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CHALLENGERS (2024)

Starring Zendaya, Josh O'Connor, Mike Faist, Jake Jensen, Darnell Appling, Bryan Doo, Shane T Harris, Nada Despotovich, Joan Mcshane, Chris Fowler, Mary Joe Fernandez, AJ Lister, Connor Aulson, Doria Bramante, Christine Dye, James Sylva, Kenneth A. Osherow, Kevin Collins, Burgess Byrd, Jason Tong, Hudson Rivera, Noah Eisenberg and Emma Davis.

Screenplay by Justin Kuritzkes.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino.

Distributed by Amazon MGM Studios. 131 minutes. Rated R.

It’s a problem when you see a movie about a love triangle in which all of the points of that triangle are so toxically unlikeable that you tend to think that they all deserve the misery that they are causing each other.

Oh, sure, some of them are better than others. One of the guys is simply horribly needy, cut off from his feelings and passive aggressive. One of the guys is immature, untrustworthy, vain, jaded and constantly trying to steal his best friend’s girl. In the meantime the woman is a complete horror – selfish, mean, angry, manipulative, unfeeling and treats both of the guys like trash.

You never really understand why both guys seem to be so obsessed with her, other than the possible fact that she is much hotter looking than either of them.

And honestly, with the only slightly closeted homoerotic subtext which kept rearing its head between the two male leads, you tend to think their lives would have been a lot happier had they just forgotten the girl and hooked up with each other.

The real challenge in Challengers is to find a character to root for – either as lovers, or as friends, or even simply as tennis pros. Good luck with that.

Challengers looks at this threesome, flipping back and forth in time over a period of about 13 years. We watch the characters grow from horny college tennis phenoms to horny regulars on the pro circuit, all the while never growing emotionally.

The main character (so much as there is a main character) is Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), an attractive-but-jaded teen tennis phenom whose career is cut short too early by a knee injury. We meet her before she has that life-altering wound, though, when she is still full of potential as a college tennis phenom.

The dudes are Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), who have been friends playing together on the circuit since they were kids. They meet up with Tashi at a teen tournament, talk her up to their room to try to get her drunk. (And, of course, the idea of seducing her lingers in the back of their minds.)

Tashi is more than willing to tease the horny, shy boys, and ends up making out with both of them on the bed – and then she slips out of the embrace and sits back and watches them making out with each other.

Tashi insists early on that she doesn’t want to be a homewrecker, but that is exactly what she becomes, metaphorically.

Over the years Tashi hooks up with both of the guys. First, she is with Patrick, but when she is injured and it becomes obvious that Art has a better career path than Patrick, she gets involved with Art, first as his trainer and eventually as his wife. But their fragile marriage (and their small child) doesn’t mean Tashi is above periodically sleeping with Patrick.

The guys' battle for Tashi is symbolized in their climactic tennis match, which is peppered in throughout the film. Art is near the top of the standings and Patrick is just barely holding on to his spot in the circuit. Art is considering retiring to become a family man (a choice which Tashi is very much against) and wants to go out on top. Patrick needs a big win in order to stay on the pro circuit. Therefore it becomes a grudge match for a pair of guys who already have a serious grudge against each other.

Challengers also does its best to turn tennis into a blood sport, which may even be true, but still it is a bit disorienting on film. The ball constantly hits the racket with a loud report like a gunshot, and on each lunge on the court the players grunt like they are being tortured. While, in fairness, there is some very spectacular tennis footage here, these runaway sound effects also have the tendency of distancing the viewer from the action.

In fairness, Challengers is an extremely well-made film, with good acting on all sides, some terrific sports footage and an evocative visual sense. I just can’t get over the fact that all three of the main characters are such jerks that it is hard to care about any of their lives, careers and their very messy love lives.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: April 25, 2024.

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THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE (2024)

Starring Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, Alex Pettyfer, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Babs Olusanmokun, Henry Golding, Cary Elwes, Til Schweiger, Henrique Zaga, Roger Snipes, Danny Sapani, Freddie Fox, Olaf Kayhan, Mert Dincer, Ethel von Brixham, Rory Kinnear, James Wilby, Henrique Zaga, Danny Sapani, Matthew Hawksley, Simon Paisley Day and Mark Oosterveen.

Screenplay by Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson and Arash Amel and Guy Ritchie.

Directed by Guy Ritchie.

Distributed by Lionsgate. 120 minutes. Rated R.

At the beginning of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, there is a chyron which explains that this film is “based on a true story.” Apparently, the word “based” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. This is the Guy-Ritchie-ization of World History, in which a group of 15-20 “unofficial” British soldiers shoot, stab, garotte, explode and wreak havoc through hundreds or perhaps even thousands of Nazis and not one of our heroes gets injured, or slowed down in any significant way.

Now, I’m not going to lie, I was not familiar with the story that was the genesis of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare before seeing this movie. However, one of the other critics at the screening I saw of the film had read the book on which it was based, and he assures me that this was a very loose, fantastical interpretation of what happened. In reality, people did bleed, sweat, cry and die to achieve this mission.

Even on the most basic level, this film is romanticized, with most of our soldiers being male-model handsome (although attractively scruffy) and the one woman being drop-dead gorgeous. The real pictures of the combatants are shown at the end and all of them were much less… ummm… photogenic.

However, if you are willing to divorce the facts from this supposedly factual film, and just look at it as a straight Guy Ritchie action/adventure saga, then I have to admit that The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a lot of fun.

The story is based upon a long-hidden mission during World War II, which was ordered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill. (What actually happened was not publicly revealed until 2016, long after pretty much everyone involved had died.) The Germans had stymied the rest of the European continent due to their U-boat submarines, which regularly sank or took over ships trying to bring passengers, weapons and supplies to the Allied forces.

Britain was on the verge of collapse and the United States refused to join the war until the U-boats were no longer a threat. Therefore, the British government decided to launch an off-the-books mission called Operation Postmaster to hobble the submarine fleet. They put together a band of renegade soldiers and criminals to go to the Spanish island of Fernando Po, off West Africa in the Gulf of Guinea. Once there, they planned to blow up an Italian ship which was transporting all of the submarine fleet’s weapons and supplies.

That part of the film’s story is (mostly) true. A lot of the rest is sheer fantasy.

The head of the mission was Gustavus Henry March-Phillipps (played by Henry Cavill), a loose-cannon soldier – according to the film, he had to be released from prison to take over the mission – who put together a band of similarly sketchy mercenaries to complete the mission.

They were to meet up with a gorgeous spy named Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González) who had her own grudge against the Nazis – she was a Jew whose family had been captured by the Germans. Her job was to seduce and betray the head of the Nazi forces in Fernando Po (Til Schweiger). Together they all put together an extremely complicated plan to distract the Nazis and attack the ship, although eventually most of their plans consist of going in, shooting, stabbing and killing as many people as get in their way.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is essentially World War II fan fiction. It is slightly less blatantly untrue than Quentin Tarantino's WWII fantasy Inglourious Basterds, but it is similarly enjoyable in a historical wish-fulfillment kind of way. Just don’t go in there expecting to learn the real story.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: April 19, 2024.

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CIVIL WAR (2024)

Starring Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Nick Offerman, Nelson Lee, Evan Lai, Sonoya Mizuno, Jefferson White, Juani Feliz, Edmund Donovan, Karl Glusman, Jin Ha, Jojo T. Gibbs, Jess Matney and Jesse Plemons.

Screenplay by Alex Garland.

Directed by Alex Garland.

Distributed by A24. 109 minutes. Rated R.

Civil War takes place in the very near future, a look at an America that is at war with itself and violently coming apart at the seams. It’s a dystopian wasteland with hundreds of abandoned cars, burnt out cities, gunfights punctuating the night, abandoned corpses and people turning on each other. It’s a very depressing thing to speculate about. Particularly because none of it seems all that far-fetched from where we are in history.

Interestingly, the writer/director Alex Garland doesn’t really bother with the politics of the situation. We never completely know what has caused the rift in the States – we are just plummeted into the situation with little or no understanding of the reasoning behind the conflict.

Even occasional hints are somewhat confounding. For example the force taking on the American government is apparently a coalition between the states of Texas and California – and I don’t think in reality you can find two more diametrically different States. Also the US President, as played by Nick Offerman, is somewhat reminiscent of Donald Trump, and yet in other ways he is not.

Garland seems to be saying it really doesn’t matter to the story that he is telling. Once the war has come, the causes sort of blur into the background. This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around.

Civil War revolves around four war correspondents who are crossing the country in a news van trying to cover the story, and hopefully get an interview with the President.

These (extremely) intrepid journalists are: Lee (Kirsten Dunst), a renowned but rather jaded photo journalist, Jesse (Cailee Spaeny), an extremely young-looking photographer who idolizes Lee and is still old-school enough to use a 35mm film camera, Joel (Wagner Moura), a writer who seems to be just a bit too excited by the warfare going on around them and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), an aging journalist who is much more circumspect and concerned about all that is going on around them.

Interestingly, although the two women are constantly taking pictures and the two men are supposedly writing the stories, they have no way of forwarding the pictures (cell coverage is gone) and they guys never seem to actually get around to writing.

However, they cheat death many times in their voyage across country to Washington DC. They realize very few people can be trusted at this point and are nearly constantly getting shot at. They also realize quickly that their press credentials are not going to keep them safe.

In general I am not a huge fan of dystopian films, but I have to admit that Civil War is a particularly gripping one, particularly in its fast-paced, danger-filled climax. The sight of Washington DC under attack, with trashed cars piled up to make barricades and missiles lighting up the night sky is disturbing, to say the least. And a brief earlier segment with Jesse Plemons as a renegade soldier deciding who is a “real American” is one of the more harrowing scenes in recent cinema.

Director Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation) has been saying that Civil War will probably be his last directing job, at least for the foreseeable future. (He will probably continue on as a screenwriter.) If that is indeed the case, Civil War is a pretty good way to sign off.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: April 12, 2024.

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STING (2024)

Starring Tony J. Black, Alyla Browne, Alcira Carpio, Silvia Colloca, Ryan Corr, Jermaine Fowler, Noni Hazlehurst, Rowland Holmes, Danny Kim, Penelope Mitchell and Robyn Nevin.

Screenplay by Kiah Roache-Turner.

Directed by Kiah Roache-Turner.

Distributed by Well Go USA Entertainment. 91 minutes. Rated R.

Occasionally Sting can’t quite decide if it is a creature-feature horror film or a heartfelt family drama. Sadly, it doesn’t quite work on either level, although it does have enough comic jump scares to make it some cheesy fun. After all, Sting doesn’t take itself too seriously, so why should we? (I am saying that both as a positive and as a negative.)

The story revolves around a strangely mutating spider who grows from a small normal size to the size of a hog in the space of a few days. And, needless to say, the bigger the spider gets, the bigger its meals become. She starts with eating the many, many cockroaches in a Brooklyn tenement apartment, and quickly graduates to small pets, and then tenants and exterminators. (I honestly have no way of telling the sex of a spider, but one of the characters refers to the creature as a she, so I’ll take her word for it.)

It also revolves around a family living in the building, particularly the young daughter Charlotte (Alyla Brown). She lives with her mother Heather (Penelope Mitchell), stepfather Ethan (Ryan Corr) and her infant sister. Ethan is a struggling comic book artist who took a job as the super at an old Brooklyn tenement apartment run by his slumlord mother-in-law. (Even though very little of the film takes place outside of the apartment, it doesn’t really look all that much like Brooklyn, and since it’s an Australian film, I’d assume it was made there.)

Ethan and Charlotte are working together on a comic book which actually has gotten sold and might be their big break if they can only get it finished, and yet Charlotte doesn’t particularly seem to like Ethan at all. In fact, honestly, Charlotte appears to be bit of a budding sociopath through much of the film – and not just because she thinks an aggressive, fast-growing spider makes for a good secret pet – until she eventually shows humanity when on the run from the giant spider and trying to save her family.

She had found the spider while on one of her apparently regular jaunts through the ventilation system of the old building. She apparently breaks into the other apartments through the huge vents, just to steal grandma’s dolls, make vaguely creepy Instagram posts of other people’s stuff, or simply to look around. In one of those nocturnal visits, she finds a spider crawled on her hand. Instead of trying to get it off, she decides to keep it as a pet. For the record, she names the spider Sting after the sword in The Lord of the Rings, not the former Police singer.

Eventually Sting gets loose in the same ventilation system and starts either killing or capturing the people in massive webs.

It’s sort of cheesy and sort of silly, but sort of fun too. And really, that’s all this film is trying for.

Jermaine Fowler adds some decent comic relief in the role of an exterminator who may have met his match with this arachnid. Honestly, other than him and the main family, most of the characters are sort of one-dimensional spider bait, but that’s okay, we’re not looking for deep characterization in a giant spider movie. We are looking for scares, and Sting delivers the goods just often enough to make it worth a look if it shows up on cable at 3:00 in the morning sometime.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: April 11, 2024.

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THE GREATEST HITS (2024)

Starring Lucy Boynton, Justin H. Min, David Corenswet, Austin Crute, Jackson Kelly, Retta, Andie Ju, Rory Keane, Pocket Turlington, Naomi Phan, Tom Yi, Evan Shafran, Jenne Kang, Mary Eileen O'Donnell, Ren Burttet, Nelly Furtado, Phil Manzanera, Andy McKay and Bryan Ferry.

Screenplay by Ned Benson.

Directed by Ned Benson.

Distributed by Searchlight Pictures. 94 minutes. Rated PG-13.

There are few things in the world that I love more in movies than music, romance and time travel. The Greatest Hits merges all these things together, so it really should be like catnip to me.

So, why didn’t I like it more than I did? In fact, why did I find it kind of boring and not just a tiny bit maudlin?

The Greatest Hits rides on a kind of genius central concept, and then squanders it all mercilessly.

Harriet (played by Lucy Boynton, who was Freddie Mercury’s female bestie in Bohemian Rhapsody) is a music producer who is going through a severe bout of depression after the sudden accidental death of Max (David Corenswet), the love of her life.

As a woman whose life revolves around music, she finds that listening to certain songs from the past can – quite literally – transport her to the time in which she originally experienced the song. She quickly becomes addicted to this strange new skill, spending most of her time picking certain songs and going back to relive her experiences with Max.

Unfortunately, you can’t always live in the past, and her pressing urge to keep returning to years gone by starts to negatively affect her present, particularly when she meets a guy (Justin H. Min) in a grief counseling group and realizes she kind of likes him. (Apparently, she didn’t like him enough for the screenwriter to actually give his character a name – unless I missed it – despite the fact that he plays a huge role in the second half of the film.)

Still, it’s a wild idea, full of possibilities and wonder. It’s a shame that The Greatest Hits can’t live up to its greatest bits.

For one thing, Harriet is a really miserable character, who doesn’t even seem to realize the wondrous miracle of what is happening to her. Instead, the film treats this gift as a burden, as an addiction that only makes her even more miserable in the present. And, yes, I get that the film suggests that you can get lost in the past and at the same time lose your way in the present, but there must have been a better way to convey that message.

The film also does not seem to know how to portray Harriet’s relationships, both with the late ex and the new dude in her life. It turns out to be a mix of tortured longing and romcom cliches – and for a movie that trades in romantic comedy platitudes, The Greatest Hits has very little in the way of lightness or humor.

However, The Greatest Hits does get bonus points for brief cameos by former pop star Nelly Furtado and the classic rock band Roxy Music, playing a song from their recent 50th anniversary reunion tour. In fact, the movie’s use of music in general as a necessity in the fabric of life is pretty spot on.

Too bad they couldn’t get the rest of their ideas to come together nearly as well.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: April 10, 2024.

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MONKEY MAN (2024)

Starring Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley, Pitobash, Sobhita Dhulipala, Sikandar Kher, Vipin Sharma, Ashwini Kalsekar, Adithi Kalkunte, Makarand Deshpande, Jatin Malik and Zakir Hussain.

Screenplay by Dev Patel and Paul Angunawela and John Collee.

Directed by Dev Patel.

Distributed by Universal Pictures. 121 minutes. Rated R.

Indian actor Dev Patel has put together an interesting career over the past fifteen years or so. He’s starred in such diverse and mostly acclaimed projects as Slumdog Millionaire (I kind of hated that way-overrated Best Picture winning film, but he was very good in it), Lion, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and even as part of the ensemble in the Aaron Sorkin HBO series The Newsroom (my personal favorite of his roles).

However, despite working fairly regularly over the years – mostly in starring roles – he has never really had a big break-out role that exploded him into the A-list of movie celebrities.

Therefore, he has decided to take matters into his own hands. In the new action thriller Monkey Man, Patel is not only the star, but he also co-wrote and directed the film. And despite the sort of ridiculous title and the fact that Monkey Man is very, very violent (sometimes stupidly violent), it is a pretty impressive calling card for the actor and now budding filmmaker – a stylish and often thrilling piece of genre filmmaking with a distinctive Indian flair.

In fact, to a certain extent, Monkey Man shares a decent amount of the plot points and themes with Patel’s Slumdog breakthrough – young Indian boy struggling to survive after the violent killing of his mother, growing into a young man who is consistently underestimated and beaten down, delving in the gray areas of organized crime and police corruption, and showing the slums of India to be something of a hell on Earth. Also like Slumdog Millionaire, we are thrown in well into the story and then many of the details are filled in through flashbacks.

Patel’s character here (he is never named, merely referred to as the Kid) grew up on the streets after his mother’s death, and in his early thirties he is part of an inhumane fight club. He is cast as the villain fighter, wearing an ape mask and called Monkey Man, and he is basically paid (rather poorly) to lose. His main skill as a fighter in this brutal circuit is that he bleeds profusely, which helps to inflame the bloodlust of the audience.

The Monkey Man character was not just random, though, nor was it simply because he had an ape mask. (Technically, an ape isn’t a monkey, but we won’t even get into that.) As a child, the kid’s mother enthralled the young boy with stories of the Hindu deity Hanuman.

According to Wikipedia, Hanuman “epitomizes the fusion of ‘strength, heroic initiative, and assertive excellence’ with ‘loving, emotional devotion’ to his lord Rama, embodying both Shakti and Bhakti. Subsequent literature has occasionally depicted him as the patron deity of martial arts, meditation, and scholarly pursuits. He is revered as an exemplar of self-control, faith, and commitment to a cause, transcending his outward Vanara appearance.”

Therefore the Kid is not only in thrall of Hanuman, in his Monkey Man character he is trying to be him. However, the fighting is just a means to an end for the Kid. He uses the money he makes to infiltrate the local organized crime in order to avenge himself on people who may have wronged him in the past.  

He begins a long, violent trail through the Indian underworld, law enforcement and politics. When badly injured during an early attempt at vengeance, he is brought into a local temple, where he is taught to win at fighting and hone his strengths and the strength of Hanuman. This leads to a long, bloody, hectic sequence where he not only tries to avenge himself but may also significantly change Indian political power.

The fighting scenes of Monkey Man are both exciting and a little bit ridiculous – there is no way this guy can take on so many people and be injured as significantly as he is and still keep going. However, action films long ago stopped making logical sense, and at least Patel is willing to acknowledge that the Kid is getting badly injured each time he goes out there, often having to take weeks or months to recover.

Honestly, I can’t imagine that I will ever be moved to see Monkey Man again, but I’m glad that I got to experience it.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: April 5, 2024.

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WICKED LITTLE LETTERS (2023)

Starring Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Anjana Vasan, Joanna Scanlan, Gemma Jones, Malachi Kirby, Lolly Adefope, Eileen Atkins, Timothy Spall, Alisha Weir, Paul Chahidi, Hugh Skinner, Richard Goulding, Tim Key, Jason Watkins, Krishni Patel, Nikita Elle Jakobsen, Adam Treasure, Susie Fairfax, Jamie Chapman, Vinodini Patel, Amy Lee Ronaldson and Grant Crookes.

Screenplay by Jonny Sweet.

Directed by Thea Sharrock.

Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. 100 minutes. Rated R.

There can be something wonderfully freeing about the use of profanity, particularly for someone who is caught in a repressive lifestyle. However, there is a cost in completely letting loose as well.

That is the moral behind this slight-but-amusing “based on a true story” British period piece.

Perhaps the most shocking part of Wicked Little Letters is that it was ever shocking. Of course, the world of small-town England about a hundred years ago is long gone. It’s interesting to look at what happened through a post-Twitter lens. Which is probably why this story of a serial poison pen letter writer in the quaint little village Littlehampton, England is portrayed somewhat comically, almost as a bit of a farce, even though at the time it was highly scandalous.

Olivia Colman plays Edith Swan, a highly repressed and highly religious spinster living in a small house with her domineering father and her proper, subdued mother. Edith’s life is a dull affair – she goes to church, spends time with some of the local women in things like sewing circles and playing card games, and spends much of her time passive-aggressively looking down on other people.

Suddenly, she starts receiving the foulest anonymous letters in the mail. Eventually, the letter writer spreads out and starts to send correspondence to other villagers, but Edith remains the main target of the profanity-strewn screeds.

Immediately suspected is her next-door neighbor, Rose (Jesse Buckley), an Irish immigrant, a widowed mother and a woman of somewhat loose morals for the time. (She works at a bar and is living with a Black man. And she is known to have a very salty vocabulary.)

Little things stood out to make Rose’s involvement in these letters a bit suspicious. The writer was obviously not really fluent in profanity – although filled with curse words and sexual innuendo, the insults really made no sense and the curses were usually used incorrectly, almost like someone was doing a Mad Libs book in which each blank space read “insert curse word here.”  

Also noticed, but mostly ignored, was the fact that the handwriting on the letters was obviously different than Rose’s.

Still, the police are determined to blame Rose, even though the head constable acknowledges that from early on they did suspect someone else. However, it would keep up appearances to blame Rose, so she is jailed and put on trial.

Her case is taken on by Gladys Moss, the first woman police officer in the town. (In fact, every time she tells people she was a gendarme, she has to specify “woman” police officer.) She is also not taken seriously by the men in her station, who just expect her to write tickets and get them coffee.

Gladys and some of the women of the town feel that someone else is sending the letters, and they get together covertly to prove it.

Of course, the audience is clued in to the identity of the letter writer relatively early in the movie. (As a viewer, if you haven’t figured out who wrote the letters from the very beginning of the film, you’re not really trying.)

The rest of the film is an odd, but mostly funny, mixture of Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Law & Order: Victorian Unit.

Wicked Little Letters won’t win any awards or change anyone’s life, but it’s an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: April 4, 2024.

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GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE (2024)

Starring Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, Kaylee Hottle, Alex Ferns, Fala Chen, Rachel House, Ron Smyck, Chantelle Jamieson, Greg Hatton, Kevin Copeland, Tess Dobré, Tim Carroll, Anthony Brandon Wong, Sophia Emberson-Bain, Chika Ikogwe, Vincent B. Gorce, Yeye Zhou, Jamaliah Othman and Nick Lawler.

Screenplay by Terry Rossio and Simon Barrett and Jeremy Slater.

Directed by Adam Wingard.

Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. 115 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Is it possible for a movie to be dumber than a bag of rocks and still pretty fun? Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire seems to prove that it is indeed possible. The adult in me recognizes that this film is intellectually kind of ridiculous, but damned if it doesn’t give a sense of Saturday afternoon Creature Feature nostalgia that makes you feel like a kid while watching it.

The story makes little to no sense. The people in the background are one-dimensional – although Dan Stevens and Brian Tyree Henry add some needed comic relief. Honestly, they could have probably cut out all of the human characters and the movie would not lose all that much.

Still, I kind of enjoyed myself during Godzilla x Kong. Go figure.

The two “titans” in the title are separate through most of the film, until the slam-bang last section. In fact, they are in different dimensions.

Godzilla is “protecting” Earth from marauding monsters (although he did a whole lot of damage even when “protecting”). Then at night he sleeps in the Roman Coliseum as if it is a giant doggie bed. (I told you there was a lot of stupidity going on here.)

Kong, in the meantime, has been banished to “Hollow Earth,” an entirely different world which seems to be somewhere in the Earth’s core, like something out of Land of the Lost. He is the only giant gorilla in this new world – until he isn’t, when he runs across an evil band of angry, giant monkeys (and one annoyingly cutesy Little Kong). He is returned to the Earth’s surface when Kong has a toothache. (Yes, really, a toothache…)

Then Kong must summon Godzilla (and an extended cameo by Mothra) to fight off the evil giant gorillas and their Godzilla-like giant-lizard co-hort who have escaped to the surface. However, instead of breathing fire like Godzilla, this baddy lizard breathes ice. Kong is even outfitted with a superpowered robot glove… because… why not?

Cut to multiple scenes of giant monsters tossing each other all over Rio De Janeiro, causing maximum damage in name of Earth safety.

Periodically the film will suddenly blast some retro pop hits – like Badfinger’s “Day After Day” and Kiss’ “I Was Made For Loving You” – without explaining how exactly those songs were being played in Hollow Earth. I’m not complaining, though, those songs were some of the better parts of the film.

It’s like one of the old films, however with much better special effects and with the human characters’ lip movements actually matching their dialogue when they speak.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 29, 2024.

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GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE (2024)

Starring Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Kumail Nanjiani, Patton Oswalt, Celeste O'Connor, Logan Kim, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, William Atherton, James Acaster, Emily Alyn Lind, Jesse Gallegos, Claudia Nell McCoy, Lauren Yaffe, Damian Muziani, Natalie Cousteau, Emily Ng, Evelyn Anne Bulls and Holden Goodman.

Screenplay by Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman.

Directed by Gil Kenan.

Distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. 109 minutes. Rated PG-13.

It’s now official – there have been more Ghostbusters reboot films now than there were in the original series of films. There were two original Ghostbuster films (1984 and 1989), followed by the 2016 all-female reboot by Paul Feig, and then yet another reboot of the property in 2021 by Jason Reitman (son of original Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman) and Gil (Monster House) Kenan, of which this film is a sequel.

So that’s three reboot films to two originals. Honestly, none of the later films (including the original sequel Ghostbusters II) are as good as the first Ghostbusters movie, not by a long shot. And, if we’re continuing to be truthful, even the first Ghostbusters, while very enjoyable, is not as good as you probably remember it being.

However, it was certainly much, much better than Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, an over-stuffed and under-funny piece of nostalgic fan service.

Unfortunately, Frozen Empire, like Ghostbusters: Afterlife before it, forgets what made the original something of a classic. Instead, Frozen Empire spends way too much time on its disjointed and overly complicated paranormal aspects and forgets to take the time to come up with some decent jokes.

You know things are going bad when the biggest laugh in the whole movie comes from Paul Rudd doing a deadpan recitation of the lyrics from the original “Ghostbusters” theme song by Ray Parker, Jr.

Suddenly, bustin’ doesn’t make us feel good.

However, at least this chapter of the saga returns to New York City, after the brief sojourn to the boonies of Oklahoma in Afterlife.

Like the last film, the main characters here are the family of the late Egon Spengler (who had been played by Ghostbusters co-star and co-creator Harold Ramis, who died in 2014). The new generation of Ghostbusters includes Egon’s daughter (Carrie Coon, who normally is so good, seems to have been told simply to play a mom, and a pretty bad one at that), her children (Finn Wolfhard and Mckenna Grace) and mom’s boyfriend (Paul Rudd). They are living in the old Ghostbusters firehouse and have taken over the ghost busting chores.

The spirits they are tracking are an odd mix of old and new. For fans of the originals, the film periodically pulls out Slimer, the library ghost and the Stay-Puft marshmallow men (now tiny id creatures reminiscent of the hell-raising monsters from Ghostbusters’ old rival in supernatural comedy in 1984, Gremlins).

The new spirits are even more problematic. There is a flying ghost eel, a chess-playing flaming ghost teen, some weird thing which is able to possess and bring any inanimate (or animate) object to life by simply touching it. Then there is the main baddy, an ancient spirit who is able to freeze the whole wide world. (When did ghosts get all these weird supernatural skills?)

And, of course, the living original Ghostbusters return in supporting roles as their famous characters. Life has moved on and they have too, but they are still on the outskirts of the story. Dr. Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) has opened a shop purchasing paranormal memorabilia. Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) has become a multi-millionaire and uses his riches to fund the Ghostbusters. Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) seems to still be a university psychologist. And Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts) seems to just be hanging around in case someone needs to answer the phones.

In fairness, the main positive in Frozen Empire is Aykroyd, who is obviously relishing revisiting the character he created (both as an actor and co-writer) 40 years ago. Aykroyd is having so much fun with his character that when he is onscreen Frozen Empire picks up steam and becomes quite nearly entertaining. Hudson and Potts are also a lot of fun to revisit, although they don’t get nearly as much to do.

However, Bill Murray is in the film significantly less than his old ghostbusting partners, and frankly when he is there, he has surprisingly little to add to the proceedings. Honestly, way more of Murray’s one-liners land with a thud than actually hit the mark, which is kind of shocking because Murray was definitely the comic MVP of the original. However, Murray appears tired and bored here, which may explain why he resisted returning to the Ghostbusters universe for decades before finally returning for glorified cameos in the three reboots. (Aykroyd and the late Harold Ramis tried several times over the years to get a Ghostbusters III off the ground in the 90s and the 00s, but Murray always refused to participate and killed the potential project.)

Not that he had any real reason to be all that excited to be back in the tan jumpsuit. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is mostly treading water, trying to be a huge, exciting blockbuster but mostly having a been-there/done-that vibe.

Also, the story, beyond being predictable and overly familiar, often makes little or no sense. For example, in one scene a character allows her soul to leave her body for two minutes in order to relate better to a ghost, which has no logic in either a narrative or character sense. And this was supposed to be the smart one.

I think it’s time to put the Ghostbusters franchise back in the deep freeze.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 22, 2024.

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LIMBO (2024)

Starring Simon Baker, Rob Collins, Natasha Wanganeen, Nicholas Hope, Mark Coe, Tiana Hartig, Alexis Lennon, Joshua Warrior, Craig Rossiter, Shannon Wilson-McClinton, Nicholas Buckland, Ricardo Del Rio, Andrew Dingaman, Yarron Jowsey, Saliesha Dingaman, Reg Roordink and Tania Roesch.

Screenplay by Ivan Sen.

Directed by Ivan Sen.

Distributed by Music Box Films. 109 minutes. Not Rated.

Limbo is pretty much the perfect name for the (fictional) town at the heart of this offbeat police procedural which takes place in a small, dilapidated burg in the desert of the Australian outback. Limbo is offbeat for many reasons, not the least of which is that if you are looking for typical mystery beats – like for example finding and punishing the bad guy – you may be looking in the wrong place.

Limbo is much more of a character study of horribly damaged people trying to survive in a hellish area, an examination on how crime can affect the people who knew the victim even decades later, and also a scathing political allegory about the racial divide in that country. And while some questions of the central mystery are answered here, many others are left hanging.

Limbo tells the story of a white Australian policeman named Travis Hurley, who is sent to the title town to look into a 20-year-old cold case about the disappearance of a young Aboriginal girl. She was a native, and a troubled girl, and at the time the case was looked into in a very slipshod manner. Even the new cop acknowledges that had she been a white girl, the case would have been handled completely differently at the time.

Twenty years later, memories are very hazy, some of the witnesses and at least one of the main suspects are dead. Frankly, those people who are still around do not trust the police enough to speak out, particularly not to a white policeman.

Of course, there may be a reason not to trust this cop. Our first introduction to him has him driving into town, checking into the local motel (a spectacular place with rooms and hallways which are actually carved out of the rock in a local cave) and shooting up with heroin until he passes out.

Travis is played by the only actor that most people will be familiar with here. It is a continuation of the return to his native land for Simon Baker, best known as the lead in the long-running TV series The Mentalist and for roles in films like LA Confidential and The Devil Wears Prada. Baker is honestly just barely recognizable here – with multiple assorted tattoos, an emaciated build, a severe buzz cut, a scruffy beard and mustache. Literally, I spent the first five minutes of the film trying to figure out if that was really him on the screen.

Baker has spent the last few years (mostly since the pandemic, it seems) back in his native Australia, taking on harsh, realistic roles which bely his pretty-boy reputation in American television and film. Good for him for taking on this risky career reinvention. Limbo has some of his finest work.

Limbo takes place in a dust-strewn, depressing area of the Australian Outback. (The film was filmed in Coober Pedy, a tiny speck on the Australian map which was known for the mining of opals.) It is a world that is well known by the Indigenous filmmaker Ivan Sen, who gives the town of Limbo an oppressive sense of heat, dirtiness and desperation, which is only enhanced by the film’s crisp black and white cinematography. The film is an arid, oppressively sun-drenched film noir. (And yes, I get the fact that sunny and noir seem to be a contradiction in terms but watch Limbo and you’ll see.)

Travis may be a visitor to the town, but you realize quickly that he knows this kind of place well, and the town’s decrepit sense of sweltering rot mirrors the policeman’s psyche. Still, despite his depression and pessimism, Travis does believe in justice, and he does seem to truly want to help solve the case, no matter how futile his efforts may be.

He enters into a fragile relationship with the town and its citizens. He particularly connects with the victim’s brother Charlie (Rob Collins), with whom he even eventually reaches the tentative beginnings of a friendship, and his estranged other sister Emma (Natasha Wanganeen), who becomes almost a wife-figure to Travis, although in a platonic manner.

Even if Travis can’t give them an answer about their sister’s fate – and neither of them seem to expect an answer to be possible – perhaps Travis can mend the rift between the siblings and come to terms with some of his own demons.

There are no happy endings in Limbo, just a sense of incremental healing. Maybe that is all anyone can expect in that world.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 22, 2024.

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ARTHUR THE KING (2024)

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Simu Liu, Juliet Rylance, Nathalie Emmanuel, Ali Suliman, Rob Collins, Michael Landes, Bear Grylls, Paul Guilfoyle, Cece Valentina, Zamantha Díaz, Oscar Best, Elizabeth Chahin, Sharon Gallardo, Alani Ilongwe, Luis del Valle, Clearco Giuria, Mauricio Adrian, Carlton Mallard, Jason Chan, Roger Wasserman and Arturo Duvergé.

Screenplay by Michael Brandt.

Directed by Simon Cellan Jones.

Distributed by Lionsgate. 90 minutes. Rated PG-13.

“Don’t worry, this dog lives,” Mark Wahlberg assured us in the previews for Arthur the King which started showing up on social media a few weeks before the film’s premiere. While technically this could be considered a spoiler, I actually respect the filmmakers of the film for coming straight out and letting us know this plot point up front. There is nothing more horrible than a film trying to wring some pathos from their audience by killing off a beautiful dog (or cat, or bird, or any other animal, for that matter).

This film, based on a true story of adventurers competing in a dangerous endurance race in the Dominican Republic when they run across a stray dog, and the mutt bonds with them, particularly the leader – would seem to be just the type of film which would put the dog in many hazardous situations, and you never know how he will survive those. Therefore, the reassurance was appreciated. I could go into Arthur the King with an easy mind, knowing that I would not have to deal with that sort of fate.

Well, maybe I would have to deal with it a bit, because once I watched the film, I found that much of the last 15-20 minutes of the movie do as much as they could to tease the idea of the dog actually being very close to dying, leading me to wonder if Wahlberg had been lying to everyone in the ads. Luckily, he wasn’t lying. (Again, sorry if that feels like a spoiler, but they have been literally advertising the film on the idea the dog will survive, so if anyone let on the spoiler, it is the film studio themselves.)

But discussing the last 20 minutes of the film is getting a little ahead of ourselves. Was the whole of Arthur the King in its own way regal, or was it simply a pretender to the throne?

The story revolves around a daunting 435-mile endurance race through the wilds of the Dominican Republic. Teams have several days to traverse the length of the course. They are allowed – in fact, it is necessary – to use multiple modes of transportation. Most of the time they are simply running, or hiking, or climbing, but they must also use things like kayaks, boats, swimming, bicycles, ziplines, etc., to reach the finish line. The first team to reach the finish line wins… something… I’m not 100% sure what. Undoubtedly, it’s a bit of money and bragging rights.

The team we are following is led by Wahlberg’s Michael Light (a fictionalized version of real-life Swedish adventurer Mikael Lindnord, whose book is the basis for the film), a well-respected guy on the circuit who always comes just short of winning. He is now a father and being pressured to slow down and live a normal life and take a job in his stepfather’s business. However, Michael is determined to take one more shot at winning – even to the point where he spends his own money, which he really can’t afford, to get his group into competition.

The team is made up of kind of underwritten types – there is the social media obsessed one (Simu Lui), the one who is racing to please her dying father, who was a legend in the circuit (Nathalie Emmanuel) and the aging former star with a bad knee (Ali Suliman).

For the record, the Arthur in the title is the name the racers gave to a stray dog who crossed their paths, apparently because the leader Michael respected the canine’s fearlessness and regal bearing, which reminded him of the medieval king. Michael gave the dog a couple of meatballs early on in the race, and hundreds of miles later the mutt showed up again, apparently having followed the group the whole way.

Oddly, despite the fact that the movie is named after the pooch, he really doesn’t connect with the racing team until about halfway through the film. In earlier sections of the film, they periodically show short scenes of the dog enduring the hard life of a stray in a small village in the tropics, undoubtedly because otherwise the audience will be wondering when the dog will be entering the story in a substantial way.

While many of the sections of the race are interesting and rather exciting, the film really doesn’t hit its stride until Arthur joins up, becoming the group’s mascot, and eventually the main focus of Michael’s trip. In fact, honestly, the way the obsessive racer suddenly falls in love with this dirty but sweet dog is rushed a bit in the second half of the film. I’d kind of have liked to have the dog along from the very beginning, although of course that is not how it happened in real life.

Arthur the King is a bit cheesy and sort of predictable, and yet it is a sweet feel-good drama which almost makes it to the finish line. As noted before, the late section where the dog is in eminent danger is overly manipulative and melodramatic, but it doesn’t completely knock the film off of its footing. No one could call this a terrific movie, but it is an enjoyable one if you’re willing to turn your brain off for a bit and just go with it.

The dog is cute as hell though, and Arthur the King is worth seeing for that reason alone.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 14, 2024.

[popentertainment-moviereviews]

KUNG FU PANDA 4 (2024)

Featuring the voices of Jack Black, Awkwafina, Viola Davis, Dustin Hoffman, James Hong, Bryan Cranston, Ian McShane, Ke Huy Quan, Lori Tan Chinn, Ronny Chieng, Seth Rogen, James Murray, James Sie, Cedric Yarbrough, Vic Chao, Audrey Brooke, Lincoln Nakamura, Cece Valentina, April Hong   , Suzanne Buirgy, Logan Kim, Reyn Doi, Mick Wingert and MrBeast.

Screenplay by Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger and Darren Lemke.

Directed by Mike Mitchell.

Distributed by Universal Pictures. 94 minutes. Rated PG.

When walking into another sequel from a long running movie franchise, I try to hold a certain expectation. Usually the expectation is that a new unforeseen villain just appears without much rhythm or reason. There have not been many times that I have seen this pulled off in a way that is cohesive to the overarching story. However, I was pleasantly surprised this week by the newest chapter in the Kung Fu Panda series. While I have a couple of notes of things I would like to have seen done differently, I found the concepts interesting.

The newest villain, The Chameleon (Viola Davis), was wonderful from a design standpoint, but unfortunately bland from a characteristic standpoint. I had hoped to see more of a story or motive behind her actions. In the film it was stated that she was rejected by mentors, and she grew bitter from that as a result.

What the villain lacked in a strong motive; she made up for in plan execution. Personally, I was excited to see the former villains of the past movies brought back for this story. As this movie served as the passing of the torch in our main character Po's (Jack Black) journey, it was fulfilling to see him display his growth for his past foes. I especially was glad to see the role of Tai Lung being reprised by Ian McShane.

With this being said, I wished that there was more interaction between Po and Tai Lung. The rivalry they had in the first movie was memorable enough for me to suddenly think about it, even after not having seen a movie from this franchise for a very long time. Considering that Tai Lung's exit from the movie was the moment that he gave Po his respect, I hoped that it would have been more sincere than it came across.

This goes for the entire final battle of the movie as well. The concept of bringing back the spirits of the past villains could have made an incredible battle sequence that tied up loose ends between our hero and his former foes. Since Po has truly embodied the importance of forgiveness and striving to do the right thing, it would have been a great moment of character growth for him to make up with the villains he once fought.

However, despite the faults in the story's execution, this was a nice watch. I thoroughly enjoyed the art style and performances given by the cast. Overall this was another high-quality movie from DreamWorks, and I look forward to the next chapter.

Jordan Wagner

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 8, 2024.

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DUNE: PART TWO (2024)

Starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, Javier Bardem, Souheila Yacoub, Anya Taylor-Joy, Roger Yuan, Babs Olusanmokun, Alison Halstead, Giusi Merli, Kait Tenison, Tara Breathnach and Akiko Hitomi.

Screenplay by Denis Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts.

Directed by Denis Villeneuve.

Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. 167 minutes. Rated PG-13.

I have to admit I have never quite gotten the Dune phenomenon, from when I was a teen and read the book by Frank Herbert and being kind of underwhelmed by it, or from when I saw David Lynch’s horrible 1984 movie version. Therefore, I went into Denis Villeneuve’s version of the book a few years ago, with relatively low expectations, particularly since not only was I not a huge fan of Dune, but I’ve also always felt Villeneuve was a technically proficient but rather cold director who is better at creating worlds than he is at telling stories.

Therefore, I was relatively pleasantly surprised by the 2021 version of Dune. It was gorgeously filmed (no big surprise, that is Villeneuve’s strong point), and while it was a little slow, a little too fascinated with the politics of this world and way too long, and it ended right in the middle of a scene, in general I was impressed by the movie.

However, two-and-a-half years have passed, and honestly when I was getting ready to see Dune: Part Two, I realized that I barely remembered a thing about the first film. The movie had blown away in my mind like spice in a sandstorm. I had to rewatch Dune a few days before the screening just to remember what had happened. Again I had basically the same reaction to the first viewing: stunningly filmed, but a bit slow, and way too long.

Well, Dune: Part Two is even longer than that film – just a bit under three hours long. However, no one will ever accuse it of being slow. Dune: Part Two is where the storyline ramps up (it’s basically based on the second half of the book) and while it is still occasionally a bit clunky and stiff, for the most part it’s an impressive act of sci-fi spectacle.

Dune: Part Two takes off from where the last film ended – the Harkonnen House has slaughtered the Atreides family. The two surviving members of the house – Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and son Paul (Timothee Chalamet) – are on the run in the desert, hiding out with the local Fremen tribe. They all work together to avenge the Atreides and vanquish the Harkonnens, as well as the Emperor (Christopher Walken) who betrayed the family. In the meantime Paul befriends and eventually falls for beautiful Fremen fighter Chani (Zendaya).

Cue lots of stunning (if occasionally redundant) battle sequences. The armature of Dune is an odd mix of futuristic and old-fashioned – they have spaceships, submachine guns and atomic warheads, and yet most of the fighting is done in hand-to-hand combat with swords. (This probably can be explained by the age of the source material; the novel was originally published in 1965.)

It occasionally gets a bit overwhelming, but credit where it is due, it is often pretty spectacular. And yes, again, the film sort of ends in the middle of a fight sequence – although this film has a much more concrete climax than the last one – so no doubt we’ll have to wait another two or three years to find out what happens next. (After all, Herbert wrote six Dune novels, there is lots of story left to go.)

This time around I expect I’ll remember it a lot better when the next film comes down the pike.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 1, 2024.

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DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS (2024)

Starring Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein, Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal, Bill Camp, Matt Damon, Joey Slotnick, C. J. Wilson, Connie Jackson, Annie Gonzalez, Gordon MacDonald, Sam Vartholomeos, John Menchion, Michael Counihan,             Abby Hilden, Haley Holmes, Fatima Barlow, Sam Mazzei, Jordan Zatawski and Miley Cyrus.

Screenplay by Ethan Coen.

Directed by Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke.

Distributed by Focus Features. 84 minutes. Rated R.

The latest example of the Coen Brothers gone solo is this surprisingly funny (and slightly naughty) road trip comedy written by Ethan Coen and his wife Tricia Cooke.

For decades Joel and Ethan Coen were a team – creating such classics as Blood Simple, Fargo, No Country For Old Men and The Big Lebowski. However, they have not done a film together since The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which came out over five years ago. Ethan decided to take a break from filmmaking, wanting to focus on the theater for a bit. Joel went solo on the 2021 Shakespeare adaptation The Tragedy of Macbeth.

In 2022, Ethan dipped his toe back into filmmaking with the documentary Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind. Then he went all in on this film, co-writing and directing on his own. However, in a 2023 interview with Empire magazine, Ethan did hint that he was working on a new project idea with Joel, so it looks like the time apart is just a break and not a complete breakup between the siblings.

Still, Drive-Away Dolls does make you wonder what else Ethan can come up with all on his own. It’s certainly one of the funniest of the Coen movies and feels looser and less serious than the brothers’ work. It also downplays (but doesn’t totally abandon) the sudden moments of violence which are so important to the Coens’ work. And when the violence does come up, it’s mostly cartoonish and played for laughs.

It has certain other Coen hallmarks –the bickering, philosophical hit men, the nude sunbathing next-door neighbor (just like in A Serious Man), and the oddball tourist traps.

However, mostly it is a buddy road trip from Philadelphia to Florida right around the turn of the millennium, with two lesbians being chased by a group of gangsters who are looking for a suitcase that is in the car they are driving south.

The briefcase is a bit of a McGuffin, much like the case in Pulp Fiction. In fact, once you actually find out what is in the case, it turns out to be a bit of a letdown, although it makes a certain amount of loopy sense in the world of this film.

The two women driving around with this briefcase are Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan). They are long-time best friends although they are polar opposites. Jamie is a wild and impulsive lesbian, always looking for fun and never sticking with the same girlfriends for very long. Marian is more introverted, shy and is still holding a torch for her last ex, who she broke up with three years earlier.

Marian is tired of her dead-end job and her life and she decides to visit her aunt in Florida. Jamie, who just had an ugly breakup with her latest girlfriend (Beanie Feldstein), who caught her cheating, and is suddenly homeless, decides to tag along. Jamie figures they can have a wild time, finding gay bars and parties in each town they hit, and maybe even getting the repressed Marian laid on the way.

They hook up with a car service, where they agree to deliver a car to Florida in exchange for the use of the car. Unfortunately, they don’t know there is a secret in the trunk that has a series of bad guys willing to kill to retrieve.

Drive-Away Dolls isn’t exactly deep, nor is it at all serious, and it doesn’t always make sense. However, it is fun and funny – sort of reminiscent of the Coens’ Raising Arizona – and that makes the flaws a lot easier to overlook. Unlike much of his work with his brother, Drive-Away Dolls will not get any Oscar buzz. Still, it’s more fun than you’d expect.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: February 23, 2024.

[popentertainment-moviereviews]

SUNCOAST (2024)

Starring Nico Parker, Laura Linney, Woody Harrelson, Ella Anderson, Daniella Taylor, Amarr, Ariel Martin, Cree Kawa, Pam Dougherty, Matt Walsh, Keyla Monterroso Mejia, Scott MacArthur, Danielle Henchcliffe, Jason Burkey, Andrea Powell, Parker Sack, Andrew Dicostanzo, Elliott Sancrant, Karen Ceesay, Orelon Sidney and Brandon Arroyo.

Screenplay by Laura Chinn.

Directed by Laura Chinn.

Distributed by Searchlight Pictures. 109 minutes. Rated R.

Writer/director Laura Chinn’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama rides on a very specific high concept – some may even say a slightly obscure one, at least at this point in history.

It is based upon a true circumstance in Chinn’s life. In the early 2000s, her brother was placed in hospice because he was dying of brain cancer. That in itself is horrific and tragic enough. However, fate placed her brother in the same medical facility as Terri Schiavo, a brain-dead former insurance agent who became a political and legal hot potato when her husband wanted to remove her feeding tube so that she would not be kept alive when she had no quality of life.

Her parents sued her husband in an attempt to keep her alive. Governor Jeb Bush and the state of Florida (where Schiavo was in hospice) jumped in and tried to legally force the husband (and the care facility) to keep her alive against their own will. It became a huge story and political battle about euthanasia, full of angry protestors (on both sides), vitriol between family members and hundreds of news stories. Even the then-President (George W. Bush) weighed in with his opinion.

The experience of being even on the outskirts of such a huge partisan scandal, at the same time as dealing with her own tragedy, has obviously had a considerable influence on Chinn’s life. She has revisited it before as a writer. Even before this film, the actress/comedian/writer had written about what happened in a section of her book Acne.

Chinn has changed some of the specifics of the story, including fictionalized versions of her character and others based upon people she knew. She even changed the name of the health facility where it all happened – calling the place Suncoast, when the actual name was Woodside Hospice House.

So, yes, Terri Schiavo was an important part of Chinn’s life.

Still, it’s been nearly 20 years since the Schiavo case. She died in March of 2005. And, honestly, there have been hundreds of political firestorms since then. I remember the story, but I’m a political and historical junkie. And even I had forgotten more than I remember about what happened in the case.

Nineteen years on, how many people have a strong memory of the case? More to the point, there is nearly a generation of younger people – who really should be a huge part of the audience for this film – who probably have never even heard the name. For example, actress Nico Parker, who does a spectacular job in the lead role here, was a baby when Schiavo died. What really are the chances that she had ever heard of her before receiving this script?

How many people will watch this film specifically for the Schiavo connection?

More to the point, honestly, the most interesting parts of Suncoast have absolutely nothing to do with the scandal or the demonstrations outside of the hospice. A teenaged girl dealing with death, her prickly relationship with her mother who often was so wrapped up in her son’s illness that she took her daughter for granted, and a shy girl’s attempts to be normal and make friends while in the middle of her own tragedy – all of these things are much more intriguing, and important, than the political firestorm going on nearby.

To a certain extent, the film’s brush with history works against it. You could cut the entire Schiavo situation from the film, and the film would not be harmed. In fact, it might be better.

Because the real story here is the strained relationship between Doris (Parker) and her mother Kristine (Laura Linney) who are having trouble dealing with each other while they are dealing with the inevitable tragedy speeding their way. The scenes in which Parker and Linney spar and push each other’s buttons have some of the strongest acting in this early year.

There is also a surprisingly smart section when Doris finally makes friends by offering up her home as a party spot while mom is staying over with her brother. However, unpredictably, these girls are not just using Doris – even after the party idea is blown-up by Kristine showing up unexpectedly during a partially unclothed game of Truth or Dare – and actually become close, understanding, giving friends who are there for Doris when she needs support.

Which brings us to perhaps the most confounding part of Suncoast. Doris befriends a middle-aged protestor named Paul who she runs into in line at a nearby restaurant. Woody Harrelson is always a welcome presence, so you nearly overlook the fact that his relationship with Doris makes no real sense. Why is this fifty-something widower spending so much time hanging out with a 16-year-old girl? Get your mind out of the gutter, it doesn’t appear to be sexual. He seems to see himself more as a mentor, a friend and a shoulder to cry on. But why is he there?

Honestly, although he’s supposedly one of the Schiavo protestors, he doesn’t seem the type. Yes, he is gutted by the loss of his late wife, but honestly, he barely appears to be the reactionary type. At one point in which he vilifies Schiavo’s husband for wanting to allow his wife to die naturally, it feels unnatural coming out of this caring, mostly easy-going guy’s mouth. Also, he often blows off the protests just to be there for Doris, whether she wants him to or not. He just seems to be protesting because it is something to do.

Also, what does Doris see in Paul? As a father figure? As an escape from the bleakness of the clinic? As a potential romantic partner for her mom down the line? It is never really clear, to the point that the whole subplot feels a bit awkward.

However, the scenes where mom and daughter come to terms and where Doris grows into her young womanhood while juggling tragedy with more base teen girl issues keep Suncoast fascinating. These are the stories that Suncoast should really be concentrating on telling.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: February 9, 2024.

[popentertainment-moviereviews]

LISA FRANKENSTEIN (2024)

Starring Kathryn Newton, Cole Sprouse, Liza Soberano, Henry Eikenberry, Joe Chrest, Carla Gugino, Jenna Davis, Trina LaFargue, Paola Andino, Joshua Montes, Chris Greening, Mae Anglim, Joey Bree Harris, Henry Eikenberry, Jennifer Pierce Mathus, Luke Sexton, Ayla Diane Miller, Jailyn Rae, Bryce Romero, Ashton Leigh, Charlie Talbert and Ray Gaspard.

Screenplay by Diablo Cody.

Directed by Zelda Williams.

Distributed by Focus Features. 101 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Screenwriter Diablo Cody has always had one of the sharpest minds for hip female storytelling and wickedly funny dialogue. Since she broke through with the Oscar-nominated 2006 film Juno, she has shared some of the most quirkily fun and yet often surprisingly dark women’s stories in Hollywood, including her series The United States of Tara, the criminally under-appreciated classic Young Adult, the aging rock goddess film Ricki and the Flash (Jonathan Demme’s final film) and even writing the book of the hit Broadway musical Jagged Little Pill, based on the music of Alanis Morissette.

So, Cody is mostly remembered for her slightly offbeat looks at the real lives of women. Still, even with her feet on the ground, Cody has always had a bit of a soft spot for the horror genre, as well, as you might pick up from her pen name. (Although the writer, whose real name is Brook Busey Maurio, insists the pen name came from merging the song “El Diablo” by old Duran Duran side-project Arcadia, and a town where she once got a speeding ticket called Cody, Wyoming.)

In 2009, hot on the heels of her breakouts with Juno and The United States of Tara, she penned a comic horror film called Jennifer’s Body, with Megan Fox as a demonically possessed killer cheerleader. The film opened to terrible reviews and box office, although over the 15 years since it was released Jennifer’s Body has gotten something of a cult following. She has not really worked on horror again since then unless you count the uncredited script doctoring which she did for the 2013 reboot of The Evil Dead.

That is until now. As you may guess from the title, the film is a very loose variation of the Frankenstein saga. (For the record, in the film the main character is not related to the original family and is not named Lisa Frankenstein but has the rather unfortunate name of Lisa Swallows.) Of course, there are lots of other very obvious influences touched upon as well, including Edward Scissorhands, Heathers, The Breakfast Club and even She’s All That.

Lisa (Kathryn Newton of The Map of Tiny Perfect Things) is a very, very disillusioned goth student in the mid-1980s. Her mental problems stem from her childhood when she witnessed her mother being stabbed to death in a home invasion – one that was never solved. Now her dad (Joe Chrest) has married a hellish evil stepmother (Carla Gugino), and they live with her and her new gorgeous, popular cheerleader stepsister Taffy (Liza Soberano). In one example of how Cody likes to toy with the audience’s expectations, Taffy is not a complete bitch to this new girl who is living in her house. Instead Taffy is very loving, nurturing and protective of Lisa.

Lisa really has no friends other than Taffy – although Taffy keeps trying to include her in activities to help her get to know people. Her hair is an unbrushed rat’s nest, she wears way too much black makeup and formless unflattering clothes. (Although, as is normal in this kind of teen film, all she really needs to do is fix her hair, get a makeup lesson, borrow some of Taffy’s sexier outfits and take off her glasses and suddenly she is absolutely gorgeous.)

The fact that she really doesn’t fit in is not helped by the fact that she often spends time in an abandoned and overgrown graveyard in the woods. She claims she enjoys the quiet, but she also likes being with the memories of the dead. In particular, she is fascinated by an elaborate headstone for a young pianist who died in the 1830s – which includes a full bust of the deceased.

One night, after a particularly uncomfortable party, in which she was dosed with drugs, Lisa goes to the graveyard in dismay. Somehow, due to a misunderstood wish, a torrential storm, and the graveyard’s apparent magical properties, Lisa somehow brings the corpse of a 150-year-dead musician back to life, although the worse for wear after over a century buried, filthy and missing several body parts. (Don’t even try to figure out the how and why of anything supernatural that happens in this film, none of it really will make sense.)

Cole Sprouse (of Riverdale) plays the creature. As with anyone playing the monster (or just a monster), Sprouse has a tricky role. He is only able to express himself through a series of grunts, gestures and glances through most of the film. (Only in the final scene, which may or may not be a dream sequence, he is able to speak.)

The creature is supposed to be a sweet, sensitive sort, but he also has a homicidal streak when he gets angry. He and Lisa start a killing spree to replace some of his lost body parts (again, how this works makes no sense at all, but you either buy in or you don’t).

And while the story made no sense whatsoever, I kind of bought in because the script was consistently funny enough that I overlooked many of Lisa Frankenstein’s flaws. Stylishly directed by Zelda Williams (Robin’s daughter) and well-acted – particularly by Newton and Soberano – it’s far from a great movie, but I have to admit I mostly liked it. It’s certainly different.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: February 9, 2024.

[popentertainment-moviereviews]

ARGYLLE (2024)

Starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Henry Cavill, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O'Hara, Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose, John Cena, Samuel L. Jackson, Sofia Boutella, Rob Delaney, Jing Lusi, Richard E. Grant, Louis Partridge, Stanley Morgan, Alfredo Tavares, Tomás Paredes, Alaa Habib, Bobby Holland Hanton, Kandy Rohmann, Fiona Marr and Chip the cat.

Screenplay by Jason Fuchs.

Directed by Matthew Vaughn.

Distributed by Universal Pictures. 139 minutes. Rated PG-13.

There is something a little bit off about the action spy comedy Argylle from the very beginning, and it’s not just the fact that the filmmakers don’t know how to spell argyle.

Still, it started out somewhat promisingly. It is the tale of a thirty-something middle-classed bachelorette named Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) who has become a best-selling author by writing a series of novels about a debonair spy named Argylle (which, for some reason is pronounced argyle even though with the double L spelling it should be pronounced “ar-jill.”)

Argylle is played by Henry Cavill, and it should be noted that Cavill has a relatively small role here, despite getting top billing and being front and center in the poster. Cavill is just playing the fictional character in some fantasy sequences strewn throughout the story.

Novelist Conway is the lead character here. She lives a fairly uneventful life, doing readings (in which she seems to read the entire book right up to the very end?) at local bookstores and hangs out with her beloved cat. She is finishing the fifth book in the Argylle series, but she seems to have hit a brick wall as far as ideas go. So she decides to take herself and her cat on a train (she’s afraid to fly) to visit her parents (Catherine O’Hara and Bryan Cranston) in the hope that the change of scenery will help her come up with an ending.

While on the train, she meets up with an eccentric traveler named Aidan (Sam Rockwell) who claims to be a fan – and a spy. He also claims that she had somehow stumbled on a story in the last book which actually had happened and there are bad guys that assume she knows more about real-life espionage than most would expect.

Suddenly people everywhere are trying to capture or kill Elly and she is thrown into an adventure more crazed than any that she had ever written. She must take to the road with Aidan in order to save her life and figure out who is after her and why. She is in near constant danger – as is her cat (honestly, the poor kitty is way mistreated in this film, thrown around, dropped off a high-rise building, shot at, and forced to spend hours stuck in a kitty backpack.)

The early parts of Argylle were actually pretty much fun, but then about halfway through the film there is a major plot twist that pretty much lost me. I won’t say what it is – spoilers and all – but if you see it you will surely know. Then after that twist, you either buy into what Argylle is selling or not, and frankly I really didn’t.

In the meantime, the film just keeps on and keeps on (nearly two-and-a-half hours for this?) with one flashy-but-cartoonish (and fairly inexplicit) action sequence after another. A highly choreographed gun, knife and hand-to-hand fight in the middle of billows of colored smoke and throbbing strobe lights pretty much show what you are getting here. If you think it looks cool, then you may like Argylle. I felt it looked kind of ridiculous. No one has fought like that since West Side Story – or at least since the “Beat It” video. And at least those fights didn’t have to put up with the sensory overload of the special effects.

Argylle is apparently a loose offshoot of the Kingsman movie series – films which I must admit I have never seen, although a friend of mine is a huge fan. And, from what I hear, the Kingsman films share this movie’s light action vibe. But I have to think, or at least hope, that the Kingsman films are better than this.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: February 2, 2024.