Category: Film Reviews

The Power of the Dog (R)

Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst.

Jane Campion writes and directs this movie based on a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage.

Brothers from a prosperous ranching family, Phil (Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons) run their ranch together, with Phil in particular getting into the dusty, gritty work of tending to the cattle. During one of their cattle drives, George starts a relationship with Rose (Dunst), the widowed owner of the inn where they stop to eat and sleep. Their relationship starts in part because George finds her crying over what a homophobic jerk Phil was to her college-age son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who had served as waiter to the ranching party.

George and Rose get married, enraging Phil, who relates to his new relatives only via psychological torture — first of Rose, already shaky about marrying in to the wealthy family, and later of Phil.

The Power of the Dog is a beautifully shot, (largely) understatedly performed, expertly scored movie that quietly ratchets up the tension as it shows the wildfire-like destruction of performative toxic masculinity, which Phil not only embodies but encourages in the ranch hands around him. These aspects, ruminating on them, are what stand out to me as I think back on the movie.

However.

As I watched the movie, what I often felt more was how hard this movie was Oscar-ing, just straining and stretching with every fiber to “for your consideration” with all its elegantly matte Important Movie might. I mean it is beautiful and Cumberbatch does create a fascinating character to watch and I definitely had that “just before an explosion” feeling the whole time I watched it. This movie is good, maybe even great, but it also felt like it needed something to pull it out of the space where you can see the words on the page of the book it’s from and into a more organic living, breathing world. Nevertheless, A-. Available on Netflix.

Tick, Tick … Boom! (PG-13)

Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp.

Before he wrote the hugely popular musical Rent, before he wrote the show that would become Tick, Tick … Boom!, the late Jonathan Larson (played here by Garfield) struggled to get attention for Superbia, a futuristic musical that Wikipedia says was meant to be a rock opera retelling of 1984. This movie, based on the one-man (plus band) show that would eventually become Tick, Tick … Boom!, tells the story of his work to put on a presentation of Superbia while dealing with changing relationships with friends and his girlfriend Susan (Shipp) and with his looming 30th birthday, which he has set as a sort of life-accomplishment deadline. (Stephen Sondheim already had a Broadway hit by 30, Larson keeps saying.)

My feelings about this musical changed in the days after I saw it. When I saw it, it felt like an affable if rough, not-quite-for-me tale with a somewhat unlikable performance at its center. But, after the Nov. 26 death of Sondheim, it started to feel more like a heartfelt tribute to Sondheim and the community of New York City theater itself. The song “Sunday,” which has more Broadway cameos than a Law & Order marathon, is a direct homage to Sondheim and he has a strong presence throughout the movie (he is played onscreen by Bradley Whitford, except during a final scene when it is Sondheim’s actual voice that we’re hearing). I felt like I was watching director Lin-Manuel Miranda express his gratitude and fondness for the lyricist/composer as much as I was watching Sondheim’s influence on Larson’s work.

I liked the nitty-gritty details of putting on the presentation of Superbia that is supposed to help it reach the Broadway stage (Jonathan takes part in a focus group to earn $75 to pay for an extra musician at his presentation) to the overall artistic struggle (at one point, his agent, played by Judith Light, explains that writing is just throwing one thing after another against the wall and hoping something sticks). But I never quite warmed to Garfield’s performance; he brings a kind of careless self-absorbed smugness to the character that just made it hard to sympathize with. And while I think some of this is part of the character — learning to see beyond himself is part of the Larson character’s journey — I don’t feel like he was meant to be as off-putting as he frequently seems.

In the moments where Garfield brings the volume down, I could see more of a real person and putting that guy in the fantastical world of song, dance and 1990s Broadway feels more winning than what we get from him through much of the film. B Available on Netflix.

Single All the Way (TV-PG)

Michael Urie, Philemon Chambers.

Also, Barry Bostwick, Jennifer Coolidge and Kathy Najimy.

This perfectly delightful Christmas cookie of a rom-com features some classic ingredients — going home for the holidays (to New Hampshire!), a pretend boyfriend, a quirky family, a blind date, the realization that your soulmate was Right There All Along. L.A.-based Peter (Urie) breaks up with his most recent boyfriend just before Christmas and asks best friend Nick (Chambers) to come home with him and pretend to Peter’s matchmaking family that he and Peter finally got together. What is extra wonderful about this movie is that Nick (who has quietly felt more for Peter than he thinks Peter feels for him) doesn’t engage in this rom-com wackiness, and throughout this sweet confection people just basically behave like normal humans (at least, by movie standards). They talk about what they’re thinking and explain their feelings and generally act out of love and respect. Crazy, I know! I know you have a lot of options out there when you need holiday silliness and joy to accompany gift wrapping or avoiding gift wrapping but Single All the Way is so enjoyable that it can be your post-chores relaxing-with-a-warm-boozy-drink treat. B+ Available on Netflix.

Ciao, Alberto (G)

Jack Dylan Grazer, Marco Barricelli.

This eight-minute short, featuring the characters from Luca, follows Alberto (voice of Grazer) as he adjusts to life with Massimo (voice of Barricelli), the fisherman, now that Julia and Luca are away at school. My kids enjoyed this short, sweet (and, like Luca, absolutely beautiful) film of Alberto earnestly trying to impress Massimo with his hard work but messing up, often with chaos-creating results. But I almost feel like this is even more a film for the parents; it offers a reminder that behind every kitchen covered in tomato sauce or flaming rowboat is a kid whose intentions (oftentimes, good intentions) outstripped their abilities. The climax is a scene that ends with one almost shockingly perfect line of dialogue. A Available on Disney+.

Olaf Presents (TV-PG)

Josh Gad.

Gad voices Olaf, the snowman of Frozen movies fame, in this series of shorts, which can be viewed individually as four-minute movies (really just two minutes, with another two minutes of credits) or as one 12-minute short. Riffing on the scene from Frozen 2 when Olaf gives a short dramatic reenactment of the plot of the first movie, these shorts feature Olaf, with occasional assists from Sven the reindeer and from the snow monster (who the internet tells me is named Marshmallow), recapping The Little Mermaid, Moana, The Lion King, Aladdin and Tangled. Each one is a goofy delight, as much for the meta commentary of the movies themselves as for snowman silliness. A Available on Disney+.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (PG)

Voices of Brady Noon, Ethan William Childress.

The first of the popular Jeff Kinney books gets a new, animated adaptation that runs a kid-friendly 58 minutes long.

Greg (voice of Noon) and his longtime friend Rowley (voice of Childress) are terrified by the start of middle school — there are the kids who are shaving, the popularity that runs on different rules than elementary school, the politics of the lunch room and the terror of the “cheese touch” (a kind of cooties caused by a moldy piece of cheese that has sat on the basketball courts since Greg’s high school brother was at middle school). Along the way, Greg starts to fear that Rowley’s “elementary-school-ish” interests will hurt their coolness cred.

The animation is bright and round and has a nice comic-y appearance. The movie does a good job of addressing the drama of the changing friendships between elementary school and middle school and the sudden self-consciousness that sets in. While there are some cartoony hijinks, the movie is much more about these issues than just pure silliness — putting the optimum viewing audience at more the late-elementary school and up level. B Available on Disney+.

Trolls Holiday in Harmony (TV-PG)

Voices of Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake.

The new trolls of Trolls World Tour show up in this 30-minute holiday special whose main storylines include Branch (Timberlake) and Poppy (Kendrick) getting each other Secret Santa gifts and Tiny Diamond (voice of Keenan Thompson) trying to regain his flow after he finds himself at a loss for rhymes. Probably that this short exists and offers a half hour of kid entertainment is the most notable thing about it. It gives you songs, some troll visual fun and a few moments of quirkiness. B- Available on Hulu.

A Castle for Christmas (TV-G)

Brooke Shields, Cary Elwes.

Romance author Sophie Brown (Shields) travels to her late father’s hometown in Scotland to escape the fan fury over her recent novel, which kills off the romantic hero of her long-running series. His death is perhaps a reflection of the end of Sophie’s real-life marriage and her general sense of unmoored-ness. When she arrives in Scotland and sees Dun Dunbar Castle, the large manor house her father’s family were caretakers of, she decides she’s home. And, lucky for her, the current duke, the grumpy also divorced Myles (Elwes), is in financial trouble and reluctantly looking to sell. Or perhaps he can have his castle and his debts cleared too if he can convince Sophie to agree to some only-in-a-rom-com terms: she lives at the castle with him for a few months to learn how to take care of it, but if she leaves before this training period is over she forfeits her down payment.

Are these two people who are initially antagonistic going to warm to each other? The total lack of mystery about this question doesn’t dampen the mild enjoyment of watching exactly everything you think will happen happen exactly as you think it will. B- Available on Netflix.

Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas (TV-14)

Jane Levy, Skylar Astin.

The TV show Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, which had two seasons on NBC, now has this holiday movie on, of all things, the Roku Channel. I didn’t watch the show but the beginning of this movie sums things up: Zoey (Levy) can hear people’s “heart songs” — their hopes and fears and other emotional struggles expressed via song. Recently, her boyfriend Max (Astin) also gained the ability to hear heart songs and, like Zoey, tries to use this knowledge to improve things for people like Zoey’s mom, Maggie (Mary Steenburgen), still dealing with the death of Zoey’s dad Mitch (Peter Gallagher). Zoey is also still dealing with his death: this is the first Christmas that the family will be without him and she is intensely determined that everything they do be exactly the way he would have done it.

I don’t know that this movie put Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist on the top of my must-watch list (both seasons are available on Peacock) but the movie is affable, sweet, lightly funny and, if you like a good dance number, enough of a good time. I like so many of the actors here — Levy, Astin, Steenburgen and also Alex Newell (who plays Zoey’s friend) and Andrew Leeds and Alice Lee, who play her brother and his wife — that I was willing to stick it out through some of the too-sugary elements or moments when it felt like the words “The Message of This Story” were flashing on screen. B- Available on the Roku Channel.

8-Bit Christmas (PG)

Neil Patrick Harris, Steve Zahn.

I’ve seen this movie described as an update of A Christmas Story and it definitely has shades of that, though it may be even more family-friendly. Here, present-day dad Jake Doyle (Harris) tells his young, iPhone-wanting daughter Annie (Sophia Reid-Gantzert) about a Christmas back in the 1980s when he desperately wanted a Nintendo. His parents, Kathy (June Diane Raphael) and John (Zahn), go from not exactly knowing how to pronounce “Nintendo” to being violently opposed to ever having one in their house. Young Jake (Winslow Fegley) and his friends try a variety of schemes to ensure that one of them will wind up with a Nintendo while Jake’s younger sister Lizzy (Bellaluna Resnick) works on getting that equally rare item, the Cabbage Patch Kid.

I thoroughly enjoyed this family comedy, with its Harris-narrated tale of life in the 1980s, occasionally edited to explain to his daughter that “of course all kids wore bike helmets.” The story features plucky kid-quests in search of the game system or the money to buy it while also offering really good-hearted examinations of kid social relationships — the bullies, the perceived weirdos, the habitual liars. It also does a good job with the age-old struggle between the “why can’t you and your friends just play outside” parents and the “X piece of tech is the Most Important Thing Ever” kids. A Available on HBO Max.

A Boy Called Christmas (PG)

Henry Lawfull, voice of Stephen Merchant.

Maggie Smith is the dour-seeming great-aunt of three gloomy and grieving children who comes to their house to babysit. Though they want nothing to do with Christmas this year, having recently lost their mother, she settles in to tell them a story about a boy named Nikolas (Lawfull) who lives deep in the woods in Finland in olden days. The king (Jim Broadbent) asks people to go on quests to the farthest reaches of his realm in search of something that will bring magic and hope into people’s lives. Nikolas’ father (Michiel Huisman) sets out in search of a magical place that Nikolas’ mother used to talk about, Elfhelm. After running away from the horrible aunt (Kristen Wiig) left to care for him, Nikolas also goes in search of his father and Elfhelm, taking along with him Miika (Merchant), a mouse that, to his great surprise, he’s taught how to talk.

Along the way they help a reindeer that Nikolas starts calling Blitzen and they meet a community of elves who are part of the resistance to an oppressive new elf regime run by Mother Vodol (Sally Hawkins).

This is a darker live-action Christmas tale, with orphans and parents who have died and discussions of grief and sadness. But in that dark fairy tale way, and for kids maybe in the 9-years-old-and-up range who don’t mind that kind of story, the movie is also sweet, adventure-packed and straightforward in how it deals with kids’ emotions. I think Maggie Smith’s narration, with its Princess Bride-style interruptions, helps sell that particular mood of kids working through stuff and of kids learning how to stay hopeful in the face of a world that isn’t always about loving moms and happy elves. B+ Available at Netflix.

Waffles + Mochi’s Holiday Feast (TV-Y)

The humans here include Tracee Ellis Ross, Samin Nosrat and Mrs. O (Michelle Obama), the owner of the market where Waffles and Mochi normally hang out to learn about food. In this half-hour holiday special, the market is closed for the holiday season and Waffles and Mochi, enamored of all the talk about special holiday foods, tell their friends it’s Freezie Day and accidentally invite the whole gang over for a Freezie Day feast. This leads Mochi to set out around the world to learn about a few winter-solstice-season celebrations and gather some holiday treats while back at Waffles’ house the guests talk about their own cultural winter holiday traditions. Like the show Waffles + Mochi, the holiday special is the right mix of learning, puppet-y fun, food, silliness and sweetness. B+ Available on Netflix.

Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas (TV-Y)

Voices of Justin Fletcher, Kate Harbour.

Shaun, his sheep friends, the dog who watches after them and their farmer, with another harebrained scheme to make money, return in this charming 30-minute Christmas-themed special. The farmer’s attempts to sell soda at a local Christmas fair and the littlest sheep’s curiosity about gifts come together, resulting in the whole flock riding a Santa sleigh on their way to heist-like hijinks at the home of a little girl who thinks she’s been gifted a robot sheep. As usual, this story has no real words, just lots of grunts and meeps and British-y noises. Sheep silliness is the star of this very all-ages-friendly holiday fare with, as always, top-notch Aardman animation. A Available on Netflix.

Home Sweet Home Alone(PG)

Rob Delaney, Ellie Kemper.

Another kid is left at home during a family trip and another feckless duo of adults attempts to steal from his house in this remake/sequel of the 1990 holiday film.

This time, it’s Max Mercer (Archie Yates) who suddenly finds himself home alone when his family, including mother Carol (Aisling Bea), has had to take two separate chaotic flights to Tokyo. A few days before this, Carol used the interesting mom-hack of stopping at a real estate open house to let Max use the bathroom. It was there he met Jeff (Delaney) and Pam (Kemper), a couple reluctantly selling their family home because a job loss has required some financial downsizing. Jeff happens to be moving a box of weird dolls he inherited from his mother and Carol mentions in passing that one particularly creepy-looking one may be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Later, when Jeff checks this out with eBay, he finds that in fact, yes, the “ugly little boy” as he calls the doll may be worth more than $200,000 and be the answer to the family’s financial problems. But, when he goes to find it, the doll is missing. He suspects Max, who was sassy when Jeff denied him a soda, and he goes looking for the Mercer household to retrieve it. One thing leads to another and soon Jeff and Pam are trying to break in to what they think will be an empty home to steal back the doll they think Max has stolen from them. Except, of course, when Max overhears them talking about selling an “ugly little boy” he thinks they’ve come to kidnap him and thus does he plan an iced-over-driveway, butter-on-the-stairs series of booby traps to keep himself safe.

On the one hand, this creates a gentler setup — nobody’s really trying to harm Max. On the other hand, Max sets Pam on fire and uses thumbtacks as a weapon and just generally offers up a lot of interesting ideas for children looking to do some mayhem. So be advised if you’re thinking of showing this to younger kids (by which I mean “don’t show this to younger kids”). Common Sense Media gives it a 9+ age ranking but I might go even older than that.

As entertainment that parents might also be roped into watching, I’m equally unenthusiastic. There are some nice moments of broad comedy with Delaney and Kemper, including a few that skew a bit toward the weird, which is an appreciated bit of tartness in this corn syrupy Christmas cookie. And original Home Alone fans will like the nods toward the source material. But there is less exhausting fare out there for family viewing. C+ Available on Disney+.

Finch ( PG-13)

Tom Hanks, voice of Caleb Landry Jones.

Cranky engineer Finch Weinberg (Hanks) is desperate to help his dog Goodyear survive without him in a post-apocalyptic world in this movie with shades of Castaway, WALL–E and also George Clooney’s downbeat Midnight Sky, which you probably didn’t see and don’t need to.

Living alone with only the dog and rover-bot named Dewey, Finch is, as the movie starts, putting the finishing touches on a bipedal AI-run humanoid, which eventually calls itself Jeff (Jones). Finch needs Jeff to be smart and adaptive enough to take care of Goodyear in a world where all food must be scavenged from abandoned stores and the heat and ultraviolet rays of the sun can cause skin to sizzle after a few moments. Apparently solar flares at some point in the recent past have turned the ozone layer into “Swiss cheese,” as Finch explains to Jeff, and now much of the continental U.S. is a dune-filled desert, beset by sandstorms and other extreme weather. After some number of years living in such an environment, Finch is now dying from the radiation exposure.

Finch is not quite finished uploading data into Jeff when a superstorm is predicted to hit the wind-powered St. Louis-based factory where he and Goodyear (and Dewey and Jeff) live. Without the food (or the longevity) to last the 40 days that the storm is predicted to be overtop him, he decides to pack his canine and robot family into a fortified RV and head out toward San Francisco, the only region of the country he doesn’t know for a fact is some kind of hellscape.

So it’s a road trip movie! And along the way, Finch tries to teach Jeff, who is extremely emotive, how to be a real boy and convince Goodyear, who isn’t so fond of this new robot caregiver, to treat Jeff as his new “person.”

Granted, my current appetite for apocalyptic entertainment is at a particularly low ebb. But this movie grated from the beginning, with its seemingly-cobbled-together elements from previous movies and its insistence that I root for (and find charming) what is essentially a walking Siri.

So I will stipulate that I am probably not this movie’s ideal viewer. And, look, Hanks is fine in this role — I mean, of course he is, he’s done it before. And the movie has some nice visuals — both in terms of scenery and how Jeff and Dewey are presented. But it’s not an enjoyable watch and it does not give me the “triumph of the human spirit” glow that it seems to want to deliver. C+ Available on Apple TV+.

Madres (18+)

Ariana Guerra, Tenoch Huerta.

A couple expecting their first child and newly moved to a rickety old farmhouse is terrorized in Madres.

Diana (Guerra) and her husband Beto (Huerta) leave 1970s Los Angeles to move to a small town in agricultural California where Beto will manage a large farm and pregnant former reporter Diana plans to write a book. They get to the house that Beto’s boss Tomas (Joseph Garcia) has secured for them to find a lot of faded paint, creaky floorboards and a shed whose door can scarily flap open at random. Beto tries to calm Diana by explaining it’s the country, weird sounds abound, but pretty quickly visions of a ghostly woman in red and a creepy music box that seems to follow her around convince her that there is more going on than Beto wants to believe. She also finds a cache of pamphlets and newspaper clippings from the home’s former occupants, many of which suggest that a condition called Valley Fever, experienced by lots of the Latin American women in town, may be related to the pesticides the farm uses.

Diana’s ability to suss this out — and just to make friends in general with Beto’s coworkers — is stymied a bit by a language barrier. Beto, a recent immigrant from Mexico, speaks fluent English and Spanish but Diana, a woman of Hispanic background born in the U.S., is shaky at best when speaking Spanish, the main language of many people in their new town.

Are the women of this town cursed, as local healer Anita (Elpidia Carrillo) says they are? Or is something more man-made causing the illness (and strange dreams and odd visions) that Diana herself begins to experience?

This movie won me over almost instantly with its little moments exploring Diana’s self-consciousness about not speaking Spanish and various socioeconomic tensions within the Mexican-American community in this town. These elements offer a nice bit of complexity to the story.

Then we get to the real evil and, if it isn’t the most horrifying Bad Thing I’ve seen in a horror movie ever, it is still pretty high on the list. This movie winds up in a pretty unsubtle place but it is well done and the impact is exactly as gut-punching as it should be. A- Available on Amazon Prime.

Zog and Zog and the Flying Doctors

Lenny Henry, Hugh Skinner.

Both of these shorts are unrated and based on books by Julia Donaldson, both illustrated by Axel Scheffler, who also illustrated her Room on the Broom and The Gruffalo books. These shorts very much have the look of those books and the same gentle rhythm in their tale of the dragon Zog (voiced by Rocco Wright as a young dragon, Skinner as an older one), who learns assorted dragon skills like breathing fire and roaring but eventually becomes part of a team of flying doctors with Princess Pearl (voice of Patsy Ferran in both movies), a young woman who prefers medicine to fancy dresses and crowns. Also patching the ouchies and illnesses of the enchanted land is Gadabout (voice of Kit Harrington in the first movie, Daniel Ings in the second), a knight who has realized that splints and bandaging is his true calling.

The movies — from 2018 and 2020 — are charming, funny and pretty adaptations of the books, with very little in the way of story addition. Instead, the movies fill in the expanded storytelling space with dragon silliness and often impressively light-touch visual gags. I think I laughed as much as my kids when we watched these two. While perhaps not the absolute perfection of the 2012 Room on the Broom short (which is a must-see), these two shorts are a sweet delight and perfect for, maybe, kindergarten and up. The stories subtly reinforce the “you can be who you want to be” message while providing plenty of gentle fun. A- Available for rent or purchase.

Queenpins (R)

Kristen Bell, Kirby Howell-Baptiste.

Connie (Bell), a former Olympic athlete who medaled in speed walking, and JoJo (Howell-Baptiste), a victim of identity theft who is trying with minimal success to make her makeup business work, are best friends, neighbors in their Phoenix suburb and couponers, who load up on deals so that they can “buy” more than a hundred dollars worth of groceries but only pay $16. Does Connie, who is struggling after the miscarriage of a baby, really need all the diapers and toilet paper she stockpiles? Maybe not but she definitely doesn’t need IRS auditor husband Rick (Joel McHale) and his constant badgering her about money and their debt to the fertility clinic. The coupons are, as she tells us in voiceover, her only real wins right now. But then a chance encounter with that biggest of big wins, the “one item free” coupon, sets her on a path to an international crime caper: She and JoJo find employees at the printer in Mexico that produces all the “free item” coupons to help them obtain (i.e. steal) coupons that they can then sell in the U.S. for half the value of the item. The buyer gets a good deal and the women make a very tidy profit.

They make so much money — and the sudden influx of coupons becomes so noticeable to the companies making the cereal and diapers — that they attract the attention of a supermarket’s loss prevention investigator, Ken (Paul Walter Hauser), for whom the illegal couponers become his white whale. He attempts to get the FBI to join him on the case and eventually gets the Post Office involved in the form of postal investigator Simon (Vince Vaughn).

I get the sense that the movie has some opinions about, like, gender and corporations but it has too much going on to really be able to do much with these ideas. Still, I liked all the performances here and even some of the sillier stuff. You get the sense that this movie sometimes thinks it’s doing a The Big Short but it reminded me more of Buffaloed, another recent light ladies-doing-crime movie. B- Available on Paramount+.

The Guilty (R)

Jake Gyllenhaal, Adrian Martinez.

Joe (Gyllenhaal) is a Los Angeles police officer working as a 911 operator. We learn through bits of dialogue that he is in deep personal and professional trouble and perhaps staring down more trouble due to something that’s going to happen in court tomorrow. His stresses are all the greater as he works a shift in a smoke- and fire-filled Los Angeles with all sorts of frantic calls coming in. But then a woman who Joe eventually learns is named Emily (Keough) calls pretending to talk to her child, allowing him to figure out that she’s been abducted. Joe quickly becomes invested in Emily’s predicament, leaning on various law enforcement agencies to try to get her situation investigated.

I don’t know that I buy everything the movie seems to be saying message-wise (if it is saying anything) but as a straightforward “90-ish minutes of tension” exercise, performed by a very small cast in a very small number of locations (basically just Joe’s call center and a few neighboring rooms), The Guilty is sort of fun. It’s a little bit puzzle, a little bit chase, a little bit detective story. It’s like a less goofy version of Fox’s 9-1-1 drama but just as stripped down when it comes to the action.B- Available on Netflix.

The Protégé(R)

Maggie Q, Samuel L. Jackson.

And having a boatload of fun is Michael Keaton, playing somebody IMDb claims is called Rembrandt, though actually I don’t recall his character having a name. He’s sort of a “vice president in charge of killing” type for a rich and powerful Big Bad. Michael Keaton is sent to “take care of” Anna (Maggie Q), the titular protege for Moody (Jackson), a top-notch assassin. An inquiry about a person connected to one of Moody’s old assignments gets her and Moody the notice of Michael Keaton’s employer. Anna finds Moody dead and decides to go after everybody involved.

Along the way, Keaton’s character and Anna develop a kind of “game recognizes game” relationship of mutual respect, trying to kill each other and also having the hots for each other. I suppose I can suspend disbelief and buy this aspect of the movie, but I also don’t know that it was entirely necessary and it is one of the times the movie needs to be either smarter or way dumber to really work. As it is, The Protégé is doing its best work in its choreographed fight scenes and feels a little half baked at all other times. Maggie Q, Jackson and Keaton are all good in these roles, but — outside of the action sequences — they don’t always feel like they are exactly in the same movie. I liked this movie fine as low-effort, lazy-night- on-the-sofa entertainment but I don’t think I’d rush out to rent it or anything. C+ Available to rent or own.

Muppets Haunted Mansion (TV-PG)

Live-action humans Will Arnett, Taraji P. Henson.

As well as Yvette Nicole Brown, Darren Criss, John Stamos and more, plus Muppets like Kermit, Miss Piggy, Statler and Waldorf, Rowlf, Animal and all your favorites. The main action is centered around Gonzo (voiced by Dave Goelz) and Pepe the Prawn (voiced by Bill Barretta) spending a night in the Haunted Mansion (of Disney ride fame) as part of a challenge instead of going to Kermit and Piggy’s Halloween party. This new movie — or special, whatever, I feel like there’s enough blur in the streaming world that this can count for my purposes — has classic Muppet show energy, with lots of cornball showbiz jokes and Fozzie Bear “wocka wocka” humor (which one of my kids just loved; “wocka wocka” is a classic that never goes out of style, apparently). The movie has some mild scares. I feel like 6 might be the bottom edge of who I’d show it to and I might go more like 7 with a particularly sensitive kid. Also, there are jokes about the show’s budget and some of the Muppets’ screen time — not exactly preschool comedy gold but I found it fun in that “family entertainment” way of ye olden holiday specials. B Available on Disney+.

LEGO Star Wars Terrifying Tales (TV-G)

Voices of Christian Slater, Jake Green.

Poe Dameron (voice of Green) ends up at Darth Vader’s one-time palace on Mustafar where Graballa the Hutt (voice of Dana Snyder) is trying to set up a Vader-themed hotel and resort. The spot holds secret Sith relics and allows for some riffs on horror movies — The Lost Boys, The Monkey’s Paw — with Star Wars characters: Luke Skywalker using the Wookiee’s Paw to make his dreams come true, Ben Solo earning his spot as the head of the Knights of Ren. And, of course, it’s all rendered in Lego.

Though not quite as charming as last Christmas’ Lego Star Wars special, this Halloween-y special is low-effort fun, with little Star Wars Easter eggs and plenty of Lego goofines. B- Available on Disney+.

No One Gets Out Alive (R)

Cristina Rodlo, Claudia Coulter.

An undocumented woman finds herself sharing a rooming house with a significantly larger population of dead residents than living ones in this tense horror movie. Ambar’s (Rodlo) lack of legal papers puts her at risk of all kinds of exploitation: by the boss who pays her in cash, by people she thinks can help her. Add to that the landlord who can rent her a real dodgy room in a real shady house because she has nowhere else to go. And, when she hears crying coming through the pipes from the basement or sees a strange man banging his head on the doors or sees glowy eyes coming from shadowy figures in the dark, it’s unlikely that she’s going to go to the police for help. This movie isn’t a searing call for immigration reform and affordable housing but those issues (as well as some thoughts on grief) are nicely integrated into this haunted house-type tale. Rodlo is a solid protagonist to follow through the craziness — she makes Ambar appropriately fearful but also competent. B- Available on Netflix.

Night Teeth (TV-14)

Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Raúl Castillo.

A would-be music producer gets tangled up in a vampire gang war in this extremely slow-moving, low-rent horror movie.

College student Benny (Lendeborg), who dreams of hitting it big making music, convinces his older brother Jay (Castillo) to let him drive Jay’s luxury SUV for a night and earn the money chauffeuring two girls to parties around L.A. What Benny doesn’t know at first is that the girls — Blaire (Debbie Ryan) and Zoe (Lucy Fry) — hired Jay specifically because Benny’s brother is part of some kind of intergenerational protection force that has been guarding a truce between his neighborhood of Boyle Heights and the vampires that call Los Angeles home. Now, that truce is about to be broken and the unknowing Benny will be stuck in the middle of it.

That setup is way more exciting than the movie itself, which delivers most of its information up front but then crawls through the action of Benny watching as Blaire and Zoe take down the vampire power structure, Michael Corleone style, for their boss/Zoe’s boyfriend Victor (Alfie Allen). I feel like sexy-vampire-gang movie should be more energetic and more fun, but this movie never kicks into gear. C Available on Netflix.

There’s Someone Inside Your House (TV-MA)

Sydney Park, Théodore Pellerin.

Based on a book, this Netflix high school horror film feels far more classic than its modern setting: There are some 1970s and 1980s slasher and YA vibes, some knowing (I think) Scream-ness and some spiritual and tonal similarities to Netflix’s recent Fear Street trilogy. High school students start dying in this Nebraska town but not only are their slayings gruesome, so are the secrets revealed before their deaths. A popular football player and his participation in the vicious beating of a fellow student; the goodie-goodie student president’s secret racist podcast. Quickly the teens become afraid not only for their lives but for their reputations as well.

Recent transfer Makani (Park) has so much to hide she has even changed her name. She is traumatized by the secret she thinks could lose her her new group of friends, which includes cool “outsider” kids like the outspoken Alex (Ashja Cooper) and the NASA-hopeful Darby (Jesse LaTourette). Ollie (Pellerin) is so outsider-y that even those kids think he’s a weirdo — making him an instant suspect for the popular kid murders. One of Makani’s tamer secrets is that she and Ollie are sort of together.

I’m sure “aw, this movie full of violent slashings is plucky and cute” is not necessarily what the movie was going for — but it is! I like these kids, with their mash of trying to do better, normal teen awfulness and earnestness. Without being Scream jokey, this movie has a sense of humor about itself and its characters and has affection for them too.