THE INSPECTION

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

In a surprising way, The Inspection justifies not just the existence of the U.S. Military, but the way it treats its recruits. Without ever saying these exact words, writer-director Elegance Bratton seems to be telegraphing that the US Marines teaches discipline, cultivates strength, and builds character—all the typical platitudes that at best I have mixed feelings about.

Billed as “inspired by true events,” those events were lived by Bratton himself, having joined the Marines after a decade of being homeless, that period following his mother kicking him out of their home for being gay. Jeremy Pope, here in his first starring role after all of two other feature film roles to date (he also had roles in the TV series Hollywood and Pose, and is a multiple-Tony-nominated Broadway actor), plays the fictionalized lead by the name of Ellis French. This is a fantastic acting choice, not just because he’s an out Gay Black man himself, but because of his subtle recognizability as one, without ever quite being coded as such onscreen. Pope can switch from uncomfortably insecure to steely resolve with aplomb.

I suppose you could call this a “gay Black G.I. Jane,” although that would be an oversimplification. Still, The Inspection is about a deeply marginalized character proving himself within constraints of the U.S. military that are challenging at best and barbaric at worst. There is a scene in which Ellis is conducting a test of his ability to save a drowning man, the man in the water being his gleefully bullying training instructor (Bokeem Woodbine), who literally drowns him. Only the subversive empathy of fellow instructor Rosales (Raúl Castillo) ultimately saves him.

So this is both the strength and the challenge of The Inspection, in that in one scene to the next, you have no idea how Ellis will be treated, and the uncertainty is what characterizes Ellis, to a degree at least, as an abused child. By the time Ellis is actually making a pass at Rosales (a moment scene in the film’s trailer), you are horrified for him.

Presumably these sorts of things actually happened in Elegance Bratton’s experience, or else why would he put them in the script? Still, this was behavior I truly could not understand: a gay man trying to keep under the radar in boot camp, still fantasizing about his fellow recruits while showering with them? I feel certain I would be so terrified of any such thing that I’d be rendered literally impotent in that scenario, but then, what do I know? I have never even showered communally with straight men, much less been in the military.

That said, the narrative trajectory of The Recruit is satisfying in its relative unpredictability. In past movies of this sort, Ellis’s sexuality would be a much more potent plot point, something kept hidden until a climactic reveal of some kind. Here, his sexuality becomes clear early on, and although it remains a central conflict in the story—being a major part of his endurance of harassment from all sides—it never becomes a movie about shame. Ellis knows who he is; he just feels like this is his only option for any kind of future.

Granted, there is a key conflict regarding Ellis’s sexuality, and that has to do with his mother’s rejection of him, and her burning resentment after he returns to her apartment asking for his birth certificate. Ellis’s mother is played by Gabrielle Union, who is great in all of about three notable scenes. I wonder if securing her as a name actor helped get the film financed, because otherwise Union’s ample talents are greater than what this role allows her to do.

Bratton dedicates this film to his mother, who reportedly passed away shortly before its release. Clearly The Inspection exists more as an exercise for Bratton to process his relationship with his mother, than as a straightforward story about a gay Black man in boot camp. Whatever the motivations, the movie works, and I was moved by it, even as I failed to see the necessity of not only the treatment of this one recruit, but all of them.

Jeremy Pope shines as a great actor with vast potential.

Overall: B+

VIOLENT NIGHT

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

There’s a maybe five-minute sequence in Violent Night that is essentially an ultraviolent version of Home Alone. There’s a little Black girl instead of Macaulay Culkin, and the booby traps are more severe than those that Kevin set—although truthfully not by a wide margin; Home Alone, while still hilarious, rather downplays the severity of the injuries the traps would actually inflict. In Violent Night, instead, people actually die. Lots of them. What’s more: Violent Night is so shameless in its ripping off Home Alone in this sequence, it comes long after the movie gets literally name checked by young Trudy Lightstone. Call it “Chekov’s movie reference.”

The thing is, that five-minute sequence is by far the best part of Violent Night, giving me several good belly laughs, and I rather wish the whole movie had been centered around that. The whole story would have been much improved just being an R-rated, ultra-violent update on Home Alone, 32 years later, as thought that holiday classic were crossed with, say, Kill Bill. Now that would have been a blast.

There is a particular problem with Violent Night, you see, and that is its tonal schizophrenia. Some scenes are very violent and also very funny. Some scenes are very violent just for the sake of violence, without being funny, as though script writers Pat Casey and Josh Miller were using the sight of David Harbour in a Santa suit as a crutch—somehow, we’re meant to stay amused just because literal Santa Claus is dispatching countless nameless goons with a sledgehammer he calls “The Skullcrusher.” I mean, sure, that’s kind of funny. For a minute or two.

Violent Night works incredibly well when it has its wits about, which is unfortunately not all of the time. And, sure, even Home Alone was treacly and sentimental, ostensibly about “wholesome family values” even though in the end it wasn’t really—but it still worked because it had its narrative priorities in order, saving the violent gags for the extended, hilarious climactic sequence at the end. Violent Night, on the other hand, whips back and forth all through the movie, between bloody fights and an ultra-rich family learning the value of each other while being held hostage by a team of criminals headed by “Mr. Scrooge” (John Leguizamo).

Anyone familiar with the truly fantastic and hilarious—and thus far superior—1988 Bill Murray vehicle Scrooged will instantly be reminded of that film’s opening sequence, which turned out to be a preview for a network TV action movie with Santa Claus as its main character, called The Night the Reindeer Died. The whole point there was exaggerated ridiculousness as the result of crass holiday consumerism, and now, in 2022, we basically have that sketch gag stretched out into a feature film. I’ll give 2022 movie this much credit, at least: Violent Night is a far better title. I bet the writers of that fake trailer from Scrooged are kicking themselves now.

Ironically, David Harbour’s Santa Claus in Violent Night is a drunken mess largely because of disillusionment about what consumerist zombies modern children have become. And yet, what does Violent Night itself represent, really?

I won’t lie: I found Violent Night fun enough. That Home Alone booby trap sequence single handedly heightened my impression of the entire movie, if only to keep me from relegating it to utter mediocrity. Now I would just call it . . . relatively mediocre.

David Harbour is inspired casting as Santa Claus, notwithstanding how easy it is to argue he isn’t fat enough. At worst, he’s “stocky”—a clear choice to make him a badass former ancient warrior. Odd that we should learn that about him but not how the hell he actually became Santa. Also strange that he should be riddled with “Christmas magic” and yet so easily maimed and bloody. This is sort of like making Die Hard as an actual Christmas movie. Still not nearly as good though.

The little girl, by the way, is played winningly by Leah Brady; she’s visiting her very rich grandmother’s estate with her otherwise estranged parents (Alexis Louder and Alex Hassell). It’s pretty fun to see Beverly D’Angelo as ultra-rich-bitch Grandma Gertrude Lightstone, although even her character, like all the other adults, exist only to serve the plot purpose of vapid people barely worth protecting or saving.

I just wish Violent Night could make up its mind between earnestness and self-parody. Nearly half the movie is incongruously earnest, as though we are watching a wholesome holiday movie, even though that’s not what it is at all. None of it fits, and a movie like this really only works if it never takes itself seriously.

David Harbour never does, at least, and so the movie is at least slightly better for it. Even the subplot of little Trudy being vindicated in her belief in Santa Claus could have worked in a movie that held its conviction of utter silliness. Instead, director Tommy Wirkola seems to want Violent Night to offer something for everybody, even though that’s just never how movies like this work. In the end, it just means the audience who comes for the cartoonish violence rendered more amusing by the involvement of Santa Claus will spend every other sequence just waiting for the action to start again.

The more tedious scenes might have worked better if it had more cleverly written humor, but with a few notable exceptions, the gags in this movie are low-hanging fruit. Someone needs to try this exercise again, and do it right, or at least better. Flesh out the young-child-as-action-hero angle. Call it Scrooge Hard, or something. Home Explode? I don’t know, we can workshop it. Unfortunately there’s no better action-Christmas-movie title than Violent Night. I just wish it got more than halfway to living up to it.

While visions of skullcrusher hammers danced in their heads

Overall: B-

STRANGE WORLD

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

I can just imagine the “anti-woke” mob reacting to Strange World, and how it seemingly checks off all the boxes, making it by far the most pointedly diverse animated feature they have ever made. “Pointedly” can itself be a loaded word, however, because the thing is, within this movie’s premise, the diversity makes literal logical sense: these characters live in a utopian society. The only way that could be true, from global point of view at least, is if several races and sexualities are represented among its population—even if the land of Avalonia is a relatively small, isolated community surrounded by mountains.

Some may argue that Disney Animation Studios is playing with fire, featuring a central character who is an out, gay teenager—much less a multiracial one. Sixteen-year-old Ethan Clade (voiced by eighteen-year-old Jaboukie Young-White, who would have to have been seventeen or maybe even sixteen when recording) has a Black mom, named Meridian (Gabrielle Union), and a White dad named Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal). He also has a paternal grandfather named Jaeger (Dennis Quaid), and when Jaeger starts asking Ethan if he has a “special someone,” I instinctively braced myself for homophobic judgment from an old White man. Notably, what Jaeger does instead is try to teach Ethan how to impress his crush by showing off. Ethan’s response? “That sounds like a pretty toxic way to start a relationship.”

Which is to say, it’s not as though Strange World is without conflict. It just doesn’t have the types you expect. It doesn’t even have any villain, or even a single hero; it has flawed and wonderful, individual people trying to make their way in the world. The world they inhabit just happens to be a fantastical one—even more so when, in an expedition to find out why the green-electric crops they grow that powers their utopian society finds them deep underground, where every single thing that exists is alive. Eventually, you realize the real premise of this movie is a modern update on the eighties film Innerspace, in which a guy explores the inside of a human body in a microscopic little ship.

Without spoiling too much, I’ll say that it isn’t a human body this time, and actually, the widely diverse cast of characters—including an Asian woman community leader voiced by Lucy Liu and an (also possibly gay) Indian character voiced by Karan Soni—are part of a much larger metaphor Strange World is making. This theme of the film, revealed more clearly as it goes along, has a lot to do with the global community and, as Ethan himself notes when trying to play a specific kind of card game with both his father and his grandfather, “living harmoniously with their environment.” In truth, it’s a little on the nose, even more than I realized: the crop the Clades grow which powers their community gives everything it touches a green shock of electricity. We’re clearly meant to take the idea of “green power” quite literally there.

This isn’t a bad theme, per se, so long as there is finesse in execution, which unfortunately, Strange World somewhat lacks. The script, by Qui Nguyen (who also co-directs, with Don Hall), leans heavily on father-son relationships: Jaeger’s obsession with Searcher continuing his legacy as an explorer, and then Searcher’s similar obsession with Ethan being a homebody farmer just like him. This is the only real source of interpersonal conflict, all of it pretty rote and retreading countless similar relationships in other movies.

What does truly make Strange World worth watching, particularly on the big screen, is its fantastic, and fantastically imaginative, animation. It never reaches the heights of Pixar’s excellence, but it’s fully absorbing nonetheless. The strange under-world of living plants and animals and land masses is a delight to exist in once the Clade family gets there, and the adventurous plot, such as it is, gets much more exciting at that point as well. They are surrounded by organisms they cannot identify, or infer what is a threat to them and what isn’t.

I must also commend the animators in their rendering of Ethan himself. I was genuinely impressed with how he has a recognizably, but subtly, queer vibe. And it’s done without ever resorting to any kind of stereotypes. I cannot help but come back to the diversity of the film’s characters overall: setting aside the fact that its inclusion represents something more nuanced than just “checking boxes,” there remains the fact that, for instance, multiracial families actually exist. When do they ever see themselves in media like this? And then, there is a moment of chaste affection between two gay teenagers that genuinely moved me, just to see it. The world is a much different place than when I was sixteen.

Strange World’s actual subversive message is about the literal world itself, and how it needs to be saved from destruction by the fully diverse spectrum of people who live on it. It even goes so far as to represent how this threat to the very biosphere (though that word is never used in the film) is the result of well-intentioned actions thought to be in humanity’s best interests. As in, it’s nobody’s fault really, but we see the problem now and need to correct it.

It’s just the telling of that particular message that’s a little clumsy, thrown together with the parallel theme of familial legacy. The script could have used a great deal of finessing—this more than anything being why this movie has flopped at the box office—but Strange World is fun to watch anyway, a visual feast.

Ethan talks to the most fun character in the movie, “Splat.”

Overall: B

DEVOTION

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

Does a movie have to be profound to be great? This is a relevant question, easy to forget, at least for me, where I tend to approach how I regard a movie from the bottom up: its baseline is far from greatness, which is what it has to prove. I had this experience with the 2004 film Sideways, which didn’t exactly blow me away, but when I realized I could think of nothing wrong with it, I still gave it a solid A. I still stand by that.

Devotion is a wildly different film, and yet I had a similar experience with it. The crticial consensus seems to be definitively mixed, and I went to see it mostly just because I love going to see the movies and I try to see everything I even might enjoy, and I expected to like it fine. And then, it significantly exceeded my expectations.

It strikes me as relevant that the “critical consensus” is still majority-White, and that remains a salient fact. I wish it were easier to seek out critical voices from the same marginalized groups represented in a given film—which is, admittedly, a flimsy and arguably lazy thing for me to say. If it’s really that important to me, I should dig into some research and start bookmarking the websites of relevant reviewers whose opinions I respect.

It should also be noted, however, that the audience score at rottentomatoes.com is 92%, a site notorious for racist user-review bombing, and earned an audience rating of A- according to CinemaScore. I have no idea what the demographic makeup is of these groups, but that strikes me as less relevant; in any case, I am far more aligned with audiences than with critics on this one. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.

So why, then, is it underperforming so dramatically? Although it feels respectable for it to be ranked #4 at the box office over this weekend, it has earned all of $9 million so far, which is literally a tenth of its budget. This movie deserves better than that.

And in a season of gratitude, I must say: thank heavens for that $90 million budget, which director J.D. Dillard used to maximum effect. It would be easy to compare this film to this year’s other aviator movie, box office juggernaut Top Gun Maverick, which is indisputably far more impressive on a technical level, and earned every penny of its earnings on its own terms. Incidentally, the trailer for Devotion, quite understandably, ran before showings of Top Gun Maverick, which means everyone and their mother saw the trailer to this movie. Maybe people think just one aviator movie was enough for this year? Well, if you bother to see Devotion you’ll discover such an assumption to be incorrect. Because not only does Devotion also justify itself on its own terms, it also features its own impressive fighter pilot flight sequences, with its own impressively integrated special effects—so impressive, in fact, that you hardly notice there are any visual effects at all. People forget that sometimes that’s exactly what makes them impressive, particularly when the use of effects serve only to move the story forward.

I am convinced audiences would be won over by Devotion if they just gave it a chance. This may be a conventionally paced “inspired by a true story” quasi-biopic, but the way I see it, that is very much its strength. This is about the bond formed between Jesse and Tom, two aviators during the Korean War, one of them Black and one of them White, and when it comes to depictions of Jesse’s challenges and Tom’s white guilt, between Jesse’s guarded emotional defenses and Tom’s willingness to listen when it’s most critical, this is the rare movie that does these things right.

Tom is played by Glen Powell, who incidentally also played Hangman in Top Gun Maverick, and his casting represents the “blandly handsome White guy” as much as anyone could. And that’s fine, because Jesse is played by the singularly talented Jonathan Majors, who popped in a breakout role in The Last Black Man In San Francisco, and later carried the HBO series Lovecraft Country—he was also recently introduced as the latest Marvel ultra-villain in the Disney+ series Loki. He is excellent in Devotion, proving himself a worthy leading man who, again, deserves more eyes on his performances than he’s getting.

All of Devotion is set in 1950, just five years after the end of the second World War and thus the same amount of time into the Cold War; the settings, always on or near a Navy aircraft carrier, move from Rhode Island to France to Korea. Jesse has a wife and daughter back home (Christina Jackson is also great as wife Daisy), scared and hopeful as this group of aviators is deployed to Korea at the start of that war, which doesn’t even happen until roughly the third act. And this is where the more thrilling flight sequences occur, which I must stress are worth the wait. There are POV shots from cockpits showing Chinese soldiers scattering across snowy forest hillsides that look very real, and whether there is any CG element to this or it was done with a large number of extras, either way it is visually impressive.

Perhaps most importantly, Devotion is about the bond of friendship, depicted with only just the right amount of sentimentality, and not about spectacle, although it has some of that too. These movies are also worth seeing, and still better experienced in a movie theater. By the end, you might just be weeping—I was—because of the attention to detail, not just in its technical achievements but in the representation of its relationships. This is the kind of movie I often find myself waiting and longing for, in which the director gives the story time to breathe. You really come to know these characters, and thus deeply care about them. And in the end, I left the theater caring about them far more than expected from what clearly looks to many to be a conventional film just like many others. The truth is, Devotion is in a class of its own.

Exceeds expectations even when you already expect it to be good.

Overall: A-

THE FABELMANS

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

There is a metatextual element to The Fabelmans that goes much deeper than the surface, something consistently more subtle than its more obvious parts—although the obvious parts can be pretty fun. As in, when young Sammy Fabelman makes a promise not to betray a schoolmate’s secret, “Unless I make a movie about it.” This line gets a big laugh because we are watching the very movie he’s talking about, and in lesser hands, this would be unbearable hokum. Not in the hands of Steven Spielberg, who here might just have made his crowning achievement.

I would never argue that The Fabelmans is Spielberg’s best film. I would, however, argue that it’s his best in twenty years, and a truly great late-career film, on par with Scorsese’s The Irishman. This is merely a matter of taste, but as someone with more of a penchant for warmth than for depth, between the two films, I prefer this one. Besides, whereas The Irishman deals with looking at your past with longing and regret, The Fabelmans, quite openly Spielberg’s most personal film, is much more concerned with love, forgiveness, and most of all, passion.

The passion part is what makes this movie work, in spite of some opening scenes that feel slightly forced and contrived. I am convinced, however, that not even those elements are an accident, and this film takes its time in deliberately winning over the viewer. There is no question that The Fabelmans is largely revisionist even as it is deeply autobiographical (written by Spielberg himself—his first feature film writing credit since 2001’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence—and cowritten by Tony Kushner), and that is is absolutely designed to be emotionally manipulative.

But that is precisely the point. Sammy Fabelman, the film’s clear stand-in for Steven Spielberg himself as a child, grows up learning not just how to make movies, but how to shoot and edit them in ways that elicit a desired emotion from his audience. This movie itself is doing exactly what we are seeing Sammy learn how to do. A lot of this film has a visual quality that lies in the space between “dreamlike” and what can only be described as “Spielbergian,” and as such perfectly illustrates the experience of wistfulness and nostalgia.

Even the things that are quite on the nose must be very deliberate, as in the name of this family, “Fabelman.” Sammy is depicted by two impossibly beautiful, wide-eyed young boy actors, first as a child by Mateo Zoryan, and then as a teenager by Gabriel LaBelle, and both are excellent, but they also represent a longstanding tradition of casting actors who are far better looking than their real-life counterparts.

In the meantime, after literally decades of commentary on how Spielberg’s parents’ divorce has informed his art, Sammy’s parents are played by Paul Dano and Michelle Williams, with Seth Rogen as the mom’s slow-burn alternate love interest, also the dad’s best friend. All three of these actors here are playing characters unlike any other they have ever played; Dano in particular is an interesting choice, as he so often plays unsettling characters. Not so here: he’s just a nice-guy dad and husband, very busy with work but otherwise understanding to a fault, unable to stop loving a wife who still loves him, but loves someone else more. This may be the most straightforward role I have ever seen Seth Rogen play, and with very little physical alteration aside from a close-cropped haircut and a pair of glasses, he nearly disappears in the part.

Michelle Williams is the standout, though, as a woman desperately trying to be happy in a situation that on paper should not be miserable, but there are emotions just under the surface that are beyond her control. Especially as the film goes on, it seems inevitable she will be an Oscar contender.

It must also be noted, however, that Gabriel Labelle carries the movie incredibly well, from the moment he appears onscreen as the teenage Sammy, until the ending sequence, in which he meets a famous film director in Hollywood, which takes a turn that is quite literally Lynchian. And still, somehow, Spielberg maintains a consistency of tone that has long been one of his many cinematic touchstones.

So often I comment on a film’s run time, and The Fabelmans, it should be noted, is 2 hours and 31 minutes long. And yet, here is the mark of a great filmmaker: it does not feel that long at all. I was fully absorbed by this movie from start to finish, even as I found myself able to contemplate Spielberg’s choices. Judd Hirsch shows up as Sammy’s great uncle, and is not in the film for long, and yet even his performance is impossible to forget. Unlike, say, countless superhero movies of this length, nothing here feels like it could have, or should have, been cut.

At age 75, clearly Spielberg is a lot closer to the end of his career than to its beginning. He no doubt has several movies left in him, but one can easily understand why he might have wanted to get this one done well before anything might force him to slow down. Nearly thirty years ago, he won his first Best Picture Oscar for Schindler’s List, which was clearly deeply personal to him as a Jewish man. This film, on the other hand, is deeply personal to him as a family man, as someone with a kind of all-encompassing empathy rarely found. You can feel the love he has for his parents, even as he dramatizes some of their less flattering behaviors toward each other. Even more keenly, you can feel the passion he had, and has, for filmmaking—and the respect his parents developed for that passion.

You get the sense that The Fabelmans is a bit of an idealized version of the Spielberg story, here rendered as the Fabelman story, but this movie’s very existence proves how he wouldn’t have it any other way. I wouldn’t either.

There is always more to the story, but the Spielberg version is a treat.

Overal: A-

GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY

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

Is Glass Onion as good as Knives Out? Not quite—but that was to be expected, the typical nature of a sequel. But, is it almost as good as Knives Out? Actually, yes. And do I hope Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig team up for more “Benoit Blanc” mysteries two or three more times? Absolutely!

Because, make no mistake: Glass Onion may not quite match the acting pedigree of its predecessor—which, frankly, has some effect on its performances—it’s still a hell of a good time. I had a blast, and even look forward to watching it again.

I can’t really decide whether I find it disappointing that this movie is getting a strict one-week theatrical release, starting today, with its Netflix release exactly one month from now, on December 23. This is a very different approach from its predecessor, this offering being much more definitively “a Netflix movie.” But, such is the state of the film industry: it could easily be argued that this is the most appropriate approach for a movie of this sort. Viewers aplenty will thoroughly enjoy the film on a streamer in a month, and movie theatre purists like myself are satisfied for now.

I loved seeing this in the theater, but do I have any reason to insist you see it in the same way? Not really. I’ll watch it again at home with my husband next month. The level of “prestige” a film is perceived to have depending on its medium of release is changing.

I will say this: some might think Glass Onion is less, say, “sophisticated” than Knives Out was, even in light of both films’ similar streaks of wit. Glass Onion seems more inclined to lean into its cornier humor, but a bit knowingly so. This was but one of many things I really enjoyed about it.

Here’s my only real nitpick. Glass Onion not only fully acknowledges the pandemic, but is literally set in 2020, a curious choice on writer-director Rian Johnson’s part. One wonders if he came up with the idea during lockdowns, as it feels a little like a “covid movie,” the nine principal characters spending the vast majority of the film alone together on a secluded island. Only one scene features a genuine crowd of people, all of them at a huge party inside a woman’s house, and it is played for laughs: “Oh, they’re all part of my pod.”

That’s not the nitpick, though. Eight guests, all but one of them friends and colleagues of billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton), are invited to this weekend island getaway. And then, shortly after the slightly jarring sight of these characters wearing face masks—to Johnson’s credit, each character’s differing level of care in wearing them properly effectively illustrates their personalities—they are each somehow immunized by a random guy walking to each of them in turn and shooting something into their throats with a sort of gun. “Immunize” isn’t even a word used; the guy just says, “You don’t have to wear your mask anymore. You’re good.” Huh? I’m not sure why we couldn’t just get some throwaway line about having all of them take a covid test, which would have been far more realistic. I suppose Johnson’ felt this would be more “cinematic,” and to be fair, we regularly forgive far less plausible things in movies. Nevertheless, I found it distractingly dumb.

That was the only such moment for me, though. Johnson is proving to be a master at whodunnit storytelling, always with the clever misdirects. You go into this movie primed to think, and fully expecting, Miles Bron to be the murder victim. Then, there is a second-act time shift so sudden the only thing it’s missing is a record scratch, and we get to see a whole lot of what we just saw, from different characters’ perspectives. And plot turns are still left after that, all of them satisfying. This movie offers plenty of what we expect of it, just in surprising flavors.

A lot of these murder mysteries are very easy to figure out, at least for the viewers trying to figure it out. I am not one of those people; I like to give myself over to the story, without making any effort to solve the mystery myself. I only get annoyed when the answer is so obvious I can see it without even trying. That never happens with “Knives Out Mysteries,” and I think even the people who usually figure out the answers will find it a fun challenge.

Some media attention has been given to the fact that Glass Onion makes Benoit Blanc’s sexuality more explicit, although it’s brief and surprisingly subtle. The brief moment when we see Blanc's partner is one of a few delightful cameos in this movie. (Two of the others, seen onscreen during a Zoom call with Blanc in the bathtub, I won’t spoil, except to say they are both the very last roles of two legendary figures, one of them a kind of heartwarming in-joke.) I don’t know how others will take Blanc’s costume design in this movie, but as a gay man myself, I kind of loved its “old-school gay” aesthetic, complete with neckerchiefs.

As for the rest of the characters invited to the island, they are played by a brand new ensemble of name actors, including Janelle Monáe (maybe the best-cast of the bunch), Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn, and Leslie Odom Jr., along with Jessica Henwick as Hudson’s assistant and Madelyn Cline as Bautista’s girlfiend, amusingly named “Whiskey.” That’s not to mention the heavy sprinkling of cameos, several of them people playing themselves, and I won’t spoil who they are.

I get the feeling a lot of these people simply jumped at the chance to appear in a Rian Johnson movie, and particularly “A Knives Out Mystery,” largely on the strength of Knives Out. As naturally they would: Johnson is very good not just at casting, but for assembling an ensemble with effective chemistry. These movies are doubly impressive for their re-watchability even once you know the answer to their central mysteries. Which is to say, Glass Onion has no unattained aspirations, aiming only to be a delight from beginning to end, and that is a promise on which it delivers.

I suppose you’re all wondering why I gathered you here today.

Overall: B+

THE MENU

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

It’s too bad we can’t all see The Menu not knowing literally anything about it at all. The experience would be far more fun, and this movie is fun regardless—but something gets lost in all that is revealed in the trailer. In all likelihood, had I had the opportunity to sit down in a movie theater, completely oblivious to anything except the fact that I was about to see a movie, and then saw this—I’d give it a higher rating. This would be the perfect contender for one of those “secret screenings” at film festivals.

Of course, they can’t all be like that, or else how could anyone sell it? We have to know something, right, to get people interested? The best marketers can do in this case, I suppose, is edit a trailer in a way that misdirects expectations a bit. This is the closest I’ll come to spoiling anything: the clear suggestion made by the trailer, as to what’s happening amongst this group of filthy rich diners at an exclusive, ridiculously high-end restaurant on a secluded island, is not exactly where this story is headed.

And the thing is, if the less you know the better, what else can I tell you? Well, I’ve already noted the premise. And you can expect a diverse, ensemble cast, with Anya Talor-Joy as the protagonist, Nicholas Hoult as the obsessive food snob who brought her as his date, and Ralph Fiennes as the, let’s say, morally dubious chef. A smattering of recognizable faces show up among the dozen or so other diners, all of whom are carried to the island in a small passenger ferry, including John Leguizamo, Reed Birney, Janet McTeer, and—a delightful surprise—Judith Light, among others. Several of them are recognizable character actors you’ll find yourself wondering what show or movie you’ve seen them in.

And this is what I liked best about The Menu: even when you start thinking you know where things are headed, in the middle of the movie’s narrative, you don’t. At one point I was really afraid we were headed for some kind of The Game-style ending in which we find out the protagonist is the only one being played. I was much relieved to find that fear unfounded. When the proceedings start to become severe, they really are as severe as they seem. Just not in the way you’re expecting if you’ve been taken in by this film’s marketing.

Now, is there any reason to rush into theaters to see this? Honestly, no. I’m all for keeping the movie theater industry afloat, and for achieving that goal through more than just CGI blockbuster extravaganzas, but some movies still serve their purpose just as well on your TV at home. As fun as The Menu is—and I definitively had fun—this is still one such example. The best I can suggest is to make a note of this film’s title, wait until you find it available on a streamer, and then turn it on without finding out anything more about it. You won’t regret it, especially if you’re inclined to roll your eyes at deeply pretentious discussions about food.

The menu tells a story. Just not quite the one you’re expecting.

Overall: B

SHE SAID

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

Harvey Weinstein appears as a character in She Said, but only a few times, only briefly, and only ever from behind—always instead focusing on the women speaking to him, or in this case, interviewing him. We never even see him in a single one of the relatively few genuine flashback scenes, in which we learn about the horrible things he did to young women in Hollywood. This is all absolutely as it should be, because fuck that guy.

That is very much the overtone of She Said, even as it focuses entirely on the investigative reporting at the New York Times that ultimately brought him down. Director Maria Schrader takes a quietly revolutionary approach to the storytelling here, never once recreating the trauma of these women or having us be direct witness to it. Instead, the film is full of characters simply talking to the two women reporters who are the main protagonists of this story, Megan Twohey and Joi Kantor (Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan, respectively), offering first-hand accounts of their experiences.

This puts an unusual spin on the storytelling mantra of “show, don’t tell.” In this context, none of this is exposition. Seeing these women, in virtually every case retelling their story many years after the fact, and the emotional toll still taken on them—that is precisely the point. Although the story here all revolves around Weinstein, at one point a woman says, “This is bigger than Weinstein,” and it’s an assertion that remains apt. Weinstein may be serving 23 years in prison now, but what about all the guys out there just like him who aren’t?

The fame of many of the actors who helped bring him down has great relevance here. Nothing discounts how they were victimized, but there is still privilege in the reach of their voices, something unknown women don’t have. It’s insane that it took literally decades for even the famous ones to be believed, but they were still the key element in getting the story reported.

One of them in particular: Ashley Judd, whose career is now widely known to have been derailed by Weinstein because of her rebuffing him. There is some poetic justice in seeing her play herself in the film, telling her own story in her own words, hammering home the reality of what happened. That said, I did occasionally get distracted by strange details when she appeared onscreen: how much of this is dramatized for effect? Did she really talk to the New York Times while sitting at her desk looking out her beautiful apartment overlooking the park? I suppose if she had actually been laying on the couch in sweats and eating potato chips, that wouldn’t have been as cinematic.

Which brings me to this point: a great many scenes in She Said are set in the New York Times news room and offices, as anyone would expect. It sometimes feels like this movie is going for a bit of an All the President’s Men vibe, which it never quite reaches. A lot of the news room scenes are a bit sapped of energy.

Luckily, a deep well of talent is still involved in the making of this movie, which quite rightly centers women both in front of and behind the camera—the script was written by a woman, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, based on the book of the same name by aforementioned women reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twhohey, which itself was based on their own New York Times investigated, co-authored also by Rebecca Corbett. The cinematographer (Natasha Braier), the production designer (Meredith Lippincott), the costume designer (Brittany Loar), the set decorator (Philippa Culpepper)—all women. Five of the eight credited producers are women, including all three executive producers.

And then there’s the cast: Patricia Clarkson as one of the news room bosses; Jennifer Ehle and Samantha Morton, both phenomenal in supporting parts as Weinstein survivors; even real-life survivor Sarah Ann Masse was cast in a small part. Many of the interview scenes are riveting, and She Said really gets compelling once we start to see a collection of accounts in their entirety. Then, even though we already know the end result, the nail biter becomes if and when key women will come forward, on the record.

As for Mulligan and Kazan themselves, they are . . . fine. I have long been impressed with Mulligan’s talent in particular, but she is definitely more successful in her native British accent; at times you can feel her working to speak like an American. Both of them have been far better in other films, but then, these parts aren’t designed to get them Oscars. She Said is a very procedural film, and so if you’re into that, this film will be very satisfying. For many, it was understandably just important to get this story told in as many mediums as possible. For the rest of us, it’s just deeply fulfilling to see the manner in which one of the worst men ever to move through Hollywood get ruined.

A satisfying moment of seeing Harvey Weinstein get shut down—without even having to look at him.

Overall: B+

AFTERSUN

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

It feels sort of crazy that the film Aftersun is being deemed “a masterpiece” by virtually every critic alive—the critical consensus was, indeed, the very thing that compelled me to go see it—and yet it is almost entirely lost on me.

I suppose “almost” is the key word there, especially the more I think about the film, and peruse other people’s reactions to it. As a rule I try not to get other people’s takes before I lay out my own review, but I was hoping to get a sense of what I was missing.

And, perhaps I have. Deep into this film, after long stretches of seemingly mundane vignettes of a father-daughter vacation, the daughter 11 years old and the father turning 31, a passage of dialogue came along that felt like the biggest hint. It’s Sophie, the 11-year-old, who says this:

“I just feel a bit down or something. Don’t you ever feel like you’ve just done a whole amazing day and then you come home and feel tired and down and feels like your bones don’t work. …everything is tired. Like you’re sinking. I don’t know, it’s weird.”

And it’s after this, finally, that you begin to get hints of an emotion struggle suffered by Calum (Paul Mescal), the father. It slowly comes to light that he is protecting Sophie from them, and on the few occasions when Sophie asks him about his childhood, he’s very guarded.

Still, I keep coming back to those lines of dialogue Sophie says. I’m developing a theory that this gets to the heart of why Aftersun didn’t particularly move me, or really even reach me. I’m finding countless examples online of people stating how it “floored” them or “wiped them out,” I suspect because of how deeply they relate. And this is the thing: I’m surrounded by people with mental health struggles, people with depression, and it often seems like a majority of people suffer from some form of it. But I am just not wired that way. I can even have what I feel is a fully realistic, fatalistic view of the world, and I can still have a good time with ease, and I literally don’t lose any sleep over it. I sleep quite soundly.

I’m not trying to brag here. I’m just trying to illustrate how I could have seen the credits roll on this movie and immediately think, …I don’t get it. I was genuinely bored a whole lot of the time, until seemingly out of nowhere Calum walks to the beach, and then straight into the ocean. I truly thought he was committing suicide, clear through the point at which Sophie, roused from sleep in the hotel lobby, is given a key by a staffer and escorted to her hotel room. She walks in and there he lay, face down on the bed and completely naked, passed out. After the otherwise wholesome vacation days together in which I kept wondering what kind of shoe was going to drop, this was a jarring sight. Sophie, unperturbed, just throws the sheets over him and lays down on the smaller cot he had to order for himself.

I have a feeling I might gain a much deeper understanding of Aftersun with repeat viewing, and perhaps my takes as they are now are wildly unfair. On the other hand, I might also argue that I shouldn’t have to watch a movie more than once to understand it. Plenty of other people clearly understand it, and take its final five minutes as a deeply poignant revelation that I still can’t effectively parse. So, I leave this movie feeling like maybe I’m just not depressed enough for it.

Apparently it’s actually very dark, but I’m just too busy being contented with my life to notice it.

Overall: B

BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER

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

I’m not going to blame director and co-writer Ryan Coogler for the clear shortfalls of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, particularly when compared to 2018’s original Black Panther. That film is easily one of the best superhero films ever made, and in my view the best of the plethora of Marvel Cinematic Universe films, so to be fair, it’s a high bar. That said, superhero franchises have a long history of the second entry of a series being equal to or surpassing the first (Superman II; Batman Returns; Spider-Man 2; X2), and the truth of the matter is, Wakanda Forever does not meet that particular tradition.

To be clear, there is much to love about Wakanda Forever, notably its performers, its production design, even its wonderful soundtrack—not to mention the deeply poignant and effective way it manages to honor the memory of both the actor Chadwick Boseman and the character King T'Challa alike. In the opening sequence, we learn that T'Challa has been afflicted with an unnamed illness, which his genius sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) scrambles, but ultimately fails, to cure. There follows a national Wakandan funeral steeped in ceremony and tradition, not to mention emotion—for both the characters grieving their king, and the actors themselves, along with us as viewers, grieving the loss of a cultural figure the likes of which we see once an era.

And although it serves as a memorial and is very downbeat, these opening scenes are both beautiful and the high point of Wakanda Forever, which is very entertaining otherwise but ultimately sags a bit under the weight of yet another MCU film’s obligations to feature narrative tentacles reaching across the connective tissue of what are now thirty films. The 2018 Black Panther served the same function, but managed it much more seamlessly, I would argue for two reasons: first, at that time there were barely more than half as many films and “the snap” (ugh, I’m so sick of The Snap) had not yet happened; second, and far more importantly, that film was not forced into the double duty of acknowledging and participating in the grief of losing the very character it introduced.

On top of all this, Wakanda Forever must also introduce another supervillain for our reluctant heroes to battle. Coogler, along with co-writer Joe Robert Cole, imbue the Aztecan character Namor with moral ambiguity tied to the global history of colonialism the same way they did with Killmonger previously (side note: we get a nice, brief appearance from Michael B. Jordan in a dream sequence). That said, I found his backstory—something having to do with plants infused with deep-sea vibranium discovered to exist outside of Wakanda resulting in his having lived since the time of the Aztecs—convoluted and difficult to follow.

Namor is played by Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta, who is of Mexican, Aztecan and Purépechan descent—a nice bit of clearly conscientious casting. That said, it does feel slightly tricky to have a movie made by non-Latino or non-Indigenous people in which they are, in one way or another, speaking to Indigenous history. Black Panther worked so perfectly in large part because of the filmmakers’ fluent understanding of their own history, and while colonialism as a theme has clear crossover between communities, bringing Western Indigenous historical threads into the mix involves a separate, distinct lineage of people. Not that I am any expert here because I am just another white guy slinging opinions across the internet, but I won’t say the fictional “Talocan” people are portrayed poorly per se—only that they aren’t woven into the narrative anywhere near as neatly as the heavy weight of Killmonger’s ancetral history had been in the previous film.

That said, I do have other nitpicks about Namor and his secret underwater society that I just can’t get past. I love science fiction when it’s done well, and get really hung up when it’s done badly. You can even introduce nonexistent technology and make suspension of disbelief easy, as with Wakandan vibranium. I have a harder time accepting science fiction that creates fictions that would never work in any universe, completely ignoring funamental laws of physics. This was the biggest reason I avoided Aquaman like the plague: the trailer alone made it clear that characters would speak like normal humans under water, something that literally cannot be done without breathing air as opposed to liquid, no matter how much oxygen it contains. Wakanda Forever contains far less of this, but it’s still there, with one brief scene featuring Namor giving a loud speech to his vast underwater army. I see that shit and all I can think is, This is unbearably stupid.

I had a similar, if less passionate, reaction to Namor’s ability to fly, using only tiny wings, no larger than his feet, grown from his ankles—somehow these little wings allow him to fly through the air upright, like an inverted helicopter drone? No. What’s worse is the agility with which he does this, darting large distances back and forth through the air like a hummingbird, these shots being a good example of Wakanda Forever’s disappointing quality of CGI effects, putting it in league with far too many other blockbuster movies coasting on the profits of mediocrity.

And this is a big part of Wakanda Forever’s problem of commitment to far too many obligations. You can just hear the production meetings in which Coogler was told this movie has to fit into the broader narrative of all MCU movies in all these ways: X, Y, Z and et cetera—non-negotiable, clearly. The thing is, other MCU movies don’t have the gravitas of these films, which Coogler expertly weaves in. This is why I don’t blame him for this movie’s shortcomings; rather, I blame that on Marvel Studios—and give Coogler (and Cole) credit for the parts of it that are still great.

In 2018, Black Panther had been a tightly polished 134 minutes—some of it still containing the typical battle chaos of an MCU climax, but impressively reigned in. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever clocks in at a whopping, and wholly unnecessary, 161 minutes. The first half or so of that runs at an effectively slow burn—in a relative sense, anyway—albeit one that introduces characters that feel unnecessary (I love Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but the inclusion of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine feels far more obligatory than vital). We get to spend time with Wakandan characters we already love: Ramonda (Angela Basset); Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o); Okoye (Danai Gurira); M’Baku (Winston Duke); it’s even delightful to see I May Destroy You’s Michaela Coel as new character Aneka, another one of Wakanda’s fabled women warriors (and it should not be downplayed that this movie puts its women in charge). We also see Martin Freeman return as agent Everett Ross (Valentina’s ex-husband, apparently), but he never felt vital, his existence effectively being the “token white guy” just more amusing than anything.

In other words, and this really cannot be overstated, Wakanda Forever has a stellar cast, which goes a long way toward making it worth your time, especially if you loved the previous film. The difference is that this movie is overlong and its plot construction is comparatively clunky, and much of the time this stellar cast is utilized only in unnecessarily long, CGI-heavy battle sequences. To be fair, even the quality of the action sequences vary; a car chase through Cambridge is genuinely exciting, whereas a battle between Wakandan and Talocan armies on a huge ship at sea proves mind numbing.

Thankfully, Wakanda Forever comes back to ground level at its end, creating poignant bookends to its story that honor the original Black Panther character in different ways—by looking back at the beginning, and looking forward at the end, particularly in a stinger after title credits that only come at the end of the film. Spoiler alert! That one stinger is all this movie offers, bucking the trend of a truly post-credits scene with no more after that; I stayed until the very end of the credits for nothing, apparently so you don’t have to. It was the last of this movie’s sprinkling of small disappointments. At least those disappointments are indeed small, and outweighed by the net effect of an entertaining night out at the movies. Just don’t expect anything approaching the greatness of what came before.

It takes a long time before we see the successive “Black Panther” … and it works.

Overall: B