Category: Film Reviews

At the Sofaplex 21/06/17

Spiral (R)

Chris Rock, Max Minghella.

And also just a bit of Samuel L. Jackson, who plays Rock’s character’s father. This movie, which was released in theaters in May and is now available for rent, is subtitled “From the Book of Saw,” putting it in the general Saw universe (the police know about and remember Jigsaw and his killings and the various helpers he had). Here, a new computerized voice is telling victims that he wants to play a game, involving police officers who have committed assorted wrongs. Police Det. Banks (Rock) is sent with his new young partner, Det. Schneck (Minghella), to investigate the first of the spiral killings (so called because the Jigsaw-ish spiral symbol is part of the killer’s imagery) and then becomes the person who receives the messages (some in the form of body parts) sent by the killer.

Parts of this movie feel like Rock working out some new comedy material — a bit on Pilates and infidelity, for example. These parts feel a bit shoved sideways into the movie but they’re probably better suited to him and the character than some of the more melodramatic moments. The movie’s ideas about policing aren’t sketched out well enough to make this a horror movie that Says Something. It’s more like Spiral is using a veneer of Saying Something to give a superficial update to the same red-stage-blood goriness.

I can’t remember what ever drew people to the Saw movies — was it the “cleverness” of the Ironic Punishment Division traps? Was it the audacity of the gore? Was it Cary Elwes? What is Cary Elwes up to these days? (Stranger Things and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, according to the Internet Movie Database — ooo, hey, and Mission: Impossible 7 … good for him!) Where were we? Right, Spiral. D+ (The plus is for the existence of the cast, not that the movie does anything good with them.) Available in theaters and for rent on premium VOD.

Oslo (TV-MA)

Ruth Wilson, Andrew Scott.

Based on the Tony-winning play, HBO’s Oslo tells the true (true-ish, basically, according to Wikipedia) story of the efforts of a married pair of Norwegian diplomats to get unofficial but face-to-face communication going between representatives of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization — without involving (or requiring any official acknowledgment from) any of the men at the top. The hope of Mona (Wilson) and her husband Terje (Scott) is that without any of the trappings of the more formal negotiations happening in Washington, D.C., perhaps people, talking to each other in a private setting one on one, can forge relationships on which true diplomacy can be built. The movie does a good job of making this moment in history (1993) seem like one full of hope and potential — which gives the movie real stakes and narrative tension. Good performances all around. B+ Available on HBO.

Dog Gone Trouble (TV-Y7)

Voices of Big Sean, Pamela Adlon.

Trouble (Big Sean) is a well cared for dog and companion to extremely wealthy Mrs. Vanderwhoozie (voice of Betty White) who finds himself tossed out like yesterday’s filet mignon when she suddenly dies. Inadvertently sent out into the big city, Trouble befriends (sort of) the grumpy pit bull Rousey (Adlon) and eventually a human, Zoe (voice of Lucy Bell). But when Vanderwhoozie’s heirs (Marissa Winokur, Joel McHale) realize the only way they can get her fortune is by taking care of Trouble, they send animal tracker Thurman (voice of Wilmer Valderrama) to find him.

This movie has some interesting ideas (probably too many) and some decent voice talent, but the movie overall never quite gels. The story feels half-baked and scattered, as though someone was still trying to figure out how to fit all the parts of this movie together. I wish the movie had also dialed back the meanness a little and turned up the animal antics. C Available on Netflix.

At the Sofaplex 21/05/20

Oxygen (TV-14)

Mélanie Laurent, Malik Zidi.

And Mathieu Amalric gives his voice to MILO, the computer system running the pod where a woman (Laurent) wakes up and finds herself locked in. She tries to calm herself — she’s in a hospital, she reasons, someone will realize she needs help. But MILO tells her that the 35 percent oxygen level in her locked pod means that someone only has about 43 minutes, best case 72, to find her before her air runs out.

This is a fun little thriller, with the woman, who can’t remember her name or anything about how she got in the pod, trying to puzzle her way out. She might not know basic facts about her life but she starts to make educated guesses about where she could be and how to find people who might know who she is. Laurent, whom I still pretty much just know from her Inglourious Basterds role, is excellent here. The woman struggles, breaks down, fights and digs in to old emotions — all while lying down in a box. Oxygen makes the most of the “one person in a box” structure, using flashbacks judiciously and spanning genres to create a story that is suspenseful and even hopeful with just the right dash of humor. B+ Available on Netflix.

The Paper Tigers (PG-13)

Alan Uy, Ron Yuan.

Also Mykel Shannon Jenkins, Matthew Page and Roger Yuan, as the father-figure-like Sifu Cheung, who taught three “we’re brothers forever”-type teenage boys kung fu. Decades later, Cheung has died and though his death is thought to be the result of a heart attack, his friends believe differently. Formerly called Cheung’s “three tigers,” the now grown-up Danny (Uy), Hing (Ron Yuan) and Jim (Jenkins) decide to investigate Cheung’s death to find out what really happened to their former teacher.

Except that they were teenagers A Long Time Ago and Danny and Hing aren’t really at fighting strength or flexibility anymore. Jim is some kind of MMA-ish teacher, but he hasn’t kept up with the kung fu specifics. These middle-aged dudes have baggage in addition to back pain — their once-close friendship broke down a while ago, as did their relationship with Cheung.

The Paper Tigers frequently has the rough-edge feel of the indie that it is and there are a few elements — everything to do with Danny’s relationship with his ex-wife Caryn (Jae Suh Park) and their young son, for example — that could have used some writerly polishing. But the movie has charm, particularly in the friendship among the three men. B Available for rent or purchase.

French Exit (R)

Michelle Pfeiffer, Lucas Hedges.

Michelle Pfeiffer gives a highly entertaining performance as a woman at the end of her fortune who escapes to Paris with her grown son in this movie that is very mannered and very weird but, mostly, strangely enjoyable.

Frances Price (Pfeiffer) leaves, like, $100 tips when she goes to the cafe for coffee so it’s not a surprise that she finds herself broke after what seems like a lifetime spent in old-money-style wealth. Her friend Joan (Susan Coyne) offers to let her and her adult but still quite dependent son Malcolm (Hedges) stay at her apartment in Paris, so Frances sells what possessions she can, turns it all into cash and sets out on her Atlantic crossing with cash, son and their cat in tow.

While on the voyage, Malcolm meets Madeleine (Danielle Macdonald), who gets fired from the on-ship psychic gig after being too honest with one of the passengers. Madeleine gives us one of many clues that there is more to the family cat than meets the eye. Once the duo have arrived in Paris, they meet Madame Reynard (Valerie Mahaffey), another gentle weirdo who seems to have decided that she and Frances will be friends.

French Exit starts out seeming like kind of a riff on a Whit Stillman movie, something about monied people with more taste and elocution than sense or coping abilities. But then it turns into something much, much weirder with a story so lackadaisical in its pacing that I kept thinking it was in its final scene, only to realize that there were some 30 or so more minutes left. For all of this, I basically liked it — particularly, I think, if you choose to read it as a kind of downbeat fairy tale — and liked what Pfeiffer did with a character that could easily have come off as cartoonish and unbelievable. B- Available for rent.

Jungle Beat: The Movie (G)

Voices of David Menken, Ed Kear.

This cute if slight movie features a funny monkey and no recognizable voice talent, for all that I thought of the main characters as Ryan Reynolds Monkey (voiced by Menken) and James Corden Alien (voiced by Kear). According to Wikipedia this movie is based on a TV show (which, oddly enough, appears to have episodes available via Amazon Prime Video while this movie is on Netflix), but it doesn’t require any previous knowledge of the show to get the movie. The basic plot is that the alien named Fneep (Kear), who looks like a blue gummy bear and sounds like James Corden, comes to Earth and his universal translator tech allows the animals — Monkey, Trunk (voice of Ina Marie Smith) the elephant, Humph (voice of John Guerrasio) the hedgehog and Rocky (also Menkin) the hippo — to talk, to each other and to him. He has been sent to conquer Earth, which he does sort of hesitantly, primarily with a short speech because a frog eats his raygun. His new animal friends are chummily encouraging about his conquering (a concept they seem to understand entirely as a chore that needs completing) and try to help him get back to his spaceship so he can get home. In this loose framework, the movie works in a fair amount of just animal silliness: Monkey’s desire for a banana, the grumpy Humph getting lost in circles in a grassy plain, an ostrich and her runaway eggs, one of whom becomes a chick eager to fly. It’s mostly sweet, mostly menace-free stuff. It isn’t the cleverest or best executed “alien and animals become friends” G-rated movie (that is Farmageddon: A Shaun the Sheep Movie, also on Netflix), but it was entertaining enough for my kids, particularly the kid who is always up for monkey-related antics. B Available on Netflix

The Year Earth Changed (PG)

I don’t usually seek out content about Our Covid Year but this tidy 48-minute documentary narrated by David Attenborough was light, pretty to look at and even somewhat hopeful. The focus is animals — animals all over the world in 2020 and how, for example, reduced ocean traffic made life easier for a whale mom or fewer people on the beach meant breeding season was easier for sea turtles. Cheetahs who don’t have to compete with the noise from safari vehicles can more quietly (and thus more safely) call to their young to come feast on prey. Birds who don’t have to compete with traffic noise have their elaborate songs heard more clearly for the first time in decades. “Nature is healing itself” as the internet said — and it did, a little bit, for a little while, so argues this documentary which sort of “a-hems” at the idea about humans doing their part post-pandemic to keep the healing going without getting into the sort of bummer details that would make this a less appealing documentary to relax with. B Available on Apple TV+.

At the Sofaplex 21/05/13

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street (PG)

I know Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, Gordon, Luis, Mr. Hooper and Maria but one name I didn’t know from the early days of Sesame Street was Joan Ganz Cooney. Cooney, one of the talking heads in this charming documentary, was one of the major forces in bringing Sesame Street to life with the goal of using the techniques that so successfully sold children candy and cereal and got everyone singing ad jingles to sell letters, numbers, reading and basic concepts. This documentary is heavy on the early years — how the show came together in 1969 and recruited its core cast and crew, the public’s reaction to the show and the show’s revolutionary approach to teaching and talking with children. We also get discussion of the real-life death of Will Lee in 1982 and how it was handled by working the death of his character Mr. Hooper into the show and the documentary touches on the 1990 death of Jim Henson. The discussion of the ruling principles for how the show reaches children is fascinating and, if you’ve watched the show in more recent seasons, you can see how the child-respecting approach and concept-teaching ideas continue to direct the show even decades later. I always love the story of people making something; Street Gang offers a smart, affectionate look at the creation of something so fundamental to the childhoods of Gen-Xers and beyond. B+

The Courier (PG-13)

Benedict Cumberbatch, Rachel Brosnahan.

And Merab Ninidze as Oleg Penkovsky, a Russian who passes secrets to the British and Americans in the early 1960s. Because Penkovsky is a high-profile official, the British send in an “amateur,” businessman Greville Wynne (Cumberbatch), who has already done some business in Eastern Europe. An ordinary salesman, looking to open a market in the Soviet Union, Greville ferries documents in and out of the Soviet Union until, of course, the Russians get suspicious.

The movie has a Bridge of Spies vibe but peppier, with Greville and Oleg forming a friendship even as they’re mostly just play-acting at “doing business” as cover for a passing of documents. Their work touches the Cuban Missile Crisis and is, apparently, based on a true story. It’s a suspenseful spy tale and Cumberbatch sells his “regular guy, extraordinary circumstances” situation. B Available for rent.

Golden Arm

Mary Holland, Betsy Sodaro.

Longtime best friends Melanie (Holland) and Danny (Sodaro) hit the road so Melanie can train for and compete in an arm wrestling competition in this lightweight but sweet movie that feels like a good Galentine’s Day watch. Melanie is a baker whose business could use an infusion of cash and who seems a little uncertain about the direction of her life after a recent divorce. Danny is an arm wrestling champ who loses her shot at that year’s national title after a fight with Brenda (Olivia Stambouliah), a take-no-prisoners competitor. This movie is part road-trip movie, part sports competition movie (complete with training montages) and part friendship movie that reminded me a bit of Bridesmaids with Holland’s Kristen Wiig energy and the way that female friendship is shown as a strong and resilient thing. B Available for purchase or rent.

Chadwick Boseman: Portrait of an Artist (TV-MA)

This 21-minute documentary looks at the work of Chadwick Boseman primarily through the lens of his Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom performance (which everybody assumed was going to win him a posthumous Oscar right up until the final moments of the award ceremony). Spike Lee, Danai Gurira, George C. Wolfe, Glynn Turman and other actors and directors who have worked with Boseman talk about his style and approach to a part. Perhaps most illuminating are the sequences with Viola Davis, Boseman’s Ma Rainey co-star and a fellow Oscar nominee for the film, who gives a window into not just how Boseman thought about his part but how all actors work to build a character, reading in part from his notes about the screenplay. It’s a short celebration of Boseman’s craft and it’s only available through, I think, this Saturday. B+ Available on Netflix.

Monster (R)

Kelvin Harrison Jr., Jeffrey Wright.

Also Jennifer Hudson, Jennifer Ehle, Tim Blake Nelson, Nas, Rakim Mayers (known in his music career as A$AP Rocky) and a very young-looking John David Washington. According to Wikipedia, this movie, which

hit Netflix on May 7, premiered at the 2018 Sundance, and from a read of Washington’s Wikipedia page and late 2017 previews of the festival I get the sense that this movie was shot a good while ago. (Also credited on this film: Radha Blank, writer/director/star of the recent The 40-Year-Old Version, is listed as one of the screenwriters.) .
While not as strong as some of the cast’s subsequent work, this movie has some solid performances. Harrison plays Steve, a 16-year-old aspiring filmmaker who gets tangled up in charges related to a robbery in a neighborhood store that ends in the murder of the clerk. Steve is held in jail awaiting and throughout his trial and we see his shock and fear at being in this situation. Largely through flashbacks, we learn about Steve’s strong relationship with his parents (Hudson, Wright) and supportive teacher (Nelson) and his budding romance with a fellow student at his prestigious magnet school. Steve also has what he later calls an acquaintance but might be better described as a fascination with James King (Mayers), a guy from the neighborhood who eventually ends up as a co-defendant at Steve’s trial.
While Monster has good performances and an interesting story it also has a not-always-successful structural element in the form of a voiceover narration by Steve that frequently puts the setting in screenplay terms. The idea that the frightened, traumatized Steve might put his ordeal at the remove of watching it as though he were watching or shooting a movie makes sense (might even make more sense in a book, where we are more naturally in his head) but it frequently gets in the way and does an amount of “telling” when “showing” would have let the emotion of the story come through more. B- Available on Netflix.

WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn
Way back before the pandemic, if you can remember that far, financial news was obsessed with the saga of WeWork in late 2019 and its failed IPO. This Hulu documentary offers a (frequently gleeful) history of WeWork’s rise and fall, packed full of more Silicon Valley nonsense than, well, Silicon Valley or any other industry parody. Stories of extraordinary excess and mission statements about changing the way people live that sound, as several people observe, like a cult are juxtaposed with people reminding us that “for God’s sake, they’re renting [bleeping] desks.” B Available on Hulu

NH Jewish Film Festival
The New Hampshire Jewish Film Festival kicks off (virtually) Wednesday, May 19, featuring 11 films and a short film presentation.
The short film program, which will be viewable for free, is available anytime between Wednesday, May 19, and Thursday, June 10 (the closing day of the festival), and will explore food themes such as “the secrets of cooking artisan pastrami, the origins of chocolate soda ‘egg creams,’ and the reason why cheeseburgers are forbidden by Jewish dietary laws,” according to an event press release. The movie available on the first day is When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, a movie in German that is getting its U.S. release on May 21. This movie and all other festival movies are available for 72 hours after their festival date, starting at noon on that day. Buy a ticket for $12 to see one movie or get a $43 four-film pass or a $110 all-access pass. The festival will also feature post-film discussions with directors for five of the films and there will be a closing day event featuring a water cooler discussion in Red River Theatres’ virtual lobby.
See a schedule of the films and events and find more on purchasing tickets at nhjewishfilmfestival.com.

At the Sofaplex 21/05/06

Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse (R)

Michael B. Jordan, Jodie Turner-Smith.

Michael B. Jordan does the best he can with this very OK adaptation of a Jack Ryan universe character. According to Wikipedia, this movie has been floating around in development since the 1990s (the book on which its based came out in 1993), and a lot of this movie’s elements (character’s action spurred on by dead wife, off-the-books CIA stuff, the Russians but not, like, directly) have a “fished out from the back of the 1990s storage unit” feel. The movie is at its best and most lively when it focuses on Jordan, playing Navy SEAL John Kelly, and lets him singlehandedly MacGyver his way out of situations. (A sequence at about the 40-minute mark where he takes on a whole bunch of armed guys using only two shirts is maybe the movie’s most clever and most energetic scene.) Available via Amazon Prime video, this movie is about 80 percent as fun as an episode of CBS’s The Equalizer reboot; watch it for Jordan when you want relaxing, if vaguely disappointing, by-the-numbers action. B- mostly for Jordan, mostly for that aforementioned scene. Available on Amazon Prime.

Things Heard & Seen (TV-MA)

Amanda Seyfried, James Norton.

Seyfried plays a woman who hates her husband so much that the possible haunting of her remote-ish farm house is, like, third on her list of problems. In 1980, Catherine (Seyfried) and George (Norton, who I still know best as the original hot, mystery-solving vicar on Grantchester) move to upstate New York so that the disappointing George can take a job at the only college that will have him. This move means that Catherine, who has a successful career as an art restorer, has to give up her job and becomes isolated in their super spooky new house with their young daughter Franny (Ana Sophia Heger). The move and perhaps, it’s hinted, general marriage woes have so stressed Catherine out that even before they box up their belongings and head to the country Catherine is struggling with the relapse of an eating disorder.

Once they get to the house, she finds a Bible that lists a former resident as “damned” and there’s all sorts of funny business with the lighting and just basically you don’t have to be a Ghostbuster to recognize that it’s haunted. (That might be a mild spoiler but the movie is pretty clear pretty quickly that it’s a haunting.) George is unsupportive about the spookiness of their house, possibly because he is busy gaslighting his wife in other ways and then cruelly using her struggles to get her to doubt herself (or at least try to convince her that others will doubt her).

This movie maybe veers into cartoonish-ness toward the end and doesn’t always know how to handle Catherine’s illness but it was basically an enjoyable little bit of haunted thriller. B- Available on Netflix.

Nobody (R)

Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielson.

Also Christopher Lloyd, RZA and Alexey Serebryakov, as the shady criminal guy. Written by Derek Kolstad (who wrote the first two John Wick movies and has a writing credit on the third), this stylish action movie with comic touches comes in at a tidy hour and a half and is now on VOD in addition to being in theaters. I think wherever you enjoy your movie nights, if you liked the John Wick movies (and I most definitely did), you will also like this tale. As with that series, Nobody’s lead, Hutch (Odenkirk), is a regular guy — or so it would seem until a moment of violence in his house awakens the person he used to be. Then, enter the guns, the car chases, the Russian mafia. This movie is exceptionally skilled in its pacing and offers well choreographed (if John Wick-ily violent) fight scenes. Everyone here (but particularly Odenkirk) seems to be having fun. B+ Available for rent and in theaters.

We Broke Up (NR)

William Jackson Harper, Aya Cash.

It was the presence of Harper (The Good Place’s Chidi) that drew me to this recent release, which is sort of an inverted romantic comedy. It begins with the breakup of Lori (Cash) and Doug (Harper) after 10 years together — and the day before they are going to travel to the wedding of Lori’s little sister Bea (Sarah Bolger, who I mostly know as a supporting actress in TV costume dramas but is fun here). A very intentionally extra affair (it’s at the summer camp the girls used to attend with all sorts of elaborate planned activities), the wedding presents Lori and Doug, whose fondness for Lori’s family prevents him from sitting it out, with a conundrum: tell people about their break up and suck attention away from Bea? (And perhaps, for Lori, upend their sister dynamic, with Bea as the “impulsive one,” in a way she isn’t ready for.) Or try to make it through the three days of the wedding trip presenting a “happy couple” front? The gentle comedy and sincere performances worked for me. B Available to rent.

At the Sofaplex 21/04/29

Stowaway (TV-MA)

Anna Kendrick, Daniel Dae Kim.

The four-person cast is rounded out by Toni Collette and Shamier Anderson in this movie about three astronauts headed to Mars. Zoe (Kendrick) is a doctor, David (Kim) is a scientist studying plant life and Marina (Collette) is the mission’s commander. Twelve hours into the flight, they find the unconscious Michael (Anderson), an engineer whose last-minute check on equipment led him to be accidentally stuck on the spacecraft before liftoff. There is no turning back on this two-year mission, which means that Michael is now part of the crew.

I found myself waiting for this movie to reveal what it is really about — space vampires! space caper! — but it ultimately is about exactly what it appears to be about, in which case it presents some plot problems that make the whole endeavor feel a little shaky. Which is too bad because the basic idea of this movie (a small number of people stuck in space, some science-y stuff that allows you to keep the low-gravity-related special effects to a minimum) is a nice way to do low-budget space stories. There are decent performances all around but nobody really gets the chance to build a fully realized character. C+ Available on Netflix

The World To Come (R)

Vanessa Kirby, Katherine Waterston.

Two women in 1850s rural New York, stuck in complicated marriages, find friendship and romance in each other in this bleakly pretty love story.

Abigail (Waterston) and her husband Dyer (Casey Affleck) joylessly churn through their days, still deep in grief from the death of their young daughter. Abigail keeps a record of the farm, which in her narration becomes a kind of poetry about their inner turmoil and increasingly distant relationship. Then she meets Tallie (Kirby), who moves to a nearby farm with her husband, Finney (Christopher Abbott), who seems disturbed and occasionally sadistic. The women seem instantly drawn to each other and fall beautifully in love even though they have little means by which to arrange their lives around this relationship that clearly makes both of them so happy.

Excellent performances and beautiful cinematography help make this story, which you know going in isn’t going to end with, like, a run through the airport and a wedding proposal, lovely and swoony despite the constant air of impending doom. B+ Available for rent

At the Sofaplex 21/04/08

Shiva Baby

Rachel Sennott, Molly Gordon.

If you can’t remember what it feels like to be crammed in a house with family, extended family and random people who ask the same intrusive personal questions as family, let Shiva Baby remind you. Danielle (Sennott), still in the working-it-out college-y phase of life, goes to a post-funeral service reception with her parents, Debbie (Polly Draper) and Joel (Fred Melamed), for, er, “wait, who died?” Danielle asks her mom as they head into the house. The death of whomever isn’t particularly traumatic for Danielle but all the people and their questions at this event are. Her parents try to put the positive spin on her in-flux situation while also asking everybody if they can help her get a job. What they don’t know when they try this with friend-of-friend Max (Danny Deferrai) — and what Max’s wife, Kim (Dianna Agron), doesn’t know, at least initially — is that he and Danielle have been hooking up for a while, having met on a sugar daddy app, which is really how Danielle makes the pocket money she says she makes babysitting. Having reality — Danielle’s parent-supported life, Max’s more successful than him wife and their baby — interjected into their relationship seems almost as crushing to Danielle as the disappointment she suspects her parents feel about her. In this claustrophobia-inducing mash of too many people and their opinions, Danielle also sees Maya (Gordon) — her longtime friend and sometime girlfriend. While you kind of want Maya to meet up with Audrey Plaza’s character from Happiest Season and enjoy a mature, emotionally grounded relationship with someone who has it together, it’s clear that Danielle and Maya still have feelings for each other.

I deeply enjoyed this movie with its interpersonal messiness and its particular way of framing conversations so everybody feels too close, too up in each other’s business. It’s funny and occasionally sad and captures the low and high stakes of Danielle, who seems so green and young. This indie-style dramady offers smart writing, solid performances and a standout bit of work from Polly Draper. B+ Available for rent or purchase. It doesn’t appear to be rated but Amazon lists it as being 18+, which feels accurate.

Concrete Cowboy (R)

Idris Elba, Caleb McLaughlin.

The story of a teen getting to know his father is set against a look at the real-life horse-riding community in a Black neighborhood of north Philadelphia in this Netflix movie. As we see over the end credits, many of the supporting characters here are real Philadelphia cowboys and cowgirls who work to maintain the community’s horse-riding tradition even as development makes maintaining stables in the city difficult. That story is ultimately probably more interesting than the fairly standard coming of age story of teenage Cole (McLaughlin), sent by his mother in Detroit to live with his father, Harp (Elba), in Philadelphia after Cole gets in trouble at school one too many times. Cole and Harp don’t know each other that well. Cole is sort of horrified to learn he’ll be sharing his father’s home with a horse and Harp is against Cole continuing a friendship with childhood buddy Smush (Jharrel Jerome), whom Harp has pegged as trouble. The scenes of the cowboy culture, what it means for the men and women involved and the neighborhood overall, are interesting and Idris Elba is good even when working with material that feels fairly middle of the road. The movie has some nice cinematography too — working standard Western-movie shots into a modern city setting. B Available on Netflix.

Monster Hunter (PG-13)

Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa.

Sure, I miss packed Marvel movie opening night screenings and I miss award-season movies that I get totally engrossed in. But really when I think about the part of the theatrical experience that I’ve missed the most in the last year, it’s probably getting hot popcorn (if you asked nicely, the good folks at Cinemagic would get it from the batch that was just popped) and settling in for a screening of, like, a mid-series Resident Evil-type movie, right as you realize that, hey, this franchise that had always seemed sorta stupid is also kinda fun. Monster Hunter is apparently based on a different video game but it stars Jovovich, is directed by Paul W. S. Anderson (Jovovich’s husband and director of some of the Resident Evil movies) and feels to me like some of the most surprisingly fun entries in that series.

Here, Artemis (Jovovich) is an Army Ranger who — you know what, let’s just skip to the good stuff. She fights monsters. Milla Jovovich fights monsters — insecty monsters, dragon-y monsters, other monsters. She fights them with guns and fire and at one point it looked like she was about to punch a monster the size of a two-story house in the face and, sure, that’s dumb, but why not? For some of the monster-fighting, she joins up with Tony Jaa, whose character is called Hunter. He’s also pretty cool. The special effects in this movie make up for whatever they lack in perfect realism with just being fun, and the setting is mostly “sci-fi desert-y type place,” a locale that provides some basic rules but doesn’t require you to ask too many questions. B Available for rent and purchase.

Upside-Down Magic (PG)

Izabela Rose, Siena Agudong.

Longtime friends Nory (Rose) and Reina (Agudong) excitedly head to the Sage Academy for magical teens but have trouble adjusting in this Disney+ movie based on a novel of the same name. Nory finds that her magic is labeled “upside down”: she can’t turn into a cat like the rest of the Fluxers; her cat form sprouts wings and sometimes a llama hump. She is sent to a class with other “UDM” students where they’re expected to wait out their time until their magic fades and they’re safe to be sent back into the non-magical world. Reina on the other hand is a perfect Flare (a magic person who can create and control fire) but she meets someone who offers her a shortcut to even more power.

This very cute tween/older pre-tween-friendly movie is all about sticking with your dreams, acknowledging and being proud of your unique abilities and learning who to trust. All the magical stuff is above-TV-average in the effects department and there is just a hint of teenager crush-ness. And, the movie had me seeking out the book, which is part of a series that is geared to middle grade (age 8 to 12) readers. B Available on Disney+

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