Category: Film Reviews

Toy Story 5 returns to fun

Summer is kids-in-the-movie-theater-air-conditioning time and Toy Story 5 offers a fun, very solidly built family moviegoing option.

I was a little apprehensive about Toy Story 5 (in theaters) largely because Toy Story 4 (streaming on Disney+ if you’re a completist)felt to me like someone at Pixar having an empty-nester, career-change crisis and trying to work it out with the toys. Toy Story 5 feels much more like an episode of Toy Story with our familiar characters having an adventure — with of course, the occasional Pixar gut punch.

Here, Jessie (voice of Joan Cusack) takes the lead of the story. She is the sheriff of the now elementary-school-aged Bonnie’s (voice of Scarlett Spears) toy room and one of Bonnie’s favorite toys to feature in her wild adventures. But these adventures just feature Bonnie and her toys — she is shy around other kids, most of whom seem to spend their“play” time on devices rather than with toys. Seeking to help their daughter break out of her shell, Bonnie’s parents buy her a Lilypad (voice of Greta Lee), a kids’-iPad-like toy with a vaguely M3gan-esque aggressively positive voice. The girls in Bonnie’s dance class all hang out on their Lilypads, playing games together in the morning. Lily is determined to help Bonnie make friends with them, learn the emoji-based inside jokes and give up on lame old toys. But Jessie knows that Bonnie needs a friend with similar interests to really connect and isn’t willing to let Lily take over.

Eventually, Jessie and her horse Bullseye wind up out in the world, running into new toys including earlier generations of tech toys that have been just as discarded as their analog brethren, including Smarty Pants (voice of Conan O’Brien), a toilet training toy. Meanwhile, Woody (voice of Tom Hanks), thinking Jessie needs his help, shows up at Bonnie’s room about the time Buzz (voice of Tim Allen) realizes that Jessie is missing.

Even though this is basically Jessie’s story, Buzz gets some nice bits of running story: with the recent marriage of Forky (voice of Tony Hale) to his plastic knife wife Karen Beverly (voice of Melissa Villaseñor), Buzz wants to propose to Jessie. And, in the movie’s opening scenes, we see a shipping container of next-generation Buzz Lightyears wash up on an island where they activate and try to figure out their mission. These scenes, which are intercut with the central action of the movie, bring a nice cartoon-antics quality to this movie. For all that the movie deals with some big issues — toys battling screens for the attention (and affection and imagination) of kids, kid-on-kid bullying facilitated by those screens, the idea that the screens are pushing kids to act grownup too fast — most of the movie is able to do this while still being lively and kid-fun, not just adult clever. The result is a movie with beloved characters that is truly enjoyable for everyone in the family.

Looking for more kid-friendly fare this summer? Here are some of the PG-rated movies slated for summer release:

• Minions & Monsters The next entry in the Minions universe opens July 1.

• MoanaDisney is going to keep making these unnecessary live-action adaptations, I guess. The Rock returns as live-action Maui on July 10.

• Paw Patrol: The Dino MovieNo job too big, no pup too small — Aug. 14.

• The Magic Faraway Tree A live-action adventure based on the books by Enid Blyton opens on Aug. 21.

• Coyote vs. Acme Trailers suggest a Who Framed Roger Rabbit?-like blend of live action and the Looney Tunes characters. See it Aug. 28.

Featured photo: Toy Story 5.

The summer movie frontier?

Who doesn’t love summer movie space aliens?

(Spoilers ahead — I don’t really know how to proceed without a little bit of secret-spilling.)

It is perhaps a mild spoiler to say that Disclosure Day (PG-13, in theaters now), directed by Steven Spielberg, is about extraterrestrial beings. It is maybe a bigger spoiler to say the movie is specifically about what happens as the existence of those aliens goes from being a secret held by the government for some 80 years to being something that a wider group of people, perhaps even the whole world, knows.

As we see in trailers, TV weatherperson Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) is suddenly capable of speaking an unEarthly clicky language, which she breaks into during one of her live broadcasts. Margaret’s moment of on-air strangeness leads her to fear she’s had a medical issue. But we see the reaction that footage of the episode gets from a secretive quasi-government agency run by Noah (Colin Firth), who is already scrambling the troops after one of his tech guys, Daniel (Josh O’Connor), made off with some highly classified video footage. And we see the reaction of a group led by Hugo (Colman Domingo), who seems to be directing Daniel in his heist. As Noah’s people chase Margaret, who doesn’t understand why she’s suddenly a wanted woman any more than she understands why she can suddenly read everyone’s thoughts, and Daniel, the two seem drawn to each other. Fairly early, we learn about the big secret Daniel is so desperate to get out to the public when he shows his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) some of the stolen footage starting with, bestill Fox Mulder’s heart, the Roswell crash in 1947.

I think we’re supposed to be watching basically regular people being pulled into this big secret — how would they handle this information, how would they react to learning the part they are playing, do they think the world can handle knowledge of aliens? There are moments that exemplify this: Jane talks to a nun played by Elizabeth Marvel and they weigh the meaning of aliens, the reaction they’d expect the world to have.

My problem is that these conversations frequently can’t break off the page to feel like a real conversation, these people never quite feel like real people to me. Emily Blunt feels off-key here. It’s as though she was given too many notes about exactly what tone to strike and ends up feeling like two or three character ideas smooshed into one person. Josh O’Connor, meanwhile, feels like he’s just hitting the one character note, just a lump of doe-eyed Big Emotion. Colman Domingo is maybe doing something interesting — isn’t he always? — but it feels like it’s from a different movie. And Colin Firth is just serving up angry British authority, take it or leave it, no side of fries.

For every “that’s an interesting idea” the movie has many story elements that are unnecessary, don’t fully make sense or don’t feel like they were developed beyond the idea stage. A running subplot throughout this movie is that international tensions have the whole world on the brink of war. We see people hoarding gas and buying out supermarkets. This element is maybe meant to heighten tension or underline the destructive tendencies of humans or some other thing I just didn’t get. For me, though, it was one of the extra accessories that Coco Chanel wants you to take off before leaving the house.

There are elements of the chase that are fun and well-constructed, though the movie is never as energetic as its most John Williams-y of John Williams scores seems to want us to think it is. I feel like there are ideas here, things that could have gone in either a more popcorn fun direction or something that felt more like a stripped down gritty sci-fi adventure reminiscent of 1970s Spielberg. For me, though, the movie never pulled together into something that was either a thrilling ride or a compelling thought experiment.

A few days later I rewatched that 1977 grittier Spielberg sci-fi: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (available for rent or purchase and streaming on Peacock). In many ways, this is the spikier, low fi version of Disclosure Day. We get many of the same elements — strange occurrences, the “what’s happening to me,” a chase with officialdom — though there is more chase and a shorter timeline in Disclosure Day. Characters played by Richard Dreyfuss and Melinda Dillon see clearly not-from-here crafts flying in the sky and come away from the experience with thoughts of Devil’s Tower National Monument stuck in their heads. Desperate to figure out what they’ve seen and what they’re experiencing, the two unwind — first Dreyfuss’s character as he scares his family (including his wife played by Teri Garr) and then Dillon’s character when her young son, seeing brightly lit “toys,” runs after a UFO and is abducted. I highly recommend this double feature — I think I had more fun thinking about Disclosure Day after watching Close Encounters. The movies are, as your serious film academics might say, in conversation with each other and are both interesting reflections of their times.

I also used the outer space theme of Disclosure Day as an excuse to catch up with March release Project Hail Mary (PG-13, available for purchase). Based on the Andy Weir book, Project Hail Mary is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the team who wrote and directed The Lego Movie and wrote the animated Spider-Verse films, with a screenplay by Drew Goddard, who also wrote Weir’s other book-to-film, The Martian. This movie is exactly as good as all those names promise.

Ryan Gosling here is, similar to Matt Damon in The Martian, the one person working alone for a good chunk of the movie. He plays Ryland Grace, a middle school teacher who is also a molecular biologist and has been kicked out of standard scientific work for some kooky ideas about the conditions required for life to develop. Luckily, Eva Stratt (an excellent performance from Sandra Hüller) is in the kooky ideas business. The head of an international scientific project, Eva is trying to figure out astrophage, a substance that is traveling from Venus to the sun and appears to be dimming the sun’s light. Scientists all over the world are working on the project and she calls Grace in to study a sample of the astrophage gathered on a recent space mission. We watch as Grace joins the project to try to figure out what astrophage is and how they could possibly reverse the potentially world-ending effects it’s having on the sun.

All of this is viewed in flashback as Grace, in the movie’s present, wakes up to find himself alone on a space craft with no memory of much of anything — who he is, where he is, why he’s there, why a robot is trying to shave off his extremely long beard.

Similar to The Martian, Project Hail Mary is a movie of questions and whiteboards and smart people tackling small problems with duct tape and plywood in order to get the information needed to tackle bigger problems. It is optimistic in its view of science and people doing science — this isn’t callous tech-dinguses trying to figure out how to monetize some crappy thing that nobody really needs anyway. It’s people, all curious and fallible, working together, across borders and language barriers, to figure things out with the ultimate aim of saving the world. This might be my favorite brand of save-the-world adventure movie? No magical stuff or superpowers, just middle-aged nerds who can mock things up with Home Depot supplies. This movie does everything right — Gosling’s performance, space visuals, showing people thinking through things and showing Gosling working out a puzzle by himself that includes a really solid vocal performance (by James Ortiz).

Featured photo: Disclosure Day.

A look at Office Romance and other streaming fare

I like a rom-com that doesn’t skimp on the com.

Office Romance (R) is a movie written by Brett Goldstein (best-known perhaps as the gruff “he’s every-[bleeping]-where” Roy Kent on Ted Lasso) and Joe Kelly, whose writer/co-creator credits on IMDb include Ted Lasso and Detroiters. Despite being a Netflix release (on June 5) this movie is of theatrical release quality with a sensibility that hits a nice middle space between expected rom-com beats and the kookier sense of humor of those involved. And, in case years of superstardom and the Affleck of it all have caused you to forget, Jennifer Lopez is actually pretty good at kooky.

Here she plays Jackie Cruz, the CEO of Cruz Air, who has successfully guided the company but is still called “Gordita” by her father, Jack Cruz (Edward James Olmos), the airline’s founder, during meetings with a board of directors that is tepid on her leadership. When expansion plans lead to a frivolous lawsuit by a competing airline, Jackie meets in-house lawyer Daniel (Goldstein), asked to handle the case when the company’s head attorney (Bradley Whitford, clearly having fun doing the most) is sidelined due to a breakfast burrito mishap. Daniel and Jackie very quickly realize their mutual attraction but, in the face of the company’s “zero tolerance for intraoffice dating” policy, they know they can’t act on it. So, of course, they get drunk on a work trip and wind up in bed. The no-dating policy is really only part of the obstacle to their romance, most of which is silly, but Goldstein and Lopez have nice romantic chemistry and even better comedy chemistry as a duo involved in romance-tinged goofiness.

For me the movie’s MVP is Betty Gilpin, who plays Jackie’s extremely pregnant assistant Sydney. The role has that “early aughts Judy Greer role” vibe but Gilpin brings her specific brand of delightful lunatic intensity. Betty Gilpin is always the MVP — whether she’s intimidating Goldstein whilst in labor, as she does here, or playing a colonial era woman whose desire to escape spinsterhood leads her to marry a man who is possibly in league with the devil on a plague-ridden island (watch Apple’s Widow’s Bay, a weird-fun horror series in which Gilpin has an excellent one-episode appearance).

Office Romance is a goes-down-easy movie that seems to have put fun first — offering solid comedy along with its reality standard romance.

Elsewhere in the streamingplex is Miss You, Love You (TV-MA, streaming on HBOMax as of May 29). Allison Janney is Diane, a woman grieving her husband who just died after a battle with Parkinson’s. She is putting together his funeral and, while she’d like her son to help her, what she gets is his assistant Jamie (Andrew Rannells). With the exception of a little Bonnie Hunt here and Oscar Nunez there, this movie is mostly Janney and Rannells talking to, talking past and dealing with each other in the days leading up to the funeral — so much so that I assumed this was the adaptation of a play. It doesn’t appear to be — it was written as a screenplay and directed by Jim Nash, probably still best recognized from his role as the dean on Community, according to Wikipedia.

Though Diane and Jamie’s relationship seems straightforward — she’s a new widow, angry that her son has sent an assistant instead of coming to care for her himself, and he’s the assistant sent, like it or not — both of their backstories are more complicated than that.

“I like seeing Allison Janney like this” was a thought I had early in the movie, by which I think I meant I like seeing Allison Janney just acting, just doing the work as a smart, articulate woman without some other bit of daffy business stacked on the role. Her performance here is precise — you understand immediately who Diane is and then get to know her in a way that deepens that understanding. Janney and Rannells play off each other well, both when the characters are getting along and when they’re fighting. It’s really enjoyable to watch even if it’s watching people move through varying stages of grief.

The Home is also sort of about grief — is a not completely untrue thing a person could say about this oddball horror movie that allegedly was in theaters last summer and is currently streaming on Hulu. The Home stars Pete Davidson, of all unlikely people, whose character, Max, comes to work at a retirement home as part of a community service sentence for doing socially conscious graffiti. Max immediately begins seeing and hearing strange things as he gets to know the residents including those played by John Glover and Mary Beth Peil (Grams from Dawson’s Creek, among her many credits). For the movie’s first half, Max sort of ambles through increasing creepiness and gore, both real and (possibly) in dreams, responding somewhat like his Chad character from the Saturday Night Live sketches (fun fact: there actually was a Chad horror movie sketch and it features John Mulaney — it’s fun!). Then Max begins a campaign of obsessive observation of the residents with a series of hidden video cameras and breaking into spaces he shouldn’t go, quickly followed by a left turn into Bonkersville.

There is a world in which all of that, especially the turn into Bonkersville, could have been a wild Malignant-like ride of horror tropes and operatic goofiness. But it doesn’t quite get there; it has some “huh, that’s a fun idea” beats but can’t pull it all together into something that transcends its weaker moments.

For a look at a story in a retirement living situation that does transcend its bumpier elements — and, frankly, the reason I’m talking about The Home at all — check out The Boroughs. This eight-episode Netflix series also has something strange happening at a retirement community — the New Mexico-set The Boroughs, which feels similar to The Villages in Florida, and its full-time care facility The Manor. (This show was the reason I thought “maybe?” when coming across The Home.) In The Boroughs, Boomers drive golf carts around a resort-like setting and engage in day drinking and promiscuity. In the nearby Manor, those with memory and cognitive difficulties wait at prop bus stops and peacefully serve each other yarn-filled mugs of “coffee.” But in both places, the settings feel a little too gentle and the staff is a little too aggressively positive. The why of it all is imperfect but the stacked cast makes the show worth sticking with: Alfred Molina as the newest resident; Jena Malone as his daughter; Alfre Woodard, Clark Peters, Denis O’Hare and Geena Davis as his neighbors, and Bill Pullman, Ed Begley Jr., Anna Deavere Smith, Jane Kaczmarek and Mary McDonnell making appearances. It is, as many reviewers have observed, a murderers’ row of performers who absolutely make everything they’re given at least 30 percent better. Skip The Home and watch The Boroughs.

Also streaming on Hulu is In Cold Light (R), which Wikipedia indicates had some sort of release earlier this year. This movie is, as the title indicates, chilly and didn’t feel fully developed but I enjoyed it for the downbeat crime & family drama it is. Maika Monroe plays Ava, vibrating with barely contained rage, sadness and fear at all times. Just released from prison, Ava tries the law-abiding citizen route for like a minute before she tries to return to the drug business she ran with her twin brother Tom (Jesse Irving). She quickly learns that there are new players and finds herself plunged into a war featuring a dirty cop and unreliable allies. (And Helen Hunt, perhaps auditioning for something in the neighborhood of the Annette Bening role on Paramount+’s Dutton Ranch. If so, she should get it. She is solid. Also, meanwhile, Dutton Ranch is a hoot.) The heart of the movie is the difficult relationship between Ava and her father Will (Troy Kotsur, Oscar-winner for CODA). Their scenes offer a reminder that, whatever Covid-era baggage we attach to CODA aside, Kotsur deserved his Oscar and that, while I mostly know Monroe from the The Hand that Rocks the Cradle remake and the weird 2024 horror movie Longlegs, there is definitely something there with her.

Featured photo: The Other Bennet Sister

A look at some TV with movie ties

With The Mandalorian and Grogu putting TV in movie theaters, let’s look at some movie-flavored TV.

The Other Bennet Sister is currently in the final third of its 10-episode run on streaming service BritBox. Whether you’re a fan of the Jennifer Ehle-Colin Firth 1995 Pride and Prejudice BBC miniseries or the Keira Knightley-Matthew Macfadyen 2005 Pride & Prejudice movie, this sequel/sidequel miniseries based on the book by Janice Hadlow is worth a $10.99 one-month BritBox subscription. (The 1995 miniseries is available on Britbox and Peacock; 2005 is available for rent or purchase.) In Jane Austen’s book, Mary was the spinster-in-training sister of the five Bennet girls. Here, the action for Mary (Ella Bruccoleri) really begins after the death of her father. Mary heads to London to serve as governess for her uncle, Mr. Gardner (Richard Coyle), and aunt, Mrs. Gardner (Indira Varma), and she’s introduced to a new circle of family friends.

One of those friends, Thomas Hayward (Dónal Finn), seems as nerdily smitten with Mary as she is with him but he unfortunately has a preexisting “understanding” with the kind Ann Baxter (Varada Sethu). While Mary breaks out of her shell, she still sometimes finds herself trapped in her “the awkward one” persona, especially when she runs into Caroline Bingley (Tanya Reynolds), one-time Lizzy-competitor for Mr. Darcy’s affections. Caroline pours on the mean girl when she realizes that Mr. Ryder (Laurie Davidson), the new fella she has her eye on, has his eye on Mary.

This TV show very much catches the tone of both book-Austen and the beloved BBC series. Bruccoleri, who I probably only knew from her role in Call the Midwife, does a good job of selling both Mary’s initial awkwardness as the quiet one in a family of bigger personalities, and the character’s hero’s journey through the marriage market.

Want more of Mary’s cutie Dónal Finn? Catch him on Young Sherlock, released in March on Amazon Prime Video. Though not necessarily of the Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movie universe, it does share those movies’ director, Guy Ritchie, who co-created the show and directed two episodes, according to Wikipedia. Ritchie gives us characters who, in tone at least, could age into the people we meet in Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (both available for rent or purchase), particularly when it comes to Finn’s James Moriarty, just a hot-headed student at Oxford here. He seems to permanently wear a bemused smile and encourages young Sherlock (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) in assorted hijinks. Sherlock is sent to Oxford to serve as a porter as a way of keeping him out of trouble — a plan by his older brother Mycroft (Max Irons, son of the Jeremy Irons) to keep his younger brother from messing up his budding government career. Sherlock and Moriarty quickly find themselves tangled up in assorted crimes that all seem to lead to larger conspiracies, and the show has buoyant fun with the various capers and ye olde spycraft. And yes, the Sherlock actor is one of those Fienneses (a nephew of Joseph Fiennes who shows up to play the Holmes boys’ father).

Another TV show running sort of in parallel to its creators’ movie universe, also on Amazon Prime Video, is the eight-episode late May release Spider-Noir, starring Nicolas Cage, who also voiced the Spider-Man Noir character in 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (available on Netflix), though the show’s Wikipedia page says that this character is a different version than the one in the movies. Here, Ben Reilly (Cage) is the rumpled 1930s gumshoe who was once the masked crimefighter The Spider. Though he still has web-slinging and spidey-sense abilities, Ben gave up the fight five years earlier when his fiancee was killed. That doesn’t stop his friend, reporter Robbie (Lamore Morris), from trying to convince Ben to get back in the game as the city sinks under the crime and corruption caused by Silvermane (Brendan Gleeson), a mob boss with his fingers in all the pies. All dames and crooked cops and scampy street urchins, this series (which I am a few episodes into) is a fun watch that won me over with its classic detective mystery vibes and its smart deployment of Cage’s whole goofy deal. And you can watch the show in black and white or color — while the color has its charms, I particularly enjoyed the shadows and rich contrasts of the black and white version.

A direct movie-tie-in series is Disney+’s eight-episode Wonder Man, a “Marvel Spotlight” series released in January, which features the character Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), who first appeared in 2013’s Iron Man 3 and later in 2021’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. (Both are on Disney+.) Introduced as the terrorist “The Mandarin” in Iron Man 3, Trevor is actually, as Tony Stark discovered, a middling actor who agreed to play the part of the villain in exchange for a good-time mansion and an endless supply of drugs. Here, he meets our hero Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) as both men are at an audition. Williams, who has just had his small guest part cut from a TV show after he had too many ideas about his role, is desperate for work, especially for a role in the upcoming reboot of Wonder Man, Simon’s favorite superhero movie as a kid. Simon works to convince his agent, the film’s casting director and the film’s director that he can be Wonder Man — while also trying to hide that he kind of is Wonder Man. Because of a tragic (hilarious) incident that led to the disappearance of Josh Gad (gamely playing himself), studios won’t let actual superpower-having people work in Hollywood. The unmasking of Simon’s powers — kind of non-specific, energy-related abilities — is his greatest fear, as it would mean the end of his Hollywood ambitions.

His ambitions make Simon a regular-guy super, not an Avenger wannabe. And his relationship with Slattery — who has his own secrets as well as long-standing actor-y issues, such as his rivalry with Joe Pantoliano (also gamely playing himself) — give this show an enjoyable The Studio sensibility.

Also in the Hulu-verse, you’ll find the just-finished first season of The Testaments, a sequel to the Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale but a show that, perhaps because of its star Chase Infiniti, feels like it shares some vibes with Oscar winner 2025’s One Battle After Another as well. Like Infiniti’s Willa in One Battle, her Agnes in The Testaments is a teenage girl doing teenage girl things (going to dances, trying to assert some independence from her home life) during weird civil unrest. The Testaments picks up in the alt-America country Gilead, a Christian theocracy that segregates and oppresses women, where Agnes is expected to soon marry and “be fruitful.” A student at a finishing school for the daughters of the elite men of Gilead that is run by Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd), Agnes is assigned to show the ropes to recent convert Daisy (Lucy Halliday). Or maybe Daisy is meant to spy on Agnes, as her fellow girls at the school warn her. What we in the audience know is that Daisy is a spy — an anti-Gilead plant picked by former handmaid June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) herself to infiltrate the school.

As the series goes on, we see Agnes develop a kind of steely strength and absolute loyalty to her friends that feels very spiritually connected with the government-fighting rebel-in-the-making that is Willa in One Battle. Infiniti also does a good job of selling the teen-girl-ness of Agnes, who, as Daisy explains in a later episode, has regular teen girl feelings and desires despite the oppressive society she’s growing up in. The relationships between the school’s girls — the ones headed for marriage, the ones who fear they might be left behind — is compelling and keeps you watching even when the Gilead of it all feels too much. (And if you need some “viva la revolución,” One Battle After Another is available on HBO Max.)

Featured photo: The Other Bennet Sister

Twin sisters set off on a mission of vengeance in Is God Is, a film written and directed by first-time filmmaker Aleshea Harris, who has given this movie all the best elements of a first film — including but not limited to energy, style and a willingness to take chances.

Anaia (Mallori Johnson) and Racine (Kara Young) often call each other “twin” in their conversations, which can take place partially via a kind of twin telepathy of facial expressions and slight head movements — that’s how close they are. Racine, slightly shorter and feisty, has always been the one to loudly stick up for Anaia, who is taller and quieter. Though both girls are scarred from terrible burns they suffered as children, Racine’s scars are mostly on her arm whereas Anaia’s scars cover part of her face. When, for example, kids cruelly taunt Anaia about her appearance, it’s Racine who offers a violent response.

Now in their young adult years, they live together and work a job cleaning offices — at least until Racine takes offense at how one worker responds to Anaia. The two decide to visit their long-lost mother (Vivica A. Fox) — who the twins start to refer to, maybe playfully at first, as God — who has written to tell them that she is dying. She asks them to do one final thing for her — kill her ex/their father (Sterling K. Brown), the man who so grievously injured all three women years ago. Though Anaia insists they’re not killers, Racine — especially after seeing the extent of her mother’s injuries — says she’ll get it done if Anaia just keeps her company while they find him. Thus begin their travels, starting with Divine (Erika Alexander), a woman who dated their father while he was on trial for the burnings.

As the movie follows the girls on their hunt, we get a series of solid performances — as well as an examination of the relationship between the increasingly out-for-blood Racine and the increasingly ambivalent Anaia. It’s a nice bit of development that the movie is able to accomplish in its relatively short run time (a brisk, well-used, no-filler 100 minutes).

Every thing about this movie is well-built and smartly used. This feels like a first film in the sense that everyone is just going for it, not hemmed in by any second guessing, and giving us visuals that can feel like choreography and dialogue that can feel more lyrical than literal. These are big bold choices but they all work and create a world specific to this story and to the bigger themes about violence, family and forgiveness. A In theaters.

Featured photo: Is God Is

Get twice the princesses, twice the Bowsers, more sidekick-y characters, more video game beep-boops and big loud everything in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which is fine, cute even at times.

You get even more callbacks to Super Mario game play here but also a “kitchen sink cookie”-like jumble of beats that feels very Lego Movie and Star Wars and even a little Frozen. It feels a little more like one of those Oreo Reese’s candy mashups than a whole new thing unto itself.

Mario (voice of Chris Pratt) and Luigi (voice of Charlie Day) are now sort of interworld fix-it guys, which is how they meet Yoshi (voice of Donald Glover), one of the many “more characters, less time with any specific character” additions here. Meanwhile, Princess Peach (voice of Anya Taylor-Joy) is still curious about her origins. Elsewhere, a similar-looking Princess Rosalina (voice of Brie Larson), mother to a bunch of those star thingies similar to that gleefully nihilistic star in the first movie, has been kidnapped by Bowser Jr. (voice of Benny Safdie), who is looking to redeem the legacy of his father, Bowser (voice of Jack Black), who, as the movie begins, is still in his pet-turtle-sized tiny incarnation and is trying to “work on himself” and has also taken up painting.

The Bowser family is probably the most kooky-fun element of this movie even though it does fall into the “twice as much and somehow less” overall feel of the movie. The movie has a fun visual sensibility, between the color and the sort of winking malevolent cuteness of everything. It walks up to the line of that kind of cleverness overall but never quite manages the quirky zaniness of, say, a Lego Movie that would push it into the territory of a movie with all-ages appeal. It is an engaging candy mashup fully enjoyable for kids and mostly tolerable for their adults. C+ maybe even a B- if you were a Mario player or are a kid just looking to be entertained or are a parent looking to zone out during something loud and pleasant. In theaters now and slated for a VOD release May 19.

The Christophers (R)

Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel star in what plays out like a slow-motion art heist in The Christophers, a Steven Soderbergh-directed movie.

Sallie (Jessica Gunning) and Barnaby (James Corden) are the children of artistic great Julian Sklar (McKellen). Or at least he was a great, back in the day, but his talent and drive seem to have faded away and he hasn’t painted anything in decades. Deep in the attic of one of his London townhouses is a series of half-finished paintings that would be valued in the millions if they were sold as finished, never-seen-before works. Sallie attempts finishing one, resulting in a painting that resembles that church fresco that was “restored” and ended up looking more monkey than man. They turn instead to Lori Butler (Cole), a friend of Sallie’s from art school who has talent in her own right but who is also skilled at capturing the work of other painters. Lori is meant to work as Julian’s assistant, while also finding the missing “Christophers,” as the paintings are called, and finishing them to then return them to the attic for them to be “discovered” after Julian’s death. And clearly Sallie and Barnaby, who have a terrible relationship with their self-centered father, are hoping that end comes sooner rather than later. Their interest in “The Christophers” has, however, pushed the paintings into the front of Julian’s mind, and Julian would prefer to see them destroyed than sold. Lori, a one-time fan of Julian’s, seems conflicted about what the fate of the paintings should be.

Both Cole and McKellen can at times feel like they’re doing one-person shows that bump into each other, but wow is it fun to watch them work. Cole keeps Lori’s feelings close to the vest with silences and subtle facial expressions; McKellen hides how Julian really feels in long self-important monologues which of course he delivers with impeccable dry humor. Together they push against each other’s defenses, annoying each other and also drawing the other person out. You can at times forget that there is a forward-moving plot in all this, it’s easy just to enjoy two great actors doing great acting playing off each other. B+ In theaters and slated to come to VOD in May.

Normal (R)

Bob Odenkirk plays yet another regular-joe guy who finds himself needing to kick butt in Normal, a totally fine example of this genre.

It ranks, I think, between the two Mr. Nobodys — not quite as good as the first, better than the second.

After a career- and soul-shaking incident in his hometown where he was a longtime police officer, Ulysses Richardson (Odenkirk, also a co-writer according to IMDb) has become a traveling interim sheriff. He’s wound up in small town Normal, Minnesota, where he stays in a grimy motel and leaves his estranged wife long internal-monologue-ish messages. Normal is as advertised — with most of Ulysses’s work being pulling apart townsfolk fighting over something stupid. But generally, people are friendly and life seems to be going well, perhaps a little better than you’d expect for a small rural town here in the mid-2020s. And this small police department seems to have a weirdly well-stocked armory. Ulysses, policing in kind of a pleasant, semi-disinterested funk, is helpful to all, including to Lori (Reena Jolly), who turns out to be half of a duo, with Keith (Brendan Fletcher), of bank robbers. That the whole town freaks out when its local bank, which appears to have only a small wad of cash and a handful of coins, is robbed is one of many clues that all in Normal is not, well, normal. (The first clue is the movie’s opening scene featuring an unhappy Yakuza boss.)

I appreciate how this movie has a short story approach to its action, keeping us mostly in the here and now and mostly resisting the urge to load up on back stories or telling us how every single thing works out. Ulysses eventually gets a sort of sidekick in Alex (Jess McLeod), the grieving adult-kid of the previous, recently-deceased sheriff, and their partnership adds a nice plucky little element to the story. Normal is exactly what its trailer promises — a blend of low-volume humor and theatrical violence that makes for an enjoyable time. B In theaters now and slated to hit VOD in May, according to Forbes.com.

Featured photo: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie