The Media Tourist

Add an ‘S,’ new stars, more tornadoes and stir for what’s almost assured to be the summer’s hottest popcorn movie

Twisters
Starring Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Anthony Ramos
Directed by Lee Issac Chung
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, July 20

Nearly three decades ago, the original Twister movie blew audiences—and most of its competition—away, barely missing becoming the highest-grossing film of 1996. Now, to paraphrase a line from a Chubby Checker hit, let’s twist again like we did last summer, with more stars, more tornadoes, more wind-shearing wowza and more big-screen wallop.  

Adding an “s” to the original movie, the newly pluralized Twisters returns to the tornado alley of Oklahoma, where a wave of monster funnel clouds is marching across small-town America. Can Kate, a young meteorologist (Daisy Edgar-Jones), figure out how to shut down the killer storms? Will Tyler, a tornado-chasing adrenaline-junkie YouTuber (Glen Powell), convince her he’s not really such a cad? Can Javi, her former college bud (Anthony Ramos), win her heart after the tragedy five years ago that tore them apart? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

And there’s a lot of wind in Twisters, with all kinds of snarl coming down from the skies. The tornadoes are CGI wonders, much more sophisticated special-effect creations than back in the mid ‘90s, when large-scale computer-generated imagery was still in its infancy. There are several pulse-pounding sequences as the intrepid storm wranglers head into funnel clouds of all shapes and sizes, including a roaring pillar of fire picking up steam after it mows down an oil refinery. The movie makes you feel about as up-close and intimate as you’ll ever want to be to a tornado.

Director Lee Issac Chung brings the same detailed sense of setting that he demonstrated in his Oscar-nominated Minari (2020), about South Korean immigrants resettling in rural Arkansas. His cameras capture the sweeping spectacle but also the intimacy—of dandelions in the breeze, fields of grain in a shifting wind, the heartbeats of heartland life. On one such occasion, at a rodeo event, Kate learns that Tyler used to be a bull rider, and he compares what he did then with what he does now. “Tornadoes, bulls—same thing,” he says. “You don’t just face your fears, you ride ‘em.”

And to ride out these storms, you’ve got some extremely eye-catching companions in the romantic triangle of main actors. You might recognize Britain’s Edgar-Jones from Where the Crawdads Sing, and Ramos from the musical In the Heights. But it’s Powell who really steals the spotlight from the sky. Coming off of two other well-received flicks, Anyone But You and Hit Man, he’s the movie man of the moment, now as a hunky, cowboy-hatted slice of sex appeal, for sure. Is it hot and humid in here, from the summer swelter and the falling barometric pressure of a tornado getting ready to rumble? Or is it just Glen Powell, strutting onscreen in a torso-hugging white tee, flashing a megawatt smile? In between the twisters, you can practically hear the audience swooning.

There’s a lot of sorta-science banter about tornadoes, what they do, how they’re formed and how they’re designated. You even hear the name of the meteorologist, Ted Fujita, who devised the now-standard system of tornado classification—EF-1, EF-2, and so on—back in the ‘70s. But nobody will be going to see Twisters be tutored about science. They’ll be going to see churning monsters from above, vehicles picked up and strewn around like toys, people sucked screaming into their dooms in a swirling abyss of wind and debris.

And, of course, Glen Powell smiling, strutting, poured into a white T-shirt.

The movie’s final tornado scene is a real gollywhopper, with the chasers herding the citizenry of a small town, during the rip-roaring “the storm of the century,” into the only shelter readily available. “Everybody into the movie theater!” someone shouts.

And getting you into the theater is exactly what Twisters is all about. So hang on—and hold on—for this summer’s wildest, windiest must-see popcorn movie.

—Neil Pond

Mia Goth returns to role of the monstrously troubled young woman who won’t let life stand in her way

Maxxxine
Starring Mia Goth, Kevin Bacon, Elizabeth Debicki, Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan
Directed by Ti West
Rated R

In theaters Friday, July 5

In the third film of director Ti West’s cult-favorite slasher-flick franchise, young Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) has set her sights on Hollywood stardom. But her violent past comes back to haunt her, as the only survivor of a horrific massacre when she was younger with some truly effed-up layers of deep trauma passed along from her sex-obsessed grandmother.  

At the screening I attended, I saw dozens of young women dressed like Goth’s character from previous films, in overalls, boots and bandanas, or blood-red 1900s dresses. One told me she loves these movies because Maxxxine has become an emblem of female empowerment, a young woman with life stacked against her who won’t let that stop her. Even if that means using an axe, a shotgun or a junkyard car-crusher to get there.

In Maxxxine, it’s now the mid-1980s and Goth’s character has added a couple of x’s to her name to reflect her success as a porn actress. But she wants more, to become famous as a mainstream star. A serial killer, murdering young women, is stalking Hollywood, and Maxxxine’s friends and coworkers are turning up dead and maimed. When she gets her big break, with a role in a non-porn horror movie, the icy female director (Elizabeth Debicki, below)warns Maxxxine to focus on her career, and to quash anything that might stand in her way. And you know she will.

Returning director Ti West has again created a super-stylized window into Maxxxine’s smeary world, swirling with grungy ‘80s esthetic and music. (In the opening scene, she struts out from an audition to ZZ Top’s “Gimme All Your Lovin’.”) It’s a meta-movie, a horror flick that stylistically recalls other horror flicks of its era. There’s over-the-top gore, extreme violence and intentionally campy dialogue. And like the previous films, it explores the seedy underbelly where promiscuous sex, pornography, hyper violence and religious extremism root around in the same grimy bed. Add some Hollywood dream-machine toxicity, and voila, you’ve got Maxxxine.

But it feels like more of a loose gorehound grab bag than a firmed-up story, with stabs of dark humor, lurid sights and grindhouse grit meant as a horror-movie homage to “exploitative” flicks from an earlier era. You know, exploding heads, mangled bodies and slashing knives.  And suitcases full of severed body parts.

Kevin Bacon has a hammy ball as a slimy private “dick,” an investigator hired to trail Maxxxine. Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan are L.A. homicide cops trying to sniff out the killer terrorizing Tinseltown. Giancarlo Esposito, from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, is her slick fixer of a manager.  Lily Collins plays an ill-fated horror-movie costar. And there’s Sophie Tucker, from TV’s Yellowjackets, and the singer Halsey, who plays a short-lived porno pal.

But everybody and everything revolves around Maxxxine. And model-turned-actress Mia Goth is once again riveting as the young woman at the messy, macabre center, fighting “the devil” inside her as she charges into the fame she always wanted, grabbing for the life she insists she deserves.

Maybe her deeply troubled path left Maxxxine starving for attention while fating her for heinous acts of vengeful retribution. The movie opens with a quote from the late, great Hollywood diva Bette Davis, about how “until you’re known in my profession as a monster, you’re not a star.” Maxxxine is indeed a movie-star monster in stiletto heels, stabbing now into the dark heart of Hollywood, drawing new blood—and appeasing legions of fans who see her as more victim of circumstance than villain.

—Neil Pond

Babbling Minions again make this franchise frolic a river of fun & laughs

Despicable Me 4
Voices by Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig & Will Farrell
Directed by Chris Renaud and Patrick Delange
Rated PG

In theaters Wednesday, June 3

What’s the most successful animated series of all time? Shrek? Toy Story? Frozen? Nope, it’s this kid-centric movie-funhouse franchise frolic about a reformed bumbling supervillain, Gru, and his clattering, chattering yellow-nubbin assistants, the Minions. Its three previous films (and two spinoffs) have topped $4.6 billion at the box office.

The latest installment finds the reemergence of an old grudge between Gru (Steve Carell) and a former rival, Maxime Le Mal (Will Farrell), while the prankish Minions are being groomed to become superhero crime busters. It’s light and lively, infectiously clever and boisterously brisk as the Minions’ slapstick shenanigans continue to steal much of the comedic spotlight—although Carell and Farrell make a superb sparring pair, still smarting over schoolyard slights from their bad-guy academy days in the French Alps at Lycee Pas Bon (translation: Not So Good High School). And Kristen Wiig (as Gru’s wife, Lucy, a former agent herself) gets her own hilarious subterfuge subplot, masquerading in witness protection as a hair stylist who makes a very dissatisfied customer. This time around, Gru’s all about being a daddy to his babbling baby boy, which gives all the far-ranging fun a foundation in his hectic home life, as he’s flummoxed by milk choices at the supermarket and mixes up the diaper bag for his satchel of spy gear.

Jokes abound in the zippy script (co-written by The White Lotus’ Mike White) and the crazily creative visual riffs on everything from James Bond gizmos to Tom Cruise aerial stunts, Austin Powers outlandishness, Transformers, the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car and even Elvis’s Jailhouse Rock, by way of A-Ha. You won’t find many other movies with such an eclectic mix of plot devices and sheer throwaway sidelines gaggery, including a hyper honey badger, Minion-officiated tennis, a giant flying robotic cockroach and a baby billygoat that confuses the command to “sit” with, well, something decidedly messier on the floor.

Listen closely and you’ll also hear the voices of Steve Coogan, Stephen Cobert, Miranda Cosgrove, Joey King and Sofia Vergara coming from other colorful characters of all shapes and sizes. But no one works harder than Pierre Coffin, who provides the jibber-jabber babble of all the Minions. It’s hard not to love this little army of mayhem-making micro sidekicks, and it’s easy to see why—their childlike antics and nonsensical gibberish are the silly source that feeds this franchise’s river of nuttily creative nonsense and makes these Despicable flicks so darn delightful for kids of all ages.

—Neil Pond

Alien invaders descend on New York. So, what else is new?

A Quiet Place: Day One
Starring Lupita Nyong’o & Joseph Quinn
Directed by Michael Sarnoski
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, June 28

Shhhhhh! Be very quiet—I’m hunting wabbits.” Maybe you recognize that line from Elmer Fudd in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, decades before this horror franchise launched in 2018 with its scarifying tale of space aliens using supersonic hearing to gobble up humans who made any sound.

There aren’t any “wascally wabbits” in this prequel spinoff about the fateful day the aliens arrived, turning New York City into smoky piles of flaming rubble. But there is a calm little feline—Frodo—and a terminal cancer patient determined to make her way through the decimated core of the Big Apple. Because all Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) wants—all she’s living for—is one more slice of pie from the Harlem pizzeria near her childhood home.

Well, alrighty then—New Yorkers must really love them some pizza, even when under attack by space monsters.

Day One doesn’t have the sheer, pee-your-pants terror of the first movie, or its 2020 follow-up—mainly because we now know what we’re dealing with, the aliens’ ravenous M.O. and how steep the odds are stacked against humanity. “We’re all gonna die!!!!” screams one guy on a rooftop, and well, he’s not entirely wrong. A lot of people do perish, although we never really see them meet their messy ends; we just assume that’s what happens when they’re standing there one second, then—whoosh—an alien swoops in and they’re gone. Like hunting wabbits.

But the handfuls of survivors who somehow avoid becoming alien grub never seem very shell-shocked or shaken about the terrors they’ve been through, or the very dire possibility than any wheezy breath they take could be their last. Ah, those stoic, seen-it-all urbanites, jadedly shuffling off to their doom…or the pizza parlor.

Indie director Michael Sarnoski takes over the reins from John Krasinski, who also starred in the first two films. The former actor from TV’s The Office sits this one out on the sidelines, as a producer, and the movie really misses his touch and the star power he brought with his wife, actress Emily Blunt, to the other films. This movie’s secondary cast (Alex Wolff, Djimon Hounsu) is way secondary to the convoluted story of Sam, her jazz-loving late father and the young British man (Joseph Quinn) who becomes her tagalong. But most of the characters, even the main ones, don’t invite much connection or empathy, unlike the imperiled “family members” of the previous films. And transplanting the story from the rural countryside to the hustle-bustle-y Big Apple…meh. We get it: New York’s a noisy place, a cacophony of chaotic sound, a melting pot that now includes aliens from another world. So, what else is new?  

And for a prequel, we never learn anything about the aliens that we didn’t already know, or not know. They’re still an enigmatic invading force from out there somewhere, scampering about like CGI spider monkeys, making a mega mess of things and apparently intent on wiping out humanity. There are a lot of jolt-y scares and some inventive sequences, like a life-or-death chase in a submerged subway. But the “suspension of disbelief” is really stretched, not by the armada of alien invaders, but by wondering how anyone could ever get a cat to be in or under water without having it totally freak out.

And maybe you won’t question how, in a city with no electricity, no running water, and almost everything alien-blasted to smithereens, can you still get pizza?

Early in the film, Sam watches a creepy marionette puppet show in a New York theater, just moments before all hell breaks loose on the streets outside. What did that scene have to do with anything? I’m clueless, except maybe it’s because, when it’s all over, a lot of viewers are going to feel like this Quiet Place was really just pulling their strings, drawing them into a franchise that feels like it’s already whispered all there was to say.  

—Neil Pond