Category: Film Reviews by Amy

Juror #2 (PG-13)

A juror realizes he has a pretty significant connection to the case he’s on in the Clint Eastwood-directed courtroom thriller Juror #2, a competent, enjoyable movie.

Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) attempts to get out of jury duty by explaining that his wife Allison (Zoey Deutch) is in the final weeks of a high-risk pregnancy, but the judge (Amy Aquino) says nice try and thus Justin becomes juror #2 on what he learns is the trial of James Sythe (Gabriel Basso), accused of murdering his girlfriend Kendall (Francesca Eastwood). As prosecutor Faith Killebrew (Toni Collete) starts to describe the crime in her opening arguments, Justin realizes that Kendall was killed at roughly the same time, in the same general area, where he “hit a deer” (a deer, he assumes) with his car on a rainy night after leaving a bar. Several years sober, Justin didn’t drink at the bar, but just stared down the drink he bought while wrapped up in grief over his and Allison’s previous pregnancy loss. But still, as his AA sponsor and lawyer Larry (Kiefer Sutherland) explains, his history of DUIs and the politics of the case, coming as Faith is running for district attorney, means there will be no going easy on Justin should he turn himself in. Will Justin let the jury convict James? Will anyone figure out that this guy acting squirrely during the whole trial is more involved than he lets on?

Chris Messina plays the defense attorney and the jury members include characters played by J.K. Simmons, Cedric Yarbrough and Leslie Bibb, all bringing nice character notes to their relatively minor roles. Juror #2 across the board has a John Grisham-lite sheen and does a good job balancing a few serious thoughts with character drama. It is takes itself just seriously enough but not too seriously and is neither too clever nor too silly. It is an interesting story, with good performances — an entertaining movie even if it isn’t setting the world on fire. Which makes the most unsettling aspect of this suspense film the movie itself. If you’ve heard anything about it, you’ve probably heard about its half-hearted theatrical release, quick move to VOD (where it seems to be doing well) and its scheduled Dec. 20 release on Max. I’m not sure what this movie’s weird release trajectory means for the future of solid, non-awards-seeking dramas but, I guess, enjoy ’em while we’ve still got ’em? B

Available for rent or purchase.

Conclave (PG)

The pope-picking process is filled with intrigue and a fun amount of cattiness in Conclave.

An old (fictional) pope dies and the Vatican machinery gears up for the election by the cardinals of a new pope. Even as the pope’s close associates — such as cardinals Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), Bellini (Stanley Tucci) and Tremblay (John Lithgow) — pray over his very recently deceased body there is political jockeying. Three weeks later when the cardinals from all around the world arrive to be sequestered in conclave to pick a new pope, all the men standing in clumps outside, getting in a smoke, have a real Tammany Hall vibe. An Italian cardinal, Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), seems to be working hard for the top spot, letting anyone who will listen know what a conservative, traditional guy he is, looking to make Latin great again and whatnot. Also a frontrunner is Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), an African cardinal who seems friendly and popular and has very hardline social views. Bellini doesn’t want to be pope — and tells everybody that doesn’t want to be pope, while also letting fly his opinions about openness and tolerance and, gasp, the involvement of women. And then there’s Tremblay, who seems to be a consensus candidate for the “least worst choice.” As everybody tries to Nate Silver about whose support will go where, a mystery cardinal shows up, Benitez (Carlos Diehz). Born in Mexico, Benitez has served in hot spots — Congo, Iraq — and was recently named the Cardinal of Kabul. He is the new kid everyone in this very clique-y lunch room is whispering about.

A “woo-hoo!” from me came during one of the too-few scenes with Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini), a nun from the order of Our Lady of Mess Around and Find Out. Shortly after Benitez arrives, Lawrence asks him to say grace before the meal and when he gives a shout out to the Sisters who prepared the food Agnes gives a little snort-chuckle, which feels like it just wraps up all sorts of things about her relationship with the church and the priests. It was a well-crafted moment (and not even the one I woo-hoo-ed about).

Maybe you’re sick of anything election-y, but Conclave is an engaging dishy drama, particularly if you have some CCD in your past. Stanley Tucci may not be at full speed here but he’s fully compelling as a man wrestling with how much he wants this job he knows he has only a slim chance at getting. Fiennes is also fun to watch as he has to deal with one person and their problems after another while seemingly getting sucked in deeper to his own crisis of faith and maybe just a little bit giving into ambition. And all over, the air is thick with side-eyes, enjoyable soap-opera-esque close-ups and little nuggets of the driest humor. I don’t know that this is necessarily a great movie but I had a great time watching it. A Available for rent or purchase.

Megalopolis (R)

Put the TV show Succession, Julie Tambor’s 1999 film Titus and Baz Luhrman’s Red Curtain movie trilogy in a blender and sprinkle that glittery, stilted-dialogue smoothie with vibes from the old Emo Kylo Ren Twitter account and you get the general idea of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, just a weirdo trip of an “I’m using my own money, nobody can say ‘no’ to me” visual project.

New York City is here called New Rome, ruled by Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who I think is supposed to represent the tired status quo. Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) is sort of a tech bro-ish inventor of a Vibranium-esque does-everything material called Megalon. Cesar is also an architect type who is part of the Design Authority that is building/seeking to build a bunch of Dr. Seuss twisty nonsense that somehow represents society’s improvement. Party girl Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel) takes a shine to Cesar but, like, shouldn’t — it feels like one of those “he’s a genius, I can fix him” situations that just makes you sad for women in film. (This whole movie is filled with female characters that seem to only exist in relation to the male characters, with no independent motivations or thoughts.) Cesar’s uncle Hamilton Crassus (Jon Voight) is the richest man in the, let’s say, world and helps to fund Cesar’s vision. Also a Crassus nephew is Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf), a weaselly fail-son with an interest in fascism. And then you have Aubrey Plaza as a TV money honey with gold digger ambitions, Grace VanderWaal as a pop girlie vestal virgin, Jason Schwartzman I think still playing his Hunger Games character, Laurence Fishburne as a narrator and, why not, Talia Shire and Dustin Hoffman. Plus Cesar and Julia can sometimes stop time — figuratively or literally, you decide!

If all that sounds like a bunch of unconnected words, that is a pretty good sense of what it’s like to watch Megalopolis. The most consistent element of the movie is the visuals, in particular the way the clothes are designed to sell a “Rome but make it modern” fashion aesthetic. Lotta belted drapiness — but I’m not mad at it! The movie’s costume designer (Milena Canonero, according to IMDb, who has done some costume design in Wes Anderson movies) seems to be having fun with the idea of, for example, translating Rome senate robes to male business looks. It may even be worth a costume design Oscar nomination.

Then there’s the Adam Driver of it all — taking this whole thing very seriously. Maybe a little too seriously? But occasionally you get moments of him making the whole ridiculous Shakespearean vibe legitimately funny (Google “Adam Driver back to the club”) or making it feel like an actual human is involved (a few but not all of his scenes with Emmanuel), which feels like a real accomplishment for a movie this turned-up-to-11 at all times.

Megalopolis is long and rambling, though you get the sense that Coppola would tell you every minute is intensely necessary. I don’t feel like it’s intensely necessary for anyone to watch it but, some day when its rental price comes way down or it shows up on some streaming network, this experiment in an almost comic book movie approach to Ideas-based filmmaking is worth a viewing as a curiosity. C+ Available for rent.

Spellbound (PG)

A 15-year-old princess is trying to keep up family appearances after her parents, the king and queen, turn into giant destructive monsters in the animated musical Spellbound.

I’m going to spoil the end of the movie because the “what it’s all about” might hit some families harder than others: “My parents are monsters” is clearly fairy tale metaphor territory. In this case, it’s a couple that have stopped operating successfully as a couple or even a team of co-parents but have become, literally, trapped in their own anger. The movie does a good job of addressing what that means for adults and how parents who don’t have the same love they once had for each other can still work together to make their child feel unconditionally loved and supported. And how kids can trust that love as a forever thing, even if their parents’ marriage isn’t. All of this is I think pretty well told but I can also imagine that for families going through it this might not be a fun movie night.

With the help of royal advisers like Nazara (voice of Jennifer Lewis) and Bolinar (voice of John Lithgow), Princess Ellian (voice of Rachel Zegler) has done a good job of making sure the right things get signed and the right people get enough proof of life that the kingdom generally thinks the royal couple are alive, well and in charge. And while they’re alive, King Solon (voice of Javier Bardem) and Queen Ellsmere (voice of Nicole Kidman) are not well or in charge. They are giant, brightly colored fuzzy-and-feathery monsters who don’t recognize Ellian or anyone else and who crash through the palace knocking things over and smashing holes in walls. This can’t go on, Nazara and Bolinar say, and convince Ellian that if they can’t change her parents back then she will become queen.

Ellian agrees because she has a plan that involves a pair of Squishmallow-esque oracles — Luno Oracle of the Moon (voice of Nathan Lane) and Sunny Oracle of the Sun (voice of Titus Burgess). The Oracles are sort of horrified that the royals are literal monsters but eventually explain the quest Ellian must take her parents on to turn them human again.

Along the way, Bolinar accidentally trades bodies with Ellian’s pet rat, the palace guards chase the family in order to catch the monsters they don’t believe are the king and queen and there’s a lot of completely acceptable singing that I don’t remember a single tune from.

Spellbound is a perfectly cromulent example of the mid-level animated feature. Spellbound doesn’t break new ground but it does tell a story with well-crafted emotional beats and enough fuzzy creature goofiness to satisfy kid viewers. B- Streaming on Netflix.

Piece by Piece (PG)

The life and musical career of Pharrell Williams gets the autobiography documentary treatment in the animated Lego movie Piece by Piece.

In some ways this is a fairly straightforward look at Williams’ life and impact on music, with discussion of his longtime love of music and talking heads telling their parts. Except that everybody here, from his parents to Snoop Dog and Gwen Stefani, is rendered as Legos in a Lego world. This animated element allows for a nice visual exploration of Williams’ discussion of his relationship to music — how it makes him feel, what he sees and thinks about when he’s listening to music and creating music. And his Behind the Music-style “dark period” is about what sounds like basically a creative block, which he talks about working through.

The Lego of it all makes the movie perhaps appear on its face to be a kids’ movie. While the songs have been, as far as I can remember, largely edited to only their PG parts and a “PG Spray” fogs up the room for Snoop’s scenes, it is a movie that is probably of more interest to adults or older kids who are familiar with the music. I could see the movie appealing to musically or creatively inclined kids — but again, probably an older audience than the bigger-tent The Lego Movie-style Lego movies.

But for adults and those older kids, Piece by Piece is a fun and visually exciting charmer. A Available for rent or purchase.

Gifts for movie-lovers

• Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat and Tearsby Michael Schulman. This 2023 book is a delight for movie history fans. It looks at different periods of Oscar races, from the silent film years through a coda on The Slap, and uses Oscar campaigns as a way to look at the movie industry and wider culture. My current read is November 2024 release Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops by Tim Robey, an interesting examination of eras in movies through the lens of box office bombs.

• This Had Oscar BuzzNow that Patreon allows you to gift memberships, you can give a fellow movie lover a subscription to this podcast hosted by Joe Reid (who does the Cinematrix game and Movie Fantasy League, both over at Vulture.com) and Chris Feil (an excellent freelance writer and thinker about movies). The show produces one regular episode a week plus bonus episodes for subscribers, which in this award season include quick-hit looks at award nominations. Make it a deluxe gift by also giving a subscription to Demi, Myself and I, a Patreon-subscription podcast where Joe Reid looks at the films of Demi Moore.

• Movies at Red River Theatres This downtown Concord theater sells gift certificates, gift memberships (which, depending on the level, can come with discounts, movie passes, free popcorn and more) and Dinner and a Movie packages, which feature two movie passes plus a $25 gift certificate to a participating restaurant for $40, according to redrivertheatres.org.

• Movies at O’neil Cinemas The O’neil Cinemas at Brickyard Square in Epping sells gift cards, which can be purchased online at oneilcinemas.com.

• Movies at Chunky’s If you like to give a physical thing with your gift card, Chunky’s Cinema Pub in Manchester offers gift boxes (with a gift card, movie pass and popcorn pass) themed to look like movie candy and gift baskets (with a gift card, admissions and popcorn passes and theater candy, all in a popcorn bag or bucket, depending on the size). See chunkys.com.

• Movies and more at Smitty’s Cinema Gift cards to Tilton’s Smitty’s Cinema also cover purchases in the GameLAB with its arcade and other attractions. See smittyscinema.com.

• MUBI You can gift the streaming service that offers a changing roster of independent, international and other not-your-standard blockbuster films. A big deal film currently streaming is this year’s Demi Moore stand-out The Substance — you can even get a “We are sorry you didn’t appreciate your experience with The Substance” T-shirt (that’s a particularly chilling phrase from the movie) to level up your gift.

Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande make for a winning pair in the thoroughly charming Wicked.

As you probably know from the book, the play, the cast album, etc., Wicked offers the backstory of The Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West, here called Elphaba (Erivo), the role first played on Broadway by Idina Menzel. After a rough childhood due to her green skin and her father and the townspeople’s horrible treatment of her, a grown Elphaba finds slightly more acceptance at Shiz University, a Hogwarts-y school where her sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) has enrolled. Their father tells Elphaba to stay to take care of Nessarose, who uses a wheelchair and is perfectly capable of taking care of herself, she tries unsuccessfully to tell people. Elphaba soon finds her own spot there when Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) spots Elphaba’s extraordinary magic abilities. Galinda (Grande), the pink-wardrobe-wearing blonde who was originated by Kristin Chenoweth, accidentally agrees to be Elphaba’s roommate in an attempt to suck up to Morrible. Galinda’s grand ambition is to become a sorceress — and to marry Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), a super handsome party boy who transfers to Shiz. Elphaba’s plan is to become skilled enough at magic to meet and work with the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum). She wants to be cheered not feared by her fellow Ozians and if he maybe wants to make her not-green, that would be OK too.

Beneath all these hopes and dreams is a darker political undercurrent. Once upon a time, Oz used to be a place where humans and animals, who could talk, worked and lived side by side. But now there are only two animal professors left at Shiz and Elphaba overhears a kind of animal resistance meeting where they discuss animals who have disappeared and other well-known animal orators who have lost their ability to speak.

That aspect to the story and a later scene where some animals undergo a transformation packs a surprisingly emotional (and dark) punch and maybe makes the movie scarier than your standard PG movie. Odd to say about talking animals but it grounded all the magic and the pink fluff of Galinda in something unexpectedly real. This is fairy tale land, but not a perfect sugary one, which makes for a more nuanced story.

But that is probably not why we’re all here. The movie does right by the music — sure, Grande can feel a little “doing a Kristin Chenoweth” at times, but she creates a fully formed character who can match the heft her songs require. Erivo is likewise absolutely great. If there’s any knock (not really) on her performance, it’s that she is so absolutely stunning at all times that the “ew, she’s green!” stuff is a hard sell. Her “Defying Gravity” is chills-inducing and she is equally at ease with both the intensity and comedy elements of her character. The look of the movie is a delight — a fantastical explosion of color and production design that manages to make Oz look, mostly, like a physical setting rather than just images on a green screen. The costumes are also quite lovely, with wit and thoughtfulness about what they’re trying to convey about the characters. You know, a fun movie that is a joy to watch on a big screen — what a nice holiday treat! B+

Rated PG for some scary action, thematic material and brief suggestive material, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Jon M. Chu with a screenplay by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox, Wicked is two hours and 40 minutes long (worth it for the fun Menzel and Chenoweth cameo) and distributed in theaters (which ask you to please not sing, like, there was a sign and everything; a singalong version will be released on Dec. 25) by Universal Studios.

Gladiator II (R)

Gladiator II Maximus-es so hard, even though the character died in the now-24-year-old original film, that I’m hoping Russell Crowe got royalties.

The movie is set some 16 or so years after the action of the first movie, with Rome still being a corrupt empire and Connie Nielsen, who is now 59 years old in real life, still looking fabulous. We meet simple non-Roman guy Hanno (Paul Mescal) and his wife Arishat (Yuval Gonen), who are just two crazy kids in love, doing chores, but then having to suit up in armor when the “suit up” horn sounds. It seems the Roman navy is nearly at the walls of their city in Numidia. The Romans, led by general Acacius (Pedro Pascal), attack. Arishat is a good archer but Acacius himself calls for her to be killed when she kills one of the Roman soldiers fighting next to him, thus Making It Personal for Hanno, who wants not just revenge against the whole Roman army, which quickly defeats the city, but specific revenge against Acacius.

Hanno is enslaved and sold to Macrinus (Denzel Washington), who sees the spark of a promising gladiator in him. He brings Hanno into his training school, promising him that if he is successful, Macrinus will see that Hanno gets a chance to kill Acacius.

Meanwhile, Acacius returns to Rome and the very petulant club kids who are the twin Emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger). They tell him to buckle up for their big plans to conquer India and Persia. When Acacius gets home, he sighs to his wife that these doofuses are the worst (paraphrasing). Surprise! — his wife is Lucilla (Nielsen), sister to Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus in the first movie, who is still trying to be the adult in the room for addled emperors and regain the “dream of Rome.” Never once will you think to yourself “hey, what became of Lucilla’s kid from the first movie” because the movie makes it instantly pretty clear what became of him and retcons some extra action for his character that felt very The Rise of Skywalker (not complimentary).

Lucilla and her dumb plans (has she been playing the long game for 16 years through how many emperors?) and Acacius and the various senators (including one played by Derek Jacobi, the other one of the I think only two actors to return from the first movie) and even Hanno and his revenge are all very small potatoes compared to the big, velvet-covered ham-ery of Denzel Washington. His character is all-singing, all-dancing robes and jewelry awesomeness. At first he’s presented as just another guy on the come-up, trying to take money from the elite of Rome. But then we find out that he has — successfully, way more so than Lucilla — been playing a much longer, somewhat lunatic game. And Washington is eating all of this up with absolute relish, having a total blast whether he’s trying to sell Hanno on the benefits of the gladiator career path or waving around a severed head in front of a horrified senate. Washington doing his Denzel Washington laugh while shmoozing the movers and shakers — chef’s kiss. The movie when he’s not around: a bunch of “thinking about the Roman Empire” mush that doesn’t even keep its logic together with itself, much less actual Roman history. To be clear, I am not looking for accuracy with the timeline here, but I am looking for characters’ motivations to make sense from scene to scene. It’s like in this two-and-a-half-hour meander around the greater Rome metropolitan area the movie itself forgets who is on whose side and why. And through it all, characters — from the gladiators in the coliseum green rooms to Lucilla’s whole personal drama — will not shut up about the long dead Maximus, which helps (along with some lackluster battles and general “I’ve got your echoes in eternity” retreading of story details) to make everything feel like a flatter, duller copy of the first movie. A for Washington, C for everything else, so, like B-?

Rated R for strong bloody violence including one very silly laugh-out-loud moment during the end, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Ridley Scott with a screenplay by David Scarpa, Gladiator II is two hours and 30 minutes long and is distributed by Paramount Pictures

Martha Stewart is a hoot in Martha, the documentary from R.J. Cutler that she apparently has some issues with.

I’ve read that she thinks the documentary spends too much time on her legal woes, she felt some shots made her look old lady-ish, she wishes there was more hip-hop — which, delightful. But the sum total is that she comes off as someone who would be a blast to three-martini-lunch with, who could talk lousy relationships and Wall Street (where she briefly worked) and media and have some cutting remarks about everybody. Her complaints about the doc feel very on brand with the woman we meet in the film, someone who is exacting, who wants things done her way and is usually right about why and who had to fight through the 1980s and 1990s to get people (often men) to see her very successful vision. The doc gives her brand extensions (her Kmart line, for example), magazines and media empire in general as an example of Stewart understanding the marketplace and finding ways to capitalize on that understanding. I even think the section of the documentary that focuses on her prosecution puts the whole situation in a relatively positive light, highlighting the James Comey of it all, who was at the time the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the lead prosecutor of her case. The movie leaves it for you to make of all that what you will but Martha doesn’t shy away from giving her eyebrow-raised, unimpressed response to the whole ordeal and the people involved.

Martha is frank, frequently fun and a fascinating time capsule of a certain era of America, and New York City, that shows a woman continuing to roll on and have fun well past the age even famous and wealthy women are usually allowed to do that in public. B+ Streaming on Netflix.

The Apprentice (R)

At roughly the same time Martha was on the come-up, turning a catering business into cookbooks and wider fame, the son of a local landlord begins his quest to break free of his demanding father’s business shadow and make a name for himself in The Apprentice, a feature film that is basically the Donald Trump comic book character origin story.

The movie’s whole arc shows Trump going from a young-ish man in the 1970s who is somewhat unformed but still with Easter eggs of future personality and appearance elements to the late 1980s when he is basically the guy who any one of us could sketch or impersonate with at least some recognizability. The movie has a very “hey it’s Arkham Asylum” and “look, an Infinity Stone” feel to scenes of Sebastian Stan, as Trump, learning from Roy Cohn (a no-effort-spared Jeremy Strong) how to sell something as the best in the world, like you’ve never seen before, or wave away a problem as being very unfair. It’s Strong whose performance really stands out whereas Stan’s Trump, while not an SNL impersonation per se, is probably not going to escape whatever you come to the movie with regarding Trump. Strong’s performance is not, like, a study in Cohn’s psychology or anything but the coiled rage he brings to Cohn does make for interesting watching.

Maria Bakalova as Ivana is a choice — perhaps it’s because the actress first emerged in a Borat movie but there is some kind of inherent comedy vibe she brings to this movie, which is very dark in its humor and in how it portrays the Trumps’ marriage. She works, on balance, but it’s never not odd.

“Never not odd” might be a good descriptor for the movie as a whole. This is a movie about a person and era in the past, true but also fictionalized (as title cards explain), but also the movie itself is only a movie anybody bothered making because it has so much connection to our real-world present. That may be a more immersive experience than you’re looking for in your relax-on-the-couch movie-watching, but with its interesting performances and point of view about this time and place, I wasn’t bored and wasn’t sorry I watched it. B- Available for rent or purchase.

Saturday Night (R)

The public personas of both Donald Trump and Martha Stewart are embedded in American culture in part because of Saturday Night Live, the first episode of which is the focus of Saturday Night.

Actually, the movie’s focus is the 90 minutes before that first showtime in 1975, when showrunner Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) attempts to pull together a mess of sketches, music and comedy that ran three hours (twice as long as it should) in rehearsal and all of its differently persnickety personalities into a live show that will be allowed back on air next week. The network — as personified by Dave Tebet (Willem Dafoe) — is perhaps actively rooting for him to fail, says Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), one of the few executives supporting the Saturday Night concept. John Belushi (Matt Wood) thinks he’s an artist. Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) is gunning for Johnny Carson’s job. Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris) isn’t sure exactly why he’s there. The women — Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Laraine Newman (Emiky Fairn) and Jane Curtin (Kim Matula) — don’t seem to be given the same weight as the men (either on the show or in this movie). And Finn Wolfhard as an NBC page is just trying to get live humans in the building to be an audience for this whatever-it-is show.

I’ve seen this movie, which was directed by Jason Reitman and written by Reitman and Gil Kenan, called Aaron Sorkin-y and I see why. There is a little bit of the “my TV show will save America” vibe that Sorkin brought to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip here. And the movie allows Lorne Michaels to compare himself to Thomas Edison without giving it the eyeroll that I did. But there are also process elements here that I enjoyed, like their attempting to figure out the lighting and how to accomplish a five-second wardrobe change. Particularly if you have some kind of memory of those years, either live as they happened or in Comedy Central reruns decades later, Saturday Night is a slight but mostly fun look at a moment. B- Available for rent or purchase.

A newly minted 18-year-old is suddenly confronted with her 39-year-old self in My Old Ass, a very sweet coming-of-age comedy.

Elliot (Maisy Stella) has gone to the woods with her two best buddies to celebrate her birthday by taking mushrooms. Her friends seem to be seeing euphoric discos; Elliot is stuck sitting by the campfire complaining nothing is happening. And then Elliot (Aubrey Plaza) shows up. Old Elliot is bemused by Young Elliot, who is initially shocked but then wants to know, like, what stocks to buy so they can be rich in 20 years and what awesome things might happen to her. Old Elliot is wary of messing with the future too much but she does tell Young Elliot to spend more time with her family, to please wear her retainer and to stay away from anyone named Chad. Elliot doesn’t know a Chad — until she meets her dad’s summer worker on the family cranberry farm and he is, of course, Chad (Percy Hynes White).

Elliot, who has always been attracted to women, is shocked to learn she’s attracted to the potentially troublesome Chad. While dealing with this confusion, she is also approaching the big life change of heading to college. She has always been eager to leave her family’s farm and small town but now that it is a reality she finds herself full of conflicting emotions.

My Old Ass thinks a lot about last times — the last time you do a thing and whether you know when you’re doing it that it is the end of something. Some lasts sneak up on you — the last time Elliot’s mom (Maria Dizzia) rocked a toddler Elliot to sleep. Some, like the last times Elliot is suddenly encountering as she prepares to leave for college and have her “life start,” as she says, are clearly last times and she has to deal with all the bittersweetness of them while in the middle of them. My Old Ass approaches this — life transitions, what we miss and how we deal with it all — with genuine emotion and melancholy-tinged sweetness while also being funny and having just the right touch when it comes to the older-self-talks-to-younger-self aspect of the story. Great performances all around help sell the realness of this world, with special kudos to Stella. A

Rated R for language throughout, drug use and sexual material, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Megan Park, My Old Ass is an hour and 29 minutes long and distributed by Amazon MGM Studios. It is available for rent or purchase and is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

The Substance (R)

Demi Moore gives a very good, frequently quite funny performance in the goofy body horror The Substance.

Aging star Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) attempts to recapture the “best version” of herself with an underground treatment called the Substance. The neon green serum does not lift and tighten — it pushes a whole new younger, flawless version of yourself out of you, violently, creating a seam down the back that this new person has to sew up. The operating rule of the Substance is seven days on, seven days off — the perfect Substance-created version of yourself gets to be for seven days while the older you sleeps. In seven days, you must switch back. Both versions are “you” and the younger version needs a “stabilizer” (fluid syringed out of the older version’s back) to continue existing.

Sue (Margaret Qualley), Elisabeth’s “best version,” is able to win a spot as the host of the exercise show Elisabeth was just fired from and is quickly getting spots on billboards. When Elisabeth reawakens she is both proud of what her alter has accomplished and, very quickly, jealous. Later Sue’s carelessness with the seven-day-switch rule has immediate and disturbing consequences for Elisabeth.

The Substance has lots of tight shots gleefully highlighting the grossness of the human body even before the movie’s final third, when what feels like a tidy dark comedy horror about beauty, age and media takes a hard left turn into total bonkers territory. Like so bonkers that the movie pushes past where you think it will stop, enters a new realm of absolute lunacy and then keeps going, so that actually by the end I kinda respected the whole crazy circus of gore the movie became. What holds it together throughout is Moore, who really does some solid work here with both the desperation Elisabeth feels (and that the Substance exacerbates) and the movie’s comedy. B+

Available for rent or purchase and streaming on Mubi.

The 4:30 Movie (R)

Kevin Smith makes his The Fabelmans with The 4:30 Movie, a nostalgia-rich tale of teenage friendship and love and ye old 1980s pre-stadium-seating movie theaters.

Ben David (Austin Zajur) gets up the courage to ask Melody Barnegat (Siena Agudong), a girl he likes but ghosted after he got nervous when they kissed, to the 4:30 screening of what sounds like a middling detective movie — their local theater in suburban New Jersey isn’t playing Poltergeist II, the current hot ticket. The screening will come in the middle of a day of movies Ben has planned with his friends, dork Belly (Reed Northup) and dork-who-wants-so-badly-to-seem-greaser-cool Burny (Nicholas Cirillo). Belly seems perfectly happy for Ben but Burny is clearly nervous about how it will change the friendship dynamic. In addition to friend friction, obstacles to Ben’s romantic movie moment include a power-drunk cineplex owner (Ken Jeong), assorted burnout theater employees and Ben’s and Melody’s parents.

From the lingering shots of the post-rotary push-button desk phone to jokes about the surely-finished-forever Star Wars trilogy, The 4:30 Movie is all about the gooey nostalgia for a very specific late 1980s time and place and for the impact it had on Smith’s life. Actually, just how Fabelmans-y this movie is becomes ever more apparent as the movie goes on, culminating in a fun little credits scene. This much Kevin Smith-itude might not be for everyone but I thoroughly enjoyed it. B

Available for rent or purchase.

Two women visit a tech billionare’s luxury private island retreat but worry there might be something sinister beneath all the gourmet meals and free-flowing Champagne in Blink Twice.

Even if you didn’t know this is a horror movie, isn’t “tech billionaire” the giveaway that something sinister is afoot?

Frida (Naomi Ackie) and her roommate Jess (Alia Shawkat) work as waiters at a high-end function thrown by Slater King (Channing Tatum), the billionaire, who we see Frida Googling earlier, watching a video of him apologizing for unspecified bad behavior. After their work is done at the event, Frida and Jess change into fancy attire and sneak in, posing as guests. They meet Slater himself when he helps Frida up after she takes a tumble in her high heels and Frida and Jess end up hanging out with Slater’s crew. Eventually, this starstruck duo joins Slater’s group on a trip to Slater’s island, where he has chickens and lives simply or some billionaire nonsense.

When they get there, along with other women Sarah (Adria Arjona), Camilla (Liz Caribel) and Heather (Trew Mullen), Frida and Jess discover that nicely appointed rooms featuring white bikinis and flowy white beach wear have been prepared for them. There is also a group of dudes who are part of the proceedings, including Haley Joel Osment playing a bitter divorcee and Christian Slater playing what I can only call “the Christian Slater character” a.k.a. the other tell that this island has sinister elements.

The most spoiler-y thing I’ll say about how this story unfolds is that it features characters (women, naturally) being reminded several times to smile. Even in circumstances that are not strictly “horror”-y, this reminder isn’t exactly benign. In this way, Blink Twice could be part of a super depressing double feature with Woman of the Hour in the way it comments on how women use smiles and giggles in a not-always-successful attempt to not get murdered.

Blink Twice is a truly disturbing horror movie — worth a watch but not a spooky Halloween fun entry in the genre. With a thankful swirl of dark comedy, it sets up an extreme situation that gets to some very (unfortunately) relatable fears about dynamics between men and women and between the owns-an-island rich and everyone else. Solid performances all around — Channing Tatum, already well-documented as good at serving up goofballness — does a good job giving something much darker. Ackie and Arjona make their characters believable and believably skilled (and not) when it counts. And then there’s Geena Davis, who at some level is the personification of Gen Z-and-younger views of second and third wave feminism I think? The disturbing implications about her character are just one of many of this movie’s smart choices. B

Rated R for strong violent content, sexual assault, drug use and language throughout, and some sexual references, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Zoë Kravitz and written by Zoë Kravitz and E.T. Feigenbaum, Blink Twice is an hour and 42 minutes long, distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and available for rent or purchase.

Girl Haunts Boy (PG)

A 1920s adventure-seeking girl haunts a grief-enmeshed 2020s boy in the light-touch ghost-rom-com Girl Haunts Boy.

Teenager Bea (Peyton List, tough girl Tory of Cobra Kai) is hit by a car — and teaches us all the origins of the phrase “it’s a doozy” — after pocketing half of an ancient Egyptian ring-set she sees at a museum on a school trip in the 1920s. A hundred years later, teenager Cole (Michael Cimino, the Victor of Love, Victor) moves into Bea’s house with his recently widowed mother (Andrea Navedo) and finds Bea’s half of the ring. He puts it on and suddenly he can see and hear her and she has someone to talk to after decades alone.

Bea and Cole become friends with a side of Maybe Something More even though she can’t make physical contact with humans or leave the general vicinity of the ring. And bringing some extra helpings of com to this rom-com is Lydia (Phoebe Holden), also a high schooler, who has a YouTube channel about the supernatural and senses that Cole has something spooky happening with him.

Girl Haunts Boy feels very middle-of-the-road streaming-Christmas-movie in both its quality (of writing, of ghosty special effects) and its emotional depth — but that isn’t really a dig. This feels perfectly serviceable as teen romance programming and didn’t pain me, as a grown-up, to watch it either. This might be the best possible programming to watch with your young teen as it only requires maybe 30 percent tops of your attention to get the gist. You can goof around on your phone, they can goof around on their phone and technically you’re still doing an activity together. C

Rated PG for mild thematic elements and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Emily Ting with a story by Dustin Ellis, based on the book by Cesar Vitale, Girl Haunts Boy is an hour and 40 minutes long and is streaming on Netflix.

Wolfs (R)

George Clooney and Brad Pitt have delightful irritated-buddy chemistry that feels like the whole reason for being for Wolfs, a lightweight crime comedy thing.

When a man — legally speaking, but more of a boy really — jumps off the bed, crashes into a bar cart and lies in a puddle of blood in the swank hotel room of the district attorney (Amy Ryan), she calls for help. An unnamed man, listed as [ ] in her phone, calls her back. George Clooney, as [ ], arrives all leather jacket and deep reassuring voice, ready to make it so she was never in the hotel room and the kid (Austin Abrams) had nothing to do with her. He is about to start his work when there is a knock at the door and another cool, reassuring man walks in — Brad Pitt — ready to help the district attorney out of her situation, which was viewed by hotel security cameras in the room by Pam (Frances McDormand). Eventually, Pam calls and tells the two men to work together to clean up the situation, and with deep annoyance and distrust, they begin to do so — cleaning out the hotel, giving the district attorney an alibi and a change of clothes, loading up the body.

Except, about that body, some mix of the drugs he’s on and the chaos of the situation meant they never really did a complete check of his pulse and the body is still a living, if unwell, person. And he is in possession of four large bricks of some kind of drug that these reluctant partners realize somebody is going to come looking for. Eventually these two are driving the kid around the city, with various underworld stops as they try to clean up the original mess without creating bigger problems with criminal types such as “The Albanians,” “The Croatian” and whoever the kid’s friend Diego is working for.

But really, this movie is about Clooney and Pitt, affectionately bickering and lightly picking on either other. Pitt’s character ribs Clooney’s for being old, Clooney’s treats Pitt’s as kind of a know-nothing. It’s cute, occasionally fun and very light. I don’t understand the economics of this kind of movie — big-deal stars in a big-deal-seeming movie that is released on a streamer most people probably have because it came with their phone — but the home viewing element does do this movie the favor that the hangout nature of things is enough. Their nitpick-y banter is charming, or at least charming enough, and if you like either or both of these actors this movie is a fine venue to hang out with them. B

Rate R for language throughout and some violent content, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Jon Watts, Wolfs is a breezy hour and 48 minutes long and is available on AppleTV+.

Caddo Lake (PG-13)

A swampy lake on the Texas-Louisiana border becomes a nexus of mystery in the twisty thriller Caddo Lake.

During drought, the Caddo Lake recedes to reveal more of the muddy marshy woods that surround it. Teenager Ellie (Eliza Scanlen) can still use the family’s motorboot to get around their small, lake-centered town, using it to get to a friend’s house to stay in the days after a fight with her mother (Lauren Ambrose). Though she and her mom aren’t on great terms, she still hangs out with Anna (Caroline Falk), her 8-year-old stepsister and the daughter of Ellie’s mom’s husband (Eric Lange), the family peacemaker.

Twenty-something Paris (Dylan O’Brien) works construction around the lake and seems to be a constant worry to his father (Sam Hemmings). Paris’ mother died in a car accident near the lake a few years earlier and Paris is obsessed with a mysterious medical condition she had that may have had something to do with the accident.

After a family gathering and another fight between Ellie and her mother, Ellie once again storms out of the family home. What she doesn’t realize is that Anna has followed her, taking a skiff, and the next day can’t be found anywhere. Meanwhile Paris is seeing and hearing odd things near the lake. Do the strange things he’s encountering have something to do with Anna’s disappearance?

The “what” of the “what’s going on” here isn’t terribly surprising but the movie unfolds its story with enough skill that I held on to the action. Paris and Ellie (and Scanlen and O’Brien) and their twin obsessive searches for the mystery of the lake make for compelling enough action. B-

Rated PG-13 for some disturbing/bloody images, thematic elements and brief strong language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Logan George and Celine Held, Caddo Lake is an hour and 39 minutes long and distributed by New Line Cinema. It is streaming on Max.