Reviewed: “Together” and “High Rollers”

2 Aug

‘Together’ (2025)

This image released by Neon shows Alison Brie, left, and Dave Franco in a scene from “Together.” (Ben King/Neon via AP)

In this claustrophobic, psycho-horror thriller written and directed by first-timer Michael Shanks, there’s much to impress – but it doesn’t, at least to the degree it should, through familiarity; once into it, “Together” plays like an homage to Ari Aster’s art-house horror hits “Heredity” (2018) and “Midsommar” (2019) with a few pages lifted from Brandon Cronenberg’s growing catalog of body-horror and Coralie Fargeat’s gloriously grim “The Substance” (2024). “Together” is conceptually and ideologically about codependence the way “Get Out” (2017) was about racism. We embed with real-life husband and wife Dave Franco and Alison Brie – who together starred in the 2020 Vrbo-from-hell thriller “The Rental” – as Tim and Millie, who move to a remote area for Millie’s new job as a schoolteacher. Tim, a slacker man-boy with only part-time gigs as a guitarist, tags sheepishly along. We know the couple’s got issues, as Millie tells a friend at their going-away party that Tim doesn’t like to “do it” anymore, and when she proposes to him at party, on bent knee with a mimed ring in a jewelry box, he balks. In the quiets near their new woodsy abode, they go for a hike and end up slipping through a sinkhole into a cave with a well seemingly designed by crew from the “Alien” films. “Don’t drink the water,” you shout silently at the screen. But they do, and when they pass out, waiting for the light of day to find a way out, they wake up, joined at the hips – kinda. Some rending, a little bit of pain and a few small tear wounds solve it. Tim writes it off as mildew, but later, back home at night and in bed, Millie’s hair starts to grow down Tim’s throat; when Tim finally gets up his nerve with Millie, he can’t pull out postcoitus. The sticky situations mount, while Millie’s passive-aggressive colleague just down the lane seems to be holding out on critical information. The performances by Brie and Franco, as a capable woman angling for adulthood and cuck in need of a clue, forge seamless onscreen chemistry. What doesn’t quite work is a third act in which revelations fall literally out of the closet with clunky awkwardness. Not worth a long-term commitment.

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Reviewed: “Happy Gilmore 2” and “Until Dawn”

26 Jul

‘Happy Gilmore 2’ (2025)

Nepotism abounds in the surprisingly tight sequel to the one-note 1996 comedy about a failed hockey player with anger issues turned pro golfer with anger issues. The success of that film made former SNLer Adam Sandler a household name and box office force to be reckoned with (and the run since has been long and profitable). Of those family ties, “Happy 2” features Sandler’s wife (Jackie), two daughters (Sunny and Sadie) and mother (Judy) in small parts. Loyal to the calendar, we’re 30 years out, Happy Gilmore (Sandler) is married to golf tour publicist Virginia Venit (Julie Bowen) and now has a brood of four: Hanson-esque hockey hooligan boys and a lone daughter, Vienna (Sunny Sandler), who wants to go to ballet school in Paris. Before we settle in, Virginia exits the picture and Happy, distraught, starts boozing wildly. The slide into financial ruin and derelict dad-dom is meteoric. That said, things are arguably worse for old foe Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald, funny and sinister as always), locked up in an insane asylum. Nearly every page from the original gets a nod, including the sadistic opportunist Hal (Ben Stiller, sporting a massive handlebar ’stache) who held Happy’s grandmother under duress as a maniacal nurse at her living facility, and here has moved on to running an AA-adjacent recovery program that Happy is ordered to dry out in. Needless to say, the only way to save the house and send Vienna to pirouette school (he needs $300,000 and then some), is golf. Added is Benny Safdie, co-director of Sandler’s “Uncut Gems” (2019), as the smarmy head of an upstart golf league called Maxi Golf (like Liv Golf on neon-infused crack) who wants to challenge the pro-golf tour, and Haley Joel Osment as the top pro on the tour – and subsequent Maxi Golf defector – who can drive the ball farther than Happy because of a radical hip ligament surgery. Many of today’s top players, including Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau, appear in the film, as well as old schoolers Lee Trevino, Fred Couples and legend Jack Nicklaus, who, when asked by a waiter (Travis Kelce, slick and sassy) what he wants to drink, says, lemonade and ice tea. The waiter pauses and asks Nicklaus if he’s not Arnold Palmer (cue rimshot). It’s a shaggy-dog laugh fest that pays astute homage (Sandler and original scribe Tim Herlihy doing a nice stitching job, plotwise) to what came before while expanding it. The best might be party-hearty golfer John Daly with a Santa beard as Happy’s next-door neighbor who’s forever in his PJs and sucking on nips. A surprising and unlikely above-par revelation, this “Happy” beats the cover off the old ball while notching a few new spins and a dizzying array of hip cameos.

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Super poop, or how AI killed the box office

21 Jul

Crowds jeer in James Gunn’s recently released “Superman.”

James Gunn’s “Superman” swooped into theaters a week ago and knocked it out of the park with more than $125 million at the domestic box office. Not bad for a flat-footed rebrand that’s a long way from “Jaws,” which 50 years ago became the pindrop for the blockbuster, pulling in more than $260 million ($1.5 billion by today’s standards), with the eventual Academy Award winner that year (and No. 2 in box office totals), “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” taking in less than 40 percent of that. With that success, Spielberg’s gambit forever altered filmmaking and the way we see films; producers began seeking ready-made target audiences and the next big onscreen wow that would blow watchers’ minds and create lines to the ticket booth.

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Eddington

18 Jul

Ari Aster’s America with Covid, mask off and reeling

The latest from art house horror darling Ari Aster, like his last outing, “Beau is Afraid” (2023), isn’t quite the occult blood-and-guts fest one has come to expect from an auteur of the macabre (“Hereditary,” “Midsommar”). But it is an American horror story to be certain. Set in the fictional Southwestern town of the title, “Eddington” takes place during the height of the Covid pandemic, with ripple effects of George Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matter movement factoring large into the equation. Eddington is a small, financially struggling New Mexican town of 2,000 that abuts a Pueblo Indian reservation. Beau, I mean Joaquin Phoenix, plays Joe Cross, the county sheriff who, despite orders from the governor and mayor (Pedro Pascal, who seems to be popping up everywhere), refuses to wear a mask. He’s not an antivaxxer or Covid denier per se, but close enough – and as a result, decides to challenge Pascal’s smooth and composed Ted Garcia for his mayoral seat.

The pratfalls and ills of social media and social politics drive the film for nearly two-thirds of its two and a half hours. It’s imbued with the shaggy-dog docudrama vibe of a Richard Linklater or Paul Thomas Anderson film, sans the slack, droll wit. Some of the satire on white privilege, however, lands quite cuttingly, especially as one pasty young man (Cameron Mann) shouting from a podium tells reluctant listeners that he’s become an antiracist and is ready to sit down and listen to others, but only after he’s had his time at the mic to “racesplain.” Also in focus is Cross’ Black deputy (Michael Ward) as BLM protesters jam the streets, and the sovereignty of the Pueblo Peoples and their lines of jurisdiction overlap with Cross’ and become a point of contention during a murder investigation. On all pointed matters (social media, race and pandemic policy), both sides get their due without a lean – that’s left to the audience. 

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Reviewed: ‘Heads of State,’ ‘Jurassic World: Rebirth’ and ‘The Old Guard 2’

10 Jul

Short Takes

‘Heads of State’ (2025)

They could have called this one “Peacemaker and Bloodsport Run for Office,” as it leverages the great yin-and-yang chemistry that actors John Cena and Idris Elba forged in the hilarious Harley Quinn DC comic reboot, “The Suicide Squad” (2021). Here they play Will Derringer (Cena), a former action movie star elected Potus, and British prime minister Sam Clarke (Elba). Derringer – an obvious and affectionate riff on Arnold Schwarzenegger – is famous for his “Water Cobra” films, whereas Clarke was a career commando before moving into the political realm. There’s a bit of a rift between the two, as it was perceived that Clarke supported Derringer’s rival by having fish and chips with them. Clarke and Derringer meet at a European summit and afterward, for squirrelly reasons, Derringer offers to give Clarke a lift on Air Force One. As Harrison Ford is nowhere nearby, the big jumbo jet is plucked from the sky by an international terrorist ring (led by an ever-menacing Paddy Considine), and Clarke and Derringer have to go off-grid and escape Belarus. While the two are assumed dead, their respective successors seek to dissolve Nato, and the U.S. intelligence network is hijacked by hackers. Fairly generic stuff made pleasantly smirk-worthy by the playful onscreen Frick-and-Frack chemistry of its leads and some nifty pacing and action scene choreography by director Ilya Naishuller (“Nobody”). Adding comic spice and sporty can-do are Jack Quaid (“The Boys”) as a wacky CIA safe house operative and Priyanka Chopra Jonas (“The White Tiger” and “Matrix Resurrections”) as a game British agent who served with Clarke in the military. 

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F1: The Movie

29 Jun

Powered by Pitt just as ‘Maverick’ was a matter of Cruise control

“F1: The Movie” is an entertaining spectacle populated by the ever-whizzing whine of Formula One race cars zipping by at jet speeds and some really tight editing that makes it feel like you’re in some next-gen, sensory immersion experience at Universal Studios. The vrooming crescendos that rise and fade with such regularity linger in the ears when you leave the theater – so much so that if you close your eyes, you can practically play it back.

The story in “F1” is pretty lightweight stuff: Old, has-been lion teams up with cocky prodigy who can’t get out of their own way as they seek pole position on the concourse of greatness. Pulling a bit from the Michael Bay playbook of cinematic bombast, “F1” is more “Days of Thunder” (1990) or “Gran Turismo” (2023) than “Ford v Ferrari” (2019) or “Rush” (2013); but what it lacks in emotion and gravitas it makes up in energized big-screen rendering. The cast, meanwhile, brings enough nuance to deepen the trope-driven premise bolted together by director Joseph Kosinski and writer Ehren Krueger. The duo pretty much made the same movie with wings and foils three years ago, when “Top Gun: Maverick” became the defibrillator shock that jolted the box-office back to life post-Covid.

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28 Years Later

20 Jun

You can try to live with rage virus but it’ll just keep evolving into something weirder

As laid out, this latest in the Danny Boyle-Alex Garland zombie apocalypse series is more reboot than a trilogy closeout for “28 Days Later” (2002) and “28 Weeks Later” (2007). In fact, it’s alleged to be the start of a new trilogy, with “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” already slated for 2026. But two films, a cinematic hat-trick does not make.

We also need to clear the chronology slate, 28 years later is not 2053, but more around now – 2030, if we extrapolate from the release date of “28 Days Later.” As with the other films, the setting is Britain, which still is the only infected area in the world as far as we know – in “Weeks,” as well as here, there are implications that the “rage virus” may be elsewhere, but it’s teaser. As to why survivors still reside on the isle of Britain: The island nation is quarantined and its coast patrolled rigorously by other countries – France and Sweden, at least.

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‘Materialists’:

19 Jun

‘Materialists’: The sheen of a traditional rom-com but a threesome is entwined in something darker

The curious title of Celine Song’s follow-up to her subtly affecting (and Oscar-nominated) debut, “Past Lives” (2023), is spot-on: Money matters – perhaps too much. Many may frame “Materialists” as a romantic comedy and something of a change-up for Song, but they would be wrong on both takes. It’s got a dark undercurrent with very few “com” moments and is driven by longing, the soul-capturing engine that made “Past Lives” so universal and engaging. That “Materialists” doesn’t succeed as well in that regard, or at all, is another matter entirely.

“Materialists” is filled with long, awkward moments. It’s a Romance 101 must: People hold back, hesitant to expose their true feelings and vulnerabilities – but here the moments don’t work. Part of that is that the characters are slight, not particularly likable and, worse, lack chemistry. Not a good start for a love story.

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Short Takes

14 Jun

Reviewed: ‘Mountainhead,’ ‘Straw,’ ‘Echo Valley’ and “Fountain of Youth’

‘Mountainhead’ (2025)

This smug billionaire-boys-behaving-badly dramedy from “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong landed just as the relationship between Trump and Musk imploded fantastically in the headlines, not so much an aptly ironic parody as a loaded diaper. Why is America so obsessed with the rich, when most of us – the other 90, 95 or 99 percent – are not so? The fantasy that money can change your life and buy you happiness? With Trump and Musk and this sour lot, it’s more about power and being right, even if you’re not and money is an afterthought (though how much you have is a boasting point). In an airy mountain chalet, four tech bros with complicated pasts and agendas hang out for a weekend of poker and backdoor business parlays. If you called them Zuck, Musk, Altman and Kalanick (the series “Super Pumped” on the Uber founder is a worthy watch), you’d not be far off. The driving plot is the alter-reality tech platform Traam run by Venis/Ven (Cory Michael Smith, who played Chevy Chase in “Saturday Night”). It has 4 billion users but has been coopted to make deepfake news stories with devastating results worldwide. Newscasts show the bloody inflaming of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and retaliation to a faked story in which women and children in a house of worship are barricaded in, firebombed and killed. People are literally dying because of Traam. Does this give pause or stop Venis from pushing his next release? Nah, he sends it out to the world with the lede “Fuuck!” because “two ‘u’s are cool.” That’s the kind of fuck-all we’re dealing with. When asked about the mayhem Traam is causing, Venis retorts that “The first time people saw a movie, everybody ran screaming because they thought they were going to get hit by a train. The answer to that was not stop the movies. The answer was: Show more movies.” (It’s here that we can drop the “V” and add a “P.”) Ven’s weekend cohort of self-loving insufferables include Randall (Steve Carell), a fat-walleted venture capitalist recovering from cancer, Souper Van Yalk (Jason Schwartzman), the host who hasn’t quite made it into the billionaire club, and Jeff Abredazi (Ramy Youssef, “Mr. Robot”), the most sensible of the bunch, who has just kicked off a tool that could thwart Traam’s AI mayhem but won’t sell it to Ven because of past grievances and ideological differences. As the world continues to go to hell on the widescreen TVs around the chalet, the boys debate taking over and running some of the countries whose governments have fallen. When the water in the manse runs dry, our quartet thinks sabotage and of an imminent terrorist attack and head to the bowling alley bunker below. “Mountainhead” is pretty much a stage play in form, and the actors are all in and hit their mark. What doesn’t is the satire that roils in human misery with a nod and a wink at cheekiness so we can walk a mile in the shoes of the rich and famous who wouldn’t give five dollars to a starving family on the street. 

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The Life of Chuck

14 Jun

A feel-good Stephen King Story

Adapted from the similarly titled Stephen King novella from the collection “If It Bleeds,” “The Life of Chuck” has to be the best feel-good downer of a film – maybe ever. It’s got everything, from a mysterious apocalyptical event to a rigorous dance number. Wang Chung shoehorns its way into the action too. (The band has little to do with the dance number, though it may have been the inspiration.)

“Chuck” unfolds in three acts told in reverse. In Act III, “Thanks Chuck,” small-town schoolteacher Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) tries to reconnect with his ex-wife, Felicia (Karen Gillan), as the world implodes in small, eerie waves. Traffic backs up, technology goes on the fritz and the busy hospital where Felicia works is suddenly empty one day. Then glowing billboards thanking Chuck “for 39 great years” start popping up everywhere with the bespectacled mug of a guy who looks like a meek, mild local TV host. He’s the Chuck of the title, played by Tom Hiddleston – more commonly known as Loki in the Marvel Universe and a Bond-esque presence in “The Night Manager” streaming series. Things get weird and even more Chucky when the power goes out and his glowing visage starts projecting from the windows of the houses in Felicia’s neighborhood.

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