Jeremy Workman’s documentary recounts the antics of eight Rhode Island artists who in 2003 covertly built and lived in a hidden 750-square-foot apartment within the Providence Place Mall. To build the secret enclosure within a dead space in the massive mall, the team had to smuggle in cinder blocks and furniture. The apartment remained undetected for more than four years. The focal point of the film is Michael Townsend, a Rhode Island School of Design instructor, installation artist and something of a merry pied piper who sees the world as his canvas. Earlier Townsend projects include a creepy-cool community of mannequins in a post-apocalyptic setting under an overpass and along an industrial canal, as well as a 9/11 memorial depicting the faces of the fallen. The mall apartment, by default, was something more whimsical, and those involved videotaped the progress on grainy lo-res camcorders. Some of the banter about sacrifice for art and commercialism amid a retail center provokes, coming most to an edge when Townsend and his then wife, Adriana Valdez, one of the eight, get into a jocular tiff about life goals and values – she wants to build a real house in the world. The apartment, replicated on a soundstage for the documentary, makes a nice backdrop for the talking-head testimonials of Townsend and others, but it borders on the cheesy when Townsend acts out moments from the past. The apartment became second-tier national news when exposed; when asked then if he’d been curating a piece of art or living in the mall out of necessity, Townsend gleefully says, essentially, “life is art and art is life.” The son of military parents, Townsend makes for an intriguing character study in real time, archival footage and cheeky reenactment.
The latest from prolific filmmaker Stephen Soderbergh (“Ocean’s Eleven,” “Traffic”) is a sharp, thoughtful spy thriller in the neighborhood of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” (2011), if updated for these high-tech times and tossed on a treadmill. There’s plenty of cloak and dagger, but the story’s center is the relationships between husbands, wives and lovers, be they deviously duplicitous, of high fealty or otherwise. “Black Bag” comes in at about 90 minutes, matching the paranormal psycho-thriller “Presence” released this year by Soderbergh. Who drops two utterly different films within weeks of each other? Both were written by “Jurassic Park” (1993) scribe David Koepp, who outdoes himself here, and both were shot in limited locations, though “Black Bag” has a bigger, world-hopping feel to it. The London-set work and contrasting light-dark framings brought together warmly by a deep, bass-driven jazz score impress in craftsmanship and seamless ease. At the epicenter of the smoldering espionage are British operatives George (Michael Fassbender) and his wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett). George has been alerted to a mole at the agency and tasked to find them – and given just a week to do so. On the list of five possible double dealers: his wife. Hanging in the balance is a nuclear meltdown and the potential death of 20,000 people, but that’s just a side issue to what interests Soderbergh and Koepp. We begin with George inviting the suspects to his and Kathryn’s posh London flat for a lovely lamb roast. Every guest is a professional liar, but did I mention the gravy’s laced with a truth serum? The other attendees are grizzled party-boy Freddie (Tom Burke), his latest office fling and X factor Clarissa (Marisa Abela), the hunky yet generic Col. Stokes (Regé-Jean Page of “Bridgerton”) and the agency’s resident psych, Zoe (Naomie Harris), who, because of a departmental mandate, has regular sessions with everyone at the table. She’s also having a fling with the colonel. As the serum kicks in and courses come and go, infidelities are confessed. The meal culminates with a knife pinning one diner’s hand to the table. George sifts through the fallout as he finds Kathryn plans to travel and a movie ticket stub for two in the wastebasket of her boudoir. When inquired as to the destination of her trip, “black bag” is Kathryn’s response; the info can’t be divulged, with no exceptions for spouses. The chemistry between Fassbender and Blanchett is intellectually and erotically electric, and George and Kathryn have a fashion sense to die for. The casting overall is a coup, though Pierce Brosnan, still dapper as ever as an agency higher-up, feels stirred in as an afterthought. The casting and lean, well-honed and MacGuffin-driven script by Koepp make the film work, as well as the tightness of the final product as pulled together by Soderbergh, who edits and shoots as well.
Keith Poulson, Ari Brisbon and David Pridemore in “Eephus.”
Opening day is near. There’s Cracker Jack excitement in the air and a legitimate hope that the Red Sox will return to postseason form. For lovers of the game and team enthusiasts (primed to get their hearts broken) who can’t wait, catch “Eephus,” a nostalgic slow-roller of a film with “Field of Dreams” (1989) undertones. Though it doesn’t play like one, it’s a rookie effort – the directorial debut of Carson Lund, a longtime cinematographer with roots in New England and ties to the hometown team and America’s game.
The Nashua, New Hampshire, native attended Emerson College and had a stint taking tickets and helping out at the Harvard Film Archive (where his film had a sneak peek last month; it’s now at the Somerville Theatre). His cinematic moorings put him in good company with Robert Eggers, a fellow filmmaker from the Granite State (“The Witch,” “Nosferatu”) and, from the halls of Emerson, the Daniels, who rocked the 2023 Oscars with “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
Lund has been shooting commercials and making independent films for the past 10 years in Los Angeles, where he and Tyler Taormina have formed the Omnes Films collaborative to help finance and launch independent projects. Lund served as director of photography on Taormina’s two critically acclaimed lo-fi features, “Ham on Rye” (2020) and “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” (2024). On “Eephus,” Taormina serves as one of several producers.
Lund said that while growing up, he played baseball around all of New England. “I consider Boston my home city. I went to Red Sox games when I was young, and it cemented my love of the game.” When he moved to L.A., he joined an adult recreational league that became the inspiration for “Eephus.” The project took nearly 10 years to get to the plate.
Reviewed: ‘The Monkey’ and ‘Elevation’ in theaters and streaming now
‘The Monkey’ (2025)
Osgood Perkins, a dead ringer for dad Anthony Perkins (“Psycho”), continues the family tradition from the other side of the lens with this spin on horror master Stephen King’s 1980 short story. The not-so-slow burn is set in Casco, Maine, where we open with Capt. Petey Shelborn (Adam Scott) walking into a pawn shop covered in blood to fix his windup mechanical monkey. After a flamethrower, a speargun and a rat enter the scene, we learn that the monkey is not a toy, a point hammered home regularly by those possessing it. It is something evil, if not death itself. Its victims of ghoulish, cartoonish circumstance are random – only the person winding up the monkey is safe. When the monkey plays its drum, anyone nearby is at risk. Petey’s twin sons Hal and Bill (both Christian Convery) later discover the monkey in a closet in their unhappy home; their dad is now a deadbeat, as their mom, Lois (Tatiana Maslany), tells us. A few cranks of the monkey’s key by the curious kids and mayhem ensues among mom, babysitter Annie Wilkes (Danica Dreyer) and Uncle Chip (Perkins), who moved in to care for the boys with his swinger wife, Aunt Ida (Sarah Levy). The twins behead the mechanical monkey, throw it in the trash and down a well, but it always returned. Flash forward 25 years, and Hal (now played by Theo James) works at a supermarket and visits his own son Petey (Colin O’Brien) once a year out of fear of cursing him. Hal, the film’s occasional narrator, tells us that he and his brother don’t get along. Bill is now totally unhinged and wants to bond with the windup wingding of disaster, with Petey and Hal looped in to his demented scheme as much of Casco gets sent to the great beyond in bloody ways. Part of the fun is Theo James’s yin-and-yang roles as the buttoned-up, protective and paranoid Hal and the delusional Bill, who sports a pseudo-mullet and “damn it all to hell” gusto. Elijah Wood (“Lord of the Rings”) pops in for a dark turn as dim-witted Ted, employed by Bill to retrieve the monkey. Levy’s Aunt Ida is unforgettable for all the wrong reasons, with an unsettling sexual aura and a plotline that’s a creepshow instant classic.
Not sure this fourth flick was necessary, but I’m happy it exists. Renée Zellweger’s goofball heroine has always been a lovable hot mess of miscues and tribulations, and is again here. Of course the series being so British – dry and droll, with cheeky nods and winks – only deepens the buttoned-up hijinks. In the last chapter (“Bridget Jones’s Baby”), Hugh Grant’s Daniel Cleaver, one of the two gents who vied for Bridget’s love in the 2001 original, is presumed dead; in this nearly 10-year follow-up, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), the guy who won her heart and had two children with her, really is dead. (Something about a humanitarian aide mission gone awry in the Sudan.) As a single mom, Bridget can’t boil a pot of water and has zero romantic prospects, though her friends push her to Tinder and other romantic meetup venues. “Labia adhesion is a thing,” one friend tells her when Bridget admits to not having sex in more than four years. Relief comes in the form of a handsome 29-year-old bloke named Roxster McDuff (Leo Woodall, “The White Lotus”), who rescues Bridget (she was 43 when she had her son in the last installment) and her children (a younger daughter in the mix now) from being treed in a park. Bridget does slowly get her groove back and returns to her old gig as a TV producer. How the happily ever after or never not pans out, I won’t say. Returning players include Emma Thompson as Bridget’s old ob-gyn who extols the virtues of a rife sex life and Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones in a requisite cameo as Bridget’s parents. Strangely enough, Firth and Grant show up too, though I won’t spoil how. Also in the mix is the always excellent Chiwetel Ejiofor (“12 Years a Slave”) as Bridget’s son’s music teacher. Just who “the boy” is, is a bit unclear; is it Bridget’s son, William (Casper Knopf), the hunky Roxster or maybe even Hugh Grant, who starred in a movie called “About a Boy” in 2002? The answer doesn’t much matter, as it’s Bridget’s world and we‘re just happy to spend a few madcap moments in it.
Reviewed “Presence,” “I’m Still Here” and “You’re Cordially Invited”
‘You’re Cordially Invited’ (2025)
A pat comedy with few surprises and several gags that don’t quite land makes it over the hump – just barely – on the likability and natural chemistry of Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon. They play Jim and Margot, charged with coordinating and executing the weddings of their daughter and sister, respectively. Los Angeles-based Margot is a bit distant from her Atlanta clan but dutifully books the revered Palmetto House, a quaint island inn on a Georgia bay that the family has always gathered at. Jim, who married there – but a single parent since his wife got sick and died years ago – books his daughter’s wedding for the same day. Whoops: Old-school pen and paper and a sudden heart attack are to blame for a booking gaffe at an inn not really equipped for two large parties. After some push and shove, all agree to make a go of it, but infringements, jealousy and sabotage turn the happy nuptials into something of “The Wedding Crashers” (2005) by way of “The War of the Roses” (1989). Jim is also having a hard time letting go of his daughter, Jenni (a fiery Geraldine Viswanathan, “Drive Away Dolls”), while Margot wrestles with the down-home narrow-mindedness of her extended family around her sis’ choice of husband, a Chippendale dancer. A rogue alligator, “Islands in the Stream” duets, Nick Jonas and Peyton Manning all make their way into the jumble with varying effect. Comedians Rory Scovel and Leanne Morgan are effective in small parts as part of Margot’s “chaos monkey” inner circle, and Jack McBrayer works as the befuddled innkeeper. The strength of the film, written and directed by Nicholas Stoller (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “Get Him to the Greek”), is the rom-com power pairing of Farrell and Witherspoon, who seem like they could do this all day long and we’d be only happy to tag along.
Payal Kapadia’s somber meditation on womanhood and companionship amid the bustling streets of Mumbai feels like a living and breathing document. It follows the lives of three intertwined women, two of whom are nurses and roommates. The more dour of the duo, Prabha (Kani Kusruti), is estranged from her arranged husband, who is now working in Germany, and moves through her days with restrained and wistful introspection. The younger of the two, Anu (Divya Prabha), is bright-eyed, perky and naively idealistic as she constantly overspends and often asks Prabha to cover her rent. She has a secret Muslim lover who asks her to wear a burka when sneaking over for their trysts. That’s one of the interesting things about Kapadia’s portrait of Mumbai – it delves into and illuminates the myriad subtle cultural, linguistic and religious identities that coexist nearly seamlessly in the dense urban setting. The movie places the patriarchy under a microscope, not by lambasting double standards and gender inequality, but by showing the sisterhood formed through common causes and tribulations. Prabha and Anu are busy working out their romantic and professional futures while the third woman, the hospital’s cook, Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), a steely, no-nonsense, middle-aged widow, rails in vain against a developer who wants to displace her. “All We Imagine as Light” is a quiet film that affects the viewer in ebbs and flow, and Kapadia’s poetic cinematic flourishes add a dreamy, hypnotic affect to the deeply emotional sojourn. Kapadia was recently in Brookline to show the film at the Coolidge Corner Theatre and was rightly praised as a breakthrough filmmaker. The texture and tenor of “All We Imagine as Light” is reminiscent of Deepa Mehta’s Elements trilogy, which bodes well for Kapadia’s future endeavors.
The Revolutions per Minute Festival hosts 10 works by Somerville experimental filmmaker Saul Levine at The Brattle Theatre on Sunday.
Not sure what experimental films are? If you’ve ever been to Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art and seen trippy, surreal video installations, you’re on your way. Experimental or avant-garde film is usually deeply personal, often sociopolitical in context and reflective of the artist’s life in the moment.
Levine, born 1938, has been producing films for nearly 60 years; he was a professor in the Visual Arts Program at MassArt for 39 years.
Levine started his filmmaking career with “Salt of the Sea” (1965), featuring footage of his friends hopping from a boat to a buoy in the New Haven harbor. “I tried to make the jump with the camera,” Levine said, “and I fell into the water but held on to the camera.” The waterlogged footage, which Levine described as “abstract swirls of magenta and turquoise,” was turned into a four-minute short that ended with a clear shot of his friend perched upon the buoy.
If you watch Levine’s later works, such as his series “Driven (Boston After Dark)” (2002-present), in which Levine rides around in a car filming subjects and captures moments in time, or “Sun Drum Moon Note” (2018), which screens Sunday, you’ll notice shaky camera work. Part of that is Levine’s editing style, but adding to it are genetic neurological ticks – what Levine refers to as “tremors” – that he’s had since birth. As a result, Levine also speaks with a noticeable stammer.
Age and neurological affliction keeps Levine from getting behind the camera as much as he used to. Levine’s time at MassArt was also cut short, ending with his resignation in 2018. He said he felt “forced out” after school administrators accused him of harming students by showing his compiled film “Notes After a Long Silence” (1989), a collage that includes scenes of him having sex with his then partner. “It was ridiculous,” Levine said, as he’d screened “Notes” over several years without complaint and “the film was posted on the school’s website.” Levine gave passionate commentary on the situation in a video on Facebook, saying he felt “ambushed” by the school’s administration. The same year, fellow MassArt professor Nicholas Nixon, a Guggenheim fellow and photographer, came under scrutiny in a Boston Globe article for more severe, yet similar allegations of inappropriate academic behavior. The Globe mentioned Levine in conjunction with Nixon, who also resigned.
Robert Eggers’ remake of F.W. Murnau’s indelible 1922 classic is more akin in plot and scope to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” than Murnau’s inaugural cinematic adaptation, which was inspired by Stoker’s classic 1897 vampire tale. What’s the difference between Dracula and Nosferatu? Drac’s more dashing and suave, whereas the nosferatu named Count Orlok is a bald, withered being, grotesque by most human norms of comeliness and hygiene. Murnau, a master of practical effects, cranked up the mystical mind control aspects and educed a once-in-a-century performance from Orlok portrayer Max Schreck. Here, as played by Bill Skarsgård, whose brother Alexander worked with Eggers on “The Northman” (2022), Orlok is a shadowy incarnation that never comes into the light the way Schreck or even Klaus Kinski did in Werner Herzog’s 1979 take. Despite the title “Nosferatu the Vampyre” on the Herzog version, Kinski’s count is listed as “Dracula” and was something of a blend of the Bela Lugosi and Schreck incarnations. Eggers, who has made his name with eerie ambient immersions into the outré – “The Witch” (2015) and “The Lighthouse” (2019) – does more of the same here with strong black-and-white visuals delivered by director of photography Jarin Blaschke, who’s worked with Eggers on all his films, and the sonorous bolstering of Orlok’s gravelly intonations. The object of the carnivorous count’s desire is Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp), a young German woman with whom he forges a psychic connection despite residing far away in Transylvania (a picture can do that). To meet IRL, Orlok summons Ellen’s real-estate lackey husband, Thomas (Nicholas Hoult, now on-screen in “Juror #2”), to his castle to receive a deed to the flat across the way from their apartment in Wisborg. The count drains half the hemoglobin in Thomas’ body – nothing like weakening your rival in love before moving in. Once ashore in Wisborg (the scenes of Orlok dining on the crew while at sea are the most grim and gruesome), Orlok unleashes a plague and takes over the souls of a few townsfolk to employ as minions in pursuit of Ellen. In his adaptation, Eggers pays sincere homage to Murnau and Herzog’s versions. The result feels new in look and posture, but it doesn’t innovate much in the vampiric pantheon. Depp turns in the film’s most palpable performance, and for a Christmas treat, Eggers regular Willem Dafoe drops in as a batty academic and occult expert intent on sending Orlok back to the beyond for good.
‘Babygirl’ (2024)
Keeping with the psychosexual power games, Nicole Kidman notches her second Christmas film that features her bare derrière. That other movie, Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 swan song, “Eyes Wide Shut,” has grown on me over the years, especially the theme of small indulgences having larger, unintended ripples. Here Kidman plays Romy, the very in-charge chief executive of an e-commerce company named Tensile Automation – basically Amazon on crack. Romy lives in a palatial Manhattan condo with her husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas), a noted New York theater director, and two precocious teen daughters (Esther McGregor and Vaughan Reilly), but something’s clearly amiss. After sex, Romy runs off to another room to watch incest porn; then there’s the new intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson) who seems to know how to push every one of Romy’s buttons and regularly challenges her authority and proclamations in public forums – something few if any in the C-suite of Tensile Automation would dare to consider. Samuel chooses Romy as his mentor, and in their one-on-ones, keeps on pushing. Outside the office, the relationship turns physical with Samuel subjecting Romy to the kind of erotic B&D shenanigans that made “9½ Weeks” (1986) a kinky cultural staple for decades. Like Todd Field did with “Tár” (2022), writer-director Halina Reijn (“Bodies Bodies Bodies”) does a deft job of flipping the gender power paradigm. Kidman is superb as she riffles through the masks her character wears – nurturing mother, caring wife, nonapologetic CEO, lonely, unfulfilled soul and object of sexual subservience – often on a dime. Dickinson’s Samuel, by contrast, feels underwritten and hollow, which is a letdown given the strong performances he delivered in “Beach Rats” (2017) and “Triangle of Sadness” (2022). We never get the why of Samuel doing what he does, and when he starts threatening to upend Romy at the office or her coddled home life (he shows up uninvited for one of the girls’ birthday parties), he takes on the role of cruel manipulator as well as wormy opportunist, one we find ourselves rooting for a billionaire exec to take down. Also notable in the web of desire and deceit is Sophie Wilde (“Talk to Me”) as Romy’s protégée, who ends up dating Samuel as the affair becomes combative.
‘The Fire Inside’ (2024)
Cambridge-born filmmaker Rachel Morrison, the first woman cinematographer to receive an Oscar nod (“Mudbound”) in the category, makes her directorial debut with this biopic about Claressa “T-Rex” Shields, the first U.S. woman to win gold in Olympic boxing. The focus of Morrison’s film (working from a script by “Moonlight” director Barry Jenkins), is not her current pinnacle of pow, however, as she is still stalking opponents in the ring and undefeated as a pro, but Shields’ challenging early years in Flint, Michigan, where she was raised by a distracted single mother (the father was in jail) and lacking resources to get by. As Shields, Ryan Destiny brings a fierce pugnaciousness to the part. It’s an impressive, all-in performance not without nuance and a vein of vulnerability. The heat – and heart – of the film lies in Shields’ relationship with trainer Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry), who backfills as a father figure. Bigger matters around Shields’ rise to prominence are a persisting gross gender disparity when it comes to compensation, respect and beyond, with a U.S. Olympic Committee publicist on Shields constantly to be more “ladylike.” Well-crafted and shot (by music video pro Rina Yang, not Morrison), with deep, palpable performances from Destiny and Henry, “The Fire Inside” strangely plays out somewhat flat-footed. Part of that’s the overuse of genre clichés (something you would not expect from the normally reliable Jenkins, but then again, consider his new “Mufasa”) and the knowledge that Shields would go on to become the Tom Brady of her sport. I’m not sure what’s next on Morrison’s plate, but “The Fire Inside” displays enough poise and promise to to get me off my stool for another round.
‘Homestead’ (2024)
Angel Studios, the family-themed, faith-based production company behind last year’s box office wonder “Sound of Freedom” (made for a cool 14 mill, it grossed near 200) saddles up with this post-terrorist-attack survival drama in which food, water and other life-sustaining needs become scarce as infrastructure and the law crumbles. The what and the why is a dirty bomb delivered by sailboat, detonated just off the L.A. coastline. Communications go silent, and the folks living on a sprawling, vineyard-esque estate of the title go into lockdown mode. The patriarch of the gorgeous grounds, billionaire Ian Ross (played by the steely eyed Neal McDonough) hires his own security detail headed by ex-Green Beret Jeff Eriksson (Bailey Chase) to keep out the riffraff (people seeking food and shelter). Based on the “Black Autumn” series by Jeff Kirkham and Jason Ross and directed patly by Ben Smallbone, “Homestead” wafts wisps of provocations – the haves versus the have-nots, what to eat when the corner market is bare and commitment to community, i.e., helping your fellow human in the wake of a societal collapse, but none really excite. Part of that is because Ross and his crew are so inherently entitled that you half want to see the hordes at the gate come for them Marie Antoinette style, and Chase’s operative is cold, aloof and always sizes up a situation with a finger on the trigger; neither character is particularly empathetic. The film does work its way around in the end, but feels rote. Alex Garland’s “Civil War,” released this year, covered similar territory with more bite. You do have to marvel at the spread that Ross and his family are holed up in, and much of the film feels like a grand mansion tour (despite the California setting, it’s in Bountiful, Utah, not too far from Angel Studios HQ).
A silly concept well-played, thanks largely to lead Megan Fox leaning in on her screen persona. It’s not the first time for Fox, who rose to notoriety as eye candy for teenage boys in the “Transformer” films: In 2009 she paired with “Girlfight” (2000) director Karyn Kusama and writer Diablo Cody (“Juno”) for the deconstructive horror-comedy “Jennifer’s Body.” Here she plays Alice, a droid nanny in a clingy maid outfit. She’s what’s known as a “sim,” mass-produced humanlike robots programmed to help out around the house, hospital, worksite or whatever. Alice is brought into the fold of a family to aid Nick (Michele Monroe) in the care of his daughter (Matilda Firth) and infant son because mom (Madeline Zima) is waiting on a heart transplant and might not be in the picture long. There’s tension because Nick is a construction worker dealing with the issue of sims replacing him and his crew at work, yet also sexual tension between him and Alice that’s pretty high from the get-go, added by glimpses of Alice in her babydoll garb and undies. The catalyst that turns Alice into a “M3gan”-esque terminator (yes, Megan goes M3gan) is the movie “Casablanca” – no joke. Nick’s a fan, and when Alice sits down to watch it with him one night and fires off a salvo of film factoids, Nick asks her if there is anyway to expunge the info from her memory banks so she might enjoy the cinematic experience organically. The answer is a disastrous reset that renders Alice jailbroken and able to go off script. Fox does a commendable job of physically articulating the tics and quirks of being a ’bot. How the film directed by S.K. Dale, who worked with Fox on “Till Death” (2021, also streaming on Netflix), evolves from there, packs a few neat curveballs and leaves things open for a sequel, but you’ve seen this bad ’bot plot before – and better.
‘Red One’ (2024)
Still playing in theaters but also now on Amazon Prime for free this week is this ho-ho-ho, so-so comedy-adventure that has Saint Nick (J.K. Simmons) kidnapped so an evil impish creature can take over the reins of Christmas. “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993) this is not. Simmons’ Santa is a bit of a change-up from your usual: He works out, hates macaroons and has a tricked-out sled with grotesquely jacked CGI reindeer. In this winter wonderland universe directed by Jake Kasdan (“Zero Effect”) there’s an org called the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority that’s trying to “rewild” the world with entities of myth and lore. One such is Grýla (Kiernan Shipka), the winter witch from Icelandic lore wants to take over the sleigh and deliver snow globes to the naughty that will imprison them in the globe for life. This is cause for pause, because is imprisoning potential future sociopaths a bad thing (well, yeah, because it’s kids, and naughty doesn’t mean homicidal), and did Grýla in the plotting of her scheme ever contemplate a three-strikes policy? In the mix to save the day are Dwayne Johnson as Nick’s head of security, Chris Evans as a hacker and bungling pa who accidentally gives away the secret locale of Santa’s operations, and Lucy Liu as a Mora operative. Thankfully, the ever-cantankerous Krampus (Kristofer Hivju, “Cocaine Bear”) makes an appearance and brings fire and fun to the few scenes he’s in. “Red One” is relatively watchable family fare, but as ephemeral and forgettable as a first dusting of snow.
Another just-watchable holiday-themed flick that treads heavily on its “Die Hard” (1988) aspirations, starting with an East Coast fish-out-of-water Jersey boy hero, now played by Taron Egerton (Elton John himself from “Rocketman”), trying to thwart a terrorist strike in a bustling L.A. complex. Egerton plays Ethan Kopek, an underachieving TSA officer and cop wannabe who regularly shows up late for airport shifts and, as a result, draws menial shit job duties and can’t get a promotion. It’s Christmas Eve and, as is his MO, Ethan shows up late and is assigned a luggage-scanning post. Unbeknown, the station is the target of terrorists trying to get a briefcase full of the lethal Russian nerve gas Novichok onto a plane. The motive has to do with framing the Russians by killing a congresswoman aboard and thus generating contracts for U.S. military contractors, or something like that, not the most inventive MacGuffin. The terrorists, led by a calm, cool Jason Bateman (“Ozark”), get the bag through the checkpoint through a threat to Ethan: that his pregnant girlfriend (Sofia Carson) working in another wing of the airport is in a sniper’s scope and will be shot should he not comply with their every instruction. It’s a pat but passable thriller, with credit to Bateman’s wormy confidence and Danielle Deadwyler, good here as a cop in the mix and even better in “The Piano Lesson” this year. But they’re not enough to elicit a “Yippee-ki-yay.”
For What it's Worth 