The Media Tourist

Disney/Pixar inventively goes inside the mind of a girl going into puberty, and it’s a wonderfully wild ride

Inside Out 2
With the voices of Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Maya Hawke & Ayo Edebiri
Directed by Kelsey Mann
Rated G

In theaters Friday, June 14

Almost a decade ago, Inside Out plunged us into the noggin of a young girl named Riley and a dedicated team of cartoonish characters—representing her emotions—helping her navigate childhood with a healthy balance of appropriate feelings.  

In this disarmingly creative coming-of-age sequel, the emotions in Riley’s head are once again led by Amy Poehler as the voice of Joy, the perky, blue-haired leader of a front-lobe squadron of Sadness (Phyllis Smith, from The Office), Fear (Tony Hale), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (The Equalizer’s Liza Lapira). Things are running smoothly; Riley, now 13 and on the cusp of high school, has become a good student, a great friend, a loving daughter and a promising hockey player.

But when a flashing red Puberty alarm suddenly goes off in command central, everything changes. A demolition crew barges in to radically reorganize the control room in Riley’s cranium to make way for the erratic tides of hormonal turbulence—and a new crew of feelings. And Joy suddenly finds herself contending with the newcomers for control of Riley’s consciousness.

As Riley tries out for a spot on the high school hockey team, the new flood of emotions responds to her uncertainties, confusion and awkwardness, charting her chaotic trajectory into a new phase of adolescence. Will she abandon her former friends and hockey mates to hang with the older, cooler players? Will she let her sense of competitiveness prevail over her natural kindness and empathy? Will she keep her cute, little-girl crush on boy bands and videogame heroes, or forge ahead into the more grownup tastes of her future?

It’s a superbly inventive depiction of puberty—how it’s messy, moody and often funny—with a small army of voices behind its characters, like Envy (The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), Disgust (Liza Lapira from The Equalizer), Ennui (French actress Adele Exarchopoulos), and Riley’s mom and dad (Diane Lane and Kyle McLauglin). Even John Ratzenberg makes a voice appearance, as he’s done in a host of other Pixar films, as a blue-hued construction foreman. June Squibb is Nostalgia, and the musician Flea is a cop.

But Maya Hawke—yes, the daughter of actor Ethan Hawke—all but steals the show as the hyper, wide-eyed, ever-fretful Anxiety, vying with Joy for the upper hand in Riley’s personality. And if you’re curious about the person behind young Riley, you can catch Kensington Tallman in the recent Max comedy series Home Sweet Rome!  

It’s masterfully clever, charmingly warmhearted and emotionally resonant as Riley’s emotions encounter all sorts of cerebral obstacles, including a literal Stream of Consciousness, a turbulent Brainstorm, deep rifts of Sar-Chasm, mountains of memories and a dark vault of secrets and discarded mental clutter. It’s an immensely enjoyable ride through the mind of a young girl going through some quantum changes as she emerges from the cocoon of tweendom. The Disney/Pixar imagineers have scored another triumph, making Riley’s swirling cocktail of hormones into something terrifically ingenious and totally relatable.

Wee little ones might be challenged to keep up with the frantic pace, the spewing fountain of ideas, the cascade of wit and the generous dollops of wisdom. But older kids and their parents will love this touching, vibrantly entertaining spin on a familiar phase of childhood that tosses us to and fro before setting us on the pathway to adulthood.  

This brilliantly zany puberty parable may take place in the head, but it ultimately lands squarely on the heart.

—Neil Pond

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence return for another blast of slam-bang action and ha-ha hinjinks

Bad Boys: Ride or Die
Starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence
Directed by Adil El Arbi & Bilail Fallah
Rated R

In theaters Friday, June 7

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? If you’re these bad boys, you make another movie. Ride or Die is the fourth in the Will Smith and Martin Lawrence action-comedy franchise, which began almost 30 years ago. So predictably, the nostalgia factor is sky-high, with two familiar characters recalling their past as crime-fighting bros while getting pulled into a new adventure involving cartel and cop cross-contamination on the mean streets of Miami.

Quips and bullets continue to fly as the jam-packed plot bulges with a buddy-cop buffet of f-bombs and crude jokes about below-the-belt body parts. It’s often genuinely funny, but the humor coexists in this Bad Boys movie-verse alongside episodes of explosive violence and high-body-count action, making for some jarring tonal shifts. A former cop recalls getting his fingernails pried off as a gruesome cartel torture—but wait, there’s Martin Lawrence in a hospital gown on a balcony, showing off his erection to downtown Miami. Ha-ha, right?

Smith is police detective Mike Lowrey, who mostly plays serious straight man to the frantic goofball antics of his partner, Marcus Burnett (Lawrence). Mike is settling into new married life with his wife (Melanie Liburd, from Ghost: Power Book II), while Marcus fights an addiction to junk food and embraces a new spiritual transcendence after his near-death experience—claiming that, in a previous incarnation, Lowrey was his lowly donkey. And that’s not the movie’s only ass joke.

It gets a bit overcrowded with supporting players, including franchise alum and newbies. There’s Vanessa Hudgens, Eric Dane, DJ Khaled and even Michael Bay, who directed the first two Bad Boys films. Eric Dane (who played Dr. Mark Sloan on Grey’s Anatomy) makes a chilling villain, and Tiffany Haddish gets a couple of naughty chuckles as a randy strip-club proprietor. Joe Pantoliano’spolice captain was murdered in a previous film, but hey, he’s back too, in flashbacks and dream sequences.

It’s a feature film, but the movie’s rhythm and “beats” make if feel like a big-screen sitcom, where the stars are never really in danger and everything can be laughed off by the audience, if not the characters. Country superstar Reba McEntire might even laugh at a scene in which Mike and Marcus—held at gunpoint by a couple of hillbilly yahoos— struggle to recall any of her songs. There’s even a scene that gives a whimsical nod to the 2022 Oscars incident in which Smith slapped host Chris Rock.

And lest you forget the movie is based in Miami, you’ll be reminded by numerous scenic skyline shots, including repeated background nighttime appearances by the massive Observation Wheel on the shores of Biscayne Bay. That’s perfect backdrop mojo, apparently, for planning stealthy counterattacks, making phone calls full of plot exposition and having some serious buddy bonding.

Fans of the franchise will likely lap it up, but anyone not already baptized in Bad Boys will probably sense the sequel fatigue seeping in, as it invariably does to most flicks that try to extend their shelf life across multiple decades. Smith and Lawrence gamely embrace the older versions of their characters, talking about this new phase of their lives while dodging gunfire or arguing about who’s grilling the chicken at a family picnic. But the novelty—of smack-talking buddy cops—has certainly worn off.

They may have once been bad boys, but now they’re older dudes. “Just refuse to die,” Marcus tells Mike, espousing his newfound invincibility after momentarily expiring on a hospital bed. Bad Boys may not ride forever, but Smith and Lawrence certainly seem up for at least one more blast of slam-bang action and ha-ha hijinks.

—Neil Pond  

Daisy Ridley swims into sports history in high-spirited period-piece biopic

Young Woman and the Sea
Starring Daisy Ridley
Directed by Joachim RØnning
Rated PG

In theaters Friday, May 31

You probably don’t know (or don’t know much) about the first woman to swim the English Channel. So let this high-spirited, warm-hearted biopic introduce you to Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle, who in 1926 made a big splash by doing something that only five other people—all men—had done, completing what was thought to be “the hardest test in all of sports.”

And beating the boys at their own game.

Daisy Ridley, the British actress best known for playing the Jedi Rey in four Star Wars flicks, is Trudy, the headstrong youngest daughter of a family of German working-class immigrants in New York City. After nearly dying from measles as a child—and hearing of an onboard ship tragedy in which hundreds of women died because they didn’t know how to swim—she’s determined to conquer the water. But in 1920s America, swimming was primarily for boys and men due to societal prohibitions about women showing too much skin.

Based on a 2009 book of the same name, Young Woman and the Sea follows mostly standard biopic beats showing how Trudy grows up to defy her grumpy father (Kim Bodina), bond with her older sister (Tilda Cobham-Harvey) and align with her supportive, strong-willed mother (Jeanette Hain). The movie also offers some playful situational humor, as when Trudy annoys her father into agreeing to let her join a swim class, or later, when her measles-related hearing loss comes in handy by muffling a dissonant drone of bagpipes.  

Eventually Trudy starts winning competitions and getting medals, and she’s invited to represent the United States in the 1924 Paris Olympics. But as female swimmers make modest strides into the mainstream, Trudy sets her eyes on something bigger—breaking into, and breaking through, the boys-club claim on the most dangerous swim in the world, one that no woman had ever undertaken.

It’s hard not to be inspired by this true-story tale as she overcomes the norms of the times and prepares to swim across the treacherous, 21-mile stretch of waterway between England and France. She’s warned of the icy, 20-degree water, schools of jellyfish, occasional sharks and even some unexploded mines left over from World War I. She’s saddled with a coach (Christopher Eccleston) who gets seasick—and spitefully jealous of what she’s trying to do. She also gets help and tips from a colorfully boisterous Brit, Bill Burgess (Stephan Graham), one of the handful of men who traversed the Channel before her. And speaking of showing skin, Burgess likes to wear skimpy bathing trunks and sometimes swim in the buff. Cover your eyes, girls!

Norwegian director Joachim RØnning has a keen eye for the many in-the-water sequences, and an attention to period detail that enhances the mood and feel of the times, from huffing steamships, clacking telegraphs and flapping carrier pigeons to families glued to their radios to get the news. We get a glimpse of Tarzan-to-be Johnny Weissmuller, who was himself an Olympic-champion swimmer before Hollywood called. The popular ‘20s foxtrot tune “Ain’t We Got Fun” becomes Trudy’s musical mantra.

It’s a Disney movie, yes, but instead of cartoon animals and evil stepmothers, it’s a rousing tale of real-life feminism in the water and a young woman who was dubbed by the press as the “Queen of the Waves.” When she comes home victorious—and beating the men’s best Channel-crossing time by nearly two hours—New York City throws her the biggest ticker-tape parade ever, with even the New York Yankees (and Babe Ruth!) cheering from the packed sidelines.

The title might make you think of a fem-centric, youthful spin on another sea tale, Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea.” Or perhaps Nyad, the recent Netflix film about Diana Nyad, in her mid-sixties when she swam from Cuba to Florida. Young Woman in the Water is an engaging look at the OG of female swimmers, a girl barely into her twenties when she made waves that rocked the world, who saw something she wanted, jumped in and went for it, stroking and kicking her way into sports history.

And yes, even swimming through a school of jellyfish. Ow!

—Neil Pond

Ferociously entertaining reboot shines with dazzling effects, action and emotion

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Starring Owen Teague, Freyda Allan & Kevin Durand
Directed by Wes Ball
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, May 10

In the newest installment of the durable film franchise about a world in which apes and humans coexist, a young chimpanzee squares off with a fearsome bonobo leader as all civilization hangs precariously in the balance. It’s a rip-roaring dystopian survival tale, a heroic journey, a parable about caring for our planet and an emotionally resonant tale about families, friends and the future.

But Curious George Goes to the Zoo, it isn’t. There’s some seriously muscular monkeyshine going on in this depiction of what happens when our young protagonist chimpanzee, Noa, sets out on a journey to find his clan, which has been subjugated into slavery by a cruel alpha-ape tyrant who calls himself Proximus Caesar. (All you Latin scholars will know that proximus means “next” or “nearest,” which is this monstrous monkey’s only relation to the late, great benevolent ape leader Caesar, who died at the end of the previous movie, 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes.) And Noa soon finds out just how the new Caesar is totally, despotically different from the old Caesar.

The new movie—the ninth in the canon—plunks us again down on Earth hundreds of years from now when apes have supplanted humans. We learn that the cause was a mutated virus with a world-changing side effect: It led apes to become fluent in speech (we know they know at least one common curse word!) and civilized, and dethroned humans into bands of feral, mute scavenging pests. The apes call humans echoes, suggesting their distant, faint resemblance to mankind of yore.  

As you might suppose, most of the characters here are apes, played and voiced by actors underneath deep layers of motion-capture effects and CGI. Owen Teague is Noa, Kevin Durand is Proxiumus, and Peter Macon is Raga, a sagacious old orangutan. There’s also a host of talent behind the performances of Noa’s ape clan, Caesar’s merciless foot soldiers, and hundreds of supporting simians. There are only a couple of non-monkeys in the mix—William H. Macy is a human now ill-advisedly serving as a lackey for Proximus, and The Witcher’s Freyda Allan plays Mae, an uneasy female echo who becomes an ally of Noa and Raga—but with an agenda of her own that is revealed later.

It’s an ape-tastic epic, action-packed and full of feels that will touch your (human) heart, tapping back into the sci-fi soul of the original Planet of the Apes in 1968. (There’s a scene with apes on horseback, snatching up men and women with nets, that will definitely give you Charlton Heston vibes.) The tech is nothing short of amazing, showing just how much SFX has evolved and progressed—to make ape characters look, move and behave like apes, instead of human actors in monkey suits and prosthetics. With fully emotive CGI faces and bodies, these apes feel like they’re on the vanguard of the next movie-effects breakthrough, the same way Avatar set a new motion-capture standard more than a decade ago.   

A couple of vertiginous “climbing” sequences, with the apes swinging like trapeze artists from mountainous peaks and scaling a sheer rock coastal cliff, will really get your blood pumping. The ape-on-ape fighting scenes have a fierce intensity that “human” actors can’t realistically match, with teeth-baring, chest-thumping, body-slamming brawls that might leave you feeling a bit bruised yourself.

In addition to allusions to politics, Roman history and power run amok, there are other touchstones. Monstrously menacing apes snarl like mini Kongs, ruling a brutish “kingdom” that resembles Col. Kurtz’s compound in Apocalypse Now.  Even little Curious George gets a wink-wink shoutout, in a children’s book found by the apes. Some of the apes-on-horseback scenes, clopping along with conversational banter, reminded me of Butch Cassidy and the Sunday Kid. The abandoned shells of human civilization—from rusted ship hulls to hollowed-out shopping malls and observatories overtaken by ivy—are stark suggestions about where humanity might end up someday, marked by decayed relics of long-forgotten science, advancement and history.

This ferociously entertaining franchise reboot (from director Wes Ball, who also directed The Maze Runner trilogy) lets us revisit a planet still evolving, a place where apes and humans still haven’t fully worked things out. Will they ever, or will one or the other always get the upper hand? In a closing scene as humans and apes both look above, gazing at the same stars in the same night sky, we’re left to wonder what they’re thinking—and wait, perhaps, for the next return to the Planet of the Apes.

—Neil Pond

Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt put the heart in this slam-bang salute to Hollywood’s unsung heroes

The Fall Guy
Starring Ryan Gosling & Emily Blunt
Directed by David Leitch
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, May 3

Stunt professionals “take it on the chin” in nearly every movie, getting punched and pummeled, tumbling out of cars, plummeting off buildings and doing everything else deemed too dangerous for the stars. They’re the “fall guys,” like Colt Severs (Ryan Gosling), who’s found a steady gig as the slam-bang stunt double for a world-famous action hero, Tom Ryder (Alex Taylor Johnson).

But Colt’s career is interrupted when a stunt for Tom goes catastrophically wrong. Months later, when he’s recovered and returned to work, he’s reunited on another film with Ryder—and finds himself in the middle of a missing-person mystery and a conspiracy to connect him to a crime he didn’t commit. Will Colt “take the fall” in more ways than one?

It’s a lively, wildly entertaining ride into behind-the-scenes Hollywood, full of surprises, twists and turns, super-sized action, wink-wink comedy, hissable villains and standup good guys, and an eye-popping, ever-escalating cascade of sheer cinematic chutzpah. And there’s a soft, cuddly heart in the middle of all the explosions, car crashes and fisticuffs as Colt rekindles his old flame with a camera operator turned director (Emily Blunt) struggling to finish her first movie—a sprawling post-apocalyptic sci-fi epic—on location in Australia.

The many meta references to other movies and the film’s detailed immersion into the realm of professional stunt work comes from director David Leitch, himself a stunt performer before moving behind the camera for action-packed movies like John Wick, Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Bullet Train and the Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw. Stay for the credits and you’ll get a look at the stunt pros who stepped in for popcorn-jostling scenes in which Reynold’s character dangles from a helicopter, gets set on fire (repeatedly), is thrown through a windshield and pilots a speedboat with his hands literally tied behind his back. (It’s a handy skill that Colt, we find out, learned to do in his first stunt job, for TV’s Miami Vice.

There are also knowing nods to the new, modern era of movie AI deepfake effects—at the roots of Hollywood’s recent acting strike—as well as prop guns (Alec Baldwin, anyone?) and the TV show on which the movie’s loosely based, the early ‘80s series starring Lee Majors as a stuntman who moonlights as a bounty hunter. (Again, stay for the credits—where you’ll also hear the theme song to the TV series, performed anew by country star Blake Shelton, and see a couple of surprise appearances.) The name of another recognizable actor pops up on a random Post-It note before the star himself later pops up on screen. Or is he a deepfake?

Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham plays a pitbullish producer, Ben Knight is a bruising bad guy, and The Black Panther’s Winston Duke is one of Cole’s stunt colleagues. You’ll see the heavily tattooed Aussie actor Matuse Paz (he’s in the nightclub scene) again in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

Gosling and Blunt make a wonderfully matched movie couple, firing up some feisty, old-school Hollywood romcom chemistry and cheeky quippery. The music is on point too, from the recurring theme (Yungblud’s cover of KISS’s “I Was Made for Lovin’ You”) to a karaoke version of Phil Collin’s “Against All Odds,” delightfully used as a backdrop for a bruising brawl in the back of a garbage truck careening crazily out of control. You’ll love how Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” brings Colt to tears.

As things zip and zing along, you’ll see how unicorns, prosthetic alien hands, space cowboys and a dead body in a bathtub all fit into things. I love the attack dog that only takes commands in French, and there’s more than one reference to another Tom, a real-life action superstar who—like Tom Ryder—likes to boast about how he does so many of his own stunts.          

It’s an adroitly clever and finely crafted cinematic ode to the rough-and-tumble world of the “unsung heroes” who make action look so easy—and get consistently overlooked by the Oscars, as Colt dryly notes.   

If you’re looking for a gonzo good time, crackling with star charisma, spinning around a sweetly romantic core and driven by a genuine love for what makes movies tick, buckle up for The Fall Guy. And hold onto your popcorn!

—Neil Pond

Slip on a tutu and sink your fangs into this feisty, freaky new vampire tale

Abigail
Starring Alisha Weir, Kathryn Newton, Melissa Barrera & Dan Stevens
Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillet
Rated R

In theaters Friday, April 19

What’s scarier than a vampire? A kid vampire! In this ferociously entertaining fright flick, kidnappers get a big surprise after they nab the daughter of a bigshot millionaire, only to find themselves trapped in a spooky old house with a shrieking, bloodsucking monster tot who’s in no mood to play nice.

Young Alisha Weir, who starred in Netflix’s Matilda the Musical, is Abigail, a preteen ballerina (the code name for the abduction is “Tiny Dancer”) who loves doing the sauté to Swan Lake almost as much as slicing into a juicy jugular vein. The crew of kidnappers (Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Will Catlett, Melissa Barrea, Angus Cloud and Kevin Durand) have all signed on for the snatch job, hoping to split a hefty ransom of $50 million. But Abigail has other plans.

The small ensemble cast is game, in more ways than one, as they find themselves on the defensive—and on the menu. “I like to play with my food,” Abigail admits. Blood gushes, bodies burst like viscera-filled balloons, and heads roll once she bares her mouthful of pointy teeth. It’s no coincidence that an Agatha Christie classic, “And Then There Were None,” is tucked away on the bookshelf.

And it turns out little vampires can have daddy issues, too.

Pint-sized terror is nothing new in Hollywood, from Children of the Corn, The Exorcist and The Omen to The Ring and Village of the Damned. And Dracula and Nosferatu may be the OGs of bloodsuckers, but could they twinkle-toe in a blood-smeared tutu along a balcony railing, doing a dainty pirouette before pouncing? Now there’s fresh blood, a new kid in town. And it feels she’s ready to sink her fangs into a feisty, freaky new horror franchise.

—Neil Pond

Henry Cavill leads a bunch of rogue-rascal Brits on a super-secret WWII mission

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Starring Henry Cavill, Alan Richson, Babs Olusanmokun & Eiza Gonzáles
Directed by Guy Richie
Rated R

In theaters Friday, April 19

A group of rip-roaring rapscallions plots to wipe out a nest of nasty Nazis in this World War II action romp inspired by a true story. Director Guy Richie’s latest baddie-laddie ensemble flick is based on a 1942 covert mission by British operatives to sabotage the supply chain for German submarines making the Atlantic so treacherous for Allied Forces.

That’s just a bunch of blah-blah, though, in this movie mainly about hot bods and bang-bang. Germans are dispatched by the dozen with just about every weapon imaginable—guns, grenades, shivs, an axe and a bow and arrows. There are bombs on boats, bombs in bunkers, bombs on beaches.

Alan Richson also stars in TV’s ‘Reacher.’

And bombshells all over the screen. Hunky Henry Cavill (known for his recurring roles as Superman) and equally hunky (if not even hunkier) Alan Richson (who stars as the title character in the Prime action series Reacher) look like they just came from a Britbox special on history’s hottest stealth fighters. Eiza Gonzáles (below), the only female in the cast, plays another real-life character (model-turned-Hollywood actress Margie Stewart) whose actual role in the real mission is historically vague—although she sure vamps it up here as a sexy spy, at one point dressed as a bare-midriff Cleopatra, seducing a smitten SS officer (Til Schweiger) and sashaying onstage through “Mack the Knife” for a group of cheering, leering Nazis. (For some reason, it made me think of Madeline Kahn cavorting for a saloon full of cowboys in the saloon as Lili Von Schtupp in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles.)

The movie’s mission is a high-stakes hail Mary pass by Great Britain, desperate to keep Hitler’s forces from marching ashore after stomping across Europe. Although Winston Churchill himself (Rory Kinnear plays the famous Prime Minister) has sanctioned them, these brazen Brits know they’ll be arrested for war crimes if they’re snared by the British navy—and certainly executed if captured by the Nazis. Churchill gives the go-ahead for the group to do whatever it takes to succeed, even if it means breaking the rules and stooping below wartime “conventions.” It’s a job for ungentlemanly gentlemen and their dirty tricks.  

And as a kind of pseudo-historical bonus, the movie offers a thru-line to the world’s most famous superspy. James Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming, was a British intelligence officer in WWII, and his fictional, suave 007 was inspired by the character Cavill plays in the film—the quippy, dashingly handsome, caddish commando Gus March-Phillips, who was the real-life husband of actress, model (and maybe special agent) Margie Stewart. In the film, Fleming is also around, without much to do but observe, and played by British actor Freddie Fox.

The appearance of Bond’s creator in a movie also featuring an actor rumored to be under consideration to play the next movie Bond (Cavill)….portraying the real-world inspiration for James Bond….makes everything feel a bit like a mobius strip with historical facts on one side and pop fiction on the other.

There’s a lot of adrenaline-stoked action, retorts of snappy British banter and spasms of highly choreographed violence—all hallmarks of director Guy Richie’s other projects like his Gentleman franchise, Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. But there’s also the sense that The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is siphoning off mojo from a couple of other WWII-adjacent films, including The Dirty Dozen from the 1960s and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.

The plot is a bombs-away jumble and gets particularly chaotic toward the end. Much of the mostly British ensemble cast—Henry Golding, Cary Elwes, Alex Pettyfer—gets lost in the crossfire…and the undercover “darkness” of night, which envelopes almost the entire second half of the film. But at least most of the “name” actors fare far better than almost all the cardboard-villain Nazis. The fearsome SS is a bunch of easily dispatched doofuses only there to be mowed down by this cheeky crew of hunky Brits in a sailboat.

“They’ll thank you for this one day,” someone remarks to March-Phillips. And indeed they did, as the real characters were ultimately recognized for their bravery and their under-the-radar dirty deeds. But as a movie, I don’t predict a lot of accolades for this lad-fest blowout, a distinctly Guy Richie concoction of glib violence, gabby retorts and implausibly smooth subterfuge, with studly, scruffy scallywags and a foxy, pistol-packing siren—plus a pop-cultural nod to another dapper “gentleman” who’d come along a couple of decades later with his own license to kill.

—Neil Pond

Kirsten Dunst plays a photojournalist in a battlezone that hits uncomfortably close to home

Kirsten Dunst & Cailee Spaeny in ‘Civil War.’

Civil War
Starring Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura & Stephen Henderson
Directed by Alex Garland
Rated R

In theaters Friday, April 12, 2024

As a team of journalists traverses a country that’s become a deadly battlefield, what they witness looks all too familiar to things we’ve seen on the evening news. But this war is different: It’s here, and it’s now—or it could be.

Set in an unspecified future that looks very much like today, Civil War follows a war-weary photographer (Kirsten Dunst), her adrenaline-junkie colleague (Wagner Moura), a young newshound wannabe (Cailee Spaney) and an older rival reporter (Stephen Henderson) on a perilous trek to the nation’s capital, where they hope to interview the besieged U.S president (Nick Offerman) before D.C. and the government fall to insurrectionist forces.

Civil War never defines or specifies the fractious divide that led to American-vs.-American infighting, but instead plunks us—and the characters—smack-dab down in the messy midst of it. There’s talk of successionist states, treason, an Antifa massacre and the disbandment of government agencies, but no direct reference to politics, parties or people. The movie suggests that, when war breaks out, ideology gets boiled down to brutal basics—an endless, senseless loop of kill or be killed, shooting because someone else is shooting at you.

Which side are you on, and what kind of American are you? It’s a loaded question, and how you answer it might cost you dearly.

It’s intentionally unnerving, unpleasant and terrifying as the journalists make their way toward Washington. Along the path of destruction, they see a crumbling civilization well on its way to collapse. A fuel stop off the interstate reveals a gruesome gas-station Gitmo; enemy hostages are hooded and executed by firing squad; highways are littered with abandoned vehicles and bodies; bombed-out buildings smoulder.

American currency is practically worthless, like “Confederate” dollars after the War Between the States—the original Civil War—ended in the 1860s. Civilians are armed with assault rifles, and Jesse Plemons adds another character to his growing catalogue of creep-out roles. And young Cailee Spaeney crawls out from a pit of corpses, which is even ickier than what she had to do as Elvis’ child bride in Priscilla.

It’s about war, yes, but it’s really about seeing war, watching it through the photos and videos of reporters in the line of fire, who risk their lives to reveal it—in the Ukraine, in Iraq, in the Persian Gulf, in Vietnam. It’s about journalism, the free press, and the media. Maybe you’ve heard that confidence in media has plummeted to an all-time low. That’s not good, but at least it’s not to the point where, as in the movie, we hear about journalists being shot on sight—at least not yet. That would give a whole new meaning to “deadline.”  

The movie asks how much death and destruction can you watch, through a camera lens or faraway, on a screen, before you become numb, burned out or even perversely pumped about what you’re seeing—images of suffering, barbarity and inhumanity. And what happens when those hard-hitting images—from those far-away places—hit a lot closer to home?

Director Alex Garland has made unsettling, thought-provoking movies before—Ex Machina, Annihilation, Men. But Civil War is in a league of its own. It’s an expertly crafted homeland horror show, an in-our-face wake-up call for a nation that seems to be on the precipice of a similarly polarized abyss, with no bridges left to cross.

Think it couldn’t happen here? Think it couldn’t happen a second time? Civil War pointedly asks us to think again.

—Neil Pond

After 40 years, the spooky-fun franchise feels like it’s run out of ‘Ghostbuster’ gas

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Starring Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard & McKenna Grace
Directed by Gil Kenan

In theaters Friday, March 22

Time to strap on those proton packs—here come the Ghostbusters, again.

Has it really been 40 years since the first Ghostbusters, back in 1984? Yep. Hasn’t there already been a couple of sequels (1989 and 2021), an all-female reboot (2016) and a slew of spinoff cartoons, comic books, theme park attractions, toys, and a hit song by Ray Parker Jr.?

Yep, yep, yep and yep.

So, is there any afterlife left in this spooky sci-fi comedy franchise?  Frozen Empire reunites stars from the original movie with later sequels for a gang’s-all-here retread of familiar faces, snappy quips, supernatural hijinks and Scooby Doo-ish scares that works hard to connect four decades of nostalgic movie dots and ghostbusting lore from before. It will likely find a decent audience of true-blue fans who dig its boisterous, noisy amusement-park vibes, but this overcrowded mashup and its complicated, convoluted plot feels like a franchise that may have finally run out of ghostbusting gas.

In this latest romp, the extended family of newbie ‘busters (Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard and McKenna Grace) have relocated from the Midwest (in Ghosbusters: Afterlife) to New York City (the original setting), where they join forces with OG stars Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and Annie Potts when an ancient artifact unleashes a malevolent force that threatens to turn the world into a giant ice cube. Is it getting cold in here, or is it just a banished Byzantine demon doing his Mr. Freeze thing?

New additions this time around include Kumail Nanjiani and Patton Oswald, who provide bits of comedic freshness to the somewhat stale shenanigans, in which much of the fun is choked out by the overloaded, overcooked plot. Emily Alyn Lind (she was young Tanya Harding in I, Tonya) plays a chess-loving friendly ghost (no, not Casper) with an agenda of her own, furthering the teen-misfit plotline of Phoebe Spengler (Mckenna Grace). Turns out Nanjiani’s character has ties to a long-ago group of Old World ghostbusters, and if you’ve ever wanted to see the prolific actor/comedian in Mesopotamian body armor, hurling fireballs at a giant horned demon, well, here’s your chance.  Some classic spooks (the cartoonish Slimer) make encore appearances, along with new apparitions (like the Hell’s Kitchen Sewer Dragon). There are all the gizmos—proton blasters, ghost traps, the Ectomobile converted hearse and the Ectocycle. There’s a bunch of cutesy little marshmallow men, the bite-size spawn of the movie’s original menace, the gigantic Stay Puft monster that lumbered through Manhattan.

Aykroyd blathers earnestly about parapsychology, Murray looks bored and bemused, and Rudd plays the decent, do-the-right-thing kinda guy that’s become his acting trademark. Potts gets a handful of lines, but not much else. And I’m not sure what to make of one of the movie’s other new “characters,” a spirit called the Possessor, which can take over inanimate objects. Honestly, the Possessor doesn’t seem much of a threat, inhabiting a garbage bag, a folding chair and a tricycle. And by all appearances, ghosts and those who bust ‘em have all but taken over one of North America’s most bustling, heavily populated metropolises, muscling out everyone except a scant handful of pedestrians and ordinary citizens. Or maybe the film spent all its budget on ectoplasmic dodads, and couldn’t afford to hire a lot of extras.

In an early scene, one of the kids (Wolfhard) complains that he’s not getting paid for being a ghostbuster. “We’re all being paid,” Rudd’s character tells him, “in memories.”

Memories are about all that Ghostbusters seems to have left in this sequel that does little to recapture the magic or fresh comedic surprises that were once essential ingredients, as necessary as green slime. Like you’d feel after scarfing a bagful of little marshmallow men, it’s mostly running on empty movie calories.

—Neil Pond