Category: Film Reviews by Amy

Space Jam: A New Legacy (PG)

LeBron James joins the Looney Tunes on the animated basketball court in Space Jam: A New Legacy, a pretty impressive flex by Warner Bros.

More than anything else, this movie seems crafted to remind you of all the properties under the Warner Brothers umbrella — Harry Potter, the DC superheroes, Game of Thrones, The Wizard of Oz, the Matrix movies. It’s like Warner Bros. was like “what can we do to convince people Disney doesn’t own everything?”

I should admit up front that I don’t think I’ve ever seen 1996’s Space Jam. It’s not like there’s some overarching mythology that I’m not able to plug in to but if there is some kind of nostalgia factor, I’m not going to hear the sounds at that particular frequency. (On the flip side, this movie also isn’t going to destroy my childhood memories or anything. I suppose I can catch up if I want as the original Space Jam is available on HBO Max.)

Human LeBron James lives in live-action Los Angeles with what Wikipedia calls a fictionalized version of his real family: wife Kamiyah (Sonequa Martin-Green), young daughter Xosha (Harper Lee Alexander), oldest teen basketball-star son Darius (Ceyair J. Wright) and younger teen “basketball, meh” son Dom (Cedric Joe). Dom’s thing isn’t real-world basketball but a basketball themed video game he’s constructing. Despite the impressive graphics and potential profitability of the game, LeBron just sees it as a distraction from Dom buckling down to really work on his basketball skills. Why can’t you appreciate me for me, says Dom, echoing every movie kid ever.

As if to underline just how profitable Dom’s skills could be, LeBron and son go to the Warner Bros. lot to see a presentation for Warner 3000, a plan by Al G. Rhythm (Don Cheadle), a try-hard attention-seeking algorithm/artificial intelligence/sentient digital being that’s making content for Warner Bros.

Al demonstrates how he can put a computer-generated version of animated LeBron in a variety of Warner Bros. intellectual properties, thus making money for everybody without LeBron ever having to physically step on set. Dom is impressed by all the tech but LeBron says hard pass to this plan that he thinks will just pull his attention away from basketball.

Because Al is very upset that nobody recognizes his contributions and hurt that LeBron made fun of his Warner 3000, he sucks Dom and LeBron into the, uhm, digital “serververse.” He tells LeBron that if he’s so keen to focus on basketball now he can — the catch being that if he doesn’t win an in-the-digital-world game against Al’s team (crafted from Dom’s game with versions of current NBA/WNBA players) he and Dom will never get out of the Warnerverse.

When Al sends LeBron off to gather his team, a now animated LeBron winds up in Tune world, where he meets Bugs Bunny (voice by Jeff Bergman). Bugs tells him that Al convinced the other Tunes to scatter to other Warner worlds and thus do Bugs and LeBron set out to find Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Wile E. Coyote and the rest to fill up the Tune Squad and take on Al’s Goon Squad.

Just in case you needed another swing through Warner’s content offerings.

Do your kids like basketball? Do they like the Looney Tunes or cartoons in general? They will probably at least tolerate A New Legacy. I kind of feel like “parents will be familiar with it, kids will at least tolerate it” and “we can pull out all of our recognizable properties” are the point and driving purpose of this movie. A summer film with this mix of marketability would probably always do well but seems like it has particular potential now, with family movies being some of the most successful sustained hits of the pandemic era (it won its first weekend in theaters, making a little less than $32 million, according to IndieWire).

If it sounds like I’m talking about this movie solely as a product it’s because it feels very much like a product. Not a bad product; A New Legacy feels like the fast-food chicken sandwich combo meal with movie tie-in bag and collectible toy that can nonetheless really hit the spot sometimes. But there’s nothing deeper there. LeBron James is, well, not an actor but he’s plenty affable and he does what the story needs him to do. The movie doesn’t do anything particularly clever with its tooniness (though there are the occasional good jokes, such as when one of the toons reminds LeBron that they’re not called the “Fundamentals Tunes” when he tells them not to do anything looney out on the court).

Space Jam: A New Legacy doesn’t feel like a classic in the making but as someone always on the lookout for “mostly attention-holding and not inappropriate for kids” entertainment (with some general messaging about trying and being yourself) this meets that standard. C+

Rated PG for some cartoon violence and some language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Malcolm D. Lee with a screenplay by Juel Taylor & Tony Rettenmaier & Keenan Coogler & Terence Nance and Jesse Gordon and Celeste Ballard, Space Jam: A New Legacy is an hour and 55 minutes long and distributed by Warner Bros. It is available on HBO Max and in theaters.

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (PG-13)

People you probably remember as “oh yeah, that girl” and “right, that guy” return for another bout of puzzle-solving and death in Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, a sequel to the 2019 movie.

That fact right there might be the most shocking thing about this movie: its preceding entry was released in January 2019. That’s a mere two and a half years ago but also, like, easily a decade or two ago in terms of how far it feels from now and how much I even remember January 2019. This movie seems to know this and shows you clips of the first movie with some voiceover that basically gives you the gist: This escape room puzzle competition is actually To The Death with nameless rich people out there in the world watching and betting on the hapless “players.” Someone survives sometimes, I guess, and in one of the games (the one we in the audience saw in 2019) two people survived: Ben (Logan Miller) and Zoey (Taylor Russell), who was smart enough to kind of break through the game and save Ben from a murderous game master.

After they escaped they couldn’t get anyone to believe their story that a company called Minos was killing people for entertainment, but Zoey is still determined to find evidence that will bring that company down. She found a clue leading to New York City and eventually worked up the nerve to go there with Ben. (This is more or less where the first movie ended, with the pair planning to go to New York. In this movie, they make the trip.)

While investigating, they wind up in a subway car, just a totally normal mostly empty subway car with a few similarly aged people, all of whom seem to be sporting some kind of scar or visible sign of a past trauma. When that subway car comes loose from the rest of the train and goes hurtling toward an empty stretch of track, Zoey, Ben and four people (Thomas Cocquerel, Holland Roden, Indya Moore, Carlito Olivero), who hopefully are paid up on their life insurance, pretty quickly figure out that they have all experienced a Minos game before and are now in some kind of “tournament of champions,” as one person correctly guesses/states the movie’s title. Since they all know how the game is played, they quickly get to work trying to figure out how to not die but this game is deadlier than their first outing. I think, or maybe they’re just more freaked out from the jump so it seems more intense. It also feels snappier than I remember, which I appreciate.

So, do you personally need to know the mythology of Minos and the game or can you just live in the moment? If, like Zoey, you want to know who is behind this and bring the whole system down and make them pay and yada yada yada, this is probably not your movie, in that “yada yada yada” seems to be the overall approach to the grand story here. If you can just be in the moment of each puzzle room and ride the rollercoaster that is spotting the clues and figuring out how that particular room is likely to kill one of the people who is left (and then you get the fun of guessing who that is going to be), then this movie is fine. Not thrill-a-minute but not boring, not smart but not too dumb and with a kind of silly cleverness. It’s fine, it’s adequate, it meets the basic requirements of entertainment in that you can watch it and be distracted from your immediate surroundings.

There’s nothing here that in the slightest reaches out to anybody not already inclined to go see this second of what I suspect will be at least three movies but I feel like if you liked the first Escape Room movie enough (enough to say remember that there was a first Escape Room and basically what it was about without having to look up details) this won’t disappoint you. C+

Rated PG-13 for violence, terror/peril and strong language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Adam Robitel with a screenplay by Will Honley and Maria Melnik & Daniel Tuck and Oren Uziel, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is an hour and 28 minutes long and is distributed by Columbia Pictures. It is in theaters.

Pig (R)

Nicholas Cage wants his pig back in Pig, a movie whose basic description does not match its surprising amount of grace.

Rob (Cage) lives somewhere in the woods of Oregon, hunting truffles for a living but otherwise shutting out the rest of the world. His hunting partner is a pig who is clearly not just a working animal but his one living source of emotional connection. When two people break into his cabin, beating him and stealing his pig, the first thing Rob does when he wakes up is to start searching.

Because a busted old truck can’t take him much beyond his own property — and probably because he wants to start his search with the one other human he sees regularly — Rob calls Amir (Alex Wolff), the guy who buys his truffles. After some searching around his rural area, Rob gets a clue — the guy his pig was sold to was “from the city.” Though Amir thinks that’s not nearly enough information to go on, Rob gets Amir to drive him to Portland to search for his beloved pig.

I’ve seen at least one headline that called this movie “John Wick with a pig” and while that’s not untrue in terms of some of the themes and there are some similarities to the basic details of the plot, the movie I thought of most while watching this was First Cow. Something about the relationships between people and animals, the Pacific Northwest setting and the way food is a source of comfort, memory and commerce kept bringing me back to First Cow. That and something in the way the movie can be mournful but dryly funny, grimy (both visually and in tone) but also full of grace (again, both visually and in the way it displays people’s core emotions).

While we get a few clues about Rob pre-pignapping, it’s when Rob and Amir get to Portland that we learn Rob has A Past. I like how the movie unfolds this information — which is why I’m not getting more into it — and what the movie chooses to tell us about Rob. In the end, we don’t know his whole biography, but we do get to what kind of person Rob is. And, as much as I credit the script for this, Cage deserves a lot of the credit as well. This is a restrained but rich performance from him.

Pig has that satisfying feel of a really good short story — sure, you don’t get every answer but you get a thoroughly engrossing experience with a fully realized world and set of characters. A

Rated R for language and some violence, according to MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, Pig is an hour and 32 minutes long and distributed by Neon. It is in theaters.

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (R)

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is probably well titled in that it is “a” documentary, not necessarily a definitive documentary, about the late chef turned author turned TV personality.

Though, “TV personality” doesn’t seem exactly right for Bourdain or for the legacy of his TV shows. Some of the people here argue that his shows, which changed titles and channels and eventually became Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown on CNN, are doing journalism, or at least a kind of journalism. And, they say, the more he traveled, the less they were about food and the more they became about people and even the impact that traveling to new places and meeting new people has on the traveler. This feels true. I watched Bourdain’s shows on and off over the years but the ones I saw most frequently and that really stick with me are Parts Unknown, particularly the last four or so seasons, which really seemed to capture the mood of the world at the time in addition to talking about food. (All 12 seasons are available on HBO Max, which is one of the producers of this film. The show before that, No Reservations, appears to be available on Discovery+.)

Here, we get something like a biography of Bourdain, focusing on the period starting in his early 40s, when he was a working chef at Les Halles in New York City, through his fame as an author and then as the host of TV shows. The shows started as, roughly, food-themed travel but morphed into something that captured the “be a traveler, not a tourist” saying. In addition to his career (though not all of his career; I recall some Top Chef years that aren’t mentioned here) we get a look at his personal life. We see the toll the course of his career takes on two marriages, his desire to be a good father after having a daughter late in life, his love for/obsession with travel, the lingering effects of his addiction to heroin and his general life outlook that is frequently described by friends and coworkers as “dark.”

The movie does a good job showing how Bourdain found his groove as a host of his shows, how it brought out his voice and how he was able to mold the shows into something more complex than food tourism. Because this movie is so focused on his TV career, we get a lot of what went in to developing these shows and I always enjoy this kind of processy element. Bourdain comes off as a kind of artist — largely an artist of things (food, cable TV shows) that exist in the moment.

This movie definitely has a point of view. The people interviewed here are, in addition to friends, largely people connected with the production of his shows. Asia Argento, whom he had been dating at the time of his death by suicide in 2018, doesn’t give an interview and it’s been reported (all over the place but I read it in Vulture) that this was a choice that the director made. This wouldn’t matter so much except that Bourdain’s TV coworkers who speak here do not seem to like Argento and did not enjoy working with her around. The crew is self-aware enough that one of the directors realizes what he’s saying comes off as a kind of blame that is maybe not fair, but everything about Argento here is just odd in its presentation. Like elements of Bourdain’s life, it’s a situation for which there is no easy solution. It would have been odd not to mention her; it would have been odd to make the movie more about her.

As has also been widely reported, the movie uses some deepfake vocal effects to have Bourdain’s voice say things he wrote but which there is no recording of him saying out loud. This is an odd choice. Bourdain has such a distinctive writerly voice, as is evidenced by an instance of someone reading a note from him, that we don’t need some simulacrum of his voice saying the words for us to know they’re from him.

These things get in the way of what is often a funny and puffery-eschewing documentary that calls nonsense on some of the “foodie bad boy” stuff and also offers an interesting examination of his work.

The documentary isn’t perfect but I suppose that fits — Bourdain wasn’t perfect. And there’s something very affecting about the way the movie talks about his death and his mental health and how his friends and longtime coworkers wrestle with it.

Ultimately, the movie made me want to revisit Bourdain’s work, maybe check out some of the books I haven’t read over the years. He was a massive talent and the movie offers a bittersweet reminder of this. B+

Rated R for language throughout, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Morgan Neville, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is an hour and 59 minutes long and distributed by Focus Features. It is currently in theaters and, according to a July 18 story on The Hollywood Reporter website, it will be available on VOD in a few weeks and later be broadcast on CNN and stream on HBO Max.

Featured photo: Space Jam: A New Legacy

FILM

Venues

Chunky’s Cinema Pub
707 Huse Road, Manchester;
151 Coliseum Ave., Nashua;
150 Bridge St., Pelham, chunkys.com

O’neil Cinemas at Brickyard Square
24 Calef Highway, Epping
679-3529, oneilcinemas.com

Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org

Rex Theatre
23 Amherst St., Manchester
668-5588, palacetheatre.org

Wilton Town Hall Theatre
40 Main St., Wilton
wiltontownhalltheatre.com, 654-3456

Shows

• Hotel Transylvania (PG, 2012) a “Little Lunch Date” screening at Chunky’s in Manchester, Nashua & Pelham on Wednesday, July 21, at 11:30 a.m. Reserve tickets in advance with $5 food vouchers. The screening is kid-friendly, with lights dimmed slightly, according to the website.

• Grease(PG, 1978) a senior showing on Thursday, July 22, at 11:30 a.m. at Chunky’s in Manchester, Nashua and Pelham. Admission free but reserve tickets in advance with $5 food vouchers.

• 21+ Scratch Ticket Bingo on Thursday, July 22, at 7 p.m. at Chunky’s in Manchester and Nashua. Admission costs $10.

• The Sandlot 21+ trivia night at Chunky’s in Manchester on Thursday, July 22, at 7:30 p.m. Admission costs $5, which is a food voucher.

• Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain(R, 2021) Friday, July 23, through Sunday, July 25, at 12:30, 3:30 & 6:30 p.m. at Red River Theatres.

• Pig (R, 2021) Friday, July 23, through Sunday, July 25, at 12:30, 3:30 and 6:30 p.m. at Red River Theatres in Concord.

• I Carry You With Me (R, 2021) Friday, July 23, through Sunday, July 25, at 4 & 7 p.m. at Red River Theatres in Concord.

• Summer of Soul (PG-13, 2021) Friday, July 23, through Sunday, July 25, at 1 p.m. at Red River Theatres in Concord.

• 21+ “Life’s a DRAG” Show on Saturday, July 24, at 9 p.m. at Chunky’s in Manchester. Tickets cost $25.

• Branded a Bandit (1924) andThe Iron Rider (1926) silent film Westerns with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Sunday, July 25, 2 p.m., at Wilton Town Hall Theatres. Screenings are free but a $10 donation per person is suggested.

• Jaws screening and kitchen takeover with Chef Keith Sarasin of The Farmers Dinner on Sunday, July 25, at 7 p.m. at Chunky’s in Manchester. The dinner costs $65 (plus tax and tip). Vegetarian option and a wine pairing option are also available. Buy tickets in advance online.

• The Goonies (PG, 1985) at the O’neil Cinema in Epping on Monday, July 26, and Wednesday, July 28, at 10 a.m. Tickets $2 for kids ages 11 and under and $3 for ages 13 and up. A $5 popcorn and drink combo is also for sale.

• High School Musical 2 (TV-G, 2007) screening on Wednesday, July 28, 7 p.m. at the Rex Theatre to benefit the Palace Youth Theatre. Tickets cost $12.

• Jaws 21+ trivia night at Chunky’s in Manchester on Thursday, July 29, at 7:30 p.m. Admission costs $5, which is a food voucher.

• Jungle Cruise (PG-13, 2021) a sensory friendly flix screening, with sound lowered and lights up, on Saturday, July 31, 10 a.m. at O’neil Cinema in Epping.

• The Wizard of Oz (1939) at the O’neil Cinema in Epping on Monday, Aug. 2, and Wednesday, Aug. 4, at 10 a.m. Tickets $2 for kids ages 11 and under and $3 for ages 13 and up. A $5 popcorn and drink combo is also for sale.

Black Widow (PG-13)

The Avengers’ Black Widow finally gets her stand-alone, sorta-origin movie with Black Widow, the first movie to return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home.

You don’t have to be a total MCU completist to enjoy this movie but it does help when it comes to orienting this movie in the MCU timeline. If you’ve seen Avengers: Endgame and are wondering how Black Widow is having any kind of adventure, stand-alone or otherwise, this movie’s “present” quickly sets up that we are immediately post-Captain America: Civil War and a while pre Avengers: Infinity War. There are actually five movies (Dr. Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor Ragnarok and Black Panther) that come between those two Avengers-heavy films and you could easily imagine a world in which Black Widow was also sandwiched in there. It could have given more oomph to her Infinity War and Endgame character arc and helped make Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow feel like a more fully rounded member of the Avengers and not just an “and also.”

Here, we see not the beginnings of Natasha, who we’ve learned previously was an assassin trained by some kind of quasi-governmental (like S.H.I.E.L.D.?) Russian spy entity, but the origin story of her sense of the importance of family. In 1995 Ohio, a tween/young-teen Natasha (Ever Anderson) is living a boring suburban life with her 6-year-old “sister” Yelena (Violet McGraw) and their “mom” Melina (Rachel Weisz) and “dad” Alexei (David Harbour). But, as we realize when the family suddenly has to flee, their boring suburban life was actually a boring suburban cover and all of these unrelated people are secret agents.

Years go by and Natasha becomes the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent turned Avenger turned anti-Sokovia-Accord fugitive we know from MCU movies past. Yelena (Florence Pugh) meanwhile has grown up to become what Natasha once was, a Widow who still works for the shadowy Russian organization mostly as an expert assassin. We see her chase a target who has been marked for assassination and who has a case Yelena is meant to retrieve. But as she’s getting the case, the target, who is herself a former Widow, sprays Yelena with a red mist. Yelena and all the Widows are acting under the influence of some kind of mind control and the spray has released Yelena from it.

The two women reunite and decide to work together to bring down Dreykov (Ray Winstone), the man who runs the Red Room, the organization that turns vulnerable girls, like Natasha and Yelena, into super soldiers (the ones who survive training) and continues to control not only all their life choices but their minds.

Helping women regain their agency — someone smarter than me can write a thesis about how this mission fits in the MCU worldview and what it says about the MCU’s attempt to course-correct from putting its Strong Female Characters on the sidelines until, like, 2019 and Captain Marvel. But I enjoyed it. Enjoyed it a lot, actually. I feel like this is a really solid examination of this character we didn’t get to know as well in previous movies. It makes sense with what we know about Natasha, it helps us understand her motivations (all the desire to atone and importance of family that was part of her arc in previous movies) and it actually gives more depth to how her story plays out in Endgame.

Johansson of course does a good job with what she’s given here. I say of course because she’s been playing this character since 2010’s Iron Man 2. But she’s also able to bring more to Natasha, more than that goofy “lot of red on my ledger” speech from The Avengers and her sorta romance with Hulk. I wish we could see more of this Black Widow (I mean, I guess we could, conceivably, with a post-this-pre-that sequel, Fast & Furious style).

I also hope there’s a way to see Pugh’s Yelena again. Pugh matches Johansson’s energy and creates an intriguing character of her own. The women have solid sisterly and buddies-on-a-mission energy.

And there is a post-credits scene (of course there is) that suggests how this slice of the MCU can continue (also, if you haven’t caught up on all the Disney+ Marvel TV shows, the post-credits scene might be the incentive you need).

Black Widow is one of the better examples of Marvel’s ability to balance sentiment, humor and action; fill in a narrative hole, and create something that is an overall good time. B+

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence/action, some language and thematic material, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Cate Shortland with a screenplay by Eric Pearson, Black Widow is two hours and 13 minutes long and distributed by Walt Disney Studios in theaters and on Disney+ for $29.99. It will be available on Disney+ without the extra fee on Oct 6.

Featured photo: Black Widow

FILM

Venues

Bank of NH Stage in Concord
16 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, banknhstage.com

Capitol Center for the Arts
44 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, ccanh.com

Chunky’s Cinema Pub
707 Huse Road, Manchester;
151 Coliseum Ave., Nashua;
150 Bridge St., Pelham, chunkys.com

O’neil Cinemas at Brickyard Square
24 Calef Highway, Epping
679-3529, oneilcinemas.com

Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org

Wilton Town Hall Theatre
40 Main St., Wilton
wiltontownhalltheatre.com, 654-3456

Shows

• Midsummer Silent Film Comedy with Sherlock Jr. (1924) and Our Hospitality (1923), both silent films starring Buster Keaton, on Thursday, July 15, at 7:30 p.m. at the Rex in Manchester, featuring live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis. Admission costs $10.

• Disney Villains 21+ trivia night at Chunky’s in Manchester on Thursday, July 15, at 7:30 p.m. Admission costs $5, which is a food voucher.

• Road Runner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, July 16, through Sunday, July 18, at 12:30 p.m., 3:30 p.m. & 6:30 p.m.

• Pig (R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, July 16, through Sunday, July 18, at 1:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m. & 7:30 p.m.

• Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)(PG-13, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, July 16, through Sunday, July 18, at 4 & 7 p.m.

• Dream Horse (PG, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, July 16, through Sunday, July 18, at 1 p.m.

• Space Jam: A New Legacy (PG, 2021) a sensory friendly flix screening, with sound lowered and lights up, on Saturday, July 17, 10 a.m. at O’neil Cinema in Epping.

• Theater Candy Bingo family-friendly game at Chunky’s in Manchester, Nashua and Pelham on Sunday, July 18, at 6:30 p.m. Admission costs $4.99 plus one theater candy.

• Elf (PG, 2003) at the O’neil Cinema in Epping on Monday, July 19, and Wednesday, July 21, at 10 a.m. as part of the summer kids series. Tickets to the screening cost $2 for kids ages 11 and under and $3 for ages 13 and up. A $5 popcorn and drink combo is also for sale.

• Hotel Transylvania (PG, 2012) a “Little Lunch Date” screening at Chunky’s in Manchester, Nashua & Pelham on Wednesday, July 21, at 11:30 a.m. Reserve tickets in advance with $5 food vouchers. The screening is kid-friendly, with lights dimmed slightly.

• Grease(PG, 1978) a senior showing on Thursday, July 22, at 11:30 a.m. at Chunky’s in Manchester, Nashua and Pelham. Free but reserve tickets in advance with $5 food vouchers.

• 21+ Scratch Ticket Bingo on Thursday, July 22, at 7 p.m. at Chunky’s in Manchester and Nashua. Admission costs $10.

• The Sandlot 21+ trivia night at Chunky’s in Manchester on Thursday, July 22, at 7:30 p.m. Admission is a $5 food voucher.

• 21+ “Life’s a DRAG” Show on Saturday, July 24, at 9 p.m. at Chunky’s in Manchester. Tickets cost $25.

• Branded a Bandit (1924) andThe Iron Rider (1926) silent film Westerns with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Sunday, July 25, 2 p.m., at Wilton Town Hall Theatres. Screenings are free but a $10 donation per person is suggested.

The Tomorrow War (PG-13)

Chris Pratt stars in the old-fashioned summer save-the-world popcorn movie The Tomorrow War, released on Amazon Prime Video.

Dan Forester (Pratt) is having difficulty getting ahead in his career (science something or other) but has all sorts of admiration from his wife, Emmy (Betty Gilpin), and young daughter, Muri (Ryan Kiera Armstrong). He’s in the middle of a consoling snuggle with the two of them while watching World Cup soccer when a wormhole opens up on midfield and soldiers come pouring through. They announce that they are from about 30 years in the future and are losing a war with an alien force. Come and fight with us to save humanity, they say, and, as news clips explain, the countries of the world eventually agree to a draft. The people drafted are both random and specific: They are men and women, fit and doughy, but most tend to be older — perhaps because, as Dan and fellow draftee Charlie (Sam Richardson) surmise, they will all be dead by 2052 and therefore won’t accidentally meet their older selves and cause a paradox.

When Dan is called up, it’s after nearly a year of the present sending soldiers to the future, with few returning and no sign that humanity’s prospects for winning the war are improving. He learns that draftees get very little training and not much in the way of uniforms; it’s just “here’s a gun, try not to get eaten.” The aliens, white insect/crustacean-y creatures, don’t have weapons (except for the sharp spikes that shoot out of their tentacles, hence their name “white spikes”) or even an organizing structure. They eat, people and whatever other animals cross their path, and once a week they go back to their nest-holes and rest (or, as we later learn, breed, which is why there are now so many of them). White spikes move fast and only lucky neck or abdomen shots take them out, so when Dan shows up in the future for his seven-day stint in the war, it’s clear that the outlook for humanity is bleak.

Dan, who once served in the military and did a tour of duty in Iraq (where he had a leadership role), is also a science teacher who has shared his love of science with his daughter. Charlie is also a former science professor who now works in tech research and development and makes up for his lack of military prowess with quips. Dan has a difficult relationship with his father, James (J.K. Simmons), who also has a military background and now has a shifty job fixing planes and skirting the law. I could list a few other Chekhov guns in the packed metaphorical armory of the first segment of this movie that go off in the final action set piece. There are a lot.

And that’s OK.

Like an Independence Day with a smaller budget and a lower wattage of stars, The Tomorrow War hits a lot of the familiar apocalypse action movie beats with a nice mix of shooting and explosions and humor and basically appealing characters played by actors who have more in them than this movie asks of them. It’s microwave popcorn fare, in the sense that it isn’t quite the fresh popcorn with real butter of summer blockbusters past and in the sense that you’ll be enjoying this one at home, which perhaps lowers the bar a little. If you need it, you can look for some deeper commentary about climate change and the ability of humans to come together (or not) when they really need to. But you also don’t need to dig that deep for a reason to basically enjoy this (long but forgivably so) lightweight summer movie. B-

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, language and some suggestive references, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Chris McKay with a screenplay by Zach Dean, The Tomorrow War is two hours and 20 minutes long and is distributed by Paramount Pictures but somehow available on Amazon Prime Video.

The Boss Baby: Family Business (PG)

The suit-and-tie baby of the 2017 The Boss Baby returns in The Boss Baby: Family Business, a cute animated movie that isn’t quite as rich as the original version but is still family-friendly.

And by that I mean not only that it is kid-appropriate (for, I don’t know, elementary schoolers and up) but also all about family. In the first movie, Boss Baby, also named Ted (voice of Alec Baldwin), is the younger brother of Tim (voiced in this movie by James Marsden). Though appearing to be a regular goo-goo-gaa-gaa baby, Boss Baby is actually a 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy-style corporate ladder-climber sent by his company, Baby Corp., on a mission. Tim deeply resented new baby Ted at first but eventually learned to live with him, in part by helping him with his corporate ambitions at Baby Corp., the company that is bullish on babies and tries to keep their affection rankings higher than those of, say, puppies.

In the years since, Ted and Tim have grown up and grown apart. (Actually, in the years since 2017, Boss Baby and Tim have had continuing adventures in a Netflix TV series called The Boss Baby: Back in Business, which has an enjoyably oddball sense of humor. For example: Boss Baby finds himself battling an outside consultant brought in to evaluate Baby Corp. managers and makes regular cracks about why you can’t trust the marketing department. In one episode, when the boys’ grandma fights with a department store over returning a blouse, she ends up unionizing the store workers. It’s weird and I recommend it.)

But now adult Tim is living in his parents’ (voiced by Jimmy Kimmel and Lisa Kudrow) old house with his wife Carol (voice of Eva Longoria) and their two daughters, second-grader Tabitha (voice of Ariana Greenblatt) and baby Tina (voice of Amy Sedaris). Tabitha has recently started at a new school and seems stressed out by its expectation for advanced math and proficiency in Mandarin. Tim, a stay-at-home dad, is worried that she is growing up too fast and growing away from him, not unlike how he and Ted have grown apart. Though they were once best friends, Ted is now very busy with his executive businessman lifestyle and mostly interacts with Tim by turning down invitations to come and visit and sending overly elaborate gifts.

This can not stand, decides Tina, who is, like her uncle before her, a Baby Corp. executive. She needs both Ted and Tim to help fight a new threat: Dr. Armstrong (voice of a very Jeff Goldblum-y Jeff Goldblum), the head of the international chain of high-achievement-focused schools (including Tabitha’s). Tina and Baby Corp. are certain he has some sort of shifty plan and they need Boss Baby to help them. Thus does Tina lure Ted to the family home and then dose both Ted and Tim with special de-aging formula that temporarily turns them back to roughly Tabitha-aged Tim and Boss Baby.

The first movie used the Boss Baby conceit as a way to play out Tim’s feelings about going from only child to oldest child with a pushy infant sibling. Likewise, this movie uses it to work through various family relationships — Tim and Ted, Tim and Tabitha and maybe Tim and his own sense of self if his oldest daughter doesn’t need him as much. And it works about as well as the first movie did, but this feels less kid-focused. Though he appears in a kid’s body, Tim is really an adult person with his adult person worries and the movie is more centered on those than on executive baby humor or kid antics.

That said, the movie did seem to have enough wackiness to entertain kids — there’s a lot of silliness with a horse, we do still get some “the horror of other babies” moments with Boss Baby. Goldblum brings a nice element of weirdness to his character who is a villain but not violent or particularly mean.

I think I liked the original The Boss Baby (which doesn’t appear to be streaming anywhere but is available for rent or purchase) more than a lot of reviewers. I still like the overall universe, as presented here, even if the sequel doesn’t quite match up. B

Rated PG for rude humor, mild language and some action, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Tom McGrath with a screenplay by Michael McCullers (based on the books by Marla Frazee), The Boss Baby: Family Business is an hour and 47 minutes long and is distributed by Universal Studios in theaters and on Peacock.

The Forever Purge (R)

The Purge-supporting totalitarian government of the U.S. is threatened by an even more violent social-media-organized group in The Forever Purge.

Don’t worry if you haven’t seen or have forgotten previous Purge entries (this is No. 5 in the series). This movie sort of catches you up/reorients you in the Purge universe: The Purge is the annual 12-hour period when people can commit any crimes they want and apparently what they want is to wear menacing animal masks and go on spree killings. It went away for a while but is back now, thanks to the recent elections favoring the Purge-supporting New Founding Fathers. They were reelected because of increased crime and anti-immigration sentiment and something something The Purge will fix it.

This movie, though, isn’t really about the Purge. While we see two main sets of characters prepare for and weather the Purge, most of the story takes place in the hours after it’s over.

The wealthy cattle ranching family in rural Texas the Tuckers gathers at their large, secure home for the Purge: there’s the paterfamilias Caleb (Will Patton), his adult daughter Harper (Leven Rambin), his sullen adult son Dylan (Josh Lucas) and Dylan’s pregnant wife, Emma Kate (Cassidy Freeman). None of them seem to be on Team Purge or Team Current Administration, though Dylan has some general resentment because his father and everybody else at the ranch knows that he’s not such a great cowboy. Certainly, he’s not a great cowboy compared to Juan (Tenoch Huerta), one of the ranch workers, and this makes Dylan all jealous, which he expresses via racism.

Juan and his wife Adela (Ana de la Reguera) are recent immigrants from Mexico and are aware of the weird annual festival of violence of their new home but they are determined to make it work, especially Adela. They spend Purge night hunkered down with other families in a fortified and guarded warehouse. And yet she remains optimistic about America and their future as the Purge ends and she heads back to her life. Optimistic right up to the moment when she is trapped and nearly killed by some mask-wearing loons telling her that it’s “purge ever after.” The Forever Purgers have decided one day of violence is not enough and want to continue the killing until everyone who doesn’t agree with their brand of white supremacist fascism is dead.

She and Juan and their friend (Alejandro Edda) and the Tuckers trying to find their way to safety — which is eventually identified as refuge in Mexico — makes up the bulk of this movie’s action, making it not really about some “organized chaos” day but about actual anarchy and the collapse of society.

I’ll try to separate what has always annoyed me about the Purge movies and the overall “watching a reenactment of your root canal” feel of this movie with what worked about it — and there are small elements that work.

I have always found the Purge as a concept maddening, both as public policy (how does it reduce crime and stimulate the economy? Even in a bread-and-circus sense it seems stupid) and as a story-telling device. The movies use the Purge as a sort of dippy murder fest — either thrill killing or petty revenge — without going much beyond that. There is a general “saying something about wealth inequality” sheen on these movies but they don’t really say that much; “rich people are jerks” is maybe as far as it goes.

So what works here? The movie gets its pacing right. It takes us from Juan and Adela’s backstory to Purge night to post-Purge pretty quickly. And it keeps up the energy without lingering too much on grisly violence for grisly violence’s sake.

Ana de la Reguera is a fun action heroine. We are probably with her more frequently than with any other one character and she definitely has that believable, can-do butt-kicking energy.

The movie also has some visual cleverness about juxtaposing Mexico and the chaotic U.S.; one of the final shots in particular made me think “huh, neat” for the way it referenced so many other movies.

Overall, though, The Forever Purge was a bummer, but I guess if Purge movies are your thing, this is maybe one of the better ones. C

Rated R for strong/bloody violence and language throughout, according to the MPA on filmlistings.com. Directed by Everado Gout with a screenplay by James DeMonaco, The Forever Purge is an hour and 43 minutes long and is distributed by Universal Studios, in theaters.

Featured photo: The Tomorrow War

F9 (PG-13)

Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto gets even more reason to talk about family in F9: The Fast Saga, a rather slow entry in this “what if James Bond were a muscle car” franchise.

Dom (Diesel) and his wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) are living off the grid. They are raising Dom’s young son, Brian (played by Isaac Holtane and Immanuel Holtane), and they don’t even have a phone (really?), so when old work buddies/Toretto crew “family” people Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridge) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) need to talk to Dom and Letty, they have to drive to the couple’s farm. (What do they farm, you ask? As far as I can tell, fancy guns and old vehicles.)

The trio arrives to tell the couple about a downed plane and an emergency communication, both involving Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), the shadowy government guy from previous movies, and Cipher (Charlize Theron), a villain from the previous movie who was being transported in Mr. Nobody’s plane. Also being transported in that airplane, which seems like a super terrible idea, was part of a potentially society-destroying weapon, which means that when the plane is run out of the sky the baddies involved can collect both a piece of the weapon and a possible ally.

After some “I can’t get involved, I’m a parent now” from Dom, he eventually decides to join Letty in joining the crew to help Mr. Nobody. They head to the spot in Mexico where the plane went down but before they can learn too much about what happened, a local military force shows up. In the midst of what turns into a shootout car chase, another set of bad guys arrive, this one featuring a face Dom recognizes: Jakob (John Cena), his long estranged younger brother.

The Dom vs. Jakob battle serves as the center of this movie, and forces us to flash back to 1989 to the brothers as young men (teens? 20somethings?). The movie spends a lot of time on their relationship and how it formed the kind of adults they became and how Jakob suffered when Dom shunned him because “the worst thing you can do to a Toretto is take away his family” — blah blah blah, it’s a lotta chat that really takes the time away from the good stuff, like a scene in the present day where Sean (Lucas Black), of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift fame, straps a rocket engine to a car or a scene where some of our heroes are driving on a rope bridge after one side is cut.

Other things happen: As has been spoiled all over the place, Han (Sung Kang), who died in Tokyo Drift (the third movie) and then appeared in the next three movies of the franchise (because time, like gravity and physics in general, works differently in the Fast & Furious movies), returns here. Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), who has been out of the franchise since the real-life death of Paul Walker and the retirement of his character Brian (to whom Mia is married), returns. This movie’s biggest star is probably the concept of magnetism; the movie has some fun with giant magnets in its various fight and chase scenes. An element of the final showdown involves space, which was great.

Yeah, I said space.

This may not be a popular opinion in the Fast & Furious community but I think these movies need at least a little action star power in the form of a Dwayne Johnson or a Jason Statham (the latter of whom was apparently in a post-credits scene that I did not stick around for because this movie is two hours and 25 minutes long and just enough with all that post-credits business, man). When Helen Mirren shows up to reprise her role as Queenie Shaw, mother of Statham’s Deckard Shaw character, you can see the difference between a strong screen presence having a good time hamming it up in these movies and the, uhm, not-exactly-master-thespians (at least, as this franchise presents them) in the main roles just sort of earnestly presenting some really silly dialogue. John Cena, who can be fun, isn’t given much room to play here; he frequently comes off as just sort of wooden until the movie’s final act. Theron really feels more like a guest role — it’s like even the movie realizes its bad guys aren’t that exciting and so it tries to dress things up with a little Cipher, all hissing insults and wacky hair.

Without big fun personalities having a big fun silly time and spreading that joy to you through the screen, you’re left with time between big action set pieces (which are the movie’s true big stars) to ponder the oh so many things that don’t make sense or aren’t explained or may have been explained in the last movie but no character details from the last movie are as memorable as the scene with a submarine-related car chase. Things like: Does the 1989 flashback mean that Dom is in his 50s? Actually, how old is anybody supposed to be? Is this really how magnets work? Is that really how space works? How does time work in this movie?

F9 isn’t the sort of movie that should leave room for you to ask any hole-poking questions while you’re watching it. But the length — much of which goes to the Dom/Jakob relationship, which I was never all that interested in —really bogs the movie down where it should be light and zippy. A merciless editor needed to get in there and slice a good 45 minutes of story. Depending on how you count it, this movie has like three villains and that is at least one and a half villains too many.

I wanted to enjoy F9; I have been looking forward to it for months. But too much of its runtime featured me impatiently waiting through all the yammering. I wanted more fast, more furious and less of the franchise flotsam. C+

Rated PG-13 for sequences of (totally, delightfully improbable) violence (including so much shooting where nobody hits anything) and action (magnets! space!), and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Justin Lin with a screenplay by Daniel Casey & Justin Lin, F9: The Fast Saga is two hours and 25 unnecessary minutes long and is distributed by Universal Studios in theaters.

All the Fast

F9 wasn’t my favorite Fast and Furious movie but I am no less a fan of the overall franchise (heck, I’ll probably even watch this one again some day and enjoy it even more, freed of the whole “F9 is bringing back movies” thing).

So where can you find all the previous Fasts and Furiouses?

The eight-film collection — which includes a bunch of extras such as the 2009 short film Los Bandoleros — is for sale on iTunes for $69.99 for the bundle (as with everything mentioned here, this is as of June 28). You can get physical DVDs of that same grouping of movies for between $34.96 and $62.99, depending on the format, from Amazon. Even better, you can also buy a physical copy of the nine-movie set, which includes Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw (a spinoff that is just a chef’s-kiss perfection-level example of this series at its least serious), for $52.99 for the Blu-ray. On its own, Hobbs & Shaw sells for $9.99 on iTunes.

In addition to buying or renting, where can you see the movies individually (preferably for “free” with a subscription service you already have)?

As of earlier this week, The Fast and the Furious, the 2001 first movie in the series, and 2 Fast 2 Furious, the 2003 second movie (and only Fast film not to include Vin Diesel’s Dom) are both currently available on HBO.

2006’s Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, which features neither Paul Walker’s Brian O’Connor or (in any significant way) Diesel’s Dom, but does have characters who factor in to F9, currently appears to be just available for rent or purchase.

The key characters from the first movie are all back together for Fast & Furious, the 2009 fourth movie, which is really when the series starts to hit its stride (and where Gal Gadot joins on). I recently caught a few minutes of the super fun early scenes of this movie (Dom and his crew steal gas from a tanker truck while it travels at high speed; Brian crashes through several windows chasing a bad guy) on some basic cable-type channel. It also appears to be only available for rent or purchase but Fast Five, the 2011 movie that introduces Dwayne Johnson’s Hobbs, is currently available on Peacock for free.

Fast & Furious 6 from 2013 brings back a character who died in an earlier movie, as well as introducing the London-based Shaw family (in the form of Owen Shaw, played by Luke Evans). Roku says this entry is available from Peacock with a subscription as well as TNT, TBS and TruTV (all with subscriptions or cable service).

Furious 7 from 2015 brings in Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw and sends off Walker, whose real-life death leads to the retirement of the Brian character from The Life. This is also the movie where a car drives from one skyscraper into another skyscraper way up in the sky in Abu Dhabi. I’m not going to try to argue that it is the best moment in film but, like, it’s on the list. Pretty high. You can see this movie on Hulu with a Live TV subscription or, according to Roku, with a cable provider login to FXNow.

The Fate of the Furious (the eighth film, from 2017) is poetry — you get Helen Mirren as mum to Statham’s character, the beginning of a beautiful frenemyship between Statham and Johnson’s character, a superbly well-choreographed fight scene involving a baby, a car chase involving a submarine.

As with Fate, Fast and Furious: Hobbs & Shaw (a sidequel from 2019 with more Johnson, more Statham, more Mirren, Idris Elba and Ryan Reynolds plus the Oscar-nominated Vanessa Kirby) doesn’t appear to be available on a streaming service, only for rent or purchase. But I greatly enjoyed it and these last three movies — Hobbs & Shaw, The Fate of the Furious and Furious 7 — might be my favorites of the franchise and would make a great dumb and fun triple feature.

All the more reason to shell out for the whole package.

Featured photo: F9

Luca (PG)

A young sea creature explores land and makes friends in Luca, an animated Pixar movie about a lot of things that I would lump in the “growing up” category.

I think Luca might be part of a good double feature with Inside Out, another Pixar movie about moving from little kid to an older and more aware phase of life. Where that movie was focused on the internal mechanics of that process — what does it feel like to grow and change and accept sadness and bittersweetness as part of life — Luca feels more like the external mechanics of growing up, learning to take chances but also take care of yourself, be a part of your family but still separate from your family, find friends who share your values, stand up for what you know is right and make things right when you make a mistake. How to approach and operate in the world feels like the broad ground covered in Luca.

Luca (voice of Jacob Tremblay) is a young sea creature (picture a water dragon crossed with a sea monkey but in bold tropical colors) who lives with his family in the bright sapphire-blue waters off the Italian coast. He spends his days herding the family’s flock of sheep-like fish — at least that’s what his mother (voice of Maya Rudolph) and father (voice of Jim Gaffigan) think he’s doing. His grandmother (voice of Sandy Martin) sees the gleam of curiosity in his eyes when she tells stories of visiting the human town on land where sea creatures, when dry, transform to look like people.

When Luca finds a few human items that have fallen off a fishing boat, he is intrigued. He meets Alberto (voice of Jack Dylan Grazer), a fellow kid sea creature and collector of all manner of human stuff. Hesitantly, Luca follows Alberto to the surface. After Luca gets the hang of walking with legs, he and Alberto spend time hanging out on a small island where Alberto lives, building rickety but (briefly) ride-able Vespa-like contraptions and dreaming of the day when they can get a cherry-red scooter and ride off together to see the world.

Soon, however, Luca’s parents find out what he’s been doing and they’re terrified and angry — humans have a long history of killing sea creatures, and land is no place for someone like Luca, who turns blue and green anytime water splashes on him. To keep him safe, they say, they’re sending him to the deep with weird, see-through uncle Ugo (voice of Sacha Baron Cohen).

Luca is definitely not interested in a life eating passing bits of whale carcass and listening to Ugo’s stories in the dark, so he takes off. He and Alberto decide to go where they’re certain Luca’s parents will never look — the human town.

The human town, which is called Portorosso (on, as the Disney Wiki explains, the Italian Riviera; circa, based on music and television snippets, maybe 1950s-early 1960s?), is a bright and sunny place with a disturbing amount of fish-spearing imagery. The boys get a glimpse of a real Vespa, a thing of beauty owned by the boasting, bullying teen Ercole (voiced by Saverio Raimondo). Ercole turns his viciousness on Luca and Alberto when a ball Luca kicks accidentally hits Ercole’s scooter. Before Ercole can dunk them in the town fountain (which would make their sea creature secret visible to all), they are rescued by Guilia (voice of Emma Berman), a plucky red-haired girl who is Ercole’s fiercest competitor in an annual triathlon. Guilia has never won, in part because she has always competed alone in the swimming/pasta-eating/biking competition and tends to spend the bike ride puking, but she is determined to end Ercole’s reign of kid-terror.

The race comes with prize money — money, as Alberto and Luca figure out, that can be spent on a not entirely decrepit used Vespa — and the three kids decide to team up and work together to try to beat Ercole.

Luca is a truly beautiful movie with lots of bright sunny colors, both in the rendering of the sea creatures and in the richly illustrated vacation poster settings. It’s fun — with a sense of adventure and a kind of boisterousness that isn’t Peter Rabbit 2-style jokey but does keep the energy up. Luca’s thoughtfulness doesn’t weigh down its funness.

And there is a lot of deeper thinking going on here. As much as the blowhard Ercole is the movie’s main antagonist, the movie’s true villain is probably something like fear — fear of people who are different, fear of the unknown, fear that keeps you from standing up for someone. Learning how to deal with different types of fear and how to respond is the real quest that Luca goes on. He easily faces the parent-instilled fears of going to the surface, but other kinds of fears prove harder to navigate. There is also a bit about learning to be yourself and make decisions for yourself, not just following what parents or friends want but also figuring out how to make your own way while still keeping your parents and friends close. It’s a lot of stuff, some of it rather subtle, to be happening in one cartoon that’s not quite two hours long, but I feel like Luca does a good job of setting the scene for the things it’s putting out there for moviegoers to consider (moviegoers of all ages; as much as Luca and Inside Out are about kids, I always feel like there’s a good bit to consider for parents as well). The movie leaves you with good feelings and plenty to talk about without presenting pat answers to big “how to live life” questions.

Luca feels like a more subdued kind of Pixar movie than, say, the big extravaganza-like franchises of Toy Story or Cars. But it has that quality of a really good storybook, with lots of elements that will stick with you long after the movie is over. A

Rated PG for rude humor, language, some thematic elements and brief violence, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Enrico Casarosa with a screenplay by Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones, Luca is an hour and 36 minutes long and distributed by Walt Disney Studios on Disney+.

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard (R)

Remember that Ryan Reynolds/Samuel L. Jackson/Salma Hayek movie from 2017? It was an action comedy that used shooting and swear words in a way that felt like they were placeholders for dialogue nobody got around to writing? Vaguely? Well that movie was called The Hitman’s Bodyguard and now it has a clunkily named sequel: The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard.

And now I know I’m really back at the movies. For other films I’ve seen at theaters since March 2020 I was often at least as aware of my surroundings as I was of the movie itself. Or the movie I was watching was loaded with some kind of “the movie that will save cinema” importance. But with this movie, with this gloriously not-quite-good-enough-to-be-mediocre movie, I was just in a theater, frequently bored and regularly checking my watch. What, it’s only been five minutes? Sigh. And, just like that, a bit of normality returns.

That the 2017 first film (in what I really hope isn’t a franchise) was sorta half-baked and leaned too much on general loudness is something I only remember because I recently reread my review. I don’t think this movie expects you to remember all that much about plot or character. Generally: Michael Bryce (Reynolds) is a Type A bodyguard who lost his license and top shelf status due to the assassination of a client by Darius Kincaid (Jackson), a top-flight hitman. For convoluted reasons, Bryce (in the first movie) had to protect Kincaid so he could testify in a war crimes trial. Sonia (Hayek), Darius’s wife, is a con woman and just sort of loud and big in a way the movie clearly finds hilarious.

Here, a despondent Michael, still unable to regain his bodyguard license, is advised to take a violence-free sabbatical and therefore goes to Italy to relax by the ocean and think self-affirming thoughts. It’s there, with his eyes closed and noise-canceling headphones keeping out the sound of bullets flying and people screaming, that Michael is found by Sonia. As she’s chased by, er, I forget who exactly, she grabs Michael and drags him along with her. Darius has been kidnapped and she wants Michael’s help finding him. Micheal doesn’t want to help and is determined not to handle any guns or perpetrate any violence but he eventually goes along.

Meanwhile, discount Bond villain Aristotle Papdopolous (Antonio Banderas) is trying to steal the information that will allow him to plunge all of Europe — except for Greece — into chaos by destroying its power grid. Interpol, in the form of a Boston detective (or something? He mentions Boston a lot, it’s weird) named Bobby O’Neill (Frank Grillo), is trying to chase down the group behind an attack on the power grid in Croatia, which was a sort of demonstration for Aristotle. When Darius gets mixed up with (and then kills) someone O’Neill was using as an informant, O’Neill uses the threat of arrest to force Sonia, Darius and Michael to be part of a sting to capture a MacGuffin that will lead them to Aristotle.

This movie doesn’t take itself all that seriously and occasionally leans in to the absurdity of its characters and story just enough to have a moment of cleverness or genuine (stupid but enjoyable) humor. A lot of other times, though, it just hangs a whole scene on, like, Samuel L. Jackson’s laugh or Salma Hayek spinning off in high-energy anger. This movie’s three leads are very much reduced to their one or two character actions — Hayek is basically a violent tornado or weirdly trying to be motherly, Jackson is being “a Samuel L. Jackson character” and Reynolds is doing a flatter, more anxious turn of his Deadpool patter. You get the sense that somebody wanted to shoot a movie in Italy and then this sequel was sort of reverse engineered from there. This movie has car chases and characters shooting at people in helicopters and yet it frequently feels slow; it’s only an hour and 39 minutes long but it often feels like it is just grinding through those minutes like a weak blender through large chunks of ice and frozen strawberries, never quite making it to smoothie territory. C-

Rated R for strong bloody violence throughout, pervasive language and some sexual content, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Patrick Hughes with a screenplay by Tom O’Connor, Brandon Murphy and Phillip Murphy, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is an hour and 39 minutes extremely long and distributed by Lionsgate.

Featured photo: Luca

In The Heights (PG-13)

A group of longtime friends and neighbors chase their various dreams In The Heights, the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first big hit Broadway musical.

Unlike last summer’s Hamilton, which was a filmed version of the stage production, this movie takes us into Washington Heights with characters walking through a (mostly) real world (with occasional forays into delightful fantasy).

Usnavi (Anthony Ramos) owns and operates a bodega but dreams of the day when he can move to Dominican Republic, where his late parents were from, and own a bar on the beach. He employs his teen cousin Sonny (Gregory Diaz IV) and lives with Claudia (Olga Merediz), whom he and everybody in the neighborhood call Abuela, though she’s not technically his grandmother. When it seems like his dream might become a reality, he considers taking both Sonny and Abuela with him.

But of course leaving Washington Heights would mean leaving Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), the girl he’s known forever but still doesn’t seem to know how to get up the courage to ask out. Vanessa also has her leaving-the-neighborhood dreams, in the form of an apartment downtown and a career involving fashion. For now she works at a local salon (with characters played, delightfully, by Stephanie Beatriz, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Dasha Polanco).

Vanessa’s friend Nina (Leslie Grace) has moved outside the Heights. She’s home for summer after her first year at Stanford and even though her college career is the pride of the neighborhood she is torn about returning to school the next year. She didn’t feel welcomed or like she fit in there.

Nina dropping out would break her father Kevin Rosario’s (Jimmy Smits) heart, especially since he sold part of his taxi business to pay for her tuition. But her living nearby would suit his dispatcher Benny (Corey Hawkins), Nina’s high school sweetheart, just fine.

And to all this inner turmoil and drama add a crushing heat wave that eventually snuffs out the power neighborhood-wide.

I’m not the first critic to observe that after the last year and a half out here in the real world (or, I guess, stuck inside here in the real world), the world of In The Heights with its packed dance floors and street parties and people hanging out with each other feels like a color-saturated peek at some glorious forgotten existence. If you’re not quite ready to squeeze into a space at a bar, perhaps viewing In The Heights in a theater with other humans is a good reentry outing. Or you could watch it at home on HBO Max until July 11. Or both! (I didn’t immediately watch the movie again after the first viewing but I guarantee between the time I write this and the time you read it I will have seen at least parts of it several more times.)

I won’t pretend to have any objective chill about this movie. I’ve been excited about it since I first saw the trailers a hundred years ago in the pre-pandemic times and I was excited when I sat down to watch it and I was excited throughout. This movie is great fun. It is jam packed with music and dancing thoroughly soaked with Latin and hip-hop influences. Even though this is a movie with a fairly high number of core characters, everybody has the space to create a relatively fleshed out person with a mix of motivations and desires and complexities. And, though the movie clocks in at nearly two and a half hours, it all feels like two and a half hours well spent. (And if the movie wanted to slow down to spend more time showing us the arroz con pollo, pasteles and the rest of the dinner spread at a big set-piece party in the middle of the movie, I wouldn’t have minded that either.) Even when the movie wanders into slightly syrupy territory the charm of the whole endeavor keeps the train from ever jumping the track.

Is this movie perfect? If it’s not, it is at least perfectly suited to my entertainment needs at the moment. Does it have flaws? Probably, but I was too busy being delighted to really take note of them. I’ll go watch it a couple dozen more times and let you know. A

Rated PG-13 for some language and suggestive references, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Jon M. Chu with a screenplay by Quiara Alegría Hudes (from the musical with a book by Hudes and music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda), In The Heights is two hours and 23 minutes long and is distributed by Warner Bros. in theaters and on HBO Max.

Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway (PG)

Peter Rabbit and friends get up to more mischief while their human caretakers are just as weird as ever in Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, a live-action movie filled with animated animals.

Bea (Rose Byrne), the painter who acts as a gentle and forgiving surrogate mother to a bunch of animals living in the country including Peter Rabbit (voice of James Corden), marries Thomas McGregor (Domhnall Gleeson), the slightly unhinged nephew of the late, grumpy Mr. McGregor of “Mr. McGregor’s garden/rabbit-pie-maker” fame. After a to-the-near-death battle during the last movie, the younger McGregor and Peter have made peace, even if Peter imagines giving Thomas a few rabbit feet to the face at the idea of his being Peter’s new father figure and Thomas keeps mentioning to Bea how nice it would be to have some human children.

Thomas is nevertheless supportive of their animal-filled life and is even helping Bea self-publish her book about Peter and his siblings — Flopsy (voice of Margot Robbie), Mopsy (voice of Elizabeth Debicki) and Cottontail (voice of Aimee Horne) — and his cousin Benjamin Bunny (voice of Colin Moody). Peter enjoys the fame that comes with being the star of a locally beloved children’s book but he’s not so sure how he feels about being called the naughty or mischievous one. And when big-time publisher Nigel Basil-Jones (David Oyelowo) says Bea’s books could be bestsellers but might she consider painting Peter as more of a Bad Seed, Peter becomes even more uncomfortable with how he’s perceived. While Bea is initially concerned that her bunnyverse will become fodder for some hipped up movie made by an American director (one of this movie’s many winks at itself), she eventually follows Nigel’s suggestions to put the bunnies into more bankable clothes (jeans, high tops) and adventures (space). After all, his other client, who wrote a children’s book about a butterfly, is doing great with his amped up skateboarding butterfly books. Bea’s willingness to compromise isn’t all about earning herself a publishing-house-gifted sports car; she also wants to use the money to preserve even more land for her animals to frolic in, with said frolicking demonstrated by Thomas in a scene that really helps to highlight what a delightful oddball his character is.

Honestly, I could watch a whole movie just about the tightly wound but deeply in love and approval-seeking Thomas and the earnest but kooky Bea. Gleeson and Byrne have great weirdo chemistry and they are both fun characters in their own right.

Of course, this is a movie for kids, so we get bits of these people, probably as a little treat to me and the other adults bringing their kids to this movie, sprinkled in all the animal hijinks. And those are fine too. I feel like the 2018 Peter Rabbit had more murder in everyone’s hearts — Peter and friends trying to kill the new McGregor, McGregor trying to rid his garden of all the animals. Here, it’s more about everyone adjusting to each other or figuring out their roles in this new circumstance. What this means for the movie is more cartoony silliness but less threat of actual harm, which makes the movie more fun overall. My older elementary-school-aged kid had a good time with the movie and laughed out loud several times — as did I, and occasionally we both laughed at the same parts.

During a trip to the city, Peter meets a rabbit who is even more of a grifter named Barnabas (voice of Lennie James). This sets in motion a whole heist sequence that is fun and keeps the energy up in the movie’s second half.

I think Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway improved on the first movie, making this kids property more parent-friendly and easily enjoyable. B

Rated PG for some rude humor and action, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Will Gluck with a screenplay by Will Gluck and Patrick Burleigh (based on the stories and characters from Beatrix Potter’s books), Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway is an hour and 33 minutes long and distributed by Columbia Pictures. It is currently in theaters.

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