Category: Film Reviews by Amy

Close the book on 2021 at the movies with Sunday’s awards show

Get excited about the Oscars!

Yes, I’m talking to you, person interested in movies enough to be lingering in the film section. But I’m also talking to me, an official Oscars Fan who proclaimed her love for the Oscars last year and yet can’t quite seem to get as jazzed about this year’s ceremony the way I did about 2018 (Ladybird! Get Out!) or 2019 (Black Panther! The Favourite! A Star Is Born and everything to do with Lady Gaga!) or even last year’s weird train station Oscars (Minari! Regina King! The song “Husavik” from Eurovision Song Contest!).

But even if, like me, you haven’t seen all of the Best Picture nominees (I’ll get to the three-hour Drive My Car, I promise) there is still a lot to get even casual movie fans enthused about this year — in terms of the movies, the ceremony and Oscar season. Pop your popcorn, open the prosecco you’re going to pretend is Champagne and don that vintage Old Navy and let’s get excited about Oscar Sunday (March 27 at 8 p.m., on ABC) together. Time to get excited about…

• The Best Picture nominees: Kenneth Branagh’s Northern Ireland-set Belfast has six nominations (available for rent or purchase). CODA, about the hearing teen daughter of deaf parents, has three nominations (Apple TV+). Adam McKay’s apocalypse, I don’t know, comedy I guess, Don’t Look Up (Netflix) has four nominations. The Japanese drama Drive My Car (HBO Max and rent or purchase) has four nominations including best international feature film. Beautiful, slow-moving Dune(HBO Max or for purchase) has 10 nominations and while I didn’t love the movie I feel like it’s a strong and worthy competitor for the sound and visual categories. The Will Smith-starring biopic of Serena and Venus Williams’ dad, King Richard, has six nominees (in theaters and returning to HBO Max on March 24, and available for rent or purchase). Paul Thomas Anderson’s nostalgia trip to 1970s L.A., Licorice Pizza (available for rent or purchase), has three nominations. The Guillermo del Toro-directed beautiful-looking but meh Nightmare Alley (HBO Max and for purchase) has four nominations. Jane Campion’s menace-filled Western The Power of the Dog (Netflix) has 11 nominations including Campion for director. Steven Spielberg’s surprisingly joyful (I mean, bleak if you think about it but joyful to watch) West Side Story (HBO Max, Disney+ and for rent or purchase) has seven nominations including what I would consider maybe the surest-thing nomination of Ariana DeBose for Anita.

• The ceremony: This year’s Oscar ceremony has the potential to be an entertaining grab bag of winners with Thoughts About This Moment We’re In globally, Academy members angry about the move of some categories off the broadcast proper and a whole bunch of people low-level freaked out about the state of their industry. For the first time in a while, domestic U.S. politics is probably, like, fourth or fifth on the list of issues that will be part of the mood of the night. I feel like last year’s Oscars missed an opportunity to get people revved up for either the nominated films specifically or the theatrical experience in general (Google “Marvel Studios Celebrates the Movies” for a look at how to do that). With movie-going still not fully Back, it would be great if the ceremony helped sell us on the concept again and helped to actually introduce people to some of the lesser-known films on the nominees list.

And crazy stuff will likely happen because crazy stuff always happens and I hope that includes, as was speculated by the folks at Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast, some actor winner pulling up the Makeup and Hairstyling winner or a Directing winner shouting out Production Design or Editing winner. Those are some of the eight categories that, as has been widely reported, have been pushed to a pre-broadcast first hour largely at the behest of ABC to make the broadcast ceremony shorter, which will somehow translate into more viewers. What will be part of the broadcast, though, is some kind of recognition of the “fan favorite film” of the year that was voted on largely via Twitter, so you know that will be weird. Anyway, tune in at 8 p.m. for the ceremony; a preshow starts at 6:30 p.m., according to Indiewire.

• The other award-granting organizations: Between this year’s Oscar season being a month longer than the pre-pandemic awards season schedule and the collapse of the Golden Globes (which were announced via Twitter a million years ago back in early January), I feel like some of the precursor awards got less attention, particularly if you’re not someone who goes seeking that info. So let’s go seeking, shall we? As with the Oscars, other awards nominee lists offer a great place to turn when you’re trying to figure out what to watch tonight.

Even though We Don’t Talk About the Golden Globes (no no no…), it is a place where the list of nominees includes Mahershala Ali in Swan Song(Apple TV+), Marion Cotillard in the musical Annette (Amazon Prime), Ruth Negga in the lovely-looking melodrama Passing (Netflix) and the score for Wes Andreson’s latest, The French Dispatch (currently on HBO Max).

The Indie Spirit Awards, which usually happen the Saturday evening before the Oscars, took place in early March this year. On that list, non-Oscar nominees include the sweet family dramedy C’mon C’mon (available for rent or purchase), the excellent Nicholas Cage drama Pig (Hulu) and the claustrophobically funny Shiva Baby (HBO Max).

The Critics Choice Awards, handed out a few weeks ago, included nominations for the delightful Western, starring Regina King and Idris Elba, The Harder They Fall (Netflix) as well as, thanks to its comedy category my favorite movie of last year, Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar (Hulu, rent or purchase).

• The night of capital F Fashion: After two years of stretchy pants, I’m not necessarily in a hurry to dress fancy myself but I do enjoy watching others do it.

• The nominees I’m rooting for: Of the nine Best Picture nominees I’ve seen, my favorite is CODA, probably followed by West Side Story and a tie between Belfast and Licorice Pizza. In other categories, I’d pick Denzel Washington to win for his titular role in The Tragedy of Macbeth (Apple TV+).

I’d be happy with any of the nominees for best actress taking the win: Jessica Chastain, who went the extra mile in The Eyes of Tammy Faye (HBO Max, rent or purchase); Penélope Cruz in Pedro Almodovar’s Parallel Mothers (available for rent), also nominated for score; Olivia Coleman, always great, in the Maggie Gyllenhaal-directed The Lost Daughter (Netflix), also nominated in supporting actress for Jessie Buckley and for adapted screenplay; Kristen Stewart, who is maybe the frontrunner for playing Princess Diana in Spencer, and depending on the day I might even agree to Nicole Kidman, a decent Lucille Ball in Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos (Amazon Prime).

The other “I’d be happy with any win” category is animated feature film: Find Encanto (the favorite to win, I think?), Luca and Raya and the Last Dragon, all beautiful and solid films, on Disney+; Flee, which is also nominated in the documentary and international categories and is a compelling tale of one man’s flight from Afghanistan, is available on Hulu and for rent or purchase, and The Mitchells vs. the Machines, a fun tale of family and technology, is on Netflix. While I agree that there are like two or even three better songs in Encanto, I am also rooting for it to win the original song category for “Dos Oruguitas.”

In what could be called the “movies people actually saw” category (visual effects), Spider-Man: No Way Home (available for purchase), the No. 1 2021 movie at the box office, faces off against the No. 2 movie, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Disney+, rent or purchase); the last Daniel Craig James Bond and the year’s No. 7 movie, No Time to Die (rent or purchase), and the 10th biggest box office of 2021, the Ryan Reynolds-starring Free Guy (HBO Max, Disney+, rent or purchase), as well as Dune. It’s a solid list — and my vote might actually go to Dune.

• Saying a final goodbye to 2021: And as at any good New Year’s Eve party, enjoy a glass of bubbly and some time to reflect (House of Gucci — that was really something, wasn’t it?) and make your resolutions: more in-theater movies, more searching for the cool weird stuff on streaming, more embracing what we get instead of wishing everything was John Wick. And, of course, a whole new year of award contenders.

Hey, look at that, I’m excited!

Featured photo: West Side Story.

Turning Red (PG)

A 13-year-old girl discovers that strong emotion transforms her into a red panda in the Pixar animated movie Turning Red, a movie about puberty, moms and daughters, friends and, occasionally, Canadian-ness.

The kids at Lester B. Pearson School hustle to earn loonies in this 2002-era Toronto. Add that to the bits of late-1990s, early aughts culture — Tamagotchis, Backstreet/’N Sync-y boy bands — and Turning Red is a smorgasbord of delightful little surprise moments nestled in some top-tier storytelling.

Thirteen-year-old Meilin Lee (voice of Rosalie Chang) enjoys being a rules-following straight arrow who crushes it at school and is a dutiful daughter at home. Or has she just convinced herself she enjoys it because she has always been so eager for her mother’s (voice of Sandra Oh) approval? But her mother doesn’t understand about 4*Town, the boy band that has Mei and her friend group — Miriam (voice of Ava Morse), Abby (voice of Hyein Park) and Priya (voice of Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) — all aflutter. Mei herself doesn’t understand her buddies’ lusting over Devon (Addie Chandler), the 17-year-old who works at the local convenience store whom Mei thinks “looks like a hobo.” “Yeah, a hot hobo,” Abby says. Yuck, is Mei’s opinion, until all of a sudden one day it very much isn’t and she feverishly fills a notebook with sketches of herself and Devon, who is sometimes a merman in these drawings.

When Ming, Mei’s mom, finds the sketches, she marches a mortified Mei right down to the store so Ming can yell at a clueless Devon about how Mei is just an innocent little girl and he had better stay away and a bunch of other things that make the world sort of fall in on Mei in a way that is as hilarious as it is horrifying (so much of this movie about this drama-and-zits phase of life is hilarious and horrifying). After a night of absolute agony over this never-to-be-recovered-from embarrassment, Mei wakes up to find that her body has become unrecognizably hairy and stinky and big.

Which, like, who hasn’t been there? But in Mei’s specific case, she has become an actual polar-bear-sized red panda.

“It’s happened already?” says Mei’s dad, Jin (voice of Orion Lee), when Mei’s parents find out about her transformation. It turns out that the family, which runs a temple dedicated to their ancestors, doesn’t just have a symbolic connection to red pandas but an actual one. A long ago-ancestor gained the ability to turn herself into a red panda to protect herself and her daughters, a power passed to every woman in the family since then. Now living in modern days, the women find the fur, the size and perhaps the anger an annoyance, as Ming explains, and they undergo a ritual to harness their panda-ness so that sudden emotional changes don’t lead to a tail and ears popping out. (There is a whole graduate dissertation to be written about this movie’s very clever handling of women and their relationship with anger.)

Mei learns that while extreme emotions can bring on the red panda, calming feelings of love and acceptance can help her turn back into a girl (one whose dark hair is now red). What Mei doesn’t tell her mother is that those peaceful feelings come not from her parents but from her group of besties, a sign that she is growing into her own person, apart from her mother. Her buddies, when they learn about the panda, aren’t repelled by the gross monster Mei feels she is and tell her they’ll be there for her no matter what — especially when “what” turns into a surprising money-making opportunity. The other kids at school are charmed and delighted by the big fuzzy red panda and will fork over their hard-earned loonies for pictures of the panda and panda merch — the perfect way for the girls to earn the money they need to buy tickets to the upcoming 4*Town concert.

Remember the end of Pixar’s Inside Out when the “puberty” button showed up on the control panel inside the emotional control center of the 12-year-old protagonist? Turning Red thematically picks its story up from there, with the fully realized, well-rounded and imperfect person that is Mei suddenly finding herself with all these new emotions and desires and thoughts. It isn’t that she’s “becoming a woman,” the blech-y phrase the movie repeats just enough to drive home the goofiness of putting all that on either getting your period or seeing a boy band, but that she’s finding new facets of herself and trying to figure out how to integrate them into who she has always understood herself to be. And, sorry to spoil the ending for you, kids, but this is basically a thing that continues for forever, as Mei’s growing up and growing apart from Ming means that Ming is also seeing some part of her identity change. What is a delight about Turning Red is that we don’t have to get all in to Ming’s head and her adult issues to see this; this movie (unlike, say, Toy Story 4 or Cars 3 or all the other movies that feel like middle-aged people working out their midlife identity crises) stays focused on Mei and her various relationships as she sees them. And it does this without making Ming either all correct or all wrong. This is another one of those Pixar movies where there is no “bad guy” per se, no person doing evil but more just a group of people, each person with their own Stuff, working through some difficulties.

Before I make this sound like a total afterschool special (which, actually, this would be a great addition to some health class about “your changing body”), Turning Red is a boisterous good time with lots of smart observations about teen life, pop music, parental expectations, the appeal of kittens. I feel like the physicality of the red panda comedy would probably make this movie fun for even middle-elementary kids (maybe 9 or so and up). And the lessons about watching your kid become their own awesome self, however painful the loss of their younger version, and the movie’s overall joy — not to mention some truly beautiful animation — is a good time for an older audience as well. A+

Rated PG for thematic material, suggestive content and language, according to the MPA on film ratings.com. Directed by Domee Shi with a screenplay by Julia Cho & Domee Shi, Turning Red is an hour and 40 minutes long and is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures on Disney+.

Featured photo: Turning Red.

The Batman (PG-13)

Robert Pattinson is the physically nearly invincible but emotionally vulnerable personification of vengeance in The Batman, maybe the best live-action Batman?

Hey, I said “maybe”; it’s been a while since I’ve seen The Dark Knight, which would maybe have been my previous “best” — though I think each of the Michael Keaton through Batfleck versions have had at least some good qualities.It’s been multiple decades since I watched Batman: The Animated Series with its out-of-time 1930s/1970s/1990s all smushed together Gotham setting and its tales of moral compromises and good intentions that curdle in a hard city. But this movie brought me back to that place, stories of deeply scarred people in a corrupt city where the victory is always, like, better governance and the possibility for optimism, as opposed to saving the world.

This iteration’s Batman is barely ever Bruce Wayne (Pattinson), the scion of the Wayne family fortune but not the model-dating society-page anchor of previous versions of the character. This Bruce has almost entirely given himself over to the Batman, as it’s called here, always with the “the.” He sees his role as not just physically fighting criminals but also instilling fear in them so that when they see the bat signal in the sky, they are moved to stop their criminal pursuits and make a run for it whether they actually see the Batman or not. His appearances as Bruce are few and mostly only to Alfred (Andy Serkis), here less a butler and more the only guy keeping the Wayne facade going, while also assisting with some of the Batman’s investigations.

The signal seems to exist mostly as a communication device between the Batman and Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), Gotham’s seemingly only trustworthy police officer. When Gotham Mayor Don Mitchell (Rupert Penry-Jones) is murdered, Gordon calls in the Batman to look at evidence in spite of the sour feelings the police officers have toward the vigilante. Gordon seems to genuinely appreciate his detective skills but also the murderer has some larger purpose that involves the Batman, having left a note with a riddle addressed to him.

As Gordon and the Batman investigate the crime, they discover that Mitchell had secrets, including shady dealings with mobster Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) and his top lieutenant the Penguin (an extremely unrecognizable Colin Farrell). As more bodies of important city officials turn up, the Riddler (Paul Dano), as they come to call the person responsible, uncovers a vast conspiracy linking mobsters, city elected officials and law enforcement not only in the present but reaching back to the days of Bruce’s parents, Thomas and Martha.

Participating, sometimes, in this investigation, though for reasons of her own, is Selina Kyle (Zoë Karvitz), who is never quite called Catwoman but who has some slinky black leather get-ups and can kick butt when needed. Selina and the Batman have Heat in a way that works for the tone of this movie and makes Bruce/the Batman a more human person.

Vulnerability in general is one of this Batman’s defining traits. He can, like so many previous Batmans, get shot multiple times without missing a step, but we do get to see him get knocked out or banged up in a way that a non-superpower person with some really good tech would. And, more significantly, we see him sad, scared, stuck in trauma, angry and, with Selina, kind of emotionally awkward without being quippy about it.

I feel like years of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies (not to mention the various tones of DC’s own extended universe, of which Wikipedia says this movie is not a part) make saying this necessary but: This movie is generally not quippy or light or an upbeat action good time. There are moments of extremely dry humor, but it all serves the “this crime-ridden cesspool” tone about Gotham and the wider world. But still it is a really enjoyable movie with its surprisingly well-paced crime story — I say “surprisingly” because I was afraid that at nearly three hours this would be a slog. Instead, the only time I checked the time I found myself thinking “oh good, there’s still an hour left.” Like a good graphic novel or a binge of those old animated episodes, this movie really pulls you in and holds you in the story with these characters. And though this is our first outing with Pattinson-Batman we don’t have to trek through the origin story with the whole “Martha and the pearls” scene (as the CinemaSins/Honest Trailers-y places call that much-recreated sequence of Bruce’s parents’ death) and Bruce becoming the Batman. We start with him mid-Batman-ing but still figuring out what it all means and what he really wants to accomplish.

Also helping to keep you rooted in this version of Gotham are this movie’s visuals, which also kept calling to mind the animated series, not because it was a live-action copy but because of how it framed people in a scene or used shadow. Similar to how previous Gothams always seemed to have one foot still in a gangster-movie version of the 1930s, this Gotham had elements of 1970s New York (without that The Joker pastiche look) but with just the right amount of elements about modern politics and society fraying (again, not in that awful The Joker way that is all shock, no substance). And points to this score, which is a departure from the 1980s-1990s Batman theme but delivers on setting the noir-y scene.

And then there’s Pattinson, who crafts a very specific Batman — not as weary as Affleck, much more damaged than Christian Bale. I don’t know that it’s “the” definitive Batman but it’s a thoroughly realized Batman who is a compelling character. His partnership with Wright’s Gordon is solid, with them working as much like young-cop/experienced-cop as they do superhero/regular person.

Perhaps most surprising of all the surprises in this movie is that The Batman feels like a different way to do a classic superhero character with well-known characters and story. After so much MCU and a DCEU that often felt more like an answer to Marvel than its own thing, The Batman offers an example how a well-known comic book story can offer familiar plot points and stories while doing something that feels new and fresh. A-

Rated PG-13 for strong violent and disturbing content, drug content, strong language and suggestive material, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Matt Reeves and written by Matt Reeves & Peter Craig, The Batman is — well, look, long, it’s a long movie. It’s two hours and 55 minutes, according to IMDB, 2 hours, 56 minutes according to other sources. But basically you will be in the theater more than three hours, with trailers and whatnot. But for once this doesn’t feel like a knock against the movie. And it is only in theaters, distributed by Warner Bros.

Featured photo: The Batman.

Cyrano (PG-13)

Peter Dinklage is the poet who woos with his words but fears he repels with his looks in the Joe Wright-directed Cyrano, an uneven but interesting adaptation of a stage musical.

Peter Dinklage has, of course, been charming as all heck since before he was fan favorite Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones so it’s kind of a “nerd girl takes off glasses to reveal she’s a supermodel”-level suspension of disbelief that women in general and Roxanne (Haley Bennett) in particular, portrayed here as kinda flighty and romantic in a way that would seem to make her attuned to men who adore her, wouldn’t be smitten with the titular Cyrano.

But people are also singing and dancing in the streets, so it’s one of a few things you gotta just go with here.

You probably know the outlines of the story: In olden days France, noted poet, wit and swashbuckling dueler Cyrano loves Roxanne, an orphan who needs one of those advantageous marriages to stay financially solvent but who dreams of True Love. And she thinks she’s found it when she falls in love at first sight with Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a new guy in Cyrano’s regiment. She rushes to tell her dear friend Cyrano about this romantic thunderbolt — breaking Cyrano’s heart just a little because he clearly hoped that maybe her romantic realization was her love for him. But Cyrano is so in love and so friendzoned that he agrees to help Roxanne meet Christian and look after him as the new guy in the army barracks.

Christian, who was also enchanted when he first saw Roxanne, is delighted with Cyrano’s help. But he doesn’t have the words to win Roxanne over, so he takes help from Cyrano — using Cyrano’s sincere love letters to Roxanne (Christian doesn’t quite realize how sincere) and the lines Cyrano feeds Christian when he talks to Roxanne from beneath her window balcony, Romeo & Juliet style. Cyrano is willing to do it because he feels like his height gives him no chance with Roxanne.

So, basically, these two guys are olden days catfishing Roxanne but as they are both pretty decent we’re OK with it? Her bigger problem is her relationship with powerful noble De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn). He’s a vindictive, grabby jerk whom she’s reluctantly been hanging out with and he has the power to put both Cyrano and Christian in harm’s way.

“Nimble” was how I found myself thinking of this movie’s wordplay and general mood (and Dinklage’s overall performance), especially in scenes between Roxanne and Cyrano or Christian and Cyrano, where the dramatic irony gives us a Cyrano’s-eye-view at everybody’s thoughts and feelings and gives an extra bit of double-edged wit to his lines. It’s subtle and delicate in a way that gives a lightness even to heartbreak. These elements also at times feel stagey in a way that I think would work if it were on an actual stage, with an audience’s laughter and responses serving as the setting of this party and pulling it all together. On screen, you sometimes get punchlines going out into the quiet void (especially if you tend to go to emptier screenings). It’s sort of — missing something. The movie isn’t quite as rooted in a real world as, say, In the Heights but it isn’t on a literal stage the way the Hamilton filmed version was (to use two Lin-Manuel Miranda plays as an example). I feel like if it were presented in a way that could give us some of that live theater energy it would make the first chunk of the movie more of a musical-theater good time.

The second chunk of the movie is tonally quite different, with the love triangle taking a back seat, at least in terms of on-screen action, to Cyrano and Christian at war. This section of the movie includes a surprisingly earnest and affecting song called “Wherever I Fall.” It’s a really heartrending moment of men facing battle, fairly certain they’re going to die, and thinking of the people they’re leaving behind. The three on-screen singers taking the lead on the song include Glen Hansard of Once fame. But this really grab-you-by-the-throat moment does not include either Dinklage or Harrison, an odd choice that puts you in the story of the men in the song but pulls you out of the story of the movie itself. The movie frequently does odd little things like this or the way that Cyrano and Roxanne are positioned in the shot of some of their more emotional scenes that undercut some of the emotion we should be getting from the relationships that make up the core of the movie.

For all this unevenness, the performances of that core trio of characters are thoroughly engaging. Bennett is hampered with some flightiness in her character (but is given some really great costuming and makeup; the movie’s sole Oscar nomination is for costuming) but manages to make her Roxanne seem appealing enough as a person that it is believable that both of these nice-seeming dudes would be so gaga for her. Harrison is sweet in exactly the right way; I feel like in the stories that have riffed on this idea, that character tends to be painted a little more meatheaded than he is here. Here, Christian is a nice guy you are also rooting for. Of course, above all we root for Dinklage, who is just thoroughly appealing and attention-grabbing throughout, even when the movie doesn’t fully build the case for whatever it’s doing with his character. B

Rated PG-13 for some strong violence, thematic and suggestive material, and brief language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Joe Wright with a screenplay by Erica Schmidt, Cyrano is two hours and four minutes long and distributed by MGM in theaters.

Featured photo: Cyrano.

Dog (PG-13)

A former Army Ranger and a former Army Ranger dog, both dealing with trauma from their time in battle, road trip in Dog, a movie that answers the question “how charming is Channing Tatum?”

The answer: charming and charismatic enough that this relatively thin-soup dramady is an OK watch.

This movie, co-directed by Tatum, shouldn’t be as watchable as it is. It should be more of a downbeat slog. But he makes his character, Jackson Briggs, the right amount of affable and vulnerable, self-aware and in denial and generally good playing opposite a dog to carry this whole movie. I left the theater thinking “huh, not bad” even if I doubt I will ever think of this movie much again.

When we meet Briggs he is grinning and bearing it as he works a job making sandwiches for jerks while waiting to see if he’s cleared to work for a private military contractor. He has left the Army due to an injury that we later learn has left him with anxiety, headaches, occasionally blurred vision, a sometimes ringing in his ear and seizures that could potentially kill him. But he has managed to get a clean bill of health from someone and now needs only his former commander to sign off to get him back in some form of battle.

His former captain is reluctant to do so — Briggs has serious, well-documented injuries — but he makes a deal with Briggs. A fellow former ranger, one Briggs served with, has died and his family wants his service dog Lulu at the funeral. As it turns out, Lulu was also injured in battle and is also suffering from trauma, exhibited largely by trying to attack everybody she comes in contact with. Nevertheless, the captain tells Briggs that if he can drive Lulu (she refuses to fly) from Washington state to the funeral in Arizona (and then to the base where this hard to handle dog will likely be put down), the captain will give Briggs the clearance he needs to get the contractor job he’s so desperate to have.

Who is going to save whom, you might think if you’ve never seen any movie with a dog before. This plays out exactly the way you think it will, with the human-canine duo having a series of adventures along the way that range from lighthearted (a psychic played by Jane Adams telling Briggs that the dog wants a comfy mattress and Indian food) to more serious than the movie has the ability to really examine (the manner of Riley’s death, Briggs’ non-existent relationship with his young daughter, really everything to do with war-related trauma). But the magic of Tatum is that the movie still works well enough to hold your interest and attention. C+

Rated PG-13 for language, thematic elements, drug content and some suggestive material, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Reid Carolin and Channing Tatum with a screenplay by Reid Carolin, Dog is an hour and 41 minutes long and is distributed in theaters by MGM Pictures.

Uncharted (PG-13)

Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg play Indiana Jones in Uncharted, a movie based on a video game but molded in the tradition of every broad action adventure that ever National Treasured its way to low-effort wide-appeal viewing.

Or maybe it’s not so much “wide appeal” as “widely not unappealing.” I mean, Tom Holland, who can be mad at that little face, even if it is often accompanied by the too smirky face of Wahlberg?

Nathan “Nate” Drake (Holland) is a bartender and pickpocket who is recruited by Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Wahlberg) to take part in a search for the lost treasure of Magellan. The mystery is a favorite of Nate’s because it was one his older brother Sam talked about when they were kids. Nate hasn’t seen Sam in years; Sully tells Nate that Sam disappeared during the search for the treasure so finding the treasure — boats filled with gold — might lead to Nate’s finding Sam as well.

Thus begins some globe-crossing to follow this golden cross to that clue to this map to find that clue — like the Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean movies this movie references but also like the Robert Langdon movies based on Dan Brown’s books with a dash of Goonies and an older-swashbuckler/younger-trainee relationship that has notes of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker.

At least, I think that’s what we’re supposed to see when we watch these two banter and adventure. But Wahlberg does not have that Harrison Ford sparkle, that ability to convey both cynic and good guy at heart. He comes off not as charming but as smirky and flat. Holland, so winning all these years as eager good-doobie Peter Parker, isn’t required to do anything radically different here as Nate but he is nevertheless a charismatic and amiable screen presence. He’s had good screen partners in similar roles (Robert Downey Jr., Jake Gyllenhaal, Benedict Cumberbatch) but Wahlberg is not playing at his level here.

Similarly, the supporting cast feels uneven. Sophia Ali as an occasional third member of the expedition isn’t given enough to do to feel like a strong team player. Antonio Banderas provides some of the villainy as a member of a Spanish family that has long had claims on Magellan’s gold but he doesn’t get to be as extravagantly mustache-twisting as he would need to to make this movie be the kind of buoyant good time it clearly wants to be.

Uncharted has a lot of good popcorn movie ideas — big action set pieces, sunny locales, quips. But the execution is uneven enough that sitting through this movie in a theater feels like more of a chore than a snack-food treat. I mention this because I think when you watch this movie next holiday season at home on some streaming service for zero extra dollars it will feel just fine for the broad audience of kids old enough to view PG-13-style gun-related violence through great-grandparents we still get embarrassed to watch sexy business around. As something you purposefully plan to consume to the exclusion of all other stimuli, Uncharted just doesn’t offer enough — sometimes even the efforts of Tom Holland can’t save the day. C+

Rated PG-13 for violence/action and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Ruben Fleischer with a screenplay by Rafe Judkins, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, Uncharted is an hour and 56 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Columbia Pictures.

Blacklight (PG-13)

Liam Neeson is yet another aging shadowy dude with a particular set of skills in Blacklight, a movie that looks like it’s going to be every Liam Neeson movie since Taken 2 but is actually less than that.

Travis Block’s (Neeson) skill set involves helping FBI agents who have physically or mentally gotten trapped in deep cover assignments or super secret work. He helps them find their way out — literally, like the agent whose cover is blown in a white nationalist compound and who has to be extracted, or, figuratively, like Dusty Crane (Taylor John Smith), an agent who is having a breakdown after a recent assignment. What we know that Travis doesn’t is that that assignment involved the death of charismatic politician Sofia Flores (Mel Jarnson), a woman who is the voice of her generation and who wants to make real change, which several characters in the movie say several times. Despite Travis’ efforts to “bring Dusty in,” whatever that actually means, at the behest of FBI director (and Travis’ longtime friend) Gabriel Robinson (Aidan Quinn), Dusty keeps trying to contact Mira (Emmy Raver-Lampman), a journalist working in some news organization with way too nice an office (floor-to-ceiling windows!).

As Travis starts to ask questions about why, exactly, Dusty has gone off the rails, he finds himself at odds with Robinson, for whom he has always worked off the books and whom he thus has no real ability to challenge. And he is also dealing with drama in his home life: We’re told Travis was a bit of an absent dad to now-grown daughter Amanda (Claire van der Bloom) but he wants to make up for that by being “there” for her young daughter Natalie (Gabriella Sengos). Amanda isn’t so sure that she wants Travis and his whole shady deal to be all that “there” for the daughter who is starting to pick up some of his paranoid habits.

In a lot of ways, this is exactly the movie you sign up for when you go see a winter-release Liam Neeson action movie: There’s his secret past in a tough-guy job, there’s a cute little kid, there’s a disappointed family to make amends to, there is some past emotional turmoil, there is a one-man-against-the-world-like quest. But this movie also feels at points like almost a parody of the Liam Neeson movie you expect, particularly in a scene where he delivers a monologue about his dark backstory that is so bleak it calls to mind that sketch of Liam Neeson doing improv comedy with Ricky Gervais. And while nit-picking the plot points of this kind of movie seems silly, this movie has a real “box of broken and off-brand Legos” feel with nothing really fitting together and huge chunks of the story just not holding up at all. Sure, there are plenty of car chases/crashes and hand-to-hand combat scenes, but there are also lots of laugh-out-loud moments that I’m pretty sure were not intended to be comedy.

I like the simplicity of early late-career Neeson’s “guy finds daughter” or “guy fights wolves” movies or even of recent films like Ice Road where the gist is literally that Neeson drives a truck on an ice road. Blacklight piles a few too many half-formed story bits on its rickety setup. C-

Rated PG-13 for strong violence, action and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Mark Williams with a screenplay by Nick May, Blacklight is an hour and 44 minutes long and distributed by Briarcliff Entertainment.

Featured photo: Dog.