Earth where he can do good.

Well, actually, Superman only has part of that message; discovering and weaponizing the other half of the message will be part of the villainy of Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult). I realize this is a very internet-y take, but watching a smug bald billionaire with dangerous tech and the ability to push around the U.S. government is not the same Dr. Evil-style cartoony fun it once was. But once I acclimated, this movie’s Lex is a solid comic book Big Bad and a solid villain for this particular Superman universe. He’s not the dark nihilism of Heath Ledger’s Joker or the annoying nuttiness of Jesse Eisenberg’s take on Lex. Hoult’s Luthor is petty, scheming and vain and a baddie in the evil corporation style while hitting the right note of villainy (not too grim, not too goofy) for this movie’s tone.

Lex ― with the help of his own Metahuman allies Ultraman, a faceless supersoldier, and The Engineer (Maria Gabriela de Faría), a woman whose blood and body are full of nanobots ― attempts to foment war and bring down Superman. He wants to destroy Superman in all the ways ― both physically and reputationally, which he does in part with an army of angry monkeys typing anti-Superman rants on social media (a nice touch). The monkeys, along with various enemies (including ex-girlfriends and political prisoners), are being held prisoner in a pocket universe that Lex created, which serves as kind of a ship-at-sea legal-jurisdiction-free zone for his badness.

It also threatens the existence of Earth, so explains Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi). Mister Terrific, Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) and Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion) are all members of what two of three of them do not want to call the Justice Gang. They sometimes work with Superman to protect Metropolis, but while he is concerned with the preservation of life and prevention of injury to people, animals and things, they’re more of a “blow it up and I’ll take my applause now” brand of superhero, especially Green Lantern. However, they have superpowers and they know about the whole Superman/Clark Kent situation, so when Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) is looking for help uncovering Luthor’s evil plans, particularly after he manipulates the government into calling for Superman’s arrest, she turns to the Justice Gang. They aren’t exactly keen to get involved, and the perpetually annoyed Terrific especially doesn’t want to get involved in Lois’ ruminations on whether she and Superman, who she knows is fellow reporter Clark when the glasses are on, are just casually seeing each other or in a relationship or what.

Working with a well-thought-out slightly muted jewel-toned color palette (such a lovely change of pace from the DCEU grays) and a not-quite-our-world visual style, Superman is a visually appealing movie and while it doesn’t break new ground with its fight scenes it choreographs them in a way that doesn’t feel like green screen versus green screen nothingness. While the movie does have a few credits scenes (I stayed for one, it was cute) and plenty of “if you know you know” wider DC universe moments, Superman feels like a complete movie, with a full story and developed characters, and not just a setup for some bloated franchise it never quite sells you on. This is a smart, engaging story set in an exciting, attention-holding world ― even better than being a good superhero movie, Superman is just a solid action movie and even if there was never a sequel or a universe extension, it feels like, artistically at least, a success.

Superman hits the right notes, being fun and funny without being quippy, and being earnest and optimistic without being ponderous. A In theaters.

The Studio TV-MA

Yes, this is a TV series, not a movie, but the Seth Rogen-fronted,10-episode Apple TV+ series is a TV show about movies. And for movie fans I feel like it’s exactly the kind of downbeat but optimistic but goofy look at The Movies as a cultural thing, that can get you excited about going to the cineplex. Rogen stars in and co-directs the series as well as co-writing some of the episodes. His Max Remick has just been given his dream job as the head of Continental Studios. He loves being part of the movie-making process, but, as he explains to Patty (Catherine O’Hara), his mentor who he has just replaced, he now worries that his job is not to make movies so much as to ruin them. Take, for example, the Kool-Aid movie he’s tasked with making — IP with franchise possibilities that he claims will be “like Barbie” in terms of its film cred as well as money-making abilities. Can he get the auteur filmmaker with an idiosyncratic take on Kool-Aid or will he have to settle for making an animated movie that hopefully isn’t racist? The show also plays with film genres and styles (it was a description on the podcast Extra Hot Great of the episode “The Oner” with its examination of the one-take shot, that finally got me into the show) in a way that makes you remember why these elements are fun or iconic. And The Studio does this while making you laugh at the extremely sweaty, grimy way that the movie sausage gets made. AThe first season is available on Apple TV+. The Studio has thus far been renewed for a second season.

The Old Guard 2 (R)

The Old Guard, a 2020 bad-ass adaptation of a Greg Rucka graphic novel, told the story of Andromache aka Andy (Charlize Theron), the oldest member and leader of a small band of immortal warriors. Andy, who has been around since ancient times, schools Nile (KiKi Layne), a modern woman who wakes up after being “killed” in action as a U.S. Marine. The Old Guard 2, also a Netflix movie starring Theron and Layne as well as first movie holdovers Marwan Kenzari, Nicolo di Genova, Matthias Schoenaerts and Chiwetel Ejiofor, is I guess a very long trailer for The Old Guard 3, a movie we may or may not ever actually get. Uma Thurman shows up as the very firstest of first immortals and serves as the movie’s big bad — or, at least, one of them. But the movie feels slow and unfinished and it sidelines the characters we grew to know in the first edition for less interesting new people. C Streaming on Netflix.

Heads of State (PG-13)

Another entry in the “presidents being action figures” genre of should-be-fun action, this Prime Video movie is flat like a room temperature glass of hours-old soda. John Cena plays a former action star turned U.S. president; Idris Elba is a military vet turned U.K. prime minister. Neither is particularly fond of the other and they bicker their way through an official meeting. But then a terrorist attack — by someone on the inside, gasp! — leaves them traveling alone by foot with various baddies on their trail. Both actors know how to meet the moment of big silly action, as evidenced by their participation in the Fast and Furious universe. But here neither gets to have much in the way of personality. The movie has that “rhythm of a joke without actually being funny” feel to its script, and whole characters (sorry, Priyanka Chopra) feel thoughtlessly jammed in. Delight in the “President Bad-Ass” genre with Prime Video’s own G-20 (starring President Viola Davis) from earlier this year and skip this AI-mush-feeling endeavor. C-, only missing a D because Idris Elba does get maybe two good moments. Streaming on Prime Video.

Ballerina: From the World of John Wick (R)

A sidequel that apparently tucks into the timeline of the John Wicks, Ballerina fleshes out the story of one of the dancing future bodyguards training at Angelica Huston’s dance studio fight club dormitory that we saw in the excellent third John Wick movie. Years ago, when little girl Eve (Ana de Armas as an adult) watched a gaggle of assassins kill her father, she was taken to Angelica, the head of Eve’s father’s tribe or whatever. As an adult, Eve has to live that “lots of guns” protection and murder for hire lifestyle but what she really wants is to find and dispatch her father’s killers. Because everything in this universe is a complicated tangle of baroque diplomacy, Huston doesn’t want her to attack the town in the Alps run by Gabriel Byrne, head of the father-killing organization. But Eve goes rogue — big surprise! — with a little help from Ian McShane and the late great Lance Reddick at the New York City assassins hotel the Continental. And, sure, it’s nice to see them again, just as it’s nice when Keanu Reeves shows up and reminds you what makes John Wick so watchable. But Ballerina doesn’t have the same energy (the first half or so of the movie feels like it could have happened in about 10 minutes and gotten us straight to the relevant fighting) or the same clarity of mission that the Wick movies have. And Armas can’t pull off Reeves’ quiet, almost robotic menace. It’s fine but not necessary in a world where you can just rewatch a previous Wick with its vastly more cleverly choreographed fight scenes. C+ Available for rent or purchase.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drop (PG-13)

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

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

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

Nonnas (PG)

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

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

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

A Working Man (R)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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