Category: Film Reviews

Coming 2 America (R)

Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall.

Murphy’s 1988 comedy gets a sequel that feels like, essentially, one of those EW movie reunion photo shoots with a few next-generation people sprinkled throughout (Leslie Jones, KiKi Lane, Tracy Morgan). Everybody looks great — I highly recommend checking out the Hollywood Reporter story about the costumes, which were created by Ruth E. Carter, the Oscar-winning designer behind the Black Panther costumes. I maybe recommend it (and a forthcoming Coming 2 America fashion lookbook? Please?) more than the movie, about which I had these thoughts: (1) I honestly don’t know if I ever saw the original all the way through or if it was one of those movies I just sort of absorbed parts of over the years. Or maybe it’s just been that long since 1988. (2) As many have noted, all the actors (including Wesley Snipes, Shari Headley, James Earl Jones, John Amos and random cameos, like Trevor Noah) seem like they’re having a great time. (3) In addition to the Coming 2 America lookbook, I’d like a whole album of new En Vogue/ Salt-N-Pepa collaborations (we get a cute reworking of “Whatta Man” here). (4) With everybody having such a great time while wearing such fun looks, does it really matter if the movie felt kinda “meh” most of the time?

The plot just barely holding everything together is that with the death of King Jaffee (Jones), Prince Akeem (Murphy) needs to return to America to find his long lost son to serve as his heir, as he and his wife, Lisa (Headley), only ever had daughters, who apparently can’t take the throne. This movie features less “2 America” and more of the American, newly-titled Prince Lavelle (Jermaine Fowler) coming to Akeem’s African country of Zamunda. Lavelle learns the ways of his new royal family, Akeem’s wife Lisa deals with her annoyance at having Akeem show up with his new son (and the son’s mom, played by Jones) and Akeem’s oldest daughter Meeka (Lane) chafes at having what she feels is her rightful role as future monarch usurped. The movie throws this all out there but, in keeping things light and jokey, never deals with its story points with much depth, which can make the story feel thin overall.

But, again, with wardrobe items like the red-and-gold wedding dress that appears at the end of the movie (Google it), does it really matter? B- primarily for fashion, En Vogue and Salt-N-Pepa and general nostalgia Available on Amazon Prime.

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run (PG)

Voices of Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke.

SpongeBob and Patrick — and then eventually all their buddies from Bikini Bottom — go to the “lost city of Atlantic City” to confront Poseidon and rescue SpongeBob’s pet snail Gary in this new animated movie. Sponge on the Run is delightful, if a bit more violent than you might want for your youngest Nick viewers (SpongeBob’s pending execution is a significant plot point in the movie’s back-half). But the animation has a nice bit of Play-Doh-like roundedness and a generally cheery color scheme. There are some delightful cameos (particularly during a weird detour where animated characters wander into a live-action-ish setting) and general goofy humor both visually and in the dialogue that make this movie a fun bit of silliness for adults as well as for kids, say, middle-elementary and up. B Available on Paramount+.

Moxie (PG-13)

Hadley Robinson, Lauren Tsai.

Rounding out the teen cast, Alycia Pascual-Peña, Nico Hiraga, Josie Totah, Sabrina Haskett, Sydney Park, Anjelika Washington and Patrick Schwarzenegger. Adults include Ike Barinholtz, Marcia Gay Harden and Amy Poehler, who also directed the movie based on the YA novel by Jennifer Mathieu.

Vivian (Robinson), daughter to single mom Lisa (Poehler), keeps her head down in high school and dreams of graduating and escaping, with best friend Claudia (Tsai), to the safety of a college science lab. But then outspoken new girl Lucy (Pascual-Peña) has Vivian reconsidering her passive reaction to the jerky and predatory behavior of school bully/star football player Mitchell (Schwarzenegger) and her school’s general discriminatory approach to girls versus permissiveness toward the school’s boys. Full of her mom’s good-ole-days memories of riot grrrl bands and patriarchy-fighting protests, Vivian pastes together a zine called Moxie, dropping 50 copies in the girls bathrooms. The zine spurs the girls to stand up for themselves and each other, but Vivian’s newfound zeal also causes a rift with her friend Claudia.

I mean, we can quibble about whether schools today are this laissez faire about very menacing bullies or if it’s really all that cool that high school girls need to resort to vaguely-Handmaid’s Tale-ish secret signals of support for each other but — Moxie is adorable. I don’t know how it reads to actual teens; from my vantage point this movie feels like mom wish-fiction about what you want your teen daughter’s life to be like. The girls here are rallied by a zine, love 1990s girl rock and social media is just a thing that exists at the margins. You (by which I mean me) want your daughter to feel empowered, not really have to deal with social media all that much, find support from fellow empowered girls, have honest conversations about different life experiences with friends and meet a boy who is genuinely respectful and supportive. And you (by which I mean me) want her to like awesome music that you will also turn up and embarrassingly mom-dance to, like the soundtrack to this movie (which doesn’t appear to be available yet as a purchase-able album but song lists exist all over the internet; time to make a mixtape!). Does this movie provide the same hit of Gen-X nostalgia as the Listen to Sassy podcast and the Real World season one reunion? Why yes it does! Now who’s up for starting a zine? B Available on Netflix.

Tom & Jerry (PG)

Chloë Grace Moretz, Michael Peña.

Cartoon cat Tom and mouse Jerry (along with other animated animals) inhabit live-action New York City in this movie that is pretty solid on the special effects but pretty shaky everywhere else.

The human story centers around Kayla (Moretz), a girl who talks her way into a temporary job at the ultra-fancy Royal Gate Hotel. She’s meant to help with the upcoming nuptials of famous couple Ben (Colin Jost) and Preeta (Pallavi Sharda). Hotel head Mr. Dubros (Rob Delaney) has faith in Kayla and her fabricated prior event experience but event manager Terence (Peña) is suspicious. When the appearance of a mouse threatens the event, Kayla attempts to fight infestation the old-fashioned way — with a cat. Tom is happy to help, as Jerry interrupted his keyboard busking. Terence highly doubts that this will work, especially as the cat and mouse duo cause destruction everywhere they go.

The Common Sense Media headline on this movie warned me that it was on the violent side so I didn’t watch it with my kids, who are otherwise right in what is probably this movie’s demo. And I’m glad I didn’t; convincing young humans that they can’t do cartoony foolishness is a significant part of my day and the way the movie puts animated characters in a live action setting makes those head-smacks and electrocutions feel real (but without the consequences of real-world physics). That factor plus the scenes that are heavy on adult humans and their boring problems make me wonder who this is for; do enough 7-to-10-year-olds want Tom & Jerry content that comes with Kayla’s Gen Z-er starting out issues?

Which is all too bad because this movie does have a nicely quirky sense of humor at times — it makes some cute jokes about Tom & Jerry’s lack of human-comprehensible verbal communication, possession of business cards and showbiz abilities. Near the end Rob Delaney calls them “Thomas and Jerome,” which is a solid understated bit of business. And the animation really worked for me; their cartoon antics have some visual cleverness. The blend of old-fashioned illustration-style Tom & Jerry with the live-action world was visually appealing, especially as the wedding got crazier and more exotic animals showed up at the hotel.

Tom & Jerry feels like it’s halfway to a family-fun reboot of old characters but the movie is just out of balance enough to make it feel longer, flatter and more worrisome in the “please don’t try to electrocute your brother like the cat”-sense than I want from my family entertainment. C+ In theaters and on HBO Max until late March.

The United States vs. Billie Holiday (R)

Andra Day, Trevante Rhodes.

Golden Globe winner Day gives a standout performance as Billie Holiday is this jumble of a movie about the singer’s legal troubles and the government’s attempts to discredit her due to the power and popularity of her song “Strange Fruit.” The story jumps around from 1947 to 1959 as Holiday struggles with heroin addiction. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics pursues her mercilessly, claiming to be trying to build a case against her to get her to turn in her suppliers. But early on we see Harry Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund), the Bureau’s leader and a malevolent cartoon villain, tell a room full of senators (and Roy Cohn) that “This jazz music is the devil’s work” and silencing Holiday will keep a lid on the civil rights movement. African American federal agent Jimmy Fletcher (Rhodes) is tasked by Anslinger with helping to bring Holiday down, an assignment he comes to have mixed feelings about.

This movie is very tell, not show — leaning on our previous knowledge of government wrongdoing and 20th century history. The movie states things — like that “Strange Fruit” is important to the civil rights movement and is “making people think” — but it doesn’t really demonstrate what this means or explain its effect on the culture of the 1940s and 1950s. The movie doesn’t really even do a good job of explaining the wider cultural relevance of Holiday and her career.

However. In the middle of a tornado of questionable movie-making choices is Andra Day and her Billie Holiday. She is able show the strength, vulnerability, weakness, brilliance and righteous anger of Holiday all at once and make her seem real, even when she is frequently wading through some business that feels 1980s-TV-biopic-y. It’s a top-notch performance that really deserved a better movie. B (a B+ maybe A- for Day’s performance; everything else is solidly in C territory). Available on Hulu.

I Care A Lot (R)

Rosamund Pike, Peter Dinklage.

This recent Netflix release feels like half of a good idea: Perfectly coiffed, razor-sharply attired Marla Grayson (Pike) steals the assets of old people, legally, by getting them declared incapable of taking care of themselves and getting herself named as their guardian. She has a network of people wittingly (and maybe a few unwittingly) helping her get them locked into care facilities and incapable of reaching family or legal representation. Marla liquidates their assets “to pay for their care” — and for her own guardianship services, of course — until they slowly waste away. She is slick and insincere and basically evil and I never once rooted for her.

The possibility of comeuppance is introduced when Marla commits Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest), a woman who appears to be quite wealthy but without family. Messing with Jennifer, who turns out to have shadowy “friends,” is a mistake, several people try to tell Marla, and that’s before a murderous Peter Dinklage character gets involved.

Of all the characters here, I guess I rooted for Wiest, who is sidelined for way too much of the movie, and maybe for Dinklage, who is one of those “always fun” actors for me but also didn’t feel like he was given the best material. This movie has a strong cast (including some nice work by Alicia Witt and Chris Messina). It sets itself up as a comedy, maybe, or at least a darkly comic drama about villain versus villain, but I felt like some of that went off the rails in the movie’s second half and maybe wanted us to see Marla as one of those peak TV anti-heroes that have moral layers (maybe just let the villain be a villain?). But Marla to me always felt like a flatter version of Pike’s Gone Girl character without the wit or the relatable rage. The movie feels like it wants to make a statement about Capitalism or The System or something but by the time we get to the big climax I found that I didn’t really care much at all. C+ Available on Netflix

Supernova (R)

Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth.

Tusker (Tucci), an American writer, and Sam (Firth), a British pianist, are a longtime couple who hit the road in an RV through the countryside in England, where they have lived for decades. We can tell by the way Sam gazes adoringly at Tusker that all their complaints about each other’s driving and navigation is the banter of a couple deeply in love. And, even before it is openly stated, it’s clear that there is an underlying current of grief to this trip. Tusker has a degenerative disease, one that is affecting his memory and abilities to write (and maybe read) as well as his physical abilities. He is getting worse and there is a bit of a “last hurrah” tone to the trip from the beginning, with the couple visiting a favorite camping spot and then Sam’s family home for a big get-together.

Exactly how Tusker and Sam are individually coping with Tusker’s illness and how they plan to handle it as time goes on is the topic they keep returning to throughout the trip but it’s one that both of them are not quite ready to deal with directly, at least to each other. Their relationship is the center of this movie and the performances of Tucci and Firth are what make this lovely, gentle movie worth watching. Both actors fill in all the corners of these characters, we can see the layers of emotion, we can see all the things they’re saying to each other even when they’re chatting about something meaningless. It’s all such good work that it carries you through this bittersweet story. A- Available for rent or purchase.

Locked Down (R)

Anne Hathaway, Chiwetel Ejiofor.

A couple stuck in lockdown in London eventually plan a half-baked diamond heist in a movie that is just so much more pie crust scraps than pie.

Paxton (Ejiofor) and Linda (Hathaway) have broken up but are still stuck living together in the same (really pretty, with multiple stories and a garden) London townhome early in the pandemic. Linda, an American, is working remotely at her job as a luxury goods executive and Paxton has been laid off, I think, from his usual job as a delivery driver. After a lot of unnecessary shagginess, we get to the action, which is that Linda has to assist with the pack-up of high-end clothes and accessories from Harrods, which is locking away all its goods during this quarantine era. One of the items she is charged with packing up is a very large diamond that has been sold to a Bad Person and is going to be sent to a vault in New York City where it is unlikely to be even looked at for decades. Coincidentally, Paxton has been tasked by his old employer to help transport these items.

According to the little sneak peek of this movie on HBO Max, the film was not only made in a house with minimal crew during Covid (actors like Ben Kingsley, Ben Stiller, Stephen Merchant, Mindy Kaling and Dulé Hill appear in Zoom or FaceTime sequences) but filmmakers were given access to the inner workings of the closed Harrods. But this gem of a setting doesn’t show up until the last 30 minutes. That’s 90 minutes of not-heisting in this heist movie.

Somewhere here is 72 minutes of a tight, light, fun movie of the “heck, let’s make something” style of Covid-era creation. But way too much time is spent underlining the unhappiness in Paxton and Linda’s relationship and the crazy-making state of being locked down (which, and this won’t be true in 10 years but it is true now, movies don’t need to explain; like, we’re here, we get it). C+ Available on HBO Max

Bliss (R)

Owen Wilson, Salma Hayek.

Wilson is either a man experiencing drug addiction and mental illness or a volunteer caught in an experiment in this odd sci-fi, I guess, movie. Wilson plays Greg, a man who has recently, in his words, messed up his marriage and is spacing out at work but still tries to convince his grown daughter, Emily (Nesta Cooper), that he is OK. But then a meeting with his boss goes fatally wrong and Greg runs to a bar, where he meets Isabel (Hayek), a woman who seems to have the power to move things with her mind. She claims that the world and most of the people in it are not real but that Greg is real and, like her, can manipulate objects after popping some yellow crystals. He stays with her in her tent under the underpass and together they grift food and get into petty trouble. When his faith in her claims about “simulations” and “crystals” starts to falter, she takes him back to the “real” world, which unlike the “simulation” (basically this world, with its pollution and income inequality and muted gray color scheme) is a brilliantly colored place of universal wealth, a healthy environment and so much happiness it’s turned people into ungrateful jerks. There, Isabel is actually a doctor who has developed the Brain Box, a device that sends people to the unhappy simulation existence so they can see how lousy things could be, to appreciate what they have. Greg is her boyfriend or husband or whatever and together they live in a beautiful house, like the one he’s been sketching during his “life” in the simulation. “Real” life is perfect and Greg never wants to leave — but he can’t shake thoughts of his children back in the simulation.

I’m not totally sure what this movie is doing, if it’s trying to say something about the state of our world, how it feels not be able to trust your own perceptions, or something about the reason people fall into addiction. Whatever it’s doing, Bliss is not doing a great job of it. It also never made me care about the central characters of Greg and Isabel. Ultimately, I didn’t really care which world was real; I was just happy when the movie was over and I could leave both of them behind. D Available on Amazon Prime

Palmer (R)

Justin Timberlake, June Squibb.

Palmer (Timberlake) is released from prison and returns to his small hometown to live with his grandmother, Vivian (Squibb), and try to start over in life. The small town-ness makes that extremely difficult — everybody knows his trajectory from promising high school quarterback to man who took part in a burglary that went bad. But his grandmother’s reputation in her church also helps to get him his job as janitor at the local elementary school.

Vivian is strict with Palmer but a giving person; when Shelly (Juno Temple), the woman renting a neighboring trailer from Vivian, takes off, Vivian watches Sam (Ryder Allen), her elementary school-aged son. Sam is sweet and happy despite his family turmoil and loves all things fancy, especially a cartoon princess show and its costumes and toys. This makes school difficult for him but he is confident in his personality and his interests, despite the bullying from kids and some adults — and he has a caring teacher in Miss Maggie (Alisha Wainwright).

When Vivian dies, Sam is basically left alone. Though Palmer initially plans to send Sam to child services, his own childhood experiences with family upheaval lead him to agree to take care of Sam while they wait for Shelly to return. Palmer, Sam and to some degree Miss Maggie, who sort of hovers on the edges (initially, it seems, to make sure Sam is all right but later because, you know, Palmer is played by Justin Timberlake), become a kind of found family, with Sam and Palmer helping each other to find some stability.

For all that this movie has some grim and violent moments, it is a kind and gentle story — but sweet fancy molasses, is it slow. You know the joke that goes “I spent a year in [some boring place] one weekend”? Palmer is the movie version of that. It goes exactly where you think it will but it takes so very long getting there. This movie sets the scene just fine but then hangs around making sure “Do you get it? Do You GET IT?” an unnecessarily long time and it does this repeatedly. You could cut a good 30 minutes out of this movie and lose nothing. B- Available on Apple TV+

Finding ‘Ohana (PG)

Kea Peahu, Alex Aiono.

Pili (Peahu), a geocaching champion, sets out on a real treasure hunt to help pay her family’s bills in this adventure-packed kid-friendly movie set in Hawaii.

Pili, 12, and her brother, Ioane (Aiono), an older teen, have come to Hawaii with their mother, Leilani (Kelly Hu), to visit their grandfather, Kimo (Branscombe Richard), who is recovering from a heart attack. The visit is their first one back to the family home since the kids were little and their father, who was in the Army, died. Leilani is frustrated to find that Kimo has a slew of bills that need paying, Pili is disappointed that she had to forgo a summer at geocaching camp and Ioane is all teenager-y about the lack of Wi-Fi — though he perks up a bit when he meets girl-teen Hana (Lindsay Watson). Pili is drawn to a journal she finds and a story her grandfather tells her about a long-ago explorer and some hidden treasure. She sets out with new buddy Casper (Owen Vaccaro) to find the mountain where a series of clues from an old journal should bring her to what she’s hoping is enough olden-days pirate-y gold and whatnot that she can pay her family’s bills without their having to sell their Brooklyn apartment (and possibly leave their city lives behind).

Mixing the best parts of The Goonies, the Indiana Jones sense of adventure and some Drunk History-style storytelling, Finding ‘Ohana is plucky fun with moments of well-executed family drama that manages to pretty seamlessly flow with the comedy and action. Other than some kissy business with the teens, the movie feels pretty older-elementary-schooler-friendly without being a chore for adults to sit through (it is just self-aware enough about its Goonies-ness to be charming in its nostalgia). B+ Available on Netflix.

Palmer (R)

Justin Timberlake, June Squibb.

Palmer (Timberlake) is released from prison and returns to his small home town (in, I think, Louisiana) to live with his grandmother, Vivian (Squibb), and try to start over in life. The small town-ness makes that extremely difficult — everybody knows his trajectory from promising high school quarterback to man who took part in a burglary that went bad. But his grandmother’s reputation in her church also helps to get him his job as janitor at the local elementary school.

Vivian is strict with Palmer but a giving person; when Shelly (Juno Temple), the woman renting a neighboring trailer from Vivian, takes off, Vivian watches Sam (Ryder Allen), her elementary school aged son. Sam is sweet and happy despite his family turmoil and loves all things fancy, especially a cartoon princess show and its costumes and merch. This makes school difficult for him but he is confident in his personality and his interests, despite the bullying from kids and some adults — and he has an understanding teacher in Miss Maggie (Alisha Wainwright).

When Vivian dies, Sam is basically left alone. Though Palmer initially plans to send Sam to child services, his own childhood experiences with family upheaval lead him to agree to take care of Sam while they wait for Shelly to return. Palmer, Sam and to some degree Miss Maggie, who sort of hovers on the edges (initially, it seems, to make sure Sam is all right but later because, you know, Palmer is played by Justin Timberlake), become a kind of found family, with Sam and Palmer helping each other to find some stability.

For all that this movie has some grim and violent moments, it is a sweet and gentle story — but sweet fancy molasses, is it slow. You know the joke that goes, “I spent a year in [some boring place] one weekend”? Palmer is the movie version of that. It goes exactly where you think it will but it takes so very long getting there. This movie sets the scene just fine but then hangs around making sure, “Do you get it? Do You GET IT?” for an unnecessarily long time and it does this repeatedly. You could cut a good 30 minutes out of this movie and lose nothing. The slow-pokey-ness of the pacing and the needless repetition of story points (that Palmer’s old friends are jerks, Shelly is a mess, Sam is bullied) cut into the impact of Timberlake’s basically average to above average performance and Allen’s realistic-kid-like performance as Sam. B- — Available on Apple TV+

Penguin Bloom (TV-14)

Naomi Watts, Andrew Lincoln.

Sam Bloom (Watts), an athletic Australian mother of three sons, becomes paralyzed from the bra-strap down during an accident on a family vacation. Months later, the family is still having a hard time coping: Sam is depressed, her oldest son Noah (Griffin Murray-Johnston) feels guilty about how the accident happened, Sam and her husband Cameron (Lincoln) haven’t figured out how to relate to each other and her younger sons, Rueben (Felix Cameron) and Oli (Abe Clifford-Barr), are just generally sort of missing their withdrawn mother. But then they find a young black-and-white magpie on the beach and name her Penguin. The bird and Sam’s role caring for the bird give the family something new and hopeful to coalesce around and help Sam find her way out of her grief.

There isn’t much to this movie, which is based on a true story. It is a pleasant movie with a palatable amount of inspirational storytelling. The Bloom family Australian home has a casual beach feel — which is sort of fun to look at, in an interior design magazine way, and consider things such as how machine washable all the upholstery looks (which feels accurate for a house with three young boys) but how uncluttered the house is (which feels more aspirational than realistic). Nobody’s performance is horrible. And … the bird is cute. There are worse things to fold your laundry to. B Available on Netflix.

The Dig (PG-13)

Carey Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes.

Edith Pretty (Mulligan) hires excavator Basil Brown (Fiennes) to help her unearth archaeological finds in a field on her property in this movie based on a true story of a true dig in Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, England.

The work was sort of a pet project of hers and her late husband’s. He didn’t live to see the uncovering of whatever is hiding in the large and centuries-old mounds in their field and now she has learned she doesn’t have long to live either. The project is also happening as the British Museum is securing all of its treasures elsewhere and another dig is rushing to finish excavation on a Roman site before the country plunges into war with Germany — this is summer 1939 and everybody knows they are weeks away from their world changing.

The Dig starts off as a slow look in on a Downton Abbey-ish world — Edith dresses for dinner by herself at the large country home tended by several servants. She and Brown slowly form a sort of friendship over their excitement about the dig and their desire to keep bigger museums and organizations from taking over. It’s interesting — the process of uncovering what they eventually realize is an Anglo-Saxon ship — but it is also a bit pokey with a lot of character beats that seem to go nowhere. About halfway through, we meet several new characters including Edith’s RAF-bound cousin, Rory (Johnny Flynn, the Mr. Knightley of 2020’s Emma), and a husband-wife archaeologist duo, Stuart Piggott (Ben Chaplin) and Peggy Piggott (Lily James). They add a welcome bit of soapiness to a movie that then becomes surprisingly story-filled and emotionally affecting in the final 30 or so minutes. The Dig is a nice bit of drama based on real history — if you can stick with it. B Available on Netflix.