THE WOMAN KING

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

If The Woman King were about a bunch of European combat battles in the early 19th century, but made exactly the same way, I suspect I would be a little more guarded with my praise. Which is to say, as it is, The Woman King sure takes a Hollywood approach to its storytelling—its editing, its pacing, its themes, particularly its score. You could call this an “action movie” or a “war movie,” but three huge things set it apart and thus elevate it: it gives agency to people of color in the 19th century; it’s specifically about Black women warriors; and it’s set in Africa.

What’s more, the Agoji, the all-female military regiment depicted in this film actually exited—although this is where the “Hollywood” part comes in. The Agoji’s sacred status is very romanticized, in at least one case their vow of celibacy challenged by a possible suitor (these movies always need some element of romance). A chance re-encounter between a mother and separated daughter stretches the bounds of plausibility.

Nearly every beat of the story arc in The Woman King is recognizable. But, that hardly matters given the subject at hand, not to mention the performances of the actors, nearly all of them Black women, headed by Viola Davis, who genuinely deserves an Oscar nod for this role. Even among the Black characters, only a couple of them are men, including the Dahomey King Ghezo (John Boyega), and the leader of their African enemies, Oba Ade (Jimmy Odukoya). Other supporting parts include Hero Fiennes Tiffin as Santo Ferreira, a Portugese slave trader and the only White man in the film; and Jordan Bolger as Malik, Santo’s morally conflicted , half-Portuguese-half-Dahomey friend from childhood. There’s also, notably, a “eunuch” included in King Ghezo’s court of many wives.

All of these men are either villains, or secondary to the many Black women who take up the bulk of the narrative space in The Woman King. Lashana Lynch (previously seen, among other things, as Maria Rambeau in Captain Marvel) is excellent as an Agoji trainer, and Thuso Mbedu is well cast as Nawi, the film’s main protagonist in spite of Viola Davis being clearly the star. (Mdedu learns to be a badass. Davis already is one.) The same goes for Sheila Atim as Amenza, who is for lack of a better term, this community’s medicine woman. There are plenty more women warrior characters given just enough screen time and story relevance for us to care about them, until they are killed in battle. I don’t say that to be trite; this is about warriors, and their deaths should mean something,

Perhaps most importantly, The Woman King is riveting entertainment from start to finish. Its opening sequence is a banger, eschewing opening credits in favor of Viola Davis and her cohort of women warriors attacking a village that has some of their people hostage. A good deal of the backstory here has to do with how warring factions of African communities gained wealth by selling each other’s captives to slave traders.

There is no question that The Woman King oversimplifies an incredibly complex history of geopolitical issues, but this gets back to the whole “Hollywood” thing: that’s what movies do. Hopefully, it will spur viewers into reading up on the real people and histories. (There is already no shortage of think pieces to choose from, contextualizing this film online.) In the context of movies that use a proven crowd pleasing formula that works, it’s about time the industry tackled stories from what remains by far the most underrepresented continent in movies: Africa. The Woman King not only takes us to a place we rarely see in cinema, but takes the revolutionary step of taking on the perspectives of its indigenous peoples, rather than from the point of view of colonizers. That is what truly elevates this movie: the agency it gives characters we’ve never seen this way before—even with their own moral ambiguities and challenges.

I suspect this is something well understood by director Gina Prince-Bythewood (who also directed the 2020 Netflix movie The Old Guard). This is a unique story packaged in a formulaic way. I am usually exasperated by blatantly formulaic storytelling, but this is still something different. The Woman King is tailor-made for mass audiences, and only laziness or racism or sexism (or all three) will keep people from giving it a look. Whether it will make any real money in theaters in today’s dubious movie theater industry climate remains to be seen, but whether it’s there or on demand soon enough, this thrilling movie is essential viewing.

Behold the sacred warriors of the Dahomey.

Overall: B+

MOONAGE DAYDREAM

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

I had somewhat mixed feelings about Moonage Daydream while I was watching it. But now, as it lingers and stays with me after the film has ended, it seems to gain value in retrospect.

There is no other movie like this one, which is apropos given that there was, and always will be, only one David Bowie. Plenty of artists have been inspired by him, but none have matched his singularity. Written, directed, and edited by Brett Morgen, Moonage Daydream provides a visual portrait of Bowie’s overall career. And even as someone who never actually bought any of the man’s albums (his record sales peaked when I was seven), I felt like I left the theater with a real sense of Bowie’s artistic essence.

Even for a man whose many personas rivaled that of Madonna, David Bowie had an almost ethereal presence that served as a through line between all of them. This is a documentary that exists in a nebulous space between “concert film” and straightforward narrative, the closest thing to a linear path being that it covers the broad strokes of Bowie’s career in chronological order.

Morgen does heavily focus on the first fifteen years or so of Bowie’s career, with an overview of the nineties serving almost as a coda, before barely touching on his death. Perhaps I’m in the minority here, but I am always interested in what was going on in the lives of these artists during downtime, or lulls, in their careers. The assumption always seems to be that audiences won’t be interested, but a skilled storyteller can make any story fascinating if it’s just told the right way. Skipping years of a person’s life because it’s assumed we won’t find it interesting seems like a copout.

Then again, a feature film can hardly fully encapsulate anyone’s entire lifetime, and Moonage Daydream is arguably overlong, clocking in at 135 minutes—particularly long for a documentary film. This one is designed to be “immersive,” and I actually went to see it at an IMAX theater as was ostensibly the intent. Seeing this on that huge screen was cool, sure, but IMAX theater tickets are more expensive, and I would hesitate to say the negligible difference from a conventional theater screen is worth the premium price.

What I can say about this movie is that it paints an impressive portrait of a famously enigmatic man, composed entirely of exclusive archival footage. There are no talking heads here, no interviews conducted for the purpose of this film—only clips of old interviews, and audio recordings of Bowie’s musings. We get brief insights into his private life and his upbringing, through this tactic alone. Best of all, we get a large amount of live concert footage, illustrating how Bowie must have been a spectacular live performer. I wish I could have seen one of his concerts.

We learn about his many artistic pursuits besides music. We see clips from several of his many movie roles (alas, just one brief shot of him as the Goblin King in Labyrinth). We hear him discussing how moving to an entirely new city pushes him to write in a new way, from Los Angeles (because he “detests” it) to West Berlin (because “rock star trappings” mean nothing there). We see his visual evolution, from openly discussing bisexuality while wearing makeup and platform shoes in the early seventies, to a middle-aged man in basic pants and a button-up shirt. No matter how “basic” his wardrobe got, however, he had a face that was uniquely as attractive as it was severe, giving him an almost otherworldly look.

All of this is rapid-fire edited together, rarely in a linear fashion, more of a kaleidoscope of images, swirling from one era of Bowie’s career to the next. It’s a bit of a sensory overload, especially for a film of this length; it’s like watching a music video marathon with no breaks. Still, there’s a surprising depth to Moonage Daydream as a completed work, making it at least somewhat greater than the sum of its seemingly infinite parts.

It’s not that hard to imagine this guy being rom outer space.

Overall: B

HOLD ME TIGHT

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

Spoiler alert! For a good long while in Hold Me Tight, you are quite deliberately led to believe it’s about a woman named Clarisse (Vicky Krieps) who abandons her family, a husband and two kids. This is a French film that few of any of my readers are likely to watch—hell, many of my regular readers probably won’t even read this review—so I have no qualms with revealing right now that the movie takes a turn and reveals this isn’t what it’s actually about at all.

Granted, the actual subject at hand is just as sad, if not more so. I won’t spoil what it is; even I have to draw a line somewhere. I will say that this movie is basically a bummer, and it is also confusing. Even during the extended stretch of time in which we think Clarisse has abandoned her family, the editing creates a multi-pronged narrative that is in no way literal, and only occasionally do you feel fully grounded in a given particular timeline.

One of the challenges of Hold Me Tight is how it is in no way stylized, and yet a lot of it ultimately reveals itself to be fantasy. The trick is in identifying which scenes are fantasy and which are reality, or at least memory of reality.

Ultimately this movie is about a woman struggling to come to grips with her tragic circumstances. I struggled to come to grips with how these circumstances are framed, although I still had an appreciation for its unusually frank reflection of a mind under the immense pressures of grief.

Hold Me Tight is quite highly critically acclaimed, and I can see why. Writer-director Mathieu Amalric has crafted something of unique artistic vision, and I can’t deny that his film has an almost hypnotic pull to it. It’s also far from populist, though, and the Venn Diagram of blockbuster action fans and cinephiles interested in movies like this barely has any overlap.

I suppose this movie might offer some level of catharsis for people who have had dramatic and severe reactions to the loss of loved ones. But, what of everyone else? I struggle to imagine this movie ever having a very large audience. Only a surprisingly viable Oscar run would give it even a modest boost, and there’s no potential for even that. This isn’t even really a tearjerker, although it’s certainly deeply melancholy. Amalric seems more interested in visually intellectualizing the experience than engaging in true emotional interrogation.

I suppose it’s a good movie for discussion, which is perhaps part of the intent: to be provocative. It certainly is on a narrative level, the way it pulls the rug out from under you, when you think it’s about one thing and then it turns out to be about something completely different. Let’s just say that Clarisse is an unreliable narrator—a difficult thing to pull off in film, but Amalric manages it.

It’s not what it looks like.

Overall: B

THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING

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

I keep imagining what Three Thousand Years of Longing will look like on small screens. The film is in theaters now, opened this past weekend, and to say people are not flocking to it would be an understatement—so far it has grossed all of $2.8 million. With a budget of $60 million, to call that a flop would practically be an insult to flops. And it’s really unfortunate, for two reasons: first, it suggests the movie is worse than it really is; it’s actually fairly compelling. And second, it looks fantastic on the big screen, in a way I fear will not translate to televisions and mobile devices, no matter how big the TVs are. At this point it will be a huge surprise if this movie even finds much of an audience in an eventual streaming landscape.

And this puts me in a tricky position, because while Three Thousand Years of Longing is both fine and in certain ways even provocative, inviting spirited discussion, I still can’t say it’s good enough to justify recommending you see it in theaters. What I can say is, if you do go see it in theaters, it won’t feel like time wasted. And in its defense, this film does not deserve to be flatly ignored by the public at large, which is essentially what’s happening.

I suppose it might have had better prospects for success if it were better than just fine. There seems to be a critical consensus that the story is a bit trifling, but the film is beautiful to look at. That is my assessment as well, but with an emphasis on its beauty being far best appreciated in actual cinemas. The visual effects seem to occupy a sort of middle ground, where it doesn’t look like a fortune was spent on them, but director George Miller has a deep talent for making the best of limited means. The visuals don’t ever look particularly cheap, either.

There’s one shot in particular, very brief and arguably unimportant to the story, that very much impressed me: when Idris Elba’s “Djinn” (known in the West as a genie) is released from his bottle by Tilda Swinton’s academic “narratologist” Alithea Binnie, he is at first huge by comparison, literally filling the entire space of her hotel room. As he slowly resizes down to better fit the space, there’s a moment when he gently grabs her by a hand that is itself nearly as large as her entire body. And this shot, blending live action footage with CGI animation, it looks incredibly convincing and real. There are other shots where the visual effects don’t look quite as real, but they don’t quite move into the realm of “fake,” either; they exists in an intermediate space of George Miller’s design, and thus easy to accept as an element of this very specific fantasy.

And here we move into another one of Three Thousand Years of Longing’s several contradictions. This movie is very much a fantasy, and in terms of production design, pacing, and visuals, all combine to make a film that is truly unlike any other, something that should be very much to its benefit. (It’s also fascinating to see a fantasy film that still acknowledges the residual effects of our modern, real-life pandemic, with sporadic extras wearing face masks in indoor scenes.) And yet, broadly speaking, it is still just another love story. Alithea and the Djinn spend a lot of time in her hotel room having intellectual discussions about the utility of being granted wishes, how all such stories are always cautionary tales, but as the Djinn regales her with many stories of his previous times spent outside of the confines of bottles (for the duration of the time indicated by this film’s title), they are all tragic tales of love, and meanwhile the affection brewing between Alithea and the Djinn is telegraphed very early on (and thus it’s really not a spoiler for me to reveal that here).

I was fully engaged through all of this, and most other viewers likely will be too, and yet for a story ostensibly themed on the eternal longing of romantic attachment, overall this film arrives at a place surprisingly shallow. It seems easy to deduce that a big part of its lack of success is how it doesn’t feel its feelings very deeply, much as its characters purport to; Miller, instead, is largely intellectualizing it all, as that is precisely what Alithea and the Djinn do as they discuss all this in her hotel room, through most of which she insists she is “content” and has no need for any wishes.

To be honest, this is where I really wish Miller had gone in a different direction. In the end, Alithea is not quite as contented as she insisted she was. But, there really are such people out there, rare as they may be, and it would have been nice to see some resolution where a contented woman—particularly an older, single, childless woman—managed to stay that way. I suppose Miller might argue, given the way that the film ends, that she does. But, I would argue otherwise. There is an assertion made in this film that there is something that “all women desire,” and although it is never said explicitly, there is very much the connotation that it is romance. And that’s a little reductive.

Nevertheless, I very much enjoyed the banter between Swinton and Elba in this movie, and would have liked even more of it than it offered. There’s a large amount of flashbacks to the Djinn’s previous experiences over thousands of years, and that is where most of the visual effects are found, but I found these sequences to be compelling as well. I particularly enjoyed the means by which the Djinn gets discovered by a new person after centuries or even millennia, which are fairly clever. That might be how I would summarize this movie overall, actually: fairly clever. It takes a universal theme and repackages it in a unique way. Most viewers would enjoy it just fine sometime later on a smaller screen at home, but as a visual experience, I was glad to have seen it at a cinema.

It’s a vivid experience, I’ll give it that.

Overall: B

BODIES BODIES BODIES

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

Depending on what social media circles you travel in, you might think the most well-known thing about Bodies Bodies Bodies is that it was described as “a 95-minute advertisement for cleavage” by gay New York Times film critic Lena Wilson, who declared star Amandla Stenberg, who is also gay, “homophobic” for DMing her with the message, “Maybe if you had gotten your eyes off my tits you would’ve watched the movie!”

Now, let me get this out of the way: I generally enjoyed this movie. But, and this is why I bring it up here, it’s not a great look for the movie itself when a star’s clapback about a comment in a critic’s review is easily the funniest thing about the movie. Which does have several legitimately funny moments.

Some of Stenberg’s comments about her intentions regarding the DM ring as disingenuous, honestly. But in her defense, her cleavage really doesn’t get that much screen time. I know I am (also) gay and all, but after all this, I went in looking for it! And trust me, when cleavage is actually gratuitous, I notice it and am occasionally even annoyed by it. Had this never been a topic of discussion, Stenberg’s breasts would never have even registered while I watched this film.

It would have been a sweeter revenge if the movie itself were better. Bodies Bodies Bodies isn’t a “great film” by any stretch, but it is . . . fine. It’s fun, in a self-consciously Gen-Z zeitgeisty way. There is a plot turn at the end that you see coming a mile away—which is saying something, because I rarely predict plot twists, because I don’t ever try. To say that the film’s title is apt is an understatement, and how it gets to that point is basically a metaphor for these rich kids’ vapidness.

Which brings me to another crucial point: Not one of these characters is someone any sane person would want to hang out with, and yet director Halina Reijn expects us to spend roughly ninety minutes with them. That may not sound like a lot, but it’s long enough for us to start rooting for more of them to drop dead. I am reminded of the 2008 film Cloverfield, which also had exclusively vapid, mostly twenty-something characters. At least that movie was scary and exciting.

Bodies Bodies Bodies does have its moments. They do get largely nullified by what is ultimately revealed to be the pathetic, if still mostly lethal, source of all their fears, as this group of old friends has a “hurricane party” (take that literally) at a remote family mansion. The race and gender politics of this group is ripe for discussion, given the core group is four twenty-something young women, two Black and two White, yet the two men in the cast are both White and, well, doofy: Pete Davidson, still in his twenties but barely, plays what is never explicitly explained but seems to be older brother to Stenberg’s Sophie; Lee Pace (also gay! but playing straight here) is the forty-something new boyfriend of Alice (Shiva Baby’s Rachel Sennott). It’s the, let’s just say bodies, of these two men that set off most of the story, Davidson’s quite early on.

This movie seems to be trying to say something about wealth and privilege, and it’s interesting to note that two of the wealthy young women are Black, but one of them is an addict and the other is a noted bitch. The one real outsider here is Sophie’s new girlfriend Bee (Maria Bakalova), who is an Eastern European immigrant and the only one there without wealth. The film stays with her the entire time and is thus told from her perspective, lingering on her clear insecurities as an outsider. This makes her subject to passive-aggressive derision as well as, soon enough, suspicion.

None of these so-called “close friends” truly trust each other, though, and ultimately they are all equally dangerous by turns in the eyes of the others. Bodies Bodies Bodies gets in a lot of amusing lines that reveal how typically lacking in self-awareness the wealthy can be. Plenty of it is effectively tense, as the hurricane ultimately knocks out the power in the house and has them all running around in the dark using the flashlight apps on their phones.

In other words, Bodies Bodies Bodies is genuinely entertaining. But, that’s all it is, and the movie clearly thinks it’s got something bigger to say. In the end it’s just as vapid as its characters, but at least we get to see them all stumble over their own dipshittery.

I mean, it’s not even that much cleavage!

Overall: B

PREY

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

There are so many fascinating things about the film Prey, streaming on Hulu since August 5, it’s hard to know where to start. It’s a historic production in multiple ways: the cast consists of Comanche characters who are played by Indigenous American actors; producer Jhane Myers is a member of the Comanche tribe; the cast returned for voice-over dubs to make it possible to watch the entire film in the Comanche language.

In other words, regardless of it being the seventh film to feature long-worn usage of a specific alien creature from a 35-year-old intellectual property, Prey is worthy of our attention due to it being a story about Indigenous people, featuring Indigenous actors, with a large number of Indigenous crew members. This movie offers a kind of authenticity you would never expect from the seventh in a franchise, which is by most accounts by a large margin the best of them.

My only legitimate issue, if you want to call it that, is that it even had to be part of the Predator franchise. But, this is the IP world we live in now: grafting an original idea, about a young Indigenous woman who defies gender norms to prove herself a warrior, onto pre-existing IP was how to get the movie made. Personally, I would have preferred a stand-alone movie, even if it had to feature an alien predator, with a totally different alien. There was not reason not to make it more original a story, except to catch the attentions of longstanding franchise fans, who are the only audiences action movies court anymore.

I suppose there’s also the fact of director Dan Trachtenberg—who previously caught attention with the 2016 film 10 Cloverfield Lane—being a white guy. Being so openly proud of a production providing so many opportunities for peope of color, but still having a white man in the top leadership position, does not provide for the best optics. All I can say is that this is mitigated, at least somewhat, by Indigenous people on the production team—some in notable leadership positions themselves—providing consultation on authentic depiction of Comache society.

In fact, I found myself wondering about the significant overtones of patriarchy in the Indigenous family being depicted. That element of the original idea for this film is still very much present, and after hearing so often about matriarchy among Indigenous societies, I wondered how authentic that element really was. Well, as it happened, not all Indigenous tribes were matriarchal: according to this source, “The Comanches had a highly gendered hierarchy. Since they were a nomadic people who sustained themselves through hunting and territorial warfare, both male occupations, men naturally usurped the primary power roles. Unlike the Caddos and Wichitas, Comanche families were patriarchal.”

Granted, I could find other online sources that only vaguely, rather than spefically, corroborate that statement. But, it’s certainly what Prey reflects, in a surprisingly gripping—and, at only 99 minutes, mercifully brisk—movie about a young woman named Naru (Amber Midthunder, who is fantastic) who proves her worth as a warrior to her dismissive brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers, also great) and other male relatives by taking down a Predator alien in early-18th century Great Northern Plains.

And there is great juxtaposition here, between the Predator’s advanced alien technology and weapons, against an Indigenous tribe and what many might be tempted to consider “primitive” tools and weapons. Except these people are far more in tune with their natural environment than anyone today could hope to be, which makes them look deceptively simple, but ultimately more dangerous than anticipated, to the Predator.

There are even several gripping action sequences that don’t involve the Predator—until they do. But in the first third or so of Prey, Naru is eager to hunt a cougar thought to have injured one of their tribe. And indeed, there is a perilous encounter with a cougar, and later with a bear, the latter being arguably the most tense sequence in the film. The downside to these sequences is the clearly low budget CGI, rendered well enough except that it is exceedingly obvious that no actual animals were on set during the filming. (Not that there should be. But, with better visual effects, it would look convincingly like there was.) The redeeming element here is the taut script, written by Patrick Aison in his feature film writing debut and with a co-writing “Story By” credit to Trachtenberg, makes the CGI easy to overlook. Prey features a good story told skillfully by a crew of amply talented writers, producers, editors, actors, cinematographer and director.

In fact, cinematographer Jeff Cutter (who also shot 10 Cloverfield Lane) deserves to be called out by name, framing beautiful vistas throughout the film, whether for quieter sequences or the tenser action sequences. Even with the imperfect (but still serviceable!) CGI, Prey always looks great.

Combine that with tight story construction, with just the right about of foreshadowing so that threads click comfortably into place as the narrative unfolds, and you’ve got an eminently entertaining film—which really should have been given a theatrical release. Given that Prey is easily the best “Predator movie,” it’s unfortunate that a streaming-only release might deny it the attention it deserves and might otherwise have gotten. It’s the biggest reason I’m reviewing it now: I want you to know about it. Many people would be understandably suspicious that a prequel 35 years into a franchise’s existence could possibly be good, but rest assured, it’s worth a look.

Who is the predator, and who is the prey? Watch and find out! No, really. You should watch.

Overall: B+

I LOVE MY DAD

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

If “cringe comedy” is a thing, then I Love My Dad is its poster child. And I’m not usually one for deeply uncomfortable stories, but I find myself impressed with this one nonetheless, and able to get fully behind it. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

That does not mean it’s not without its flaws. But, the flaws are minor. A last-minute minor twist, something that functions more as a punch line really, which really doesn’t stand up to any real scrutiny. But, in the moment, it’s effective and amusing. Such is the case with this entire movie.

Let’s cut to the chase: this is a movie about a guy who catfishes his son, posing as a young woman online in a desperate attempt at staying in his son’s life after he’s been blocked on social media. It’s sort of like Mrs. Doubtfire for the 21st century, only far less mainstream a release and, crucially, fully acknowledging all of the ways in which it’s problematic.

In fact, it’s entirely the point. Chuck is a deadbeat dad, someone who is never there for his son, who has recently attempted suicide. Fanklin blocking him on social media is described by Franklin himself as “setting healthy boundaries.” It’s a moment when Chuck is forced to face his lifetime of unreliability.

The miracle of I Love My Dad is how Patton Oswalt manages to make Chuck both pitiful and likable at the same time. That is an incredible trick. In fact, I have long been such a fan of Oswalt as a comedian, I really thought it would be hard to stop thinking about how I was looking at Patton Oswalt. (Oswalt is also currently voicing Matthew the Raven on Netflix’s The Sandman, and I am regularly distracted by his distinctively recognizable voice.) And yet, somehow, within minutes I forgot I was looking at Patton Oswalt the actor, and fully accepted him as Chuck the deadbeat dad who nevertheless really loves his son.

Much more importantly, Franklin is played by 32-year-old James Morosini, who I literally just discovered while writing this was also the writer and director of this film. And here I had just been impressed with his eminently convincing, subtle, and nuanced performance as a young man with mental health issues. This is clearly a man with stunningly ample talents and I pray we get to see much more of his work in the years to come.

The supporting cast is rounded out by Transparent’s Amy Landecker; Wine Country’s Rachel Dratch; Get Out’s Lil Rel Howery; and relative unknown Claudia Sulewski as Becca, the young woman Chuck is pretending to be—based on a real Becca from the diner in his Maine hometown.

Chuck is never intentionally creepy or gross, however. He’s just stunningly boneheaded in his decision making, and quickly gets in over his head, as his son falls in love with the woman he’s pretending to be. A plot like this could very easily go off the rails very quickly, but Morosini’s script pushes the envelope just far enough to be somewhere within the gray area between horrifying and devastating. It’s a line that, somehow, is often very funny. This is the kind of movie that will have you laughing out loud at the same time it makes you want to crawl under your chair.

I Love My Dad surprises in all the right ways. Just when you’re afraid it will go to a place that’s not just bad but unforgivable, it pivots to a place that’s still painfully awkward, but somehow tolerable. Given the fraught tone it’s going for, it really exceeds all expectations.

They might drive you right into lethal embarrassment.

Overall: B+

BULLET TRAIN

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

There have been a few great movies set on trains, and a lot of pretty good ones. This latest one, an ensemble piece with Brad Pitt at its center, hardly makes it into the realm of “okay.” It’s got way too much talking for how dull most of the dialogue is, and not enough action.

The last act does get more exciting, with a sequence that effectively turns it into Runaway Train, but this is a 126-minute movie that could easily have been 105 minutes at most. By then it’s a little late for the movie to save itself.

To give the movie credit where it’s due, the script, by Zak Olkewicz based on the novel of the same name by Japanese novelsit Kôtarô Isaka, does have several moments that made me laugh pretty hard. They just come interspersed with scenes that are overstuffed and over-concerned with a labyrinthine plot about a man (Pitt) hired to grab a briefcase full of money off a train. There are also several cameos that are fun, but feature actors whose talents are too great to be wasted on this movie.

I spent about the first half of Bullet Train wishing here were more action sequences. That’s what I come to a movie like this for, for some excitement, not lame attempts at “snarky banter” and “snappy editing.” This is a movie influenced by so many others that came before it that it collapses under the weight of the superior content that came before it.

A lot could have been forgiven with just some well-choreographed fight sequences. Instead, Bullet Train too often mistakes gore and a high body count for wit. And being set on a bullet train, there are many opportunities for gripping excitement. The few times this movie takes such opportunities, it veers headlong into the absurd. A man tricked into getting off at a stop jumps onto the back of the train accelerating out of the station, and then uses his brass knuckles to break though the last train car’s back window. Seriously?

Easily the worst part of this movie is its visual effects. It’s a widespread problem these days for movie CGI to look cheap and incomplete, but Bullet Train is a particularly bad offender. Literally not one scene with any kind of background looks real. How am I supposed to get invested in what’s going on if every scene effectively looks like a cartoon? Something that looks fake has no capacity to impress.

I suppose the best thing about this movie is the ensemble cast, featuring Brian Tyree Henry, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Michael Shannon, Sandra Bullock, Bad Bunny, Zazie Beets, and plenty of others, in addition to Brad Pitt. In the hands of another director, this cast alone might have elevated the material, but David Leitch has fashioned something that just feels overall like a cash grab. Ironically, it is apparently poised to easily out-earn any other movie this weekend, but that’s really only because blockbuster competition in 2022 has been sparse. When it comes to great tentpole entertainment this summer, it’s been a little bleak.

I don’t expect a movie like Bullet Train to be high art, mind you. I do prefer it not be lazy, which this movie is on nearly all fronts. I won’t deny that I was entertained, but that’s hardly an achievement considering the options in theaters right now. This was a movie I was fine going to see, only because it was what the multiplex had to offer. I long for a time when filmmakers aim higher.

Time to get onboard the “off the rails” train!

Overall: C+

DC LEAGUE OF SUPER PETS

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

I suppose if you take your children, or your niece or your nephew, to see DC League of Super Pets, they will be suitably entertained, and you won’t hate the experience.

That’s about as close as I can get to heaping praise on this movie, which, even as an animated feature, embodies every cliché of comic book superhero movies developed over the past twenty years. It sticks to the formula, following the same story beats as nearly all of the rest of them, with a big, effects-laden climactic battle at the end, the fate of the world (or the city, or the galaxy, or the universe, take your pick) hanging in the balance. It has a few clever one-liners, most of which got burned through in the trailer. It wants you to think it has a sense of humor about itself, with self-referential meta humor, except that it’s all been done before ad nauseam, and ultimately it’s just another in a long line of cash grabs.

And League of Super Pets is very much in the “DC Cinematic Uniiverse,” the opening titles preceded by the glimpses of all the DC heroes in a graphic presentation long known to be part of their attempt at replicating Marvel’s runaway success. This movie doesn’t just feature Superman and his super dog, Krypto, but it features every quasi-human superhero member of the Justice League as a diversified ensemble supporting cast—each of them positioned to wind up with one of the “League of Super Pets” as their own pet.

To be fair, I did kind of enjoy this movie, for a while. Some of the humor, and a few of the animal-based puns (love Krypto’s dad, “Dog-El”), actually land. But, the shtick outlasts its welcome, and you feel all the exact same pieces of the “superhero story” clicking right into place. The truth is, DC League of Super Pets is just another superhero movie, just like countless others that came before it. Grafting the tropes onto domesticated animals doesn’t make it any more original.

If anything makes this movie watchable, it’s the voice talent, which is abundant: Dwayne Johnson as Krypto; Kevin Hart as Ace, the invulnerable dog; Vanessa Bayer as PB, the pig who can change her size; Diego Luna as Chip, the electrified squirrel; Natasha Lyonne as Merton, the speedy turtle; Kate McKinnon as Lulu, the villainous guinea pig; John Krasinski as Superman; Keanu Reeves as Batman; Marc Maron as Lex Luthor, of all people—his second major voice role in an animated feature this year (The Bad Guys isn’t exactly a classic either, but it’s a better movie)—and there are plenty more, in many cases recognizable voices in cameo parts. Every person voicing characters in this movie is clearly having a great time, and that alone makes it more fun to watch.

It’s still pretty forgettable once it’s over. DC League of Super Pets is fun while it lasts, but there’s nothing special about it. It’s just another movie that is almost literally paint-by-numbers and will disappear into the outer rims of the zeitgeist once opening weekend has passed.

Maybe if they’re cut enough you’ll be distracted from how stale it gets.

Overall: C+

FIRE OF LOVE

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

There are many who have seen the documentary Fire of Love who consider it a must-see, and it’s easy to see why: it’s full of truly incredible footage left behind by French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, literally up until the day—spoiler alert!—they died together in a pyroclastic flow on Mount Unzen in Japan in 1991. Their footage goes back years, though, about two decades into the early seventies, and they caught stunning images throughout that time, very effectively showcased in this film.

Director Sara Dosa is clearly presenting Fire of Love as the story of these two people, though, and not just the story of the footage they got, and in the end, she leaves us with a wildly incomplete picture. I’m dying to know what other scientists, their peers, thought of their antics, which seemed a great deal reckless to me. Were these just two idiots so addicted to the dangerous lure of volcanic eruptions that it killed them, or did they have legitimate scientific reasons for pulling what appeared to me to be ridiculous and potentially lethal stunts?

There is one instance, after all, when they literally take a rubber raft out into the middle of a lake of sulfuric acid, and due to a headwind they wind up taking three hours to struggle paddling their way back to shore. A couple of other scientist friends, who are more experts at sulphuric acid, smartly stayed on shore. Later, on their many press tours in support of films they made or books they wrote about volcanoes, Maurice is seen multiple times gleefully referring to themselves as “the ignorant geologists” who took the senselessly hazardous path. More than being focused on the results of research, which you would think these two would be prioritizing, he just seems to love the attention.

Very little of Fire of Love gives any air time to Katia and Maurice’s career accomplishments, only mentioning one admittedly pretty significant one near the end of the film. There is no examination of the necessity of their incessant need to get far too close to lava flows and pyroclastic explosions all over the world, certainly not in any context of the pursuit of learning. Sara Dosa’s film instead appears designed almost solely to wow us with jaw dropping video footage of volcanic eruptions from decades past, and combined with voiceover narration provided by Miranda July, it certainly achieves that goal.

I just couldn’t stop thinking about what the hell Katia and Maurice were thinking. Clearly I’m meant to be moved by their dual loves, equally for each other and for volcanoes, an unbroken bond that lasted until a tragic end that also contained an element of poetic justice. We see a bit of frustrations they have with each other, multiple tongue-in-cheek references to their “volcanic relationship” that is clearly hyperbolic, and a small amount of Katia feeling that Maurice gets closer to the dangers than necessary—all while she does exactly the same as she never leaves his side.

They were to people obsessed, like tornado chasers but with volcanoes. Several sequences in the film detail notable world volcanic eruptions during their careers, including the three months they spent studying the blast zone of Mt. St. Helens immediately after its eruption, which they were deeply disappointed not to have been present to see in person. A couple of minutes detail shots and footage of the St. Helens eruption taken by other photographers, and some of it is clearly rare footage that comes close to mind-blowing.

So, I’m of two minds about Fire of Love, which is absolutely worth watching on the strength of its two decades of exclusive footage alone. Just don’t expect to get much out of the “romantic” story of two scientists so dedicated to their passions that they were willing to die for it. That leaves far more questions than answers, and another documentary would do well to get into their actual research and whether their individual work actually moved the field of volcanology forward in any meaningful way. This movie provides us with no such information, instead playing to the crowds who come for two intellectual people apparently done in by dumb love.

Dancing with death: two middle-aged lovers in a shower of lava bombs.

Overall: B