Tag Archives: movies

Reviewed: ‘The Drama’

4 Apr

Dark rom-com with likable leads packs a big wallop–one certain to polarize.

The latest from off-kilter impresario Kristoffer Borgli is a dark, sardonic rom-com with a sharp morality barb — one so pointed and polarizing that it will repel many viewers.  Others will be provoked, but still hop on board with Borgli’s go-for-broke vision. Of course, the real reason we’re all on tenterhooks about “The Drama,” starring hot properties Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as an engaged couple, is because the movie was shot here in Cambridge and Boston, with a pivotal scene playing out at Porter Square stalwart Andy’s Diner.  

The one thing “The Drama” is not: predictable. It’s also surprisingly funny in awkward, uncomfortable ways. As with “Dream Scenario” (2023), Borgli plants his biggest twists in small, mundane scenes. Things begin innocuously as Pattinson’s Charlie eyes Zendaya’s Emma at a Back Bay Tatte, where she’s reading a novel (it’s fictional fiction, although it shares the name as real novel by Caitlin Wahrer). He’s instantly smitten, looks up the book online, and pretends to have read it for his goofy, gawky overture. Emma ignores him. It’s not a classic cold shoulder, though: An earbud blasts beats in one of her ears, concealed by hair, and the other is deaf — the why of it, revealed later, packs a twist worthy of a Wes Anderson film.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

Reviewed: “Project Hail Mary”

21 Mar

Weir’s self-published first novel was hailed for its deep scientific detail and accuracy but “Hail Mary” trades hard science for a more fantastical plot.

⭐⭐⭐Rating: 3 out of 4.

Fans of Andy Weir’s “The Martian” — and Ridley Scott’s 2015 film adaptation starring Matt Damon — will find familiar bones in this deep space drama with a side of buddy comedy based on Weir’s third novel, “Project Hail Mary.” Weir’s self-published first novel was hailed for its deep scientific detail and accuracy but “Hail Mary” trades hard science for a more fantastical plot. As in Christopher Nolan’s weighty “Interstellar” (2014), we learn early on that the Earth is dying — here, because an alien microorganism called “Astrophage” is eating away the sun. Without adequate sunlight, famine will arrive in 20 to 30 years; the wars triggered by the diminishing food supply will crack civilization far sooner.

It’s not just an Earth problem, either. The ravenous Astrophage are devouring nearly all the stars in the galactic neighborhood — except one, some 12 light-years away. A team of astronauts has been sent to study this star, find out why it is resilient, and return to Earth with the solution. The caveat: The ship has only enough fuel for a one-way trip. The astronauts will send the solution back to Earth via probe, while they drift around for a few more years with various forms of painless euthanasia at their disposal. It’s not exactly something most people would raise their hand for. But the alternative is slow starvation — or worse — before your newly refinanced mortgage is paid off.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

Reviewed: “The Bride!”

13 Mar

The narrative flip from the book’s Gothic Europe to post-Prohibition Chicago is a kitschy and vibrant reimagining.

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!” is a hot mess — both the title character and the film. It’s a wildly ambitious project with a distinctive female lens, and while it’s rife with social commentary, those themes often feel stitched on — and at times, carelessly so. The film flounders despite a killer cast, including Gyllenhaal’s husband, Peter Sarsgaard, and her brother, Jake, who appear in supporting roles. But the main reason to see the film is the bravura headline by Jessie Buckley, who’s been nominated for a best actress Oscar for her deeply emotional portrait of grief in “Hamnet” (2025).

Buckley can do no wrong in “The Bride!” She previously partnered with Gyllenhaal for her critically acclaimed directorial debut “The Lost Daughter” (2021), for which Buckley received a best supporting actress nod. Here she carries the film’s heaviest load, both as the shadowy visage of “Frankenstein” author Mary Shelley hurling barbs of foreboding from a dark dreamscape, and as Ida, a brash flapper-era Chicagoan party girl whose demise leads to her reincarnation — or “reinvigoration” in the film — as the bride.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

Reviewed: “Pillion” and “Crime 101”

20 Feb

“Crime 101”

Bart Layton’s neo-noir crime drama has a killer cast draped in a B-movie sheen.  The aloof antihero is Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth), who executes precise jewelry heists. Mike knows every detail of the courier or shop he’s knocking over and every job is done within a mile of LA’s 101 freeway, hence the name, shared with Don Winslow’s novella from which the movie is adapted.

Layton seamlessly weaves divergent threads that might otherwise have meandered. We meet Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo), a detective who vexes his department head by pursuing justice and truth instead of closing cases, and Sharon Combs (Halle Berry), an insurance investigator who also is up against it with her corporate hierarchy. Berry could have given her character the pop, sizzle and verve of Vicki Anderson (Fay Dunaway) in the brilliant 1968 version of “The Thomas Crown Affair.” Berry instead plays Sharon as a woman who was once all that but has been worn down by sexism, misogyny and promises broken.

Still, she’s good at her job. So is Mike. Astute at assessing risk, he turns down the next job from his handler (Nick Nolte), who pitches it to Orman (Barry Keoghan), a punkish up-and-comer whose methods are far different from Mike’s. The things bad bosses do to good employees will have you wishing Mike, Lou and Sharon had an HR department to lodge a complaint with.

The taut script gives the ensemble rich material, shaping characters more deeply than seems possible in their brief time on screen. Hemsworth is especially good as Mike, switching from socially awkward to debonair as the job demands it. His troubled past bubbles up as he starts to date a young publicist (Monica Barbaro, who steals a few scenes). Layton and crew tie things up neatly, but the ending is where the movie is least compelling. The gems in “Crime 101” are stashed along the road.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

Frederick Wiseman, chronicler of democratic society

19 Feb

Fred Wiseman (left) and Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi at the Coolidge Corner Theater (Claire Vail).

Frederick Wiseman, the critically revered documentarian whose films mapped the moral frame of American life, died Monday at 96 at his home near Porter Square, in the city he in many ways, spent a career studying.

Born in Boston in 1930 and trained as a lawyer (Yale Law and a stint in the army) before turning to filmmaking, Wiseman carried a jurist’s sensibility into cinema — gathering evidence, observing behavior, withholding judgment. His camera did not accuse; it revealed. His body of work may be one of the most sustained portraits of modern democratic society ever assembled on film.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

Reviewed: “David,” “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” and “The Wrecking Crew”

15 Feb

“David”

Written and directed by Brent Dawes and Phil Cunningham, “David”’s animation is on par with Pixar. It sticks to the part of the Biblical story that chronicles the rise of the young shepherd and poet who would become the unifying King of Israel. Of course, David slays Goliath, repels the Philistines, deals with King Saul’s January 6th cling to power and ultimately makes Jerusalem the capital of Israel — all this around 1,000 BC. David (well voiced by Brandon Engman) is an earnest, reluctant leader full of brio, no matter the tall odds.

Scenes of battle and violent conflict are tres G-rated—think fights in “The Lion King.” As David matures as a military leader, he is not the conflicted warrior king depicted in the streaming series “House of David” and the Bible itself, the one who commits adultery with Bathsheba and subsequently hatches a plot to kill her husband. No, this David often breaks into song and follows prophecy to the letter. It’s crisp animation and tight story-telling.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

Reviewed: “Melania”

3 Feb

Visual appeal but not much to say

Muse Films

For “Melania,” Amazon MGM Studios spent $75 million to bring us what can at best be called a smug, self-aggrandizing video diary. Of that money, only an estimated $5 million was spent on the production. The initial $40 million payment was a license fee for the film and a ‘docu-series’ to run later, of which, Melania Trump reportedly received $28 million, with another $35 million being spent on marketing —i.e., the ad campaign we had to suffer through during the Patriots playoff run. Considering it’s arguably the most expensive documentary ever made, is it any good?

The answer is a qualified “meh.”

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

Reviewed: “Send Help” and “Arco”

1 Feb

“Send Help”

Eyeballs are gouged, testicles put to a blade, and blood spurts in this Sam Rami film. It’s not quite as gory as Rami’s “Evil Dead” films, but it is not exactly shy. Rachel McAdams, dorked out with greasy hair and frumpy clothes, plays an office drone at some cutting-edge tech company. Linda Little is a numbers geek, apt to rise from her cubicle and chat up her bosses with tuna fish smeared to her upper lip. Bradley Preston (played by Dylan O’Brien of “Maze Runner”), becomes Linda’s new boss after his father dies (“Evil Dead”’s Bruce Campbell). Bradley, the jerk, welches on a promised promotion and relocates her to a new Bangkok office. Linda learns of the betrayal en route to Thailand with Bradley and his biz-school bros. The plane goes down, and Linda—a “Survivor” aficionado who has dreamed of a role on the show—suddenly becomes indispensable in hunting, kindling and scavenging. The sex-and-power reversal evokes Ruben Östlund’s darker “Triangle of Sadness” (2022). But “Send Help,” driven by flimsy pretexts for improbable hidden agendas, takes a softer bite of social commentary. The film has Linda and Bradley transitioning from uneasy codependency to something resembling “Lord of the Rings” without earning it. What begins as an empowerment fantasy grows banal. “Send Help” is whimsically entertaining. McAdams’s bravado carries the paunchy plot. 

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

“The Rip” needs stitching while “H is for Hawk” soars

27 Jan

“The Rip”

With a cast of Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Teyana Taylor, Kyle Chandler and Stephen Yeun, one couldn’t possibly go wrong, right? All but one have been nominated for, or won, an Academy Award. Alas, in “The Rip,” writer/director Joe Carnahan (“Boss Level,” “Copshop”), bobbles the ball here with an overly complicated script that confusingly employs misdirection.

Cambridge besties Affleck and Damon play Miami detectives J.D. Byrne and Dane Druthers, who are caught up in the aftermath of another detective (Lina Esco) being executed while investigating the “stash house” of a drug cartel. Byrne and Druthers are brought in for questioning about the murder. But they also have a lead on the house and assemble a crew of trusted associates (Taylor, Yuen, and Catalina Sandino Moreno) to move in.

Inside they find only a young woman (Sasha Calle) house-sitting what she says is the property of her recently deceased grandmother. When $20 million in bills is found in plastic paint buckets in the attic, she claims ignorance. Druthers takes everyone’s cellphone while he “figures thing out,” then, a-la “Assault on Precinct 13,” the streets around the abode go vacant, telephone pole lights start to blink and a barrage of bullets fly. The sum of “the rip” (confiscated drug money) was initially purported by intel to be 150K, so right away we know something’s off and that one of the crew is the rat that killed Esco’s cop and is trying to abscond with the green. As suspicions rise, hidden agendas surface and outside forces add to the pressure point. The result is a clunkier “Reservoir Dogs” (1992) or “The Usual Suspects” (1995). Affleck and Damon lean into their parts, though most of the rest of the cast, save Calle, hang in the orbit of their swagger. That’s part of the problem with this big budget escape room caper – it’s more about muscle than character or intrigue. You really want to like “The Rip,” but its stitching is too loose. 

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

Reviewed: “Resurrection,” “No Other Choice” and “We Bury the Dead”

9 Jan

“Resurrection”

Bi Gan’s dazzling, cerebral sci-fi phantasm folds memory, myth and cinematic form into a single, dream-logic tapestry. Set in a future in which humanity has traded the ability to dream for immortality, “Resurrection” follows the last remaining “deliriant” (Jackson Yee), a Frankenstein-like being still capable of dreaming, and the woman (Shu Qi) tasked with entering his subconscious to retrieve buried truths. What unfolds is an episodic odyssey through visions shaped by Chinese history, genre homage and shifting perspectives. It’s a visually sensual smorgasbord told in chapters aligning with a different sense and narrative style — we begin with German expressionism and wind up with one of the most stunning long shots ever projected on a screen. It’s bathed ominously in languid red and takes place in a trash-strewn, cyberpunk part of the city that hosts a vampire lair where a young punker (Yee again, who plays five roles — one per sense) has come to profess his love for a mercurial chanteuse (Gengxi Li) This bold, poetic nightmare resonates with humanity and wonder. “Resurrection” should be expressly seen on the big screen to drink in Gan’s riveting dreamscape meander.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

← Older Entries