Reviews of “The Devil Wears Prada 2” and “Is God Is”
“The Devil Wears Prada 2”
It’s been 20 years since the original “Devil Wears Prada” made office politics and the pandemonium of high fashion intoxicating. While the main cast — Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt — barely look a decade older, times have definitely changed. Social media, micro-aggressions and HR rules have changed life for Streep’s Miranda Priestly (fashioned after famed “Vogue” editor Anna Wintour, whose former junior assistant penned the book the first movie was based on). She has to have her latest assistant (Simone Ashley) police her language in board meetings.
At the end of the last Manhattan fairytale, Hathaway’s Andy Sachs left “Runway” magazine for the world of hard-hitting journalism—an endeavor that pays considerably less. When we catch up with Andy, she’s collecting a coveted award for her integrity-driven stories, only to learn that she and everyone at the paper have been sacked by the paper’s new parent company (a scenario all too familiar and real these days). Simultaneously, “Runway” gets egg on its face for a feature it ran on a fashion line that it didn’t know uses sweatshops for its threads. Nothing like an out-of-work scribe and a company in a PR tailspin to get the team back together again. Natch, Miranda barely remembers Andy (or feigns such) and per usual sets her up to fail. Still at Miranda’s side is Nigel (a well-postured Tucci bringing back his blasé-faire élan), loyal vanguard of haute fashion and barbed witticisms, with Emily (Blunt) now over at Dior and a chief buyer of ad-space from “Runway” (the real-life model for the Emily character recently fessed up and the parallels are to-the-curb tight).
In the first “Prada” we had Paris, here we get Milan and a meandering side thread about a takeover of Elias-Clarke, the parent company of “Runway.” What that does besides putting too much yarn in the air is to weave Lucy Liu, Kenneth Branagh with an enviably rich mane, Justin Theroux (unrecognizable as a goofball tech-bro) and B.J. Novak as the mealy-mouthed scion of Elias-Clarke’s CEO, into the fold. The sharp script, again written by Aline Brosh McKenna, and tight direction by David Frankel — also returning — go far, but nearly falters along the final walk as the overly complicated corporate mega blah ties up. The cast, though, is all in, lovingly bringing back the personas so many identified with and rooted for. Miranda may not be the firebrand she was back in 2006, as time and mega-mergers have tamped her down. She’s less a pop-off-the-screen paw scratch, but also more vulnerable and human. “Prada 2” is a comfortable nostalgic fit, with clean lines and even seams.
“Is God Is”
Adapted from her own stage play, Aleshea Harris’s “Is God Is” is a slow burn of a revenge tale that twists in strange, stylized ways as it follows the travails of twin sisters Anaia (Mallori Johnson) and Racine (Kara Young, the upcoming “I Love Boosters”). The twins, after receiving a letter from their disfigured mother (an unrecognizable Vivica A. Fox), set off on a quest to avenge her by killing their father (Sterling K. Brown, “Moonlight,” “Paradise”). What ensues is something of a lo-fi spaghetti western filtered through the lens of a Greek tragedy with bubbles of Afrofuturist hip — in a loose stylistic sense, think “Sinners” and, to a lesser degree, “Him.”
Of the twins, Racine is as — if not more — scarred than her mother from the fiery act of cruelty inflicted by Brown’s father—the flashback of which is dark, eerie and hard to watch. The credits list him only as “Man.” Mom is referred to as Ruby God, which, I guess, is what gives her agency to command the act of vengeance from her long-simmering death bed somewhere in the dusty fields of Virginia.
The command that Ruby has over the girls is curious as she has been long absent from their lives — since the incident. They grew up in foster care hell. The two also have a form of ESP, where they can look at each other and communicate in full sentences — for the rest of us it helps that we see them on screen in closed-captioned psychic subtitles.
The violence that comes — and there’s lots of it — is fast, bloody and brutal. It’s also at times comedic, with a touch of mean poetry to it — something Quentin Tarantino elevated to an art form and Harris is not too bad at. The girls’ tools of choice? A rock in a bloody white sock — looking like David’s sling — and a pair of pruning loppers.
As the twins, Johnson and Young are asked much of, and shoulder it well, but the film feels too long for what it is as the quiet moments of talky contemplation before the next, far-too-intimate beat down, often feel flat and don’t add anything new. Brown and Fox smolder in their brief parental parts, and the ever-elegant Janelle Monáe is a portrait of troubled grace as Man’s current wife. “Is God Is” comes out swinging and fierce, but there’s a hollowness to it that resonates more than the searing anger it postures.
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“A Quiet Place” drops you into a post-calamity spot that feels all too close, given the current state of division and fear in the country and creeping need to think about how to survive a civilization-crumbling war or sweeping, sudden natural disaster. We catch up with a family out on a scavenging mission to get medicine and supplies. Inside a ransacked pharmacy, they’re all barefoot and don’t speak to each other as they go about their task. Mom (Blunt) picks up and puts down pill vial after vial with all the deliberate care of one of the silent thieves in Jules Dassin’s great heist film, “Rififi” (1955). The lack of spoken communication and the worry etched on the faces of the nuclear-plus family ratchets to a nerve-racking tic. Wandering about on his own, the youngest boy reaches for a toy space shuttle that lights up and beeps, but dad (Krasinski) is fast on the take and in sign language sternly tells him “No.” Outside, they remain silent and walk single file, never veering from the painted white center line of the road. Along their amble through a rural country-scape we see no other humans and soon learn why – after a noise emitted unwittingly by one of the party draws something formidable and fast out from the woods, and the family is suddenly one less. 
For What it's Worth 