THE LONG WALK

Directing: C+
Acting: B+
Writing: C
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-

Stephen King wrote the novel The Long Walk when he was 19 years old. It was the first one he ever wrote, though not the first to be published (that was Carrie, published when he was 27). That would place the writing of The Long Walk during King’s college years in the late 1960s, during the peak of the Vietnam War—for which reviewers later interpreted this novel as being a metaphor.

Now, nearly 60 years after it was written and 46 years after it was first published, The Long Walk gets its first-ever film adaptation, starring Cooper Hoffman (the late Philip Seymour’s son), David Jonsson, Charlie Plummer, Mark Hamill, and more. I don’t know if Stephen King is just trying to cash in on as many film adaptations as possible or what, but I can’t say this film works all that well as a metaphor for much of anything, much less the Vietnam War, which has largely passed out of an active place in the American cultural consciousness. We have young adults now with no memory of 9/11.

The Long Walk is getting some rave reviews, and I can’t quite understand why. It has strong performances and is well shot, so it kept my attention, but I still rather found it lacking. The story is set 19 years after a war has left the United States in economic dire states and a diminished place in the world. I suppose it could be argued that it doesn’t matter, but the story as presented here tells us nothing else about why the war happened or how our society got to a place where there is an annual marathon with one “winner” from each state who must walk through a desolate rural America, always at least at 3 miles per hour on penalty of execution after three warnings, until only one of them is left.

This is where even the Vietnam War “metaphor” idea falls apart, because these young men volunteer for this opportunity—they aren’t drafted. The winner is granted one wish as well as riches beyond their wildest dreams, and much is made of the country being so economically depressed that everyone they know is eager to volunteer out of desperation. But that’s not exactly the same thing, is it? Average young men didn’t enlist for the Vietnam War out of desperation; they were forced into it by the draft.

“The Long Walk” is indeed televised for the country, and Mark Hamill as “The Major” mentions how production picks up all around the country each year after the Walk. This brings in a dark sort of televised entertainment into the premise, which is both similar to and pre-dates the likes of Kōshun Takami’s Battle Royale (published 1999) or Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games (published 2008)—or indeed even Stephen King’s own The Running Man (published 1982), which itself is getting a second film adaption released later this fall, starring Glenn Powell (the 1987 adaptation starred Arnold Schwarzenegger).

The Running Man looks to be far more fun than The Long Walk, which leaves me still looking forward to it, albeit with a cautious optimism. At least that one promises exciting action set pieces, of which The Long Walk has none: my companion at The Long Walk today noted that it was the most violent movie she had ever seen with no action in it. It’s just a bunch of young men either walking, or, when they get too tired or get injured so they can’t keep the pace, getting shot. And you should get fair warning here: the kills in this movie are pretty gruesome, especially the first one, which shows a bullet tearing through a guy’s face. In many of the rest of the examples, you see bits flying out the other side of their head when they get shot. There’s quite a bit of this, but it’s not the only type of gross thing you’ll see: I’ll just say that one guy winds up with some gastrointestinal trouble, and we get a direct look at the results. I can only hope that I go with more dignity when I die.

But, basically, all these guys sign up for a 98% chance of an ignominious death. With there being 50 contestants of “The Long Walk,” I found myself running nerdy numbers in my head. For instance: if we assume 10% of the population is queer, then at least 5 of these guys should have been queer, but we don’t get a single gay character—a common issue with Stephen King’s vastly prolific writing, in which nearly everyone is cisgender and straight. Instead, we get a somewhat shocking amount of homophobic banter between these young men. I can’t figure out if JT Mollner, who adapted King’s novel into this screenplay, was just staying true to how King represented young men in the sixties, or if we are meant to rationalize this detail as the inevitable backsliding of social mores in a country that has become far-right authoritarian. The problem is that The Long Walk as a film provides no such clarity, so we’re just left to take the way these guys talk to each other at face value.

We don’t even get backstory on any individual characters. The closest is Raymond Garraty (Hoffman), the lead character, whose letter congratulating him on winning this “lottery” to represent his state serves as the opening title card. We see his mother (Judy Greer) driving him to the meeting point and breaking down when they say goodbye, and later we get the single real flashback regarding what was the ultimate fate of Garrett’s father—who defied national law by sharing old music and pop culture that is now banned with his son. That’s the extent of it with Garraty, and none of the other 49 contestants get even that treatment—not even Peter McVries (Jonsson, who was very impressive as the synthetic, Andy, in Alien: Romulus), who is eventually revealed to be the co-lead of the film.

Garraty reveals a plan to avenge his father, which prompts some wise advice from McVries: “Vengeance doesn’t help.” In the end, this is a big part of what makes how The Long Walk ends—very differently from the novel, to be clear—so baffling. It’s as though writer JT Mollner, and director Francis Lawrence, can’t decide what they’re trying to say. The Long Walk is clearly designed to be unsettling, and it very much works on that front. But, to what end? The character left standing at the end makes a truly momentous choice that is antithetical to what had previously seemed to be his own wisdom, and then walks off into the night in an environment that suddenly changes in a way that makes no practical sense. Are we supposed to take this at face value, or is this a fantasy in a character’s head? Again: this movie doesn’t seem to know. It would be one thing if The Long Walk were being provocatively ambiguous, but it feels more like it just doesn’t quite know what it’s going for. To that end, I can tell you what you should be going for: a better movie.

Are we there yet?

Overall: B-

SPINAL TAP II: THE END CONTINUES

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

I keep rewatching the original films shortly before their “legasequel” comes out, and still hoping the new film will meet my expectations. Why do I keep doing this? What was the definition of insanity again?

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is far from bad—it just falls far short of the brilliance of the original 1984 film, This Is Spinal Tap, which launched an entire genre of filmmaking. To say it broke a mold would be an understatement, given the trick it pulled off at the time of convincing many people it was a real documentary about a hard rock band. Not only could no other movie in the same vein manage the same trick, but certainly no one’s going to fall for that in a sequel. Not even one released 41 years later.

It could be said that The End Continues is running on fumes, riding the coattails of that original film. It could also be said that’s sort of the point. There’s also a lot, however, that director Rob Reiner (who also directed the first film) brings to the table in a fresh way. This isn’t just about nostalgia, but a bit of a new angle. The first film reflected some ridiculous truths about the music industry, and this one reflects on aging in that industry.

Back in 1984, Christopher Guest, who co-wrote both of these films and also plays Nigel the guitar player, was 36 years old. He’s 77 now. The same goes for Michael MkKean, who plays the lead singer, David. Harry Shearer, who plays Derek the bass player, is 81 now; he was 40 when the first film was released in 1984. Rob Reiner, who inserts himself even more into the sequel than he did the first film, is 81 now. He’s the first one of these characters we see, and after a mildly amusing reference to “all this exposition,” that scene ends with a physical gag that does’t really work. There are moments in this film that feel like really old people trying to be as funny as they used to be.

To be fair, the actual talent on display remains undiminished. A big part of what makes Spinal Tap work is that the actors are both deeply skilled improvisors and accomplished musicians. The lyrics may be ridiculous, but they’re still making actual music, and actually harmonizing. Well, when they’re not singing out of key due to rustiness, anyway.

I do find myself wondering if I might like The End Continues better re-watching it after a fair amount of time has passed. That was basically my experience with This Is Spinal Tap. The degree to which these movies are edited down from what must be endless footage is incredibly impressive, as is these actors’ dedication to their characters. The trick they pull off is giving them all nuance even as they’re all on the spectrum between outrageous and stupid.

I just wished I had laughed more. Don’t get me wrong, I laughed pretty hard a few times. But a lot of The End Continues feels like it’s trying to keep me in stitches while I simply manage a relatively consistent chuckle. I did enjoy the way this film continues the running gag of the band’s long history of drummers who have died, this time hiring a young woman, Didi Crockett (professional battle drummer Valerie Franco), for the band’s one-time gig that is also their first time performing in 15 years. It’s this performance that serves as the climax to which the narrative is working toward, but I’ll only say this of Didi: make certain you stick around to the very end of the credits. This won’t be hard, as just as with the first film, more clips roll through the entirety of the credits. I actually found this to be the funniest part of the movie.

The legacy of this, I guess we can now call it a “franchise,” is also on full display in The End Continues thanks to a ton of high-profile cameos, two of which (Paul McCartney and Elton John) are already revealed in the trailer. A couple other very famous singers appear briefly in a TikTok video, and a couple of characters played by people in the first film who only later became famous also appear very briefly. This is all undeniably fun, but I don’t know how necessary it is. Spinal Tap has plenty notoriety on their own without stunt casting being brought in to validate them. Although McCartney has one line that did make me laugh pretty hard, less because of it being a particularly original joke than because of his delivery. Elton John gets far more screen time but isn’t quite as funny, though there is a sight gag near the end that I got a kick out of.

I had a good time at Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, and it comes together well enough to justify its own existence. The first film gained a cult following in an era where cult success was still possible; this new one is expected to underperform at the box office. And why wouldn’t it? Its very existence is a reference to an original property from four decades ago, and people as old as the people in it don’t go to the movies much. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of life The End Continues has on streaming platforms, but it’s unlikely to light a fire there either.

When it comes down to it, this is a movie made for the people who were already fans. It’ll hardly feel like a revelation or innovation in the “mockumentary” genre the first film started, but for fans, it won’t disappoint either.

Want to make old people look old? Put an iPad in front of them!

Overall: B

DOWNTON ABBEY: THE GRAND FINALE

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Downton Abbey is nothing if not consistent. All three of these movies exist as little more than feature length episodes of the British historical drama series that aired on ITV in the UK between 2010 and 2015, and on PBS in the U.S. between 2011 and 2016. It is arguably writer Julian Fellowes’s crowning achievement, at least in terms of success and durability, though it was clearly an idea expanded from his own 2001 film Gosford Park, his best work thanks to direction in that case by Robert Altman. Fellowes is now 76 and still plenty busy, with his work on HBO’s The Gilded Age, an inferior series that owes its life to Downton Abbey and is nevertheless still addictive in its passive-aggressive cattiness in period grandeur.

It’s all fundamentally the same, really: soapy stories of ensemble casts of characters whose lives intersect between the upstairs and the downstairs of grand houses. And what is there to say about how good it is otherwise, really? If you’re into this sort of thing then you’re into it for the long haul, and if you’r not into it, you have no reason to care. Why would you watch The Grand Finale if you haven’t been watching the show for 15 years, or at the very least have seen the previous two films?

And these films, as a trilogy, serve a dual purpose. All of them exist as a nostalgic revisitation to the world a beloved TV series, and also to provide grand closure that only the cinema can provide: when the first film was released in 2019, it was a means of giving all these many characters a chance to shine on the silver screen. That was the only thing that was different, really, as it otherwise felt like simply stepping into the cozy comfort of a world fans had loved so much. It was more of the same with Downton Abbey: A New Age in 2022, except that it also served as a more definitive goodbye to one of its more iconic characters The Grand Finale now rolls in to be the definitive goodbye to every one of them. Mind you, this was already after the series killed off so many beloved main characters it was like Game of Thrones without the blood and gore—spoiler alert, we get flashes of each one of them in the closing scene of this new movie.

And here I am, a sucker for it all, every time. Downton Abbey is not now, nor has it ever been, great. What it has always been was fun, with its constant stream of pleasantly polite banter. The stakes are never very high, and the closest thing to a villain in this latest iteration is basically dispatched hardly more than halfway through the movie. Of greatest concern, always, is how these deeply traditional Brits reckon with changing social and moral attitudes of the 1920s—or, in this case, the first year of the thirties. It’s ironic how Downton Abbey is always ostensibly about cresting waves of the future while simultaneously being a period piece told in always the comfortably same way.

In this final story about the Crawley family and their array of service workers, the biggest deal is Lady Mary’s (Michelle Dockery) divorce—from a man never actually seen in this movie. This makes Mary a social pariah, and naturally the Crawleys band together to support her, and ultimately change local attitudes about divorced women in the process. Lady Mary’s other struggle is with her father, Robert (Hugh Bonneville), who has stated Lady is ready to take over control of Downton but is having difficulty letting go. Meanwhile, there are plenty of other subplots as always, including a visit from Noël Coward (Arty Froushan), who arrives with his friend Guy Dexter (Dominic West), who is in a secret romance with Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier). A scene in which Barrow, no longer working as a servant at Downton, is invited to join the group upstairs in front of the rest of the workers downstairs is particularly delightful.

There are other sendoffs: Mr. Carson (Jim Carter) is retiring as the family’s butler, also having difficulty letting go; Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol) is shortly after doing the same as the longtime cook of the house. There isn’t even time to get to all the other characters, but I will mention Paul Giamatti as Harold, brother to Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) and brother-in-law to Robert, who has been hoodwinked out of most of his and Cora’s family’s wealth. This all leads to inevitable discussions of tightening budgets and figuring out ways to move on—including Robert and Cora moving out of the main Downtown house, which makes no sense to me. The house is gargantuan, why can’t Lady Mary take control of the house and still allow them to live there? (Cue some English aristocrat gasping and dropping their tea at such a preposterous idea.)

I have to admit, a runtime of 123 minutes is impressively tight given these countless narrative threads—as was the case with both the first and second movies (122 minutes and 124 minutes, respectively). Just as it had as a TV series, Downton Abbey runs like clockwork as a film series. Should we even believe that this is truly the end? Will this be the historical drama version of the Friday the 13th movies? If Julian Fellowes comes back with a fourth film the subtitle should be Violet Lives. Except they’d have to re-cast Maggie Smith, who sadly passed away just last year. So never mind on that. Maybe this really is the end.

The Grand Finale is admittedly a little misleading, in that it’s just as “grand” as it’s ever been but not particularly exciting. There’s no “going out with a bang” with Downton, and at one point Robert even utters the quote “So this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.” I wouldn’t exactly call The Grand Finale a “whimper” either, but it is pretty stolid. It does effectively tug at the heartstrings in the end, and I am not above admitting I got misty-eyed in the closing scene. Downton Abbey was never long on thrills, but it was dependable, in both its writing and its performances. It gave you reasons to love its many characters, and never gave you any reason to stop. In the end, this movie serves as a two-hour cinematic hug goodbye.

Now let’s all gather round and hear basically the same story yet again. Because we love it!

Overall: B

THE ROSES

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-

The Roses starts out strong, with a lot of promise, and then it kind of . . . peters out. The whole point of this movie is to be entertained by a warring couple who let things get out of hand in a divorce, and ironically, the flashback scene of when they first met is possibly the most entertaining in the movie. It certainly establishes Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch as having undeniable chemistry, as Ivy and Theo Rose.

And then, The Roses takes way too long to get on with what we came to this movie for. The runtime is 105 minutes, and it’s not until well into the second half that we even see this couple truly start to sour on each other.

I get what director Jay Roach and writer Tony McNamara are trying to do, I guess. They do a fairly impressive job of presenting characters who are both empathetic in their own ways. I’m just not convinced it needed to take well over half the movie to get there. The poster goes out of its way to note that this movie is “from the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things,” apparently to underscore one movie that was far more successful than this one has any hope to be, and another one that had far greater depth and wit and humor.

As it happens, The Roses is based on a 1981 novel called The War of the Roses by Warren Adler—which the 1989 film The War of the Roses, starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, was also based on. Crediting both films as simply based on the novel saves this new one, on a bit of a technicality, from being considered a “remake”—it’s simply another adaptation. The first film, directed by Danny DeVito, was a much more pointedly dark comedy and therefore much more my jam; I enjoyed The Roses okay but would be much more inclined to recommend you simply seek out The War of the Roses from 1989 and watch that.

In the first film, the couple is a lot less verbally vicious, and the focus is more on their curdling resentments that evolve into sabotage and comic violence. This new The Roses spends so much time on the success of the first ten years of the Roses’ marriage that I became convinced it would not end on the same comic but deeply dark note the first film ended on. I won’t spoil the ending here, but I will say this: it surprised me, but also managed to be somewhat ambiguous in a way that allows the movie to have its cake and eat it too. I left the theater saying I prefer that movies have more balls than this.

Theo Rose is a successful architect and Ivy Rose runs a local seafood restaurant too far off the main road to be successful—plus she’s called it “We’ve Got Crabs,” one of this movie’s attempts at wit that doesn’t quite land. Theo loses his job after a signature building he designed, with a structure atop it meant to evoke a sail, collapses in the middle of a freak rainstorm. I should ask my architect friend how plausible this scenario is, because I found it hard to believe—but, the sequence itself has its share of both effective humor and thrill to it. The humor then gets undercut by the amount of time Theo spends afterward obsessing over the video that gets re-edited to music and then goes viral, a plot detail now wildly overused.

On the same night, the main road closed, a bunch of drivers are diverted to We’ve Got Crabs, and this includes a local food critic who reviews the restaurant. The review is so glowing that by the next day the restaurant is overwhelmed with customers, and within weeks Ivy is being flown to San Francisco to hang out with famous chefs.

This is where things turn for the Roses: Ivy becomes the great success and the publicly disgraced Theo can’t get work. Breadwinning and parental roles are swapped, and differing opinions about parenting are a big part of brewing tensions. Although I will say, for the record, I’m with Ivy on this one: kids should be allowed to have fun—the clarifier here is that there should be moderation in all things, and Ivy just wants to be the “fun parent” and Theo is excessively regimented with the kids. Speaking of which, while Ivy and Theo are relatively well-rounded characters, their relationship with the two kids is never fleshed out in a satisfactory way. Having them move to the other coast in Miami on a fitness scholarship at the age of thirteen is a little weird. As is both kids’ all-in subscription to their dad’s fitness obsession.

This does, however, get the kids out of the way so that we can get to the Roses’ climactic battle—but not before they meet with Ivy’s lawyer, played by Allison Janney, yet another thing The Roses takes too long to get to, because as always Janney is great. Theo hires neighbor friend Barry (Andy Samberg) as his lawyer, and the running gag of Barry’s wife Amy coming on to a reliably disinterested Theo never quite works either. Amy is played by a game and entertaining Kate McKinnon, but given Theo’s lack of interest, Amy just comes across as inexplicably oversexed and it never really works, even feels like it fits with the rest of the movie.

Instead of peppering the entertaining battles through the movie, The Roses builds up to a climactic battle between the two leads. There’s a sort of montage of one-upmanship, including a dinner party that I hoped to get more out of, until a final blowout between Ivy and Theo in the house—which Theo designed and built, but Ivy paid for, thus being the one thing each of them refuses to give up. This sequence is pretty entertaining, until it becomes almost cartoonish (in what world would a woman who works as a chef “learn AI” and create a deep-fake video in one evening?). I do like how the falling living room chandelier is a nod to the first The War of the Roses from 1989. But, the 1989 sequence is far better, and any nods in this movie are just gestures to things already done better. You might as well just go watch the other movie instead.

Theo and Ivy make a mess of things in The Roses.

Overall: B-

SPLITSVILLE

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Splitsville takes romantic comedy into a peculiarly unusual direction, contextualizing it with the concept of open relationships in a way that may not be for everyone. Broadly speaking, it worked for me. I laughed more than I do at most contemporary romantic comedies. I may need to spend some time thinking about exactly how non-monogamy is explored in this movie, and everything ties up a little too neatly in the end, and in a way some may feel negates the idea that people can do non-monogamy successfully. I’ll let other people get into the debate about that, though, because I was as entertained as I hoped to be and therefore got what I wanted out of this movie.

That doesn’t mean some of it is a little tricky. Let’s start with Dakota Johnson, the biggest star in the cast, and an actor who seems to embody characters who exist in the same universe no matter which movie they’re in. I would not say Johnson is the most versatile of actors, and yet there is something undeniably compelling about her screen presence. There’s something almost ethereal about her, which you wouldn’t think would work in the part of Julie, a thirtysomething mom unhappy in her marriage, and yet here we are. At least she lives in an incredibly nice house with floor-to-ceiling windows and a pool thanks to being married to a very successful husband, Paul (Michael Angelo Covino), so her elegant and very-Dakota-Johnson fashion choices seem to fit.

The story actually revolves around Carey (Kyle Marvin), who happens to be Paul’s best friend. Carey works as a private school gym teacher, and I suppose the private school is meant to indicate how Carey can work as a gym teacher and still be close friends with a wealthy property developer without any class differences causing awkward tensions. In the opening scene, Carey and his wife Ashley (Adria Arjona) are on their way to a weekend getaway, and after witnessing a freak accident on the road, Ashley declares she wants out of the marriage.

In a comically extended sequence, Carey bails out of the car and runs to the home of Julie and Paul, where talk of divorce leads to the revelation that Julie and Paul are not monogamous. I won’t spoil where things go from there, but I will say that these characters consistently justify their open relationships in ways that seem a bit regressive: “If you make the bad thing not bad, then it’s okay.” This seems logical on the surface, except that Splitsville spends its time suggesting that non-monogamy will inevitably lead to problems—which is to say, non-monogamy is inherently bad—rather than acknowledging that it actually works for some people.

To be fair, it also doesn’t work for a lot of people. Spoiler alert: when Carey takes Julie and Paul’s news as a revelation and proposes it to Ashley as an idea for saving their marriage, it doesn’t work. Especially considering who Carey decides to have sex with. All this is to say, the idea not working out for characters like these is still valid. I would just like to see a movie in which people have open relationships and it’s not the major challenge for them all to overcome.

And, to clarify, non-monogamy does work, for all of these characters, for quite a long stretch of Splitsville. It works until it doesn’t. Or it may never have happened at all. Things get complicated, of course–especially when sex and romance does a bit of merry-go-round movement around this foursome. Declarations of not feeling jealous are made, and petty jealousies are quickly revealed. One might even say predictably—though a fight sequence that occurs between Carey and Paul at Paul’s house, destroying furniture and windows and more, is exceedingly well staged and quite entertaining. These are characters who have trained on certain defensive moves, so they both get some good ones in, but they are also both crippled by rage and sadness, which makes them fumble a great deal, lending the scene some realism. They spend more time damaging the house than they do each other, although they still do plenty of that.

There’s a lot of great dialogue in Splitsville, sometimes just short of Aaron Sorkin-esque. This is a movie with both compelling ideas and compelling performances. I do have some technical nitpicks, though, such as the multiple sequences with the camera swooshing back and forth around one or the other of their houses, as a means of communicating the plot. At Carey and Ashley’s house, we see how Carey amasses a group of friends out of Ashley’s growing number of ex-lovers (and these guys—and one woman, though we never see her—run the scale of plausibility as characters). In another scene, we glide through the many rooms of Paul and Julie’s house during a birthday party for their son. In one moment of the extended cut, a guy the kid barely knows arrives at the door while the party is in full swing, and as he’s let in and the camera moves past him, we hear the man walking while bellowing “Feliz Cumpleaños,” as if that would happen. Everyone sings “Happy Birthday” together, hello!

As I said, these are nitpicks. A pretty big one is the decision to hire a “mentalist” rather than a magician or clown or the kid’s birthday, and he’s played by Succession’s Nicholas Braun. This is played as a comic thread of the many things going on in the scene, and it just doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the movie, nor is it ever very funny.

The rest of the movie is, though. Your mileage will vary with Splitsville, but it got pretty far with me. Nitpicks notwithstanding, I had a really good time with it.

Two couples get messy, and then clean up their messes, in Splitsville.

Overall: B+

CAUGHT STEALING

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+

Thank god Darren Aronofsky finally made a movie I can get behind again.

I became an Aronofsky loyalist after The Wrestler (2008) and Black Swan (2010), having already caught my attention with Pi (1998) and Requiem for a Dream (2000). The Fountain (2006), released between those two pairs of great movies, was fine, but not great, indicating that Aronofsky was not quite infallible—but then he seemed to double down on that notion with two genuine duds, mother! (2017), which was so awful it made me angry; and The Whale (2022), which won Brendan Fraser his Best Actor Oscar but was a wildly insensitive story about morbid obesity, played by someone who was not obese (don’t even get me started on the stupid double entendre of the title). The only Darren Aronofsky featurre film I haven’t mentioned here is Noah (2014), the one film of his I never bothered to see because it was such a wild departure, was based on a story in the Bible, and was poorly reviewed to boot.

It does mean, however, that Darren Aronofsky has not quite stayed consistent as a director who has earned my loyalty based on his name alone. For a while there I thought he had that status, along the same lines as the Coen Brothers or Pedro Almodóvar or Christopher Nolan. And then his most recent movies went from not worth seeing to dreadful to barely tolerable, so when the trailers began running for Caught Stealing, I could only be cautiously optimistic at best.

This time, the optimism paid off. The one thing I’ll give Aronofsky credit for when it comes to every one of his movies is that everything he makes is unlike anything else he’s ever made—and yet you can find his sensibility somewhere deep in all of them. Caught Stealing isn’t quite a comedy, but it has several funny moments, making it the closest thing to a comedy he’s ever made. He clearly has both a sense of humor and a soft spot, as evidenced by the almost-incongruously cute animation element of the closing credits.

Caught Stealing is more of a farce, albeit one with plenty of gritty violence in it. My favorite thing about it is the lead character, Hank (Austin Butler, excellent as always), is a regular-guy bartender living in 1998 New York City, and although he gets caught up in extraordinary circumstances, he’s no action hero. After being hospitalized by goons looking for his punk Brit neighbor Russ (a nearly-unrecognizable Matt Smith), Hank freely admits to police Detective Roman (Regina King, in a part that takes one of this movie’s many surprising turns) that he’s really scared. Eventually Hank steps up and does heroic acts, but only when he’s otherwise out of any conventional options, and never with any “alpha male” energy. This is a guy who’s vulnerable, who cries, who gets physically hurt—quite badly.

I won’t be the first to mention the violence in Caught Stealing, the knowledge of which had me going in with the expectation that I may be unsettled by it. The trailers make it look almost comic. It’s certainly startling at times, but very much to the credit of both Aronofsky and script writer Charlie Huston, the violence is only ever in service of the story and the character development.

Almost every character is given more dimension than their screen time would lead you to expect; virtually every actor in this film brings something more to what’s merely written on the page. This is particularly the case with Zoë Kravitz as Yvonne, Hank’s love interest, in spite of getting disappointingly little screen time (for justifiable reason, in terms of plotting); and both Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio as Hasidic mafia brothers Lipa and Shmully. There is a brief detour to their mother’s place with Carol Kane that is a delight, but then Carol Kane is always a delight.

The less you know about Caught Stealing going into it, actually, the better. Not all the characters are what they seem, and some of the characters turn out to be what they seem but also helpful in surprising ways. Certain characters that would live to the end in other movies don’t here, and others that you fear for make it out okay. There’s a feeling of randomness to all these characters’ fates, but in a way that’s surprisingly satisfying. Most critically, Caught Stealing is utterly unpredictable, perhaps because people are often utterly predictable.

I will mention there is a cat. Bud the Cat, played by a remarkably chill cat named Tonic, is part of the inciting incident—Russ the neighbor asks Hank to look after Bud when he has to go home to the UK for a family emergency. Russ is tied up with all these criminals, and Hank simply has the bad luck of being in the way when the goons (including one named Colorado, played by Bad Bunny) come looking for him. Other key plot elements include the kitty litter, a fake plastic poop, and a literal key.

Caught Stealing even features character development between Hank and Bud the Cat, which is the sweetest part of the movie, even though I have a hard time believing a cat would just chill inside his open carrier whether he happens to be between a driver and an airbag, or on the beach at Coney Island. Regardless, I’m a big fan of Bud the Cat, and also a big fan of Caught Stealing.

Tonic stars in Caught Stealing.

Overall: B+

HONEY DON'T

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: C+

Honey Don’t is a very peculiar film, in that the mixed-bad reviews are hardly unjustified, and yet I found the experience of watching it to be a surprisingly enjoyable one. It’s the kind of movie that, in another time, could have easily become a gay cult hit—it fits neatly into the “lesbian noir” genre, after all, and has a deeply subtle but pervasive camp sensibility to it. There’s a lot in it that might go over the heads of mainstream audiences but which gay audiences might appreciate. Plus, the lead character, private investigator Honey O’Donahue (a wonderful Margaret Qualley), is gay.

So are multiple other characters: local cop MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza), with whom Honey has a fling; Mr. Siegfried (Billy Eichner, criminally underused), who has hired Honey to investigate who his boyfriend is having an affair with; and Collegian (Christian Antidormi), Siegfried’s boyfriend who meets a delightfully dark fate that I won’t spoil here. That fate, however, is very directly tied to Hector (Puerto Rican actor and singer Jacnier), who has an illicit sort of employment with local Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans, always fun to see in parts that are not Captain America).

It doesn’t take long for bodies to start piling up, in ways that are both amusing and decidedly Coen-esque—this is another film directed by Joel Coen but without his brother Joel, here co-written by Ethan and his wife Tricia Cooke, and this may be the Coen film made by one without the other that I have enjoyed the most. That doesn’t make it the best, per se; I just enjoyed its oddball mix of noir and queer sensibility. I kept thinking of the 2021 film French Exit, which I enjoyed in a very similar way. That’s a different movie, except that it also has its own (much more overt) camp sensibility, also easy to have a blast with in spite of its obvious flaws.

There’s something to be said for casting. Margaret Qualley has such great onscreen charisma she carries Honey Don’t through what otherwise would be lulls in the plot. Charlie Day plays a local detective who is charming enough to make up for his clueless declarations of “You always say that!” when he hits on Honey and she tells him “I like girls.” Evans hits the perfect notes in his performance of an oversexed minister who keeps doing ministry even in bed.

It’s in the plot threads that Honey Don’t is likely to lose people. This movie is all of 89 minutes long, and is a rare case of one you find yourself wishing had been longer. It ends with multiple narrative threads that neither get any satisfying resolution, nor do they appear to have any connection to one another. It’s difficult to say which does more to make or break a movie, the script or the editing, but it feels a lot like both are at fault with this one.

At least the charismatic actors are also shot well, giving this a slight feel of older, better Coen Brothers movies (and the opening credits have a particularly fun and clever design). As the story goes along, as long as you’re not thinking too hard about what the hell is going on, it’s easy to have a great time. It’s tempting to say Honey Don’t is ultimately a failure, except for the parts I enjoyed so much—the actors, the cinematography, the subtle notes of camp. I would recommend it only to a very particular group—queer people who love a knowingly, esoterically ironic point of view. It’s pretty cool that Ethan Coen went in that direction, if nothing else.

It’s no masterpiece, but it’s fun to watch!

Overall: B

NOBODY 2

Directing: C+
Acting: B-
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B

When Nobody was released in 2021, it worked perhaps better than it deserved: released in May, it was the first movie I saw in the theater since covid stay-home orders had begun 14 months before. There was something freeing about the experience, both the return to normalcy for us movie lovers, and the violent release of pent-up tension that unfolded in the plot, about a guy with a problem resisting an urge to pick fights—but always with good (sort of) on his side. It also established Bob Odenkirk as the latest in a line of unlikely older-man action heroes.

Odenkirk was 58 when Nobody was released, which makes him 61 now. That film also featured Connie Nielsen as his wife, Becca; Christopher Lloyd as his dad, David; and RZA as Harry, his brother—all of whom return for Nobody 2. Even Gage Munroe and Paisley Cadorath return as Hutch and Becca’s children, who are quickly established at the beginning of the film as increasingly frustrated by their dad’s absence—but not as much as Becca.

Nodody was hokey and contrived as hell, but lots of fun not just in spite of but because of that: it was a movie that made no bones about what it was, and that’s what made it work. It was kind of a blast. Nobody 2 has a bit of a problem in that it simply attempts to replicate what the first movie did, giving it the feel of a copy of a copy. Nothing is innovated here, and the film seems to serve little purpose other than to stage ultra-violent combat sequences at a rickety amusement park.

Hitch and Harry were taken there once as kids by their dad, you see, and it was the one family vacation they ever took—something Hutch is attempting to replicate by returning there with his own wife and kids. Naturally, what else is replicated is how the dad gets sucked back into old habits there, particularly when an asshole employee swats his daughter upside the back of the head. This results in violent retribution that is so wildly out of proportion, the movie quickly stopped being fun for me. Acting in self-defense is one thing, even when it’s excessive, but in response to a swat on the head? Bashing a guy’s head through an arcade game?

Nobody 2 attempts to make this behavior okay—for the sake of the audience, anyway; Becca doesn’t approve, at least not at first—by having Hutch admit to Wyatt (John Ortiz), the park owner, that “I lost my shit,” but in response to what still qualifies as assault against his daughter: “What would you do?” Wyatt, the park owner who starts off as a potential adversary after his son and Hutch’s son get into a scuffle (this is what starts it all), seems to ponder this briefly and then basically give Hutch a pass.

But there are some truly wild characters we have yet to meet. There’s the local sheriff, Abel (Colin Hanks, at 47 looking shockingly like his father in middle-age), ridiculously corrupt and acting as a sort of middle-man between Wyatt, who oversees an underground drug operation for which the amusement park is a front (seems unduly complicated), and the most bonkers character of all, Lendina, played with unselfconscious relish by Sharon Stone. She’s the boss of this entire operation, a ruthless woman about whom a character might say “She’s wiped out entire bloodlines for less.” Funny how Hutch can wipe out her henchmen like they are, you know, nothing but story props.

I won’t lie, I had kind of a good time with Nobody 2. That can happen when you just surrender to what a movie is, in this case a moderately amusing action movie with modest ambitions and zero pretense. That doesn’t make this movie good, and this is just a rehash of a previous film that barely succeeded on such flimsy merits. Nobody might still hold up, actually—but it was the kind of movie that worked precisely because it shouldn’t, but it was saved by great fight choreography and charismatic performers. The performers are mostly the same in Nobody 2, but the premise and especially the villains are so ridiculous that it sometimes took me out of the movie. Every supporting character in Nobody 2 is not only a caricature, but practically a cartoon.

But, if you just want to see a bunch of people get dismembered and blown up in an amusement park, I suppose you’ll have a great time.

Fire in the hole! In the plot hole!

Overall: C+

WEAPONS

Directing: A-
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A+

Weapons is a tricky one, because its success relies so heavily on how little you know going in. How much can I tell you about it, then? About as much as the setup is revealed in the trailer: all but one student in a single third-grade class suddenly run out of their homes at the same time in the middle of the night, run out into the darkness, and no one has any idea where they went. The parents of these students are deeply suspicious of the class teacher, Justine (Julia Garner, perfectly cast), for little reason other than it’s the only thing they have to hold onto, the closest thing to a shred of sense. She is seemingly the only thing all these kids have in common.

I suppose you could argue that it’s strange this community is not equally suspicious of Alex (an exceedingly well-directed Cary Christopher), as he is just as much what these kids have in common as Julia is: he’s from their class, and he’s the only one that didn’t run out into the night. Of course, adults are far more likely to suspect other adults than a child, and while they might also have been suspicious of Alex’s parents, those two are . . . let’s say: incapacitated.

Such is the central mystery of Weapons, and one that remains a mystery for quite a long time in this movie: what made these children run away, and where did they go?

This is perhaps the perfect time to mention that Weapons was written and directed by Zach Creggor, the filmmaker behind the 2022 surprise hit Barbarian, which established him as a bold new voice in cinema. What Weapons proves is that he is far from a one-hit wonder. This is a movie that does everything right. It establishes a mystery, then unravels it before out eyes without ever once telegraphing what comes next. It doesn’t have the wild tonal shifts of Barbarian (one of the many things that made that movie such a delight), but it does provide a fair amount of laughs—just don’t expect them to come too soon. Creggor wants to put you through the paces of nervous tension first.

Horror has never been my favorite genre, but horror with a healthy dose of humor gets me a step closer. Weapons has been likened to a cross between Magnolia and Hereditary, which does reveal a little bit, in an abstract way: we get several chapters, each titled the name of the character being focused on, the first being the aforementioned Justine. Another is Alex, and yet another is Archer (Josh Brolin), a parent of one of the missing children. There’s also Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), a local cop; and James (Austin Abrams), a homeless addict who is given far more dimension than such a character is typically given in any movie, let alone a horror movie. Eventually we start to see how the narratives of all these characters intersect, which is where the Magnolia comparison comes in. The broader vibe otherwise can be inferred.

There is no allegory or metaphor to be found here; Weapons is simply a magnificently structured and cleverly written horror story, the kind that makes you remember how exhilarating it can be to go to the movies—especially with a crowd of people. I will admit I spent a lot of time with my hands over my face, and Creggor does employ several well-placed jump scares—something I usually hate. I have some mixed feelings about the multiple dream sequences, and in one of them the apparition of a giant machine gun in the sky feels a little on the nose (that sounds like something close to a spoiler, but believe me, it isn’t). Weapons clocks in at two hours and eight minutes, but to say there isn’t a dull moment is an understatement.

When it comes to the comparison to Hereditary, what I would clarify here is that Hereditary was much more unsettling than Weapons, which still succeeds at it to a degree. Weapons is far more thrilling, though, especially one it takes a decisive turn in the final act—which is where most of the humor also comes along. It’s also an incredible jolt of energy in a story that was already crackling, but it pivots from suspense to a beautifully executed sort of chaos.

Most critically, Zach Cregger shows admirable restraint. The final-act chaos is over just when you think you want more, but in a fully satisfying way. Nothing gets over-explained, or indeed in many ways explained at all. Amy Madigan suddenly shows up, and I won’t dare spoil in what capacity—only that she proves to be the wildest character of all. But whether it’s her or any of the other ensemble cast, they all feel like authentic people with dimension, even when they make you giggle (there’s one moment when Josh Broken delivers a perfectly executed “What the fuck!”).

I haven’t yet mentioned Benedict Wong as the school principal, Andrew, who also gets his own chapter. We don’t even realize for a while that he plays a gay man, and I was sort of taken with the scene in which he is grocery shopping with his partner, simultaneously trying to talk down a paranoid Justine on the phone while pointing at which cereal he prefers. I loved that Wong played his part straight (so to speak), while his partner is played by Clayton Farris with a perfect touch of effeminacy. The fates of both these characters is pretty wild in the end, but in neither case does it have anything to do with their sexuality. They are simply among a great many regular people caught in extraordinary circumstances.

I mean, they’re just caught in a movie, to be fair—but, in the best way. Weapons is not something you will soon forget, and will want to talk about at length, so long as it’s with someone else who has also seen it. No spoilers! Movies like this are why we love cinema.

Run, don’t walk, to the cinema to see this movie!

Overall: A-

THE NAKED GUN

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Spoof movies in the vein of The Naked Gun had their heyday long, long ago—it started with Airplane! in 1980, and lasted perhaps through Hot Shots! in 1991. In the middle of that period, we got The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! in 1988, starring Leslie Nielsen, who had already surprised audiences by pivoting from a long career in serious dramas before pivoting to his part in Airplane! Nielsen then became, for all intents and purposes, the poster boy for spoof movies, starring in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear in 1991, then The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult in 1994. Those diminishing returns continued with little-known films such as Dracula: Dead and Loving It in 1995; the Fugitive spoof Wrongfully Accused in 1998; and his injection into the Scary Movie franchise in 2003 (Scary Movie 3) and 2006 (Scary Movie 4).

By the 2000s, the Scary Movie franchise represented a genre long run out of steam, made by people who have exhausted all the good punch lines, and who clearly no longer quite understood the assignment. Scary Movie (2000) was the cinematic equivalent of a hat on a hat, created in response to Scream (1996) and its sequels—but those films were packed with self-referential comedy, a meta exercise that did not lend itself well to parody, because parodying something already comedic makes little sense.

Enter 2025, well into the era of the rooboot and the “legasequel,” and this new The Naked Gun qualifies as both. I would have preferred a well-made film in this genre that was an original idea, but The Naked Gun is what we’ve got. And here’s the surprise: this is perhaps the first spoof movie made in thirty years by people who not only understood the assignment, but have sharp, comedic minds.

I have often wondered what it would be like to remake Airplane!—full disclosure, my all-time favorite comedy—in the modern era. The pop culture references would have to be updated, as would any of the gags related to technology. Would it play quite as well? Probably not, but I would be very interested in seeing it attempted. I’ve gotten the next-best thing with The Naked Gun in 2025, which succeeds shockingly well at updating all the references and the technology, while fully honoring the tone of the humor in the original.

Plus, this Naked Gun has something other reboots almost never have, which is restraint—not in terms of all the deliberately dumb humor, which is the overall point of this exercise, but in any penchant for self-reference, or particularly reference to the original 1998 film. Aside from the plot connection that establishes this as technically a sequel rather than a reboot (Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin, Jr, son of Leslie Nielsen’s Lieutenant Frank Drebin; Paul Walter Hauser plays Ed Hocken Jr, son of George Kennedy’s Captain Ed Hocken), there’s only a couple of references to the first film, so subtle that only audiences who well remember the original will catch them, just as the passing shot of a stuffed beaver, or the very brief cameo by “Weird Al” Yankovic, which also happened in the original. There’s even a very brief cutaway to Priscilla Presley watching the news. And yet, anyone who has never seen any of the previous films can watch and enjoy without feeling like they’re missing anything—these are just fun little Easter Eggs for those of us who do remember.

A big part of what makes The Naked Gun work is its inspired casting, once again with people known as serious actors, who play their parts straight. Liam Neeson, already enjoying a reinvention over the past 15 years as an older action star, could not be more perfect as Drebin Jr. He shot this movie at the age of 72, and although that’s 10 years older than Nielsen was in the original Naked Gun, they still have the long career of serious roles in common. And Nielsen was indeed born 26 years before Neeson, which certainly makes them believable as father and son. Paul Walter Hauser has proven to be a versatile actor across genres, and I liked him better here than I did as the Mole Man in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, also currently in theaters. As Drebin’s love interest, Beth Davenport, we get Pamela Anderson, a worthy successor to Priscilla Presley in this genre.

With the addition of Danny Huston as the Elon Musk-like villain, Richard Crane, who sells electric cars but also plans to detonate a device with sound waves that makes everyone kill each other so he can inherit and rule over the world with fellow billionaires after waiting out the carnage in a bunker, The Naked Gun features a game cast of actors who all understand what kind of movie they’re in. None of it feels like a cash-grab, and the script, by Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, and Akiva Schaffer (who also directed), manages to make the humor feel fresh rather than rehashed.

I won’t pretend that all the gags land, but with this type of humor, mileage varying comes with the territory. The run time is a wonderfully brisk 85 minutes—exactly the same as the original film—which keeps the pacing breakneck, creating a far better feeling than the countless “comedies” of the past twenty years that bafflingly clock in at over two hours, creating opportunities for lulls. There are no lulls in The Naked Gun, and if one gag doesn’t make you laugh, there will be another one that will, and in a matter of seconds. That is precisely how these movies are supposed to work.

This may not be an original idea, but police procedurals as a target of parody is an evergreen proposition, and at least The Naked Gun is a recognizable property. Well, it is for us older folks, anyway—but I already noted that this movie can work just as well for anyone who has never seen the previous films in the franchise, or indeed are unaware that they even exist. Funny is funny, and as long as you’re open to this kind of humor (dumb jokes written by smart people), the bottom line is that this movie is funny. And things look surprisingly promising for this film: a score of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes; a score of 75 on MetaCritic; a surprisingly large crowd in the theater where I went to see it, at 10:45 a.m. on a Saturday. It’s tracking to make around $20 million this weekend, exceeding initial projections.

Whether The Naked Gun will prove to be rewatchable the way its predecessor was remains to be seen; I may see it again just to look for visual gags I missed the first time around. Movies like this tend to pack in a lot, which means some of it can get missed while you’re laughing. This is the best problem a comedy can have, and god knows movie comedies that actually get a theatrical release are a dying breed. It’s fantastic to see a movie like this come along with so much more life in it than anyone had any reason to expect.

There’s so much more to offer here than you’d think!

Overall: B+