Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Mar 12 2025
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Movie Reviews

Oh, the Pain

In “Novocaine,” Jack Quaid dives into danger as a man with no feelings…sort of

Novocaine
Starring Jack Quaid & Amber Midthunder
Directed by Dan Berk & Robert Olsen
Rated R

In theaters Friday, March 14

When his office crush gets abducted, a young bank assistant manager sets out to rescue her. That sounds like it could be the setup for any number of flicks, but this gonzo action comedy hinges on the “ordinary” hero’s rare genetic disorder, which prevents him from feeling pain.

We learn that Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid, from TV’s The Boys) grew up with the nickname of Novocaine, given to him by bullying schoolmates who delighted in making him their recess punching bag; they enjoyed seeing him take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’. (P.S., Nathan’s condition is a real-world thing, CIP, or congenital insensitivity to pain, which affects a spectrum of bodily sensitivities.)  On a tentative first date at a diner, he tells Sherry (Amber Midthunder) that he dares not ingest solid food (he might chew up his tongue and not know it), and his wristwatch timer is reminding him to take a bathroom break (because he doesn’t get a natural “signal” that his bladder needs emptying).

But when the bank gets robbed and Sherry gets taken as a hostage, Nathan isn’t thinking about pee breaks as he plunges into a gauntlet of pain-free heroics, encountering sneering bad guys, booby-trapped lairs, flying bullets and body-slamming brawls. I must give the movie credit for finding, ahem, creative ways to illustrate just how impervious Nathan is to pain. He gets walloped in a wide variety of ways, like the coyote in a real-life Road Runner cartoon. He breaks his thumb to slip out of handcuffs and turns a broken bone—his own protruding tibia—into a lethal weapon. He has his fingernails pulled out with pliers, gets plugged with an arrow from a crossbow, almost crushed under a garage car lift, impaled with a medieval mace and calmly digs out a bullet from his arm.  

But here’s the thing. Nathan is no John Wick, no James Bond or Deadpool. He can be grievously injured, or even killed—he just doesn’t “feel” it, which puts him in even more peril. People with CIP won’t know spilled coffee can scald their hand, because they don’t get the “Ouch! That hurts!” message. That sets up the subplot, about how Nathan might not register physical discomfort, but he’s not immune from emotional distress. (The movie opens with REM’s “Everybody Hurts.”) Quaid, the son of actors Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan, has an amiable everyman quality that squares with Nathan as an average guy, certainly no superhero, who removes the “dis” from his “disability” and dives right into danger.

And people do get killed. The movie’s rampaging dark humor doesn’t really jibe with all the blood and body goop, or when people expire via bullets or beatings.

Amber Midthunder, who has appeared in FX’s Legion and starred in The CW’s sci-fi drama Roswell, New Mexico, brings a tantalizing dash of ambiguity and vulnerability to her role as the “love interest,” noting that we’re all scarred by something, hiding a part of ourselves until someone lets us know it’s OK to show it. Matt Walsh, from TV’s Veep, gets in a few droll quips as a sports-obsessed cop.

But mainly, Novocaine wants to show Nathan enduring an avalanche of mayhem and make audiences squeal with perverse glee seeing him rebound from every body-abusing, bone-breaking, skin-scaring whack, crunch, burn, blast and kaboom. You may think it’s all giddy popcorn fun, but for me, I didn’t particularly enjoy being turned into a movie surrogate for those schoolyard bullies, who kicked Nathan’s ass repeatedly, every day, because they knew, hey, he can’t feel it.

At least, in The Road Runner, when the coyote gets flattened with an anvil to the head or smushed by a bolder, well, it’s only a cartoon—with no squishy viscera or protruding bones.

—Neil Pond

Mar 05 2025
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Movie Reviews

Bruiser Babe

“Queen of the Ring” is the true story of the woman at the colorful center of a wrestling revolution

Queen of the Ring
Starring Emily Bett Richards, Josh Lucas & Francesca Eastwood
Directed by Ash Avildsen
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, March 7

Unless you’re a deep-dish wrestling fan, you probably don’t know about Mildred Burke, who dominated the sport for some 20 years as the “Kansas Cyclone.” This is her story, based on the 2009 book by Jeff Leen, The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds, and the Making of an American Legend.

That title pretty much says it all—sensuality, brawn and glamour wrapped in wrestling tights. Emily Bett Richards, best known for her role as brainy Felicity Smoak on the CW series Arrow and its DC spinoffs, slips convincingly into the starring role of Burke, a single mom raising her baby boy while slinging hash in a small-town diner and dreaming of a way out of the boonies.

“I’ve always loved being feminine and tough,” Mildred says, hooked on the rough-and-tumble razzle-dazzle of seeing her first wrestling match, as a hyped-up crowd boos a hissable “heel” putting the hurt on a handsome “babyface.” The stars align when she meets a dashing wrestling promoter, Billy Wolfe (Josh Lucas), who gives her a shot in his traveling wrestling sideshow. Soon she’s grappling in carnivals with big sweaty guys from the crowd—and beating them.

And she finds herself falling for Billy Wolfe, several years older. Their “complicated” on-again/off-again relationship is a major crux of the movie, especially when she finds out he’s a cad, canoodling with other girls as he grooms them for the ring.  

Mildred becomes a ticket-selling draw, a wrestling superstar, a heroine to little girls, and a big part of the mainstreaming of “lady wrestlers” at a time when female wrestling was illegal in much of the country.  As a tagline for the movie notes, she becomes the first female million-dollar athlete in history—long, long, long before Venus Williams, Simone Biles or Coco Gauff came into the sports spotlight.

Director Ash Avildsen knows a thing or two about sports flicks. You might say they’re in his blood. He’s the son of Oscar-winning director John Avildsen, who made Rocky and three Karate Kid movies. Queen of the Ring certainly makes the most of its modest budget, and the wrestling scenes have the wallop and wham of authenticity. You’ll spot some familiar faces playing real people from the wrestling world. Walton Goggins (currently on HBO’s season three of The White Lotus) is East Coast wrestling mogul Jack Pfefer. Hey, isn’t that Francesca Eastwood (Clint’s daughter) as wrestler Mae Young, who has a thing for other girls in tights? And there’s Martin Kove, who played the original antagonist in The Karate Kid, as promoter Al Haft. Adam Demos (from the Netflix series Sex/Life) is “Gorgeous George” Wagner, who became a strutting superstar with a flair for flamboyant showmanship and a head topped with bountiful, blonde-dyed hair.

The movie strikingly recreates scenes and settings from its era-spanning story, from the 1930s into the ’60s, when television catapulted wrestling into dens and living rooms across America. (There must have been a separate line item on the budget for men’s fedoras and porkpie hats). And it gets a some further bona fides with appearances by real-life female wrestlers, like Toni Storm (an All Elite Wrestling world champion) and Kamille (nee Kailee Dawn Latimer), making her film debut as the towering, tough-as-nails June Byers, who would become, like Mildred, a Professional Wrestling Hall of Famer.  

Throughout the movie, we’re reminded that wrestling is highly physical—and sometimes dangerous, as wrestlers can be seriously injured, or even killed, in the ring.  But it’s also a show, a spectacle, a piece of stagecraft with characters, personas and plotlines. “I want to entertain people,” Mildred says. “I can’t sing, and I can’t dance. But I can tell a story.”

Stay for the credits and you’ll learn that Mildred Burke died, at the age of 73, in 1989. But her story is one of force, determination, reinvention and perseverance, and Richards digs in with a vigorous intensity to flesh out her character’s multilayered persona as a mother, breadwinner and savvy businesswoman who found success, fame and riches in a “man’s world.” This wrestling tale about the queen of the ring has a rousing ring of truth, especially for anyone who wants to learn more—in this Women’s History Month—about a woman at the center of a colorful chapter of wrestling history.

—Neil Pond

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Mar 04 2025
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Movie Reviews

You Go, Girls!

Movie review: “Rule Breakers” tells the inspiring true story of a group of high school computer-whiz Afghans who rocked the world at international competitions

Rule Breakers
Starring Nikohl Boosheri, Ali Fazell & Waj Ali
Directed by Bill Gutenberg
Rated PG

In theaters Friday, March 7

Since it’s Women’s History Month, here’s some Women’s History—about a group of teenage girls from war-torn Afghanistan that came to America in 2017 to compete in a global robotics competition.  Based on their inspiring story, this emotionally stirring dramatic recreation reminds us of their impressive feat—from a part of the world at a time where girls and women were just beginning to emerge from the brutal oppressions of Taliban rule—and illustrates the courage of these young women, the power of dreams and the importance of education.

If you love “underdog” stories, Rule Breakers certainly falls into that category. It’s Rocky with robots. Canadian actress Nikohl Boosheri leads the cast as the determined young college student—based on Roya Mahboob, the real-life IT pioneer and software guru recognized by TIME magazine in 2013 for building internet classrooms in her native Afghanistan—who teaches a group of high school girls basic programming skills, then how to build and operate robots. But it’s not easy, as they navigate volatile—and violent—Middle Eastern politics and defy the country’s heavy-handed patriarchal norms to become a team, the Afghan Dreamers, and participate in competitions around the world.

The movie mostly follows familiar dramatic “beats” as the girls bravely break the rules
and navigate the perils, including Taliban threats, a roadside ambush and a mosque bombing that strikes tragically close to home. And the film certainly represents Mahboob’s advocacy for girls and women—the empowerment of education and the global “language” of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math)—as it shows young minds from varying cultures, religions, languages and customs coming together with a common goal of finding solutions to large-scale humanitarian problems, like detecting toxins in water and locating land mines, left over from deadly warfare, so they can be safely removed.

“The world has too many borders, and too many walls,” says one of the competition organizers, stressing the positive vibes of diversified global get-togethers that encourage cooperation and unity while fostering innovation, fueling young brainpower and creating bridges instead of barriers. “It’s not people building robots,” says one of the participants. “It’s robots building people.”

It’s also got a guest appearance by Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and a performance spot for the Black Eyed Peas to remind everyone at a competition that “Tonight’s gonna be a good night.” There even some situational humor, and one scene—set in a thumpin’ German disco—where the girls shake off their head coverings, let down their hair and allow themselves a few glorious groovin’ moments before getting back to work. As Cyndi Lauper reminded us way back in the ‘80s, girls just wanna have fun. Even hajib-wearing, computer-coding, robot-rockin’ Afghani teens, taking a short break from breaking the rules, crossing borders and making the world a better place.  

—Neil Pond

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Feb 19 2025
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Movie Reviews

Monkey See, Monkey Kill

The deep horror roots of the sinister simian wind-up toy in “The Monkey”

The Monkey
Starring Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Colin O’Brien & Christian Convery
Directed by Osgood Perkins
Rated R

In theaters Friday, Feb. 21

As a horror flick, The Monkey certainly has its bona fides. It’s based on a 1980 short story by horror maestro Steven King, inspired by a much older classic creepy tale, The Monkey’s Paw, by British author W.W. Jacobs. One of the producers is James Wan, the creator of Saw, Insidious and The Conjuring franchises. The director, Osgood Perkins, made last year’s Longlegs, a wild ride of freakish serial-killer disturbia with Nicolas Cage and a demonic doll. And the director is the son of Anthony Perkins, forever enshrined in the halls of horror as the cray-cray, cross-dressing Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Psycho.

Here, murder and mayhem swirl around a wind-up monkey “toy” that unleashes all kinds of hellzapoppin’ when someone turns the “key” on its back, making its mechanical arms start to bang on a drum. As a drummer myself, hey, I get it—some people don’t think much of drum solos. But at least no one’s ever died, as far as I know, because I dig into a roll or a few paradiddles.

Theo James (from the dystopian Divergent films, and season two of The White Lotus) plays double roles as the adult versions of twin brothers, Hal and Bill, who’ve grown up loathing each other. As kids (both effectively played by Christian Convery, from Netflix’s Sweet Tooth) rummaging through their dad’s collection of souvenir curios, they discover a box containing the monkey. “Turn the key and see what happens” is the instruction on a label on the monkey’s back.

What happens when the key gets turned is spectacularly bad news. People start to die, in twistedly inventive, Rube Goldberg-ian ways—decapitated by a flying knife at a Japanese steakhouse, trampled to death in a sleeping bag by wild horses, mangled by a lawnmower, beheaded by a cannonball, eviscerated with a speargun in a pawn shop. No one is safe when this monkey gets cranked.

Unlike some other evil “objects” or playthings (like the dolls in Chuckie, Anabelle, M3GAN or The Boy), the monkey doesn’t participate or engage in the mayhem. It doesn’t come alive and pick up a kitchen knife, like the South America voodoo doll in Trilogy of Terror, chasing Karen Black in the made-for-TV shocker back in 1975, or directly menace Telly Savalas like Talking Tina, the “Living Doll” on that 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone. This sinister simian is more a silent summoner of evil, an inscrutable avatar for the deep, dark pit of existential unknowable-ness, staring us down with a relentless, unsettling grin and a drumbeat heralding doom…for someone.

Elijah Wood (Frodo from The Hobbit-verse) has a scene as a gonzo parenting guru, and the director himself slips into the role of Hal and Bill’s swinger uncle.  

The movie, which often feels like a smart-ass comedic spoof and send-up of horror cliches, runs on gleeful, ghoulish humor and an embrace of its own wild, wooly weirdness—like the school cheerleaders who show up to rah-rah-sis-boom-bah at murder scenes. It’s also got a subtext about fathers and sons, deadbeat dads, the various toxicities that families “pass down” through generations, and the infallible truth that we’ll all inevitably meet our expiration date someday. The movie even literalizes a line from the Book or Revelation: “And I looked and beheld a pale horse. And his name that sat on him was Death.” Giddy-up!

“Everybody dies,” the boy’s mother (Tatiana Maslany) tells them, after the funeral of their babysitter. “That’s life.”

That’s certainly life with The Monkey, where a twist of its key always brings an insanely over-the-top, spectacularly splattery encounter with the grim reaper. Who’ll be next? How many more people will die? Is the Monkey the devil? Can it be stopped?

And can you ever hear the retro grooves of Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the Night Away” again without thinking of a grinning keyed-up monkey, lopped-off heads, killer bees, and how a cobra can leap out of a golf course hole and clamp down on your jugular?

—Neil Pond

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Jan 29 2025
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “You’re Cordially Invited”

Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon spar in raucous wedding comedy

You’re Cordially Invited
Starring Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon
Written and directed by Nicholas Stoller
Rated R

Streaming Thursday, Jan. 30, on Prime

“Things go wrong at weddings,” states Will Ferrell’s character in this raucous nuptials romcom—in which things do, indeed, go hilariously haywire as two wedding parties discover they’ve been mistakenly doubled-booked for the same time and place.

Ferrell plays the doting widowed dad planning the big day for his only child, his daughter (Suresh Viswanathan). Reece Witherspoon is the sister of another bride-to-be, wrangling the event for her younger sib (Meredith Hagner).  

Personalities clash and tempers flare as both groups compete for space, amenities, attention—and soon are plotting how each can foil and spoil the other’s day. The comedic mix has a terrific cast of supporting players, including standup comic Celia Weston, 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer and veteran actress Celia Weston, who’s appeared in some 75 movies and TV series—and who dang near steals the show as a drawly Southern-belle matriarch. The shenanigans get crazily sideways, but in the middle of the mayhem is a soft, slushy message about dads, daughters, family ties and how love and loathing can be flip sides of the same canoodling coin.

Ferrell, a funnyman with impeccable cred from a slew of hilarious movies, and the versatile Witherspoon do their darndest to ride the seriously silly, anything-goes wavelength, synching up their fine-tuned comedic timing to the orchestration of director Nicholas Stoller, whose resume includes Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), a pair of fratty college yukfests (Neighbors and its sequel) and a boisterous redo of Gulliver’s Travels (2010) starring Jack Black. It has a lot of laughs, but it also sometimes strains to keep all the unrestrained wackadoo on a leash.  

You’ve certainly seen wedding comedies before, from Bridesmaids to Wedding Crashers and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. But you’re probably never seen one with such a crazy, anarchic ruckus, including a saboteur in a zebra costume, strip-club groomsmen, bawdy bridesmaids, and much more Hollywood attention to the Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers duet “Islands in the Stream” than it’s ever gotten before.

And is that NFL icon Peyton Manning just standing around, one of the Jonas Brothers as a singing pastor with a soft spot for Creed, and SNL veteran Bobby Moynihan as the host of a Masked Singer-esque hit TV show? Yes, yes and yes.

And indeed, as you may have seen in any of the marketing materials, Will Ferrell wrestles an alligator. So if you’re ready for a wedding that offers one uniquely unhinged, surprisingly heartfelt trip down the aisle, well, You’re Cordially Invited to this one.

—Neil Pond

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Jan 16 2025
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “One of Them Days”

Keke Palmer and rapper SZA are seriously broke besties in this riotously funny street-smart female buddy comedy

One of Them Days
Starring Keke Palmer and SZA
Directed by Lawrence Lamont
Rated R

In theaters Friday, Jan. 17

Two broke besties have a wild day in L.A. in this raunchy, riotously fun street-smart female buddy comedy that kicks off the new year’s movie season with a load of laughs. When Dreux (Keke Palmer) and Alyssa (Grammy-winning rapper SZA, making a very impressive film debut) find out a freeloading boyfriend (Joshua David Neal) has absconded with their rent money, they’re off and running a crazy gauntlet of urban misadventures to get it back.

Along the way, they engage with a gaggle of characters who all contribute to the careening comedic spin. There’s the former stripper (Janelle James from TV’s Abbott Elementary) having a very tough first day working her new job at a blood bank. Another Abbott Elementary alum, Kayla Monterroso Meija, is a stressed-out clerk at a predatory loan company with a ridiculously high interest rate. Dreux swoons for a handsome guy (Patrick Gage) in a Mercedes, until she begins fretting that he might be an axe murderer. A voluptuous temptress (Aziza Scott, from TV’s Home Before Dark) certainly lives up to her nickname of Big Booty. When Alyssa recovers a pair of pricey Air Jordans off a power line, they run afoul of the shoes’ owner, a thuggish gang leader (Snowfall’s Amin Joseph). Euporia’s Maude Apatow is a chipper new—white—resident in the girls’ otherwise all-Black apartment complex, where she becomes an unlikely ally.

SZA and Keke Palmer star in “One of Them Days.”

But the movie belongs to Palmer and SZA, who have a natural, easy-flow chemistry as they plunge right into the riotous rush of it all, while an onscreen countdown clock keeps popping up to show how much time Dreux and Alyssa have left before they’re evicted from the apartment—or worse.

It’s wall-to-wall randy, rat-a-tat-tat zippy and zingy, peppered with f-bombs and other colorful zingers not meant for little ears. See if you can fill in the blanks of this sample of dialogue: “____, I got knocked on my ___ because of them ____.”  Asides about Black hair, Church’s chicken and one character’s, ahem, well-endowment all generated waves of raucous laughter at the screening I attended.

And underneath it all, there’s the foundational subtext of scrappy young Black women navigating jobs (and job interviews), testy romantic relations, depressing economic realities and rapacious rivals, while maintaining their own bonds of sisterhood. When they toast at the end, with Flaming Hot Cheeto margaritas, you’ll taste both the spice and the rich sweetness.

“It’s ghetto,” Dreux says, taking a sip, “but it’s got a runway quality to it.” You might say something similar about One of Them Days: It’s gloriously ghetto, but it totally runs with the gritty glamour of it all.

—Neil Pond

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Jan 14 2025
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Unstoppable”

Inspiring true sports tale of the one-legged underdog who became a collegiate wrestling champ

Unstoppable
Starring Jharrel Jerome, Jennifer Lopez and Bobby Cannavale
Directed by William Goldenberg
Rated PG-13

Available on Amazon Prime Thursday, Jan. 16

You don’t have to be a sports fan to stand up and cheer for this rousing true story about Anthony Robles, who became a champion wrestler despite what was considered the significant handicap—to most everyone but him—of being born with only one leg. Based on Robles’ own 2012 autobiography, it’s an inspiring, heart-tugging tale about a teenage athlete determined to work his way to the top, despite a mountain of odds stacked against him.

Jennifer Lopez gives a solid performance as Robles’ mom, Judy, the emotional anchor in a domestic storm stirred by Robles’ bullying stepdad (Bobby Cannavale) while young Anthony is vying for a place on the Arizona State U wrestling squad and holding down a sideline job, scrubbing private planes at the local airport.

Jharrel Jerome, who stars as Robles, has both his legs, requiring some nifty digital effects to make him look like he doesn’t—and some seamless stunt doubling by Robles himself, who’s now in his mid-30s. It’s amazing to see just on a technical level, because you’ll absolutely be convinced you’re watching, well, a man with only one leg. And you are, except when you’re not. Ah, the magic of the movies.

According to one sideline commentator at a tournament, Robles wrestles “like a boa constrictor,” sliding, slithering, pouncing and squeezing his two-legged opponents. Even if you don’t know your pins from your takedowns, you’ll be amazing at the movie’s realistic depiction of the grappling, rough-and-tumble matches. And you can’t miss the overtones from another cinematic tale of an underdog when Robles’ visit for a match takes him up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and into the same exact spot as Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa in Rocky, nearly half a century ago.

The solid supporting cast also includes Don Cheadle and Michael Peña as coaches, and Shawn Hatosy as Roble’s most formidable rival, the intimidating Tom Brand from the wrestling powerhouse of Iowa State University.

“You make people believe in something,” Robles’ mom tells him as her son’s will to win and overcome creates a growing wave of support far and wide, fans of all ages who cheer him on. “You’re unstoppable.”

You’ll believe, too, in the message of this true-life sports drama with a smear or two of blood, copious amounts of sweat and even some tears. And if you really want your eyes to get moist, stay for the credits, where you’ll learn about Robles’ amazing achievements that continued after the events depicted in the film, as well his mother’s own triumphant, uplifting coda.

—Neil Pond

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Jan 08 2025
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Better Man”

Musical biopic puts a marvelous simian spin on Robbie Williams’ pop-stardom monkeyshines

Better Man
Starring Robbie Williams/Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton & Rachel Banno
Directed by Michael Gracey
Rated R

In theaters Friday, Jan. 10

I’ll venture that you’ve never seen anything like this swinging, soaring, stirring music biopic about British pop star Robbie Williams. Because the star of the show is a monkey.

Throughout the film, Williams is portrayed as a chimpanzee, meant to represent the singer as he sees himself, “unevolved” and immature. “I’m ugly, stupid and untalented,” is young Robbie’s stinging self-assessment. Though what we hear is Williams’ own singing and speaking voice, British actor Jonno Davies portrays him—via some amazingly tactile high-tech motion-capture technology—as the monkey. It’s like one of the primates from Planet of the Apes became a Brit-pop singing star.

When he’s 16, Williams joins the startup “boy band” Take That—in the vein of Boys II Men or Backstreet Boys—that would notch nearly 30 Top 40 hits, a dozen of which went to No. 1 on the British charts. The movie is filled with music, often as springboards for movie-musical sequences, like when the group hits the streets for an poppin’ and boppin’ take of the song “Rock DJ.”      

It’s a bold choice to portray your movie’s star as a simian, surrounded by ordinary people who don’t seem to notice anything unusual. But it allows for some wildly provocative, surprisingly evocative moments as director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman) depicts just how maladjusted Williams feels, from growing up in working-class London to reaching the top of the pops as self-loathing singing star. The visual landscape is constantly moving and fluid, from “reality” to sweeping sequences of fantasy. When Williams crashes his car into a frozen lake, he’s swarmed by fans and paparazzi, pulling him deeper under. After he meets a cute girl at a party, the entire scene becomes a dazzling dance number orchestrated to the 1999 hit “She’s the One.” (And hey, this monkey’s got some smoooooth Fred Astaire moves!) When Williams is singing on stage and peers out into the audience, he sees troubling versions of himself, apes glaring back at him in scorn and disapproval. At one point, he dives into the crowd and fights them.

British actor Steve Pemberton plays Williams’ dad, an unabashed fan of classic crooners who abandoned his family to chase his own dreams of stardom. Rachel Banno is Nicole Appleton, the British pop star for whom Williams falls, hard, but eventually loses to another singing star, Liam Gallagher (Leo Harvey-Ellege) of Oasis. Alison Steadman (who played Mrs. Bennet in the mini-series Pride and Prejudice) is Robbie’s beloved grandmother, who gave him affection and support while munching on bags of crisps in front of the telly.

“I don’t want to be a nobody,” a sorrowful young Robbie tells his gram, recalling something hurtful and lingering that his father once told him. Robbie instead wants to be something that he would later express in his song “Better Man.”

That song, of course, becomes the title and the theme of this marvel of a movie, in which a CGI-motion-capture ape man makes us feel all kinds of human empathy for the real person he represents in some daringly creative cinematic monkeyshines.

—Neil Pond

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Dec 23 2024
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Nosferatu”

New remake of the original vampire flick stirs up chills anew.

Nosferatu
Starring Lily-Rose Depp, Bill SkarsgÄrd, Nicholas Hoult & Willem Dafoe
Directed by Robert Eggers
Rated R

In theaters Wednesday, Dec. 25

A beautiful bride becomes a ravenous obsession for a monstrous vampire in this spectacularly spooky spin on an old, oft-told tale.

How old, and how oft-told? Well, the original Nosferatu was a silent movie back in 1922, long regarded the first vampire film. It was based on the novel Dracula, by Bram Stoker, from the late 1800s. That story, and that movie, are both lauded as groundbreaking masterpieces, launching multitudes of other movie offshoots over the next century. Now this new, supremely crafted creepshow stirs up the terrifying roots of the classic story with chills anew, pouring on a moody megadose of gloomy Gothic doom, dark red blood and gasp-y (sometimes ghastly) arousal to offset all your cozy holiday feelings of comfort and joy.

Lily-Rose Depp (yep, Johnny’ Depp’s model-turned-actress daughter) is Ellen, the young newlywed suffering from unsettling nightmares and violent seizures. Her husband, Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) is a London real estate agent sent to faraway central Europe to arrange for a new home for the mysterious—and chilling—Count Orlock. (Though it’s never mentioned by name, a glimpse at an upside-down map notes the region as “Transylvania.”) And guess where Orlock wants to relocate? Yep, in London, just down the street from Ellen and Thomas.

Is Ellen sick with worry for her traveling husband? Or maybe distempered with melancholy, perhaps even possessed? Her friends (The Crown’s Emma Corwin, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson) are concerned, puzzled, and unsettled by her troubling spells. During Thomas’ absence, they summon the local doctor (Ralph Michael Ineson), who eventually calls on a scholarly professor of all things ancient and occult-y (Willem Dafoe, perfectly cast).

Soon enough, the prof gets a pungent whiff of what’s up. Turns out the count (Bill SkarsgĂ„rd) is a vampire with an appetite for blood—and a beyond-the-grave crush on Ellen. But by then, the bodies are piling up, rats have infested the town, the count has arrived after a fateful shipboard journey, and some little girls discover, tragically, that imaginary monsters aren’t so imaginary.

Director Robert Eggers is a maestro of malevolence, as he demonstrated in his previous films The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman. He confidently paints this tale with all kinds of disturbia and draws out—sometimes graphically—the mythos of sexuality that’s often been sublimated in vampire stories. Ellen’s writhing agonies are close to ecstasies as Orlock seduces her from afar, causing blood-spurting, eyeball-bulging contortions—and orgasmic sighs. As different characters say throughout the film, “He is coming!” Uh, well, you could put it that way.  


Willem Dafoe is a vampire hunter.

The movie also explores the nature of evil in a world of yore where demons and curses and fairytales are real, science and religion powerless against unholy darkness, and death a fact of life. Orlock, who turns out to be the eternally unquenchable demon Nosferatu, is quite literally death itself. Can the “plague” he brings to London be stopped? Not just with a stake—or pickaxe—through the heart, I’m afraid.

Let’s talk a minute about actor Bill SkarsgĂ„rd. He’s best known for playing another demonic character, the killer clown in two It horror flicks. Here’s he’s truly unrecognizable under layers of facial prosthetics and slinking around like a half-decomposed corpse. Cloaked in shadow for most of the movie, he’s a hideously ossified incubus, a profane beast for the ages. He is indeed the stuff of nightmares.

And so is this movie, now leading the pack as the best—and most lavishly unnerving—scary movie of the year. It’s a devilishly potent, magnificently orchestrated scare fest that’s intentionally unsettling, but also strangely comforting. Because it’s a dark, delicious reassurance that as long as Robert Eggers is making movies, horror is in good hands.

—Neil Pond

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Dec 22 2024
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “A Complete Unknown”

Timothée Chalamet channels Bob Dylan in tune-filled biopic about the young troubadour.

A Complete Unknown
Starring Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning and Monica Barbaro
Directed by James Mangold
Rated R

In theaters Wednesday, Dec. 25

He hitchhiked a ride, in the back of a station wagon, into New York City in 1961—as a complete unknown—with dreams of becoming a successful singer/songwriter. That’s how this vibrant biopic of Bob Dylan begins, setting up its intoxicating whirl through the turbulent first half of the decade as the former Robert Zimmerman becomes the new “youthful” voice and face of folk music, setting the foundation for all that would follow.

And just this time last year, TimothĂ©e Chalamet was singing a different tune, as the spry young chocolatier Willy Wonka. Now he’s kicked it up a few notches and dug down deeper, giving a much more matured, grounded and finely nuanced performance as the enigmatic, petulant, creatively restless and intriguingly shape-shifting writer of such classics as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are A-Changing,” “It Ain’t Me Babe” and “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.” He sings like Dylan, talks like Dylan, looks like Dylan and even nails Dylan’s tics and mannerisms. I’ll let true Bob Dylan scholars weigh in on the deep-dish accuracy, but to me, it sure feels like Chalamet could well be in the year-end Oscars race.

The movie introduces us to other real-life characters in Dylan’s early orbit. There’s banjo-playing elder statesman Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and the legendary Woody “This Land is Your Land” Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), twin pillars of era’s folk scene. Monica Barbaro, from NBC’s Chicago franchise (Chicago Justice and Chicago P.D.), brings fire, spice and ice as folksinger Joan Baez; her complicated and testy relationship with Dylan—she calls him an “asshole,” he disses her songwriting as something like “an oil painting at a dentist’s office”—becomes one leg of a romantic triangle with Bob and New York artist Suze Rotolo (Elle Fanning). Ozark’s Charlie Tahan is Al Kooper—who’d later go on to found Blood, Sweat & Tears—as he scoots behind the Columbia studio’s Hammond B3 for a Dylan session and lays down the distinctive organ intro for “Like a Rolling Stone”  (a line from which the movie takes its title). And there’s country hitmaker Johnny Cash (Robert Holbrook), who becomes a pen pal and idol to young “Bobbie.”

Director James Mangold, whose wide-ranging movie and TV work also includes Walk the Line (2005), the Oscar-nominated biopic about Johnny Cash and wife June Carter, creates an authentic, almost encyclopedic milieu of the times, from music-makers in hippie-dippy clothes and smoky Greenwich Village coffeehouses to brow-creasing worries about Communists lurking everywhere, nuclear Armageddon and race riots in the aftermath of the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King. It shows how folk music became instrumental in the social activism of its times, its songs confronting and colliding with politics to create seismic pop-culture shifts and upheaval.

A Complete Unknown is really all about Dylan, how he became interwoven into the larger social fabric of the ‘60s, and how the success he wanted so badly also brought him a suffocating level of acclaim that he didn’t. And it’s about how he continually worked to create and re-create himself, twisting and retooling his musical identity in a stubborn refusal to conform to anyone’s expectations—and how even people close to him felt like they didn’t really know him, who he really was, or who he wanted to be.

Monica Barbaro plays Joan Baez.

Fittingly, the movie ends in 1965, just after Dylan goes “rogue” at the iconic Newport Folk Festival, causing a near riot by introducing a jangly bombast of electric instruments and drums for his three-song closing set—and then coming out, with just his acoustic guitar, to sing “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue.” It’s his final kiss-off to the folk darling he used to be, and how he started. Then he roars off on his motorcycle.

Music fans will dig it for sure, and everyone else—including those too young to “remember” Bob Dylan or the ‘60s—can certainly appreciate the care and attention that clearly went into depicting the events, and finally the pivotal moment when the young troubadour, only in his mid-20s, shook off folk music’s dusty past and headed down a highway into the future. Like a rolling stone, indeed.

—Neil Pond

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Dec 19 2024
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Sonic the Hedgehog 3”

Jim Carrey all but steals the show from the little blue multimedia mammal

Sonic the Hedgehog 3
Starring Jim Carrey, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter and the voices of Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba, Ben Schwartz and others
Directed by Jeff Fowler
Rated PG

In theaters Friday, Dec. 20

Since 1993—and Super Mario Bros.—Hollywood has been capitalizing on videogames and their built-in fan base of passionate gamers. Sonic the Hedgehog, the Japanese-based Sega series of the early ‘90s, has been one of the most successful, and most prolific, spilling over into television, comics and related games and generating its own galaxy of characters.

This third big-screen movie in the Sonic franchise continues the adventures of the quippy little blue computer-generated anthropomorphic hedgehog who can run faster than the speed of sound. Ben Schwartz (from TV’s Parks and Recreation) returns as the voice of Sonic, who’s joined again by his teammates, the brawny anteater Knuckles (voiced by Idris Elba) and Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessy), a gadget-guru fox.

It’s action-packed, zingy with wit and geared toward the generation-spanning audience the Sonic games and their multimedia spawn have been cultivating now for more than three decades. It’s a kid-friendly spy movie, a sci-fi tale, a meta heist comedy, a perilous adventure and a riff-tastic spin through time and space as Sonic faces off with another super-powered hedgehog named Shadow (voiced with just the right amount of angst by Keanu Reeves), discovering Shadow’s wrenching backstory and unraveling a sinister plot to, well, destroy the Earth.

There are shades of Mission Impossible, Raiders of the Lost Arc, Ocean’s 11, Armageddon, Austin Powers and James Bond, with nods to Godzilla and Casper the Friendly Ghost, loads of far-out gizmos and gimmicks and full-on montages orchestrated to the music of the Beach Boys and Jelly Roll. Even the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” album cover gets a nod. And the moon gets sliced in half, like it was indeed made of cheese, and Sonic gets sucked into a gaping black hole. This little hedgehog sure covers a lot of ground.

Other familiar faces get in on the zaniness, including James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Krysten Ritter, Shemar Moore and Natasha Rothwell. And Alyna Brown, the young Australian actress who played young Furiosa in this year’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, has a small part that resonates throughout the film.  

But the movie really belongs to Jim Carrey, who doubles down on his gonzo, over-the-top Jim Carrey-ness in a double role, returning as the rotund mad scientist Dr. Robotnik and also Robotnik’s mad-scientist grandfather. “It’s like we’re two characters, played by the same actor!” they both exclaim when they meet, looking into the camera for wink-wink emphasis. Carrey’s jokes fly fast and furious—even giving Sonic a run for his ha-ha’s—as he reflexively punches up nearly every scene with quips and puns and mannerisms and movie lines, from across the spectrum of his movie-comedy career, like he’s filling a carnival funhouse with his own greatest hits. If they handed out awards for best performance by Jim Carrey doing Jim Carrey alongside another Jim Carrey in a videogame franchise about a blue hedgehog, he’d be a solid shoo-in.

But for all its gung-ho go-for-it-ness, the movie has a soft, sensitive underbelly about friendship, family, making good choices, love and loss. It’s the awwwwwww at the center of all it all.

Fans of the franchise, of any age, will find a lot to like—especially in its end-scene hint of more to come. And everyone else, well, just sit back, buckle up and let Jim Carrey and Sonic take you on a way-out trip that suggests this speedy bright blue videogame breakout still has even more places for his blurry little legs to take him.

—Neil Pond

Dec 18 2024
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “The Brutalist”

Adrien Brody is an immigrant architect working to build an American dream in this sprawling post-Holocaust drama

The Brutalist
Starring Adrien Brody, Guy Pierce & Felicity Jones
Directed by Brady Corbet
Rated R

In limited release Friday, Dec. 20

Adrien Brody gives an impassioned starring performance as LĂĄzlĂł TĂłth, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who emigrates to America in 1947 to build a new life, hoping to draw on his pre-wartime work as an architect back in Hungary.

Taking its name from a mid-century architectural style, The Brutalist is big and bold as it majestically sprawls across the years and LĂĄzlĂł meets a wealthy industrialist (Guy Pierce) who wants him to oversee a monumental legacy project on a hillside in Doylestown, outside Pittsburgh.

This is a large-scale, epic movie, the kind of serious, soulful drama that generates significant Oscar buzz. It’s gorgeous and enormous (three and a half hours long), filled with dramatic intensity, terrific acting, a multi-tiered plotline, complex characters and over-arching themes about the immigrant experience, antisemitism, homelessness, the downside of the American dream and the lofty aesthetics of design. Add opium addiction, lusty sex, a deadly train derailment and a shocking rape for spicy seasoning.

Felicity Jones plays TĂłth’s wife, stricken with osteoporosis from wrenching malnutrition in a concentration camp, forcibly separated from her husband in the turmoil of the battle of Budapest at the close of the war—and now confined to a wheelchair. Their teenage niece (Raffey Cassidy) is an orphan, rendered mute by the traumas of what she’s endured. Joe Alwyn is a pompous, smarmy son of privilege; you’ll want to reach through the screen and give him a good, hard slap across his smug face. A Black U.S. Army veteran (Zachari BankolĂ©) that LĂĄzlĂł meets in a soup line becomes a close friend.

It all looks amazing, with elaborate period detail and impressive, sometimes jaw-dropping visuals, the kind of grandiose skyscraper of a movie—with an overture, intermission and an epilogue—that harkens back to Hollywood epics of yore. The soundtrack—with originals by composer Daniel Blumberg—is auditory magnificence. The movie towers over most others by its sheer scope, unbridled ambition and elegant artistic vision, like the massive, concrete, steel and granite construction project at its core—an achievement designed not just for the present, but a thing to be admired far into the future. The Brutalist isn’t a popcorn matinee movie. It’s a cinematic triumph, a thing of beauty constructed for the ages, and one I promise you’ll watch in awe.  

—Neil Pond

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