Category: Film Reviews by Amy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured photo: Sylvie’s Love

Soul (PG)

A middle-aged man hangs between life and “the Great Beyond” just as his dreams of being a working musician appear to be coming true in Soul, an animated movie from Pixar.

Joe Gardner (voice of Jamie Foxx) teaches band to high school students, who have varying degrees of interest in his instruction, but his real passion is to get a full-time paying gig as a professional jazz musician. He has chased this desire, to much disappointment, for years. His mom, Libba (voice of Phylicia Rashad), urges him to quit chasing this dream and accept the teaching position (and its pension and health care and steady paycheck) permanently. But then Joe has an audition with Dorothea Williams (voice of Angela Bassett) for a position as a piano player in her jazz band. He gets a chance to play a gig with her that night that could put him in as a regular. So delighted is Joe as he walks down the street contemplating this new future that he doesn’t realize there’s an open pothole in his path until he’s fallen into it.

He suddenly finds himself a bloop of glowy, vaguely person-shaped blueness, headed on a pathway through the stars up to what he’s told is the Great Beyond. Joe is definitely not interested in the Beyond; he wants to go back to the city and play jazz. Luckily, the afterlife doesn’t have the strictest security ever and he’s able to stumble away from the path to the Beyond and into the Great Before, a sort of nursery area for new souls. He’s mistaken for a mentor and is given new soul 22 (voice of Tina Fey) to mentor. His task is to help her find her “spark” and get her ready to go to Earth.

But 22 wants none of Earth and its whole “life and eventual death” thing. She’s had lots of mentors — all of whom have given up in frustration at her lack of a “spark.” Joe sees an opportunity; he’ll help 22 find her spark and earn the badge that lets her go to Earth and he’ll take the badge to return to his body and she can stay in the soft new souls land forever. Thus do they set off to find 22’s purpose.

Along the way, Joe and 22 do make it to Earth for a bit, though 22 winds up in Joe’s body and Joe winds up in the body of an emotional therapy cat. That cat, who (as Joe) can talk (at least to 22) and do things like push elevator buttons, is the most actively kid-like element of the movie. Similar to how Inside Out used personifications of emotions and personality traits rendered as physical spaces, Soul gives dimension to spiritual elements — for example, a place called “in the zone” where living people’s souls go when they’re playing a great basketball game or lost in a musical performance, and a variant of that location where souls go when they’ve lost connection to life and greater purpose. Soul is thoughtful and beautiful and I’m not sure I totally understand who this movie is for.

I mean, it really is beautiful — beautiful looking in how it blends the different visual ideas about an afterlife with the “real” world, beautiful sounding in its lovely score that mixes jazz and other musical styles. And it has some really beautiful ideas about life and what gives a person’s life meaning. I recently finished a rewatch of the series The Good Place, so maybe I am particularly susceptible to big-picture “what does it all mean” ideas rendered with a bit of cartooniness. I liked this movie and I think I would have liked it even more on a big screen, where I could have been even more enveloped in all the visuals. But where Inside Out was tethered to the kid-world by the girl the emotions operated in and the kid parts of her life experience, like imaginary friends, I’m not sure how kids connect to Soul. My younger kids saw parts and seemed to enjoy the music and the little soul blobs, but there is a level of zaniness missing here. (And the “lost souls” idea is expressed in a way that feels just disturbing enough that it would stick with younger kids, perhaps popping up in their brains at, like, 2 a.m.) I rewatched the movie with my elementary-aged kid and her interest seemed to wane as the movie went on. The idea that singular focus on your big break, the life milestone that will really “start” your life, will cause you to miss what your actual life is, for all its joy and heartbreak, is interesting to me. Do such concepts have any meaning to kids? I mean, my kid laughed at some of the butt jokes, so it wasn’t a total loss.

This doesn’t make the movie less successful as a, like, piece of film but as a PG movie on Disney+ it did make me wonder if when this movie goes on during family movie night, it will be the kids falling asleep and fiddling with an iPad while the parents are paying rapt attention. B+

Rated PG for thematic elements and some language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Pete Docter and Kemp Powers with a screenplay by Pete Docter & Mike Jones & Kemp Powers, Soul is an hour and 40 minutes long and distributed by Disney. It is available on Disney+.

Featured photo: Soul

Wonder Woman 1984

Diana Prince suits up in her golden armor for an all-too-brief fight sequence in the otherwise extremely long Wonder Woman 1984, a sequel to the 2017 Wonder Woman available until near the end of January on HBO Max and in theaters.

Though we last saw Wonder Woman hanging with Batfleck and the other Justice League-ers in roughly the current day, this takes us back to 1984 when Diana (Gal Gadot) is working in antiquities (for the Smithsonian, I think?) in Washington, D.C., and trying to discreetly protect people from baddies and other danger on the side. Despite a full professional life, Diana has a lonely private life, still aching from the death of Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) during World War I. Despite Diana’s inner sadness, her outer awesomeness has fellow museum science and antiquities person Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) wishing that she could be like Diana. Barbara makes that wish while holding an artifact that claims to grant wishes, though both Barbara and Diana initially have their doubts about the authenticity of the item. Diana has also made a Steve-based wish while holding the artifact. While they might not believe in the artifact, we see the little wind blow-y effect in their hair and so we are not so surprised to see their wishes come true: The formerly awkward Barbara can suddenly walk with ease in heels projecting sexy confidence and finds she has increasing physical strength. Diana is approached by a man she’s never met before — who then says and does the last things Steve Trevor ever said and did, and suddenly she can see that it’s him, returned.

After initially just giving in to the delight of having Steve back, Diana and Steve decide to go figure out how it is that he has returned. Unfortunately, by the time they start their quest, the artifact has been stolen by Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), who had long been on the hunt for it. A large donation to the Smithsoneon and some flirting with Barbara gets him access to the artifact and he convinces her to let him take it to get it looked at by an expert. What he actually does is, essentially, wish for all the wishes by wishing to become the artifact (which at some point people start calling “the Dreamstone”). People wish on Maxwell to get their heart’s desire and in return he takes something — their company, their wealth, their henchmen, etc. Their wishes seem to take from him too; he gets weaker and sicker-looking with each wish. Diana and Barbara discover that their wishes have a cost for them as well. These individual costs, however, are minor compared to the mounting societal costs as more and more people wish on Maxwell for more — more nukes, more power, more money. Diana discovers that this may be a feature, not a bug, of the Dreamstone, which has a dark history and was forged by a god known as the “god of lies.”

The lies are seductive and the truth is often sad and bittersweet but the world has to acknowledge and live in the truth to save itself — I think this is the working philosophy of this movie, which I feel like would have played a little different in the alternate timeline of June 2020 (the movie’s original release date), where all anybody is thinking about is the election and we’re all seeing movies in the theater, than it does now. There are some choices made with Pascal’s Max (some of the elements of his character read pretty Trump-y) that make me feel like this movie, without being overtly political, is trying to say something about the state of discourse. I feel like that element is maybe one of the many “too many accessories” that this movie should have taken off, Coco Chanel “take one thing off” style. (I always misremember that quote as “before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take three things off” and I feel like three is the minimum number of things this movie needs to take off.) There is a lot to do with Max that takes away from the development of Diana, Diana and Steve, Diana and Barbara, and Barbara and her own sense of self. Somehow, this two-and-a-half-hour movie feels like it doesn’t have time to give us any relationship or theme in depth — and yet the movie does not fly by. More editing? Less story? More editing of fewer plotlines and a more consistent tone — this movie just felt all over the place and needed streamlining in all things.

That said, there are nice elements. Because we can, I went back to watch some of the highlights of this movie before I wrote this review. The scenes between Diana and Steve do a good job of capturing the sparkle of that pairing, even if somehow the sparkle isn’t sustained. There is a nice start to a friendship between Diana and Barbara but then there is just so much plot business that it kind of gets lost. And there are some fun action stretches, nothing quite as fun as the No Man’s Land scene from the first movie, but nice work, to include an intro that gives us little-girl-Diana in Themyscira and brings back Robin Wright and Connie Nelson. (Much like Thor and Asgard in the Thor movies, Diana in Themyscira feels like a stretch where the movie really knows itself and what it’s doing.) And we get the golden armor that has been part of this movie’s marketing, though not for nearly as long as you’d hope given the general coolness of it.

Wonder Woman 1984 is a sequel to maybe the best recent vintage DC Comics movie and one that had a lot of Strong Female Lead hopes-and-dreams stuff attached to it. Living up to that is a tall order, and this movie doesn’t quite. But that’s not going to stop me from watching it, or at least parts of it, again. B-

Rated PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Patty Jenkins with a screenplay by Patty Jenkins, Geoff Johns and Dave Callaham, Wonder Woman 1984 is two hours and 31 minutes long and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.

It was a horrible and great year for movies

What even is a 2020 movie?

This year’s Oscar race will include films that at least dip a toe in theaters by Feb. 28. I spent at least the first month of this year watching 2019 movies as they trickled into local theaters. And then there’s that long stretch, between March 13 and right this moment, when I have seen exactly three movies on a big screen. Do all those small-screen movies — some great, some blech, some perfectly shrug whatever — count as part of 2020 cinema?

Yes. Like Stephen King used to say when he’d do his annual favorite film list in Entertainment Weekly, whatever we see this year is on this list for a great movie of this year. And, as much as I love the hot popcorn and cool air conditioning of a movie theater, it hasn’t been all bad for movies in 2020. After an Oscar season that was excitingly accessible, it was a silver lining to the terrible 2020 cloud to have movies like First Cow, Never Rarely Sometimes Always and Hamilton available to view as they were having their moment, instead of waiting for films to filter out of the big cities. And those movies are on a pretty long list of good and great films that came out this year. Finding a way to balance the fact that Ammonite is available to every interested Kate Winslet fan (I haven’t had a chance to rent that VOD release yet) and that most movie-lovers are also movie-theater-lovers and want them to survive will be the challenge of 2021 and beyond. (Some new movies are still hitting area theaters before they get to small screens, including Christmas Day releases News of the World and Promising Young Woman, but, of course, big budget theater-only releases are still far fewer than normal.)

But first, we have to get through winter.

What follows are my picks, not just for the best films of 2020 (endless movies also means there are endless movies to catch up on and plenty of 2020 greats that are still on my to-watch list) but for the films that might offer you some fun, escape, artistry and entertainment as we wait out the socially distanced season and hope for a return to more robust movie theater offerings sometime soon. (The streaming locations listed here are based on December offerings, which may change in January.)

• Excellent movies I saw this year that are technically 2019 movies: Portrait of a Lady on Fire was totally robbed during last year’s award season; it is beautiful, swoony, bittersweet and at times haunting (currently on Hulu). I didn’t get to review Little Women, the adaptation of the classic novel by director Greta Gerwig, before I did my 2019-in-review roundup; this is a perfect movie (currently on Starz but I may have to spring for the two-movie bundle that also comes with the 1994 Little Women and sells for $16.98 on iTunes).1917(currently on Showtime and available for rent or purchase) was also a basically perfect movie that dazzles with the visual feat of a “one-shot” movie that takes soldiers through battlefields on a mission during World War I. If you want to make an argument for the supremacy of seeing a movie in theaters, 1917 does a good job of selling that point.

•2020 movies that literally saved my life: I mean “literally” in the figurative sense though an argument for “literal” could be made as the precious moments of peace and quiet these movies brought to homebound children in the spring and summer of 2020 meant a calm cup of coffee or some other sustenance-providing thing for me. Trolls World Tour(available on Hulu and Peacock if you didn’t buy it the second it appeared on iTunes) may not be the best movie of 2020 but who cares, all of my children were happy to watch it the first time it came out and continue to watch it now. It is a bright and fun animated movie with cute music and, if you need to feel like your kids’ media has merit, it has some decent stuff about celebrating differences.

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmaggedon(available on Netflix) is another movie that kept all the kids entertained, but this one has legitimate claim for a “year’s best animation” prize. From Aardman Animation of Wallace & Gromit fame, this tale of sheep and their fellow farm animals encountering a friendly young alien is sweet, well-crafted and full of funny sci-fi Easter eggs. It’s also basically language-free and very little-kid friendly.

• More good kid fare: The Willoughbys (on Netflix) is a beautifully animated story about four siblings trying to dump their neglectful parents and learning to appreciate their kind nanny. It has shades of A Series of Unfortunate Events and just the right amount of Ricky Gervais. Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe(on Disney+) is another great movie about siblings working together that called to mind The Simpsons in its ability to pack every minute and every frame with jokes (though still with the right amount of slapstick for the little viewers). The eight-minute short Once Upon a Snowman (also Disney+) shows us snowman Olaf’s adventures between his “Let It Go” creation and his finding Anna.

• Add this to the family holiday rotation: Eleventy bazillion Christmas movies hit screens this year but here are three that are worth holding on to for next year — Jingle Jangle(on Netflix), a fun musical about a toymaker and his plucky granddaughter; Lego Star Wars Holiday Special (Disney+), totally great use of both Lego and fan-service, andMariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special (AppleTV+), which is like the grown-up (but family-friendly) version of Elmo’s Christmas Countdown (and both feature Jennifer Hudson!).

• Excellent movies I’ll never watch again: A movie can be great and a stone cold bummer at the same time. Thus, Never Rarely Sometimes Always with its heartbreaking performance by Sidney Flanigan as a young woman who needs abortion services but runs into so many obstacles is definitely on my list for 2020’s best and I don’t think I can put myself through seeing it again. (It’s on HBO Max and available for purchase.) Another movie great at stoking rage is The Assistant, a quiet film about a young woman working her first job for an unseen but monstrous movie producer boss. (It’s currently on Hulu and available for rent or purchase.)

I doubt I’ll bring myself to watch The Invisible Man again. Elisabeth Moss brings genuine terror not to the idea of an invisibility suit in the wrong hands but to the toll of domestic violence and, sure, this is one of those Universal Pictures horror movies but Moss deserves some awards attention for her top-shelf performance. (Available on HBO Max and for purchase.)Blow the Man Down is a smart movie with excellent performances (Sophie Lowe, Morgan Saylor and, as always, Margo Martindale) and a Coen Brothers-y feel (it’s available on Amazon Prime) that feels like an atmospheric mystery novel read in one sitting.

• Pretty good middle-of-the-road movies: We need not just great movies but pretty good movies that might be able to stand up to casual rewatching.

Netflix has a fair amount of these offerings. I have already rewatched parts of Will Ferrell’s wacky comedy Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. I liked the Charlize Theron superhero movie (based on a Greg Rucka comic) The Old Guard and truly hope there will be a sequel. And I wouldn’t mind a next chapter of the kinda stupid Mark Wahlberg-fronted Spenser Confidential, an upbeat procedural that shares some DNA with the TV show Spenser for Hire.

The “Tom Hanks on a Navy boat in World War II” movie Greyhound (Apple TV+) delivers exactly on that premise. I liked Melissa McCarthy in Superintelligence (HBO Max); it might not rival Spy or The Heat but it’s an enjoyable comedy. Love and Monsters(available for rent or purchase) is an optimistic movie about the end of the world. I’d even put Birds of Prey (now on HBO Max) in that category, especially if you can fast-forward to the last half-hour.

• Pretty-good good movies: A rung up, you’ll find movies like Valley Girl (available on Hulu), a jukebox musical update of the 1983 film. An American Pickle (HBO Max), the “two Seth Rogens” movie was funny, sure, but also sweet and contemplative. The Sunlit Night (now on Hulu) has some of those qualities as well, and a solid Jenny Slate performance. I liked the indie Buffaloed (also on Hulu and available for rent or purchase) for its spunkiness. Sofia Coppola’s On the Rocks (Apple TV+) was a crisp gin and tonic of a dramady. Unpregnant (HBO Max) is the comedy, Booksmart-ish version of Never Rarely Sometimes Always, based around a sweet friendship. Vampires vs. The Bronx (Netflix) offers fun horror and something to say.

• Great docs: This was a great year for documentaries and at the front of the pack is Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (on Netflix) that is about a camp for kids and teens with disabilities in upstate New York in the mid-20th century but sprawls to cover the political movement for legal protections for the rights of people with disabilities (and introduced me to American hero Judith Heumann). Another solid Netflix offering is Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado, which brings us the life of a hugely popular TV personality. In Netflix’s Dick Johnson Is Dead, a filmmaker deals with the dementia and mortality of her beloved father with grace and humor.

On AppleTV+, Boys State gives us the best and worst of present-day American politics as filtered through a high school government program in Texas.

And speaking of young nerds (and I mean that in the very best sense), watch a pre-Hamilton Lin-Manuel Miranda and his crew of improv rappers make theater and song and comedy in We Are Freestyle Love Supreme.

• More of the best movies I saw this year:The best movie I saw in theaters this year (at least, of 2020 offerings) wasEmma (currently on HBO Max and also available for rent or purchase), a beautiful and stylish-looking and cleverly cast and acted adaptation of the Jane Austen novel.

The 40-Year-Old Version (Netflix), about a woman reinventing herself, and The Vast of Night (Amazon Prime), a sci-fi suspense film, are two movies with an indie feel that nevertheless earn their place next to any glossy mainstream fare.

Palm Springs (Hulu) was one of those woulda-been theatrical releases that wound up on a streaming site, which means I’ll be able to watch this charming rom-com with Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti again and again.

Remember when everybody was raving about First Cow(currently on Showtime; available for rent or purchase)? They are right! This Western about friendship and baked goods is gentle and charming.

Enola Holmes (Netflix) puts the plucky little sister of Sherlock and Mycroft in the middle of her own mystery to solve (and the women’s suffrage movement). This bubbly action and adventure has a sweet story about mothers and daughters at its heart.

Mank (Netflix) is the most awards-season movie to ever awards-season with its Old Hollywood setting and its behind-the-scenes look at the writing of Citizen Kane using Kane-like visuals but it also would actually deserve those awards for its technical and performance feats.

Speaking of eyeball-grabbing style, Black Is King,Beyonce’s visual album riff on The Lion King, is absolutely beautiful (visually, musically, fashion-ally) and heartfelt (on Disney+).

Make room on the Oscar nominations list for all kinds of entries for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which features what appears to be the last Chadwick Boseman performance we’ll ever get and another knock-out Viola Davis role.

Two more movies with standout storytelling and performances: Shirley(on Hulu and available for rent or purchase) a gothic thriller mixed with a Shirley Jackson biopic starring Elisabeth Moss, and Spike Lee’sDa 5 Bloods(Netflix), another chance to see strong work from Chadwick Boseman.

• Absolute best time with a movie in 2020: Hamilton. As I said, what even is a 2020 movie? Can a filmed 2016 theatrical production count as a movie from this year? I say sure. Hamilton was a joy to watch (and rewatch; it’s available on Disney+). The experience of watching a Broadway play with its original cast and shot in a way that made it feel alive and not locked on a stage (even though this was on a stage it felt less boxed in than, say, Netflix’s adaptation of the musical The Prom) is maybe one of the most optimistic parts of whatever happens next in movies. More art to more people — let’s hope we can find a way to have that and our movie theater popcorn too.

2021 ‘at’ the movies
Who the heck knows what 2021 will bring, but here are some early 2021 movies that I’m looking forward to:
• One Night in Miami Directed by Regina King, this movie tells the story of a fictional meeting between Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown, according to Amazon, where it will be available on Jan. 15.
• The Little Things This Denzel Washington movie is slated to be released by Warner Bros. in theaters and on HBO Max on Jan. 29.
• Supernova This movie also sounds like it has awards potential with Stanley Tucci playing a man with early onset dementia and Colin Firth playing his longtime partner. It has a Jan. 29 theatrical release date.
• Nomadland Based on the nonfiction book of the same name, this movie is showing up on some top 10 lists and earning Frances McDormand buzz for her performance. The movie currently has a theatrical release date of Feb. 19; no word yet on streaming access.
• The Many Saints of Newark This Sopranos prequel movie is another Warner Bros. release and could hit movie theaters (and HBO Max) March 12.
• In the Heights This movie was on my list of things I was excited about for 2020 last year and I am hoping it will see the light of screens this year. Currently, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s pre-Hamilton musical is slated to hit theater screens (and HBO Max) on June 18.

Featured photo: Trolls World Tour

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (R)

The late Chadwick Boseman probably secures his Oscar with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a new Netflix movie, adapted from a play by August Wilson, which also features a standout performance by Viola Davis.

The bulk of this movie’s action is centered around Ma Rainey (Davis), a real-life founding mother of blues, showing up at a Chicago recording studio in 1927 to record a set of songs. Most of the scenes are either in a large recording room or a small rehearsal room where her band heads between recordings. The band consists of pianist Toledo (Glynn Turman), Slow Drag (Michael Potts) on bass, band leader and trombone player Cutler (Coleman Domingo) and Levee (Boseman), a trumpet player with a lot of ideas about his songs and the band he plans to form and even “better” more modern arrangements for Ma’s songs. Levee is certain his style of playing will better reach customers in the big cities, who might see Ma’s music as too country. The studio’s owner, Sturdyvant (Jonny Coyne), seems to agree with Levee, but Ma doesn’t care about the potential big city audience when she knows what the audience who turns out to see her likes. Her manager Irvin (Jeremy Shamos) might tend to agree with Sturdyvant but knows that ultimately Ma will have things her way. And as we see when she talks to Cutler about making these recordings, she might seem like a diva (demanding cold Coca-Colas or for a nephew to have a small part) but she always knows exactly what she’s doing and how to wring the most from a system that is inherently against her interests.

There are times when this movie very much feels like a play in the staging and the way people talk, but I didn’t mind that, even when it leads to monologues that would maybe feel unnatural in a more “out in the world” movie. Here, the strength of the performances easily pushes past any not-quite-cinematic staginess. The movie takes place, for the most part, on one day in 1927 in one building but also manages to serve up a good slice of late 1800s through mid 1900s American history (the ending of the movie mercilessly encapsulates the next at least 50 years in the American music industry).

Boseman, who died this summer, will likely get the bulk of the spotlight here. This movie shows how much more Boseman had in him, how much of a good-across-the-board performer he was. Boseman was someone who could be an anchor in a big popular blockbuster, a believable action hero and do more nuanced work. Even though he gets some big shouty moments here, you can see layers going on behind Levee’s words.

Davis, of course, is also great here because she is basically great everywhere. Davis is masterful at showing how Ma uses loud demands as protection in a situation of constant vulnerability. Davis doesn’t give us a perfect human being but does give us a rounded character whose life you can see in the expressions on her face. A

Rated R for language, some sexual content and brief violence, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by George C. Wolfe with a screenplay by Ruben Santiago-Hudson (based on the play by August Wilson), Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is an hour and 34 minutes long and distributed by Netflix, where it is currently available.

Freaky (R)

A high school girl swaps bodies with a grunting serial killer in Freaky, a fun horror movie with a particularly fun Vince Vaughn performance.

Teen Millie (Kathryn Newton) is having a hard time. Her father died a year ago, which has left her mother, Coral (Kate Finneran), a bit of a wreck and her police officer older sister, Char (Dana Drori), angry. Millie is so busy trying to smooth over their relationship and take care of her mom she doesn’t seem to have the space to grieve herself or to live her life. Her friends Nyla (Celeste O’Connor) and Josh (Misha Osherovich) urge her to go to the upcoming homecoming dance, take a chance on talking to the boy, Booker (Uriah Shelton), she likes and pursue her dream of heading off to college. You don’t want to get to the end of your life and realize you never lived it for yourself, Nyla tells her.

And that end may come much sooner than expected. The Blissfield Butcher (Vaughn) has long been a local urban legend, a spooky tale of a serial killer who hunts teens born from decades-earlier murders. Nobody much believes the stories until four teens are horribly, red-corn-syrupily murdered in the movie’s opening scenes. After the big football game, Millie, who plays the school’s mascot, is waiting alone outside the stadium for a ride home. The Butcher appears and chases Millie before stabbing her in the shoulder with a strange, old blade he stole from the scene of the movie’s first murders.

Char arrives just in time to scare him off but not before Millie notices that the Butcher started bleeding from the same spot on his shoulder where he had stabbed Millie in hers. When she wakes up the next morning, she finds herself not in her cheery bedroom but on a mattress in a murder-lair (complete with disfigured mannequins and dead animals) and in the giant (and smelly) body of the Butcher. Which, of course, means that back at her house the Butcher is waking up to her unsuspecting mom and sister.

Quickly, we figure out the rules to this situation: The knife has curse-bestowing properties, the bodies have been switched for 24 hours, Millie has to stab the Butcher to switch the bodies back or their situation becomes permanent. Though a pretty solid sketch of the Butcher is all over the news — making it hard for Millie to move around her town unnoticed — she does get some help from Nyla and Josh, whom she’s able to convince of her true identity. They work to get the knife from the police evidence locker and find the Butcher to get her body back. She also needs to stop the Butcher, who quickly realizes that his physically weaker new body nevertheless has the benefit of lulling people into seeing no threat until it’s too late. Also, Millie irritatingly notices, the Butcher seems to have done a better job at styling her body (a bold red lip, a sassy red leather jacket) then she usually does.

The Butcher, both as Vaughn and as Newton, is just a grunting kill machine; it’s Millie where the actors get to do a performance, particularly Vaughn. Sure, it’s a little gimmicky to have big, extra-scruffy 50-year-old Vince Vaughn nervously biting at his finger and screeching like a teenager. But he does a really solid job making us see Millie and her feelings, fears and conviction.

Beneath all this silliness, Freaky — not unlike Happy Death Day, which this movie’s director, Christopher Landon, also directed — has some interesting beats about grief and learning how to come back from loss. A scene between Vaughn as Millie and Finneran’s Coral (Millie’s mom) does a good job of being silly and funny, bittersweet and filling in the details of the family’s relationships with each other in a way that really pays off later. There are also some interesting moments about power and gender that transcend what you expect from a movie with this much gleeful gore.

I will admit that I am definitely more in the tank for this kind of horror — horror plus laughs, weighted more toward laughs — and this movie puts you even more at ease by not only making the kills extravagantly stagy but also making everybody other than Millie who is attacked by the Butcher extremely unsympathetic. So, it’s all fun with very little serious “keep you up at night” terror. B+

Rated R for strong bloody horror violence, sexual content and language throughout, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Christopher Landon with a screenplay by Michael Kennedy and Christopher Landon, Freaky is an hour and 42 minutes long and distributed by Universal Studios. The movie is currently in theaters and available on video on demand.

Godmothered (PG)

A godmother in training tries to prove her godmothering prowess before her academy of godmothers is shut down and everyone is sent to work as tooth fairies in Godmothered, a live action movie new to Disney+.

Eleanor (Jillian Bell) has never done proper godmother work and it doesn’t look like she’s going to get the chance. Even though she is the rare eager young recruit, there isn’t much call for fairy godmothers these days and the school’s headmistress, Moira (Jane Curtin), is considering shutting the whole thing down. In a desperate attempt to save the Motherland, as the godmother headquarters is called, and prove her own godmothering abilities, Eleanor finds an old letter to a godmother from a young girl named Mackenzie and decides to go to Boston to find and help her.

When she arrives, she learns that Mackenzie (Isla Fisher) is now “old,” an Isla-Fisher-aged single mom with two daughters — teen Jane (Jillian Shea Spaeder) and younger Mia (Willa Skye) — and a crummy job on a fifth-ranked local news show. Eleanor is surprised but still determined to help her; Mackenzie thinks she’s doing an act and calls security. Eventually, by showing Mackenzie her old letter, doing some magic and getting a raccoon to help with household chores, Eleanor convinces Mackenzie that she is a real fairy godmother. But Mackenzie, who is still grieving the death of her husband, says she doesn’t want the ball gown and happily-ever-after with a prince that Eleanor has been trained to provide. Might that change if it turns out that colleague Hugh Prince (Santiago Cabrera) is interested in more than just Mackenzie’s producing abilities?

This has a very Enchanted feel — with the earnest visitor from fairyland learning the strange and grimy ways of the unmagical modern-day Earth. But this movie isn’t quite as, er, enchanting — not quite as smart in its story or its writing, even though I am a fan of Bell and Fisher does solid work here too. This has that second-tier-ish-ness of a direct-to-video sequel (with some direct-to-video-level special effects too). But for that, it’s not the worst. Common Sense Media gives this an age 8 rating and I would say it’s that primarily because younger kids might be a little bored but it wouldn’t necessarily scare or traumatize them. (There is maybe one extremely veiled sex joke that I only half caught because my kids were sort of in and out of the room during the movie; there for the singing and the fairy magic but wandering away during the emotional talking stuff.)

I think Godmothered could have been a more substantial movie with a little rewriting; it has a solid cast, some nice ideas (does True Love really have to be about finding your Prince? And what does “happily ever after” truly mean?) and some cute moments. B-

Rated PG for some suggestive comments, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Sharon Maguire with a screenplay by Kari Granlund and Melissa Stack, Godmothered is an hour and 50 minutes long and is distributed by Walt Disney Studios on Disney+.

Featured photo: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

The Croods: A New Age (PG)

The Neanderthal-ish cave family the Croods meets some yuppie helicopter-parent homo sapiens in The Croods: A New Age, an animated movie in theaters now and coming to PVOD soon, possibly this Friday, Dec. 18.

Meet the Croods: dad Grug (voice of Nicolas Cage), mom Ugga (voice of Catherine Keener), tween-seeming son Thunk (voice of Clark Duke), baby Sandy (voice of Kailey Crawford), Gran (voice of Cloris Leachman) and teenage daughter Eep (voice of Emma Stone), and Guy (voice of Ryan Reynolds), the teenage modern-human-like boy who joined the Croods pack in the first movie. He spends a lot of time flirtily saying “hey” to Eep, who flirtily says “hey” back. Guy is tired of the Croods’ family sleep-pile and other instances of too-much-togetherness and would like to strike out on his own with Eep, who is interested in this “privacy” thing he speaks of. Grug wants everyone to stay together to improve their chances of survival (and because of general dad-ness).

When Grug stumbles upon a wonderland of delicious foods planted in neat rows in a lush paradise, he announces that he has found a place everybody can live happily forever, together. But what he’s actually found is a farm — specifically, the Bettermans’ farm, home to husband Phil (voice of Peter Dinklage) and wife Hope (voice of Leslie Mann, who is perfect here) and their teenage daughter Dawn (voice of Kelly Marie Tran). The Bettermans have found a, well, better way to be, as they explain: they live in a walled off compound of fresh food and drinkable water and a lovely tree house with a shower and a flush toilet and separate rooms for everyone. And, they know Guy — the Betterman family and Guy’s family were friends years ago, before Guy’s parents died in a tar pit. Guy seems like a perfect fit for the Betterman lifestyle and for Dawn, who has been lonely living in her parents’ protective paradise and is happy to see Guy again.

While wooing Guy away from the Croods might be the Bettermans’ plan, to this PG kids’ movie’s credit, it isn’t interested in any teen love triangle. Guy’s struggles seem to be between Eep and the comforts (and privacy) of the Bettermans’ way of living. Dawn isn’t on his radar, nor is he on hers. Dawn is more interested in being friends with Eep; they become fast besties, both having an “ugh, parents” mindset and a desire for adventure.

Details of the first The Croods have largely vanished from my brain, just as details from this movie felt like they were fading from memory as I watched the movie. A New Age is full of fun vocal performances (Mann and Keener, in particular) and cute moments (Gran’s memories of the “Thunder Sisters” clan of female warriors sets up a solid action sequence in the movie’s climax) but there’s nothing sticky about the overall story. The characters are more types than personalities (the overprotective mom, the dad who doesn’t want things to change, etc.) and the story hits marks like an amusement park ride chugging past its various attractions — there’s the wacky monkey stuff, there’s the mid-movie couple fight. This movie is forgettable, but with its fantastical creatures (land sharks! wolf-spiders!) and landscapes, all colorfully rendered, it’s not unpleasant in the moment — not for me, the parent, or for kids old enough (age 7 or 8 maybe?) to sit through teenage drama. B-

Rated PG for peril, action and rude humor, according to MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Joel Crawford with a screenplay by Kevin Hageman & Dan Hageman and Paul Fisher & Bob Logan, The Croods: A New Age is an hour and 35 minutes long and distributed by Universal Studios.

Featured Photo: The Croods: A New Age (PG)