The Media Tourist

George Clooney and Adam Sandler shine in this warm hug of a movie about friends, family, work, choices, consequences…and regrets

Jay Kelly
Starring George Clooney & Adam Sandler
Directed by Noah Baumbach
Rated R

In theaters Nov. 21, on Netflix Nov. 5

So, who’s Jay Kelly? He’s a very successful actor, not near as young as he used to be, and this funny, touching and moving movie takes us on an engaging, emotional journey with him as he re-evaluates his life. And it’s a big booster shot of authenticity that he’s played by George Clooney, himself a very successful (Oscar-winning) actor, not near as young has he used to be when he made his debut back in the early ‘80s.

Jay Kelly is a wonderfully woven story about life’s wide-ranging journey, told through an inside-Hollywood prism as we meet the people in Jay’s past and present: his manager (Adam Sandler), publicist (Laura Dern), director-mentor (Jim Broadbent), old acting-school chum (Billy Crudup), father (Stacy Keach) and daughters (Riley Kelough and Grace Edwards). The populous cast also includes Patrick Wilson, Isla Fischer, Emily Mortimer, Greta Gerwig and Eve Hewson.  

The movie’s many characters have all played—and are playing—parts in shaping Jay’s life, and we watch him as he revisits old memories. Regrets? As the song goes, he’s had a few. But we see how he, and his life in movies, have touched countless lives, made so many people smile, across the decades. Jay Kelly is a showbiz microcosm for us all, reminding us how we’re irrevocably shaped by where we’ve been and what we’ve done, and the choices we’ve made. As Jay regards his own life, and his choices, he wonders if he’s been the father he should have been, the husband he might have been, or the friend he could have been.

Clooney is charming and spot-on-perfect, but Sandler is a revelation. Hundreds of movie miles away from the on-screen immature goofballs that have been his primary stock in trade, here he’s a big part of the film’s heart and soul as his character is wrenched between his loyalty to his client and his own family priorities.

Director/writer Noah Baumbach, a lauded Hollywood presence himself, expertly juggles all the actors and the movie’s many moving parts as the story moves across time—and across Europe, where Jay goes to attempt to catch up with his youngest daughter and pick up an honorary award. On a bustling train ride from France to Italy, he enviously watches “ordinary” people enjoying their lives—and becomes a real-life “hero” by nabbing a purse-snatcher. Throughout, the characters’ conversations and dialogue, and their behaviors, ring true.

But life, and fame, can be complicated, and sometimes nothing—and no one—is quite what appearances suggest, especially when it’s a superstar actor playing roles, always pretending to be someone else.

The movie begins—and ends—with Jay asking for another “take,” another shot at re-doing his part, his scene. “Can I go again?” he asks. Haven’t we all wanted a re-do, a chance to do something over, and do it better?

Jay Kelly is a wistful, wonderfully warm hug of a movie about friends, family, choices, sacrifices and consequences, a rumination with a smile wrapped in the life of an unreal actor who seems every bit as real as the real actor playing him.

—Neil Pond

Third installment of hocus-pocus franchise adds new youthful hijinks

Now You See Me: Now You Don’t
Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco and Isla Fisher
Directed by Reuben Fleischer
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, Nov. 14

Ready for some (more) hocus-pocus-y hijinks?

The gang’s all here in this third installment of the “magical” movie franchise about a group of superstar illusionists known as the Four Horsemen (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco and Isla Fisher), who use their smoooooth sleight-of-hand skills for much more than just pulling rabbits out of hats.

This time they’re again Robin Hoods, now on an international mission to bring down a nefarious diamond heiress (award-winning British actress Rosamond Pike, from Gone Girl and Saltburn) at the head of a global crime syndicate of arms dealers, drug traffickers and warlords. And if you’re a fan of the previous flicks, you’ll be delighted to see Morgan Freeman returning to his role as the Horsemen’s mentor, a grand senior wizard with a few tricks still up his sleeve.

But this movie’s main trick is introducing a new supporting cast of younger tricksters. There’s Dominic Sessa (who made a most impressive debut opposite Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers), Ariana Greenblatt (she played Sasha in 2023’s Barbie) and Justice Smith (from the horror flick I Saw the TV Glow). They’re the new Horsemen, now saddled up to take this franchise even further down the road.  

There are twists and turns, snappy quips, a slick, sneering villainess, and plenty of situations where some stage-magic smarts come in handy—misdirection, card trickery, holograms, disguises, switcheroos, escapes, hypnotism and vanishing. It all feels like James Bond lite, with no substantial danger; you just know the Horsemen will somehow be able to wiggle out of any sticky situation, whether it’s a locked jail cell, a hall of mirrors or an oversized glass box slowly filling with sand…and them locked in it.

The movie also gives a big bow to the art of classic performance magic, with references to great illusionists and their groundbreaking tricks, plus how large-scale subterfuge and deception—inflatable tanks, dummy parachutists, sound effects—were used in World War II to dupe the Germans. It’s a magical history tour.

All the chasing and running and wily outsmarting lead to a big “trick” of a finale and a cameo appearance by yet another star (no spoilers here!) who played an integral part in previous movies.

“Everything that disappears, reappears,” says Eisenberg’s character. True dat: Just like this durable movie property, which reappears yet again to remind us just how much razzmatazz entertainment can be found in a star-packed bag of tricks.  

—Neil Pond

Scattershot sequel to the 2021 horror hit feels like a movie misfire

Black Phone 2
Starring Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Madeline McGraw & Jeremy Davies
Directed by Scott Derrickson
Rated R

In theaters Friday, Oct. 17

Ever since Lazurus, we’ve been fascinated with people who come back from the dead. Ethan Hawke pulls off his own resurrection trick in this gritty sequel to the 2021 horror hit in which his character was killed off in a climactic confrontation by the young teen he’d kidnapped and tormented.

In Black Phone 2, set four years later, Hawke’s creepy “Grabber”—so named because he snatched victims off the street and sweeps them away in his black van—haunts the dreams of the younger sister of the boy who ended his reign of neighborhood terror. Then those dreams become living nightmares.

The gang’s all here from the first film. Mason Thames (from the recent How to Train Your Dragon remake) is Finny, the only known survivor of the Grabber’s basement of horrors. Madeline McGraw (from Disney’s Secrets of Sulphur Springs) returns as his sis, Gwen, now haunted by nighttime visions of the Grabber, his deeds and his victims. Jeremy Davies is back as their father, battling alcoholism and his own traumatic past.

But this time around, it’s all about the ghostly Grabber being set on revenge by sinking his sinister hooks—or his hatchet—into Gwen.

There’s blood and visceral goop and terrible stuff going down, but not a whole lot of bone-chilling scares or shocks. And right off the bat, we know the Grabber is dead, right? The sequel is set in 1978, back when there were still wall-mounted telephones and payphone booths. Gwen’s dreams are shot in a way that looks, appropriately enough, like grainy, 8mm home movies. And a ringing phone likely means someone from the “other side,” or the Grabber himself, wants to talk. There’s a remote Colorado winter youth camp, a blinding snowstorm, and a group of mutilated kids killed by the Grabber, entombed under the ice of a frozen lake, their lost young souls crying out for eternal rest.

And Hawke gets star billing, but he spends almost the entirety of the movie hidden behind the grinning devil mask that became the Grabber’s must-have accoutrement. Oh, the masked Grabber also ice skates, in a finale that suggests ax hockey might be hell’s most popular pastime.

The original Black Phone was a big box-office success. But maybe it was best just to let it rest in peace, rather than bring it back with a story that feels like a strained hodgepodge of horror-show cliches and stereotypes—the snowstorm, zombie-ghost children, a lakeside camp, a young woman accused of being “possessed,” bad dreams that bleed into reality. It’s like The Shining, Friday the 13^th, The Walking Dead and Carrie all showed up in A Nightmare on Elm Street and took a Wrong Turn into The Exorcist before heading to an Ice Capades show.

And it also gets sidetracked by what seems to be an unfocused obsession with religion, with lots of scenes showing crosses and Bibles, recited lines of Scripture, and a foul-mouthed spew of venom at overly pious Christians. Most of the story is set in a Christian youth camp. But it never connects faith to the rest of the narrative.

“O death, where is thy sting?” Gwen asks the Grabber at one point, quoting the New Testament’s book of 1 Corinthians.

Fans of the first Black Phone might be asking the same question about this scattershot sequel with little of its predecessor’s sting. Where is the monstrous mojo of a phone call from beyond the grave? As creepshows about phone booths go, this one feels like a misdial.

—Neil Pond