The Media Tourist

Director Tim Burton puts his curveball twist on Disney’s flying-elephant tale

Dumbo
Starring Colin Farrell, Danny DeVito, Eva Green & Michael Keaton
Directed by Tim Burton
PG

I’ve been, done, seen about everything—goes an old song—when I see an elephant fly.

That tune is from the beloved 1941 Disney classic Dumbo, about a baby circus elephant who does just that, thanks to oversized, floppy ears that become wonder wings.

Disney’s new live-action Dumbo fleshes out the animated original with colorful new characters, layers of sumptuous detail and dashing retro drama, and all the dazzle and wonder that modern CGI effects can provide—especially when it comes to making you believe you’re actually watching a precious little pachyderm soar, somehow, into the air.

Colin Farrell with Nico Parker and Finley Hobbins

Set around 1920, the story begins when World War I veteran Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell) returns stateside to reunite with his children (Nico Parker and Finley Hobbins) and saddle back up for his old job as a trick rider with the traveling Medici Brothers Circus. Wartime has been tough on Holt; he lost an arm in battle, and his wife died of influenza while he was away. And now circus owner Max Medici (Danny DeVito) tells him he had to sell the horse that Holt used to ride.

So no more giddy-up for Holt, who is reassigned to care for the elephants, including Max’s latest investment—a large, pregnant female named Mrs. Jumbo. Max is ecstatic that the arrival of a cute little baby elephant will give his struggling circus something big to promote.

Danny DeVito

But when “baby Jumbo” is born, Max is bummed to discover the newborn has enormous ears, so cumbersome the poor little feller trips and stumble-bumbles over them when he walks. Circus roustabouts dub him a “monster,” and audiences members jeer at him and give baby Jumbo a cruel new nickname, Dumbo. To add to the heartache, Max sells off Dumbo’s mom after a tragic big-top incident.

But things begin looking up, so to speak, when Holt’s children discover Dumbo’s hidden talent—whenever he inhales a feather, he’s clear for take-off.

And baby, this baby soars!

The jeers turn to cheers, newspaper headlines blare the amazing news—and a smarmy Coney Island entertainment mogul named V.A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton) comes calling with an offer that Max and his little traveling circus troupe can’t refuse. But is it too good to be true?

Director Tim Burton certainly understands Dumbo’s plight. The veteran filmmaker, so adept at telling eccentric tales of oddballs, outcasts and misfits in films including Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Ed Wood, Frankenweenie and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children—and even his gloomy take on Batman—syncs up with this heart-tugging fantasy about a little elephant alone and afraid, humiliated and abused, finally emerging as a humble hero.

Burton’s telltale touches are everywhere, from the swelling soundtrack provided by his longtime musical collaborator, Danny Elfman (this is their 19^th movie together), to the quirky characters that make up the cast of Max’s circus—like multitasking muscle-man Rongo (played by British actor DeObia Oparei), who also provides the big top’s beat behind a slapdash drum kit, keeps tabs on the books, and handles Max’s PR.

Burton’s signature, curveball spin on Dumbo edges into some deliciously dark corners, but the movie’s big—and big-top—heart throbs with the rousing, high-spirited pulse of family, togetherness and freedom.

Eva Green

Casino Royale Bond girl Eva Green, who also starred in Burton’s Dark Shadows and Miss Peregrine’s Home, plays Colette, a French acrobat. Vandevere wants the aerial “Queen of Heaven” to team up with Dumbo as a high-flying duo for his curiously Disney-like amusement park, Dreamland, but she soon realizes that Dumbo’s dreams are far beyond any circus tent. Alan Arkin shows up as a fat-cat banker with dollar signs in his eyes.

Burton jams and crams a lot into this little elephant’s trunk. The original Dumbo was barely an hour long, and this one’s nearly doubles that. In addition to dozens of characters, there are undertones about animal rights, especially in the closing scenes. There’s a mischievous monkey, a group of trained mice and a “Nightmare Island” of captive, “dangerous” creatures. If you’re familiar with the original Dumbo, you’ll appreciate the reappearance of the Oscar-winning song from 1941, “Baby Mine,” and a “bubble” sequence that nods to “Pink Elephants on Parade,” another musical number in the original.

There’s also a modern girl-power subplot that certainly wasn’t there back in the less-enlightened 1940s. Holt’s daughter, Milly, is a budding scientist who doesn’t want to become a circus sideshow act. “I want to be known for my mind,” she says.

Disney movies, from Bambi onward, have frequently had a thing about children who’ve lost, or had to grow up without, a parent. But it’s hard not to think about the timely real-world connection—the wrenching scenes of separation and detainment of children apart from their mothers or fathers—when Mrs. Jumbo is loaded into a dark, dismal cart, the door slams shut and it’s driven away, and little Dumbo is left wailing, with big tears in his big eyes, as she goes.

You’ll probably have tears in your eyes, too, and more than once—but don’t worry, not all of them will be so sad.

Nobody really expected Dumbo to be a big hit, back in 1941. The animation was relatively simple, nothing groundbreaking, and done on the cheap. But the little airborne cartoon elephant won over audiences and became one of Disney’s biggest success stories of the decade. The film went on to air on TV and get theatrical re-releases later in the ’40s, in the 1950s, and in 1972 and 1976.

And even if you’ve never even seen it, you still probably know about the endearing, pint-size pachyderm who represents hopes, dreams and the impossible becoming possible, no matter how impossible it seems. He’s become part of pop culture, and it’s great to see him soaring again.

“That’s my elephant!” shouts Vandevere at one point.

But no, sir—that’s our elephant.

In theaters March 29, 2019

Jordan Peele’s scare-tastic follow-up to ‘Get Out’ delivers a terrifying twist and feels like an instant horror classic

Us
Starring Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss & Tim Heidecker
Directed by Jordan Peele
R

A family’s beach vacation takes a terrifying twist in the new movie from writer-director Jordan Peele, who reminds us of the soul-shaking scares that can be waiting to pounce from places we’re least expecting them—or places we never want to look.

Like, when we see ourselves.

Us, Peele’s follow-up to his excellent Oscar-winning Get Out (2017), begins in the 1980s as a guileless young girl, Adelaide (Madison Curry), wanders off a boardwalk amusement park and has a traumatic experience inside a funky beachside carnival funhouse, a hall of mirrors—where she sees another little girl who looks exactly like her.

It’s unnerving and very creepy.

Now, some three decades later, Adelaide is all grown up (and played by Lupita Nyong’o), returning to the same California seaside town, Santa Cruz, for a getaway with her husband, Gabe (Winston Duke) and their kids, teenage daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and son Jason (Evan Alex). She’s still haunted by what happened on the beach, and so are we.

The family tries to enjoy the day with their friends (Elisabeth Moss of The Handmaid’s Tale and Tim Heidecker, and their two too-cool teenage daughters, played by twin sisters Noelle and Cali Sheldon). But a weird vibe is building, like the odd design on a Frisbee that gets tossed onto their blanket—and what’s with that eerie old guy in the filthy trench coat, who’s hanging around? Is that blood dripping off his fingertips?

And why did Jason draw a picture of him when he got home?

Then things really shift into creepy overdrive that evening. “There’s a family in our driveway,” says Jason. That one line sends shivers down the spine, because the “family” outside looks exactly like the family inside. They easily break into the house. They overpower Adelaide, Gabe and the kids. Things get violent and threatening.

The outside “family” moans like animals or talks in rasps and croaks. They move or flit about in bizarre, herky-jerky motions, or like robots. And they’re carrying big, sharp scissors—for something they call “the untethering.”

Where have they come from? Who are they?

“It’s…us,” says Jason.

Us is a horror show, for sure, with boldness, bite, brilliance, blood, substance and style. In Get Out, Peele melded gotchas with scathing social commentary, and he’s working on an even broader canvas here. This is a masterful, scarifying puzzle of a film that combines terror, humor, violence, pop culture, philosophy, religion and roasting riffs on consumerism, class, yuppie excess and American comfort zones. It’s a lot to unpack, and you’ve got to stick with it.

You may want to look up the movie’s repeated references (you’ll see it visualized at least twice) to the Old Testament verse Jeremiah 11:11. (It’s heavy.) If you’re old enough to remember the 1986 charity campaign Hands Across America, well, that will come in hella-handy. Did you know that there are hundreds of miles of unused tunnels, deserted mine shafts and abandoned subway systems underneath the surface of the United States? How can bunnies be creepy and cuddly at the same time?

This is a movie you’ll probably be discussing long after you see it; it’s got plenty of things to dissect—especially about the duality of human nature, our ids and egos and just where, and how, any of us might “find ourselves” if we went into a hall of mirrors—or dug deep enough into our pasts.

Though all of the actors pull “double” duty, also playing their dark-side doppelgangers, Nyong’o is a true revelation, raging with explosive survival instincts that can turn equally monstrous in either of her characters.

Peele, who got his start in comedy with the Emmy Award-winning duo Key & Peele, has now become a modern horror maestro. He nods to Kubrick, Spielberg and De Palma, but he’s clearly got his own footing and panache. On April 1, he’ll take over the vaunted Twilight Zone franchise for its reboot on the streaming service CBS All Access. If this movie’s any indication of where he might take it, I’m all aboard.

Some scary movies just scare you. This one rattles you good. Who are we? What do we see when we look in the mirror? Are we the “us” we think we are? Do the things we do to feel good—and prosperous, and comfortable—make someone else feel miserable, poor…and very angry? Are heaven and hell two identical twins that ended up on opposites sides of the same cosmic coin?

It’s a deep, dark dive into a movie-carnival funhouse of apocalyptic nightmares, where grim shadows lurk and dreams go to starve and fester—and an iconic, sunny summer song by the Beach Boys will forever sound more ominous because of how it’s used in one particular scene.

This is Us, a modern horror movie that has the feel of an instant classic, one that has staying power to shock and awe years or even decades from now, a horror film that suggests that the most monstrous monsters of all might be the monstrosities that are the easiest to overlook, bury or forget—until we’re confronted with them face to face. And those faces turn out to be our own.

In theaters March 22, 2019

Brie Larson Radiates Grrrrl Power in Marvel’s First Fem-Solo Superhero Saga

Captain Marvel
Starring Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Jude Law, Annette Bening and Ben Mendelsohn
Directed by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck
PG-13

Move over, Thor. Step aside, Spidey. At ease, Iron Man. There’s a new officer pulling some serious rank in the comic book corps.

But don’t call her Captain Marvel—not just yet.

In the first female-fronted superhero saga from the Marvel big-screen spandex factory, Brie Larson stars as Carol Danvers, a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot—and also a Kree space-alien soldier, known as Vers, from the distant planet Hala.

But Danvers has a hard time understanding how to reconcile these two separate—but very connected—parts of her life. Her memory’s been scrambled, in a big, primal explosion that also gave her cosmic superpowers, and she spends most of the movie trying to put the pieces together.

She doesn’t know who she really is. She doesn’t know who she really was. And she doesn’t know that her past and present will eventually merge and she’ll become the super-charged superhero known as Captain Marvel, who can zoom through the skies, glow with fire and shoot explosive photon beams from her hands.

And she certainly doesn’t know that she’ll become a pivotal figure—perhaps even a cornerstone—for the entire Marvel franchise.

Captain Marvel, the 21^st Marvel movie, is mostly set in the 1990s, before the events depicted in most other flicks in the Marvel Comic Universe, which connects almost all the Marvel titles and characters. Much of the fun is seeing how it lays the groundwork for things that happened in previously released films, reintroduces familiar characters and whets the appetite for more movies to come (like Avengers: Endgame, opening April 26).

Co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck are mostly known for their indie films Half Nelson, Mississippi Grind and It’s Kind of a Funny Story. This is a pretty big deal, to get the keys to kingdom for a huge franchise movie—a Marvel epic with the Disney brand. And even though DC Comics beat Marvel to the punch getting Wonder Woman to the big screen (as the first female superhero movie, ever), there’s still a lot riding on Captain Marvel. Even before the movie was released, internet trolls weren’t happy about Brie Larson’s casting (since, in the comics, Captain Marvel was originally a man), or her campaign for more “inclusion” in superhero epics. (And speaking of inclusion, Boden becomes the first woman to ever direct a Marvel movie.)

Here come the Skrulls!

But Captain Marvel soars as an origin story with heart, cheeky humor, wit and warmth, zingy dialogue, punchy action, colorful characters and a hero—heroine—who radiates righteous grrrl power as Danvers breaks the glass ceiling on two worlds where men can’t seem to stop telling her what she can’t do, what she’s not qualified to do, what she’s not meant to do. “You do know why they call it a cockpit, don’t you?” one of her male Air Force co-pilots taunts her. “Don’t let your emotions overrule your judgement,” says Yon-Rogg (Jude Law), her Kree mentor, training her as part of his elite, SWAT-type team of Starforce warriors who fight the shape-shifting, green-skinned Skrulls, led by Talos (Ben Mendelsohn).

The movie pulsates with a rockin’ soundtrack of ’80s and ’90s tunes from female-fronted bands—“Only Happy When It Rains” by Garbage, Heart’s “Crazy on You,” “Celebrity Skin” by Hole, “Just a Girl” by No Doubt. When she crash-lands through the rooftop of a Blockbuster video store in 1995, Vers ponders the rows of strange artifacts, briefly picking up a VHS copy of The Right Stuff, the 1983 Oscar-winner about the Mercury astronauts and America’s space race. It’s a nod to her own test-pilot roots—and the space gauntlet she’ll soon be running herself.

And it’s full of fun ’90s pop-cultural artifacts. A Nerf Gun factors into a smashing space-alien smackdown. A Space Infinity Stone, an all-powerful Tesseract, is transported inside a Fonzie lunchbox—Heeeeey! Remember pay phones, dial-up internet, Troll dolls and settling in to watch The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?

Samuel L. Jackson

On Earth, Vers runs into Special Agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), the future director of the Avengers superhero organization S.H.I.E.L.D, and his assistant, Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg). Both Jackson and Gregg were digitally “de-aged” to look some 25 younger, and it’s pretty amazing, especially for Jackson, who appears extensively—without Fury’s signature eyepatch, which we know will come later. Jackson, a Marvel fan favorite, is the special sauce that spices up anything he’s in, and he enlivens Captain Marvel considerably with some of the movie’s best quips and one-liners.

Gemma Chan (from Crazy Rich Asians) is a Starforce warrior. Annette Bening plays the elusive Dr. Wendy Lawson, who holds a critical key to Danvers’ fuzzy-memory back story. Lashana Lynch adds a layer of warmth as Danvers’ former Air Force bestie, Maria Rambeau, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see her precocious daughter, Monica (Akira Akbar), whom Danvers nicknames Lt. Trouble, crop up in another Marvel movie down the road. There’s a pause for a sweet posthumous cameo from the late Stan Lee.

The movie brings up issues about refugees, imperialistic domination, war and the age-old question of who, or what, you can trust. The granny on the train, who might be an evil alien in disguise? The enemy alien, who might be an ally? The memory, that might not even be real? A “Supreme Intelligence” who might not be so supreme, or so intelligent, after all?

An orange tabby cat named Goose (dig the Top Gun reference) is a fur-ball of feisty surprises, and surely earns a place in filmdom’s feline Hall of Fame.

But Captain Marvel is Brie Larson’s movie, certainly—even if her character is never actually called Captain Marvel. The closest we get is “Mar-vell,” one of the earlier incarnations from the comics; you’ll have to bore down into Marvel lore to find out just how deep Captain Marvel goes, back to 1967, how the mantle of character passed over gender lines in the 1970s and finally became fully female around 2012.

“It’s two words,” she tells Fury. “Mar-Vell.”

“Marvel sounds a lot better,” Fury says. “Like the Marvelettes.” He playfully sings a bit of the group’s big 1960s hit, “Please Mister Postman.”

Danvers grins, but she’s not having any of that—not yet. She’s got other music to make, another superhero song to sing, more galactic mail to deliver, other missions to fly. Captain Marvel will assuredly be back. And we’ll all get used to that name. Hang on, and stay tuned!

In Theaters March 8, 2019

Pulpy little crazy-train thriller asks: Who’s afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?

Greta
Starring Chloë Grace Moretz & Isabelle Huppert
Directed by Neil Jordan
Rated R

Folklorists tell us that fairy tales once had a practical component at a time when the world was a much darker, more dangerous place. They were cautionary yarns that carried warnings for children to steer clear of wild animals, keep out of the forest and avoid strangers—who might bamboozle them, harm them, steal them or even kill them.

The world is still a dangerous place, as we know.

In Greta, a young woman named Frances (Chloë Grace Moretz) reminds us all again when she innocently returns a left-behind purse she finds on a New York City subway to its rightful owner, a lonely older widower named Greta (French actress Isabelle Huppert) who lives alone in a big, old back-alley apartment, loves classical music—and desperately wants a new friend.

How desperately?

Well, let’s just say it doesn’t take long before things start to become desperate, indeed. Frances, a recent transplant to the Big Apple, tries to be friendly at first. She visits Greta again, helps her cook, assists her in picking out a new shelter dog.  

Maika Monroe and Chloë Grace Moretz

Frances’ spunky flatmate, Erica (Maika Monroe), can’t believe just how quickly Frances—who’s recently lost her own mother—has let herself become entangled with Greta. “You’ve like, totally adopted this woman—and you hardly know her!” Erica says. “She’s not your mother.”  

And soon enough, it becomes clear that Greta has a screw—or two—loose. She calls, she texts—and she stalks. She shows up where Frances works, at an upscale restaurant, making a scene. She sends Frances flowers, keeps popping up in the hallway of her apartment building, and follows her roommate. Cops tell Frances they can’t really do anything. “Ignore her,” one policeman tells Frances. “She’s just looking for attention.”

Of course, attention isn’t what Greta’s looking for, as we—and Frances—find out.

Greta feels, in many ways, like a modern-day fairy tale. Greta’s home—dark, forbidding, off the “beaten path” of a busy street—is like the lair at end of a windswept woodland trail. I halfway expected to see Hansel and Gretel, or the Three Little Pigs, peeping around the potted plants beside the front door.

Greta is the Big Bad Wolf, the Evil Stepmother and the Wicked Witch, all rolled into one. And when she sits at her ancient upright piano and plays Franz Liszt, or puts Chopin on the turntable, those Euro maestros sound more creepy than classical—especially when they mask the muffled thumps and thuds coming from the wall behind the piano.

And Frances is a contemporary Red Riding Hood, down to her hood-ie (although it’s gray), and her ride is a bicycle as she ventures to Greta’s house. Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Frances is, and her fear turns out to be completely justified. Greta is a monster.

Irish director Neil Jordan won an Oscar for writing the screenplay for the gender-bending The Crying Game back in 1992. Greta’s no award winner, I’m afraid, but it is a tight, pulpy, nasty little crazy-train psychological thriller that takes a sharp turn into something even nastier in the home stretch. You won’t be shocked, or really even surprised, when this fairy tale goes “grim.”

But for all its campy craft, there’s a somewhat serious thread running throughout about grief, loss and what drives people to madness. The Evil Queen who bedeviled Snow White may have had some serious psychological or environmental issues that turned her into a cold, cruel, vain, jealous sorceress with a magic mirror and a poisoned apple—but we never hear about them.

At only 22, Moretz already has more than 60 movie and TV roles on her resume, including last year’s horror film Suspiria, the 2013 remake of Carrie and the 2016 comedy Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. Here she’s certainly believable as a smart, sensible “good girl” trying to do the right thing, who quickly gets sucked into a situation that turns icky, then ugly, then downright dangerous and dire.

Monroe, who plays Frances’ apartment mate and old college roomie, best known for the breakout 2014 horror flick It Follows, is the audience surrogate for the film—the voice of reason, question and doubt. Believe me, you’d want her as your best friend, too.

And Huppert, the international screen, TV and stage veteran who was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar for Elle in 2016, camps it up as Greta, nimbly nibbling around the edges of craziness before diving in fully and chewing up the scenery. She dances, she screams, she purrs, she wipes up a puddle of blood, she pulls out a hypodermic syringe, she slams the lid—and locks the hasp—on a big, wooden, coffin-like box filled with toys, stuffed animals and…

So—who’s afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?

In theaters March 1, 2019

A heartwarming end to a high-flying, two-decade franchise

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

Starring the voices of Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, F. Murray Abraham, Kristen Wiig & Jonah Hill
Directed by Dean DeBlois
PG

Ever seen a dragon fly?

They crop up all along our pop-cultural pantheon—there’s Smaug from The Lord of the Rings, Peter Paul and Mary’s “Puff, the Magic Dragon” and the magnificent airborne beasts in Game of Thrones.

And there’s Toothless, the sleek, black “Night Fury” first introduced in DreamWorks’ acclaimed, animated How to Train Your Dragon back in 2010. Now the third and final installment of Toothless’ tale comes to the screen with most of the original vocal cast again aboard, and new visual wonders to behold.

Writer and director Dean DeBlois, who also directed and wrote the first two films, returns as well, giving the movie and its characters a sense of seamless continuity, even though the “trilogy” and its timeline are spread out across nearly a decade.

The Hidden World is a warmhearted, high-spirted, coming-of-age adventure about the young Viking-heir chief Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) and his faithful dragon, living in the dragon utopia that Hiccup and his clan have built on the island of Berk. Vikings—as fans of the franchise know, and other viewers are quickly brought up to speed—once feared and fought dragons, but now coexist with them in peace and harmony.

Hiccup has taken on his leadership role since the death of his kindly father, Stoick (Gerard Butler, seen in flashbacks). Other characters who flock and flitter around him for support (and a steady, mead-like flow of comedy) are his mother (Cate Blanchett), the hulking blacksmith Gobbler the Belch (Craig Ferguson); his strong, confident, warrior-sidekick sweetie, Astrid (America Ferrera); and his fellow dragon-riding Viking buds Snotlout (Jonah Hill), Eret (Kit Harington) and the twins Ruffnut (Kristen Wiig) and Tuffnut (Justin Rupple).   

Everyone rallies when Berk comes under attack by the villainous dragon slayer Grimmel the Grisly (F. Murray Abraham), who sees Berk’s “toxic notion” of dragon domestication as “the undoing of civilization.” Grimmel especially wants to capture—and destroy—the Night Fury, Toothless, the last of its kind, and he “baits” him with another dragon, a female.

The pure white “Light Fury” is the exact opposite of Toothless—bright where he is dark, day where he is night, yin where he is yang. Guess what? Toothless falls in love.

Most of the story has to do with Hiccup’s decision to vacate Berk and seek a new home—the so-called “Hidden World,” the legendary origin of all dragons, as rumored to exist in ancient mariners’ myths. There they’d be safe forever from Grimmel and other dragon-haters. But there’s also an overriding, unmistakable, bittersweet theme of growing up and letting go, as both Hiccup and Toothless embrace the emotions that come with being older, wiser and ready for the next stages of their lives.

The film is awash in color, texture and eye-popping computer-generated effects, immersing viewers in an explosively imaginative world of wildly creative locations, creatures and characters. A “courtship” ritual between Toothless and the Light Fury is both humorous and heartfelt, and their romantic night flight, through the heart of a thundercloud and across the shimmering sea, hits emotional and visual high notes.

The movie—and the entire franchise—belongs to Hiccup and Toothless, but props have to be given to the bite and bile F. Murray Abraham puts into Grimmel, the maleficent dragon slayer. In a make-believe movie—and one intended, in large part, for a younger audience—he creates a character with chilling, very grownup undertones of the constant threat of hate in the real world, be ye Viking, dragon or otherwise.

And the ever-dependable Kristin Wiig gets to shine especially for few knockout moments in a spotlight scene when the constantly chattering Ruffnut is taken prisoner by Grimmel—but only temporarily. It’s a reminder about just how impressive her comedy chops are, even when it’s only her voice, coming through a character that it took an army of illustrators and visual-effects artists to bring to lanky life.    

But the thing that might impress you most about all the impressive things, in this most impressive movie, full of modern, high-tech movie magic and dynamic digital mojo, is how you might find yourself dabbing a very real tear or two away from your eyes when it’s over.

Just keep reminding yourself: It’s only—sniff—a movie about dragons, after all. And dragons aren’t real…are they?

For the final, closing, soaring chapter of this popular, successful franchise about a Viking boy and his faithful, flying dragon, the third time is definitely a charm—and a charmer.

In theaters Friday, Feb. 22, 2019

Death comes to us all—sometimes in a big, goofy baby mask and a hoodie, again and again again

Happy Death Day 2U
Starring Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard & Phi Vu
Directed by Christopher Landon
PG-13

So you think you’re stuck in a same-old, same-old kind of rut?

Consider the Sisyphean circumstances of Theresa “Tree” Gelbman, a young coed who not only can’t seem to get out of college, but who keeps dying—murdered, to be exact—on her birthday, over and over and over again.

Bum-mer.

That was the premise of Happy Death Day, a modest little horror hit in 2017. In that movie, Tree kept waking up on her birthday anew, reliving its experiences Groundhog Day-style, each day capped by another unfortunate encounter with the Grim Reaper. This was her fate, repeatedly, until she figured out who was behind her murder(s), and why, and how she could finally break the sequence.

It was a taut, wickedly engaging funhouse puzzle with a unique twist on the time-honored genre of “attractive young women in peril.”

And we know that Hollywood can’t let a good thing just slip away.

In this frightfully fun, cheekily self-aware sequel, when one of her campus mates, Ryan (Phi Vu), has a freak-out deja-vu “death” experience, Tree (Jessica Rothe, reprising her role) knows exactly what’s happening—her birthday curse has somehow returned. And it’s spread to other people now. The killer again wears the creepy, snaggle-toothed, big-baby mascot mask of their university, which makes it easy for him (or her) to hide, disguised, in plain sight.

Jessica Rothe with Israel Broussard—and a quantum time machine

Tree discovers that the cause of all the trouble is a quantum time machine, a thesis project built by Ryan and some of his fellow science-nerd students. (Ah, those meddling scientists!) The Big Bang Theory-ish doohickey is a cooling reactor that slows down time on a molecular level and allows multiple dimensions to overlap and interloop.

That “explains” why people keep getting killed over and over again—they’re stuck in a multi-dimensional loop. “Do I look like I know what a multi-dimension is?!” asks an exasperated Tree, when one of the science students attempts to enlighten her.

Eventually Tree gets stuck in the loop again, too, and has to work with Ryan to find a way to stop the killer, close the loop and end the die-wake-repeat cycle—and tie up a couple of other loose ends with her family, her boyfriend (Israel Broussard) and her sorority pal (Ruby Modine).

Director Christopher Landon, who also returns to the job, stirs a brisk streak of send-up humor, and outright comedy, into the killer mix—this isn’t a bloody slasher film, by any stretch. It’s more Scooby Doo than Scream, and it’s also got a potent undercurrent of real emotion, as Tree has to make some hard decisions and choices about her past, present and future. “Every day is a chance to be someone better,” she says.

Death can be a drag, but when it’s an everyday thing, you might as well get some laughs out of it, right? In in one darkly whimsical montage sequence, Tree takes matters into her own hands, causing her own demise in several creative ways to explore various loops—seeking the “right” one to close—without having to wait to be murdered.

Look her up on IMDB and you’ll see that the actress who plays Tree was one of the roommates of Emma Stone’s character in the Oscar-sweeping La La Land. They all sang and danced together in the big go-out-on-the-town number, “Someone in the Crowd.”

That’s the way it is in Hollywood, and in life. One day you’re singing and dancing and painting the town, the next you’re gleefully diving headfirst into a wood chipper or getting chased off the top of skyscraper, plunging to the pavement below.

As Happy Death Day 2U impishly reminds us, life is rich and rewarding, but death comes to us all—and if you’re Tree Gelbman, it just keeps coming, in a big, goofy baby mask, with a big, shiny knife, again and again and again.

In theaters Friday, Feb. 15, 2019

Taraji P. Henson gets inside guys’ noggins, but there’s not much there

What Men Want
Starring Taraji P. Henson, Richard Roundtree & Tracy Morgan
Directed by Adam Shankman
R

It’s a man’s, man’s, man’s world, according to James Brown’s hit single from 1967.

And that still rings all too true for Ali Davis (Taraji P. Henson, the star of TV’s Empire), a go-get-’em sports agent for an elite corporation repping the upper crust of NFL, NBA and MLB superstars. But Ali’s gone about as far as she can go within the ranks of the male-dominated, bro-centric culture of her company.

She can take the off-color humor, the “locker-room talk” and the constant stream of chest-puffed, testosterone-fueled camaraderie. But when she’s passed over—again—for a promotion to full partnership, she blows a gasket.

“How am I supposed to fight a system that’s rigged against me?” she rails to her father (Richard Roundtree), a boxing coach. Roundtree knows a thing or two about fighting a rigged system. As the prototypical black detective in Shaft, back in 1971, he fought the system, the Man, the black mob and the white mob to find a crime lord’s kidnapped daughter.

But Ali finds her answer at a bachelorette party, where she drinks a fortune teller’s funky tea, then falls and bonks her head. When she wakes up, she discovers she can hear men’s thoughts. At first, it totally freaks her out. But then she realizes she can use her new “gift” to get inside guys’ noggins to get a real leg up on her competition at work—particularly to woo aboard a new young basketball hotshot (Shane Paul McGhie) and his helicopter dad (Tracy Morgan).

Director Adam Shankman, whose previous films include the musicals Hairspray and Rock of Ages, plus the comedies The Pacifier with Vin Diesel and Adam Sandler’s Bedtime Stories, pours on the yuks. But he doesn’t seem to have much of a feel about how to make this raunchy comedy about workplace inequality much more than a broad, lazy swipe at an easy, timely target.

The f-bombs fly. There are jokes about gays, Christians, farts, various styles of sex and all kinds of body parts. In a movie like this, when you hear “nuts,” you can assume it’s not a reference to Super Bowl munchies. There are inflated phalluses, phallus necklaces, a bong shaped like a phallus. We get it: Ali is “surrounded” by phalluses. When she “accidentally” calls her boss “Dick” instead of his real name, Nick, it’s supposed to be really funny.

The movie, a gender flip on the 2000 Mel Gibson comedy What Women Want, presents almost everything as a punchline. But if a human resources director could hear the “thoughts” Ali hears when she walks through a thicket of her male coworkers—well, it would probably be more “actionable” than laughable.

Shaquille O’Neal

There are sports figures peppered throughout. Former Seattle Seahawks star Brian Bosworth plays Nick; there’s a high-stakes poker game with NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal, former NCAA All Pro player Grant Hill, Minnesota Timberwolves player Karl-Anthony Towns and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

A subplot involves Ali’s gaggle of girlfriends (Wendi McLendon-Covey, Lisa Leslie, Phoebe Robinson, Tamala Jones) and how her ability to hear the thoughts of their husbands and boyfriends isn’t always such a good thing. A wedding scene becomes a raucous free-for-all when Ali decides she can no longer hold in the truth about the men in the wedding party.

Pete Davidson

Singer Erykah Badu hams it up as the kooky shaman who cooks up the concoction that expands Ali’s mind, and you’ll see a host of other familiar faces—most notably Josh Brener from HBO’s Silicon Valley as Ali’s swishy man Friday, Brandon; Saturday Night Live’s Pete Davidson; Max Greenfield of New Girl; The Detour’s Jason Jones; and Kellan Lutz, best known as Emmet from the Twilight movie series, as a hunky-hot neighbor.

What do men want? “To get paid and get laid,” says Ali. Seems like she’s after the same thing, especially when she’s in the hay doing the wild thing with Will (Aldis Hodge, who starred on TV’s Leverage). But maybe she wants something more, like a serious relationship, and perhaps a family…

Ali’s widower father, we find out, wanted a son, instead of a daughter. And he named her Ali after his favorite fighter, Mohammed Ali. We see a photo of the legendary prizefighter in the very first shot of the film, behind Ali as she’s working out on a treadmill, barking orders into her cellphone, swatting down text messages, sweating up a storm.

We get it: She’s a fighter.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee—that’s what Muhammad Ali said. Too bad this featherweight movie, too focused on easy, cheap laughs, is only content to float above the serious issues, at a very serious time. It skirts toxic workplace environments, racism, sexism, and wage discrimination and bias without ever sinking a flag into a solid statement about any of them.

Muhammad Ali knew you could dance around, but you had to land the punch, especially the big one. What Men Want has no such sting.

In theaters Feb. 8, 2019

M. Night Shyamalan’s star-packed superhero saga is more letdown than showdown

Glass
Starring Bruce Willis, James McAvoy, Samuel L. Jackson & Sarah Paulson
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Rated PG-13

What if comic book superheroes are real?

That’s the question director M. Night Shyamalan poses in Glass, which brings together characters from two of his previous movies.

Bruce Willis is David Dunn from Unbreakable (2000), the lone survivor of a train crash who emerged virtually indestructible and with the ability to see bad guys’ hidden evil deeds. James McAvoy starred in the horror-thriller Split (2016) as the psycho Kevin Crumb, whose “horde” of multiple personalities included the murderous, feral-like Beast.

And the movie takes its title from the character of wheelchair-bound Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), whose brittle bones break, like glass, with the slightest pressure.

If you’re a fan of Shyamalan movies, you’ll likely know how all these characters connect. You’ll know that, and know why, Price caused the wreck of the train on which Dunn was traveling. You’ll remember that McAvoy’s character(s) in Split kidnapped three girls, killing and partially devouring two of them. And you’ll understand why Dunn—now a hooded vigilante dishing out justice to street thugs—wants to find Crumb before he can harm any more young women.

Glass gets off to a rousing start but stalls when the drama settles in at the psych ward of a Philadelphia mental hospital, where Dunn and Crumb are brought when they’re apprehended. Guess who’s already there? That’s right, Mr. Brittle Bones himself.

“First name: Mister, last name: Glass,” Price later says. Well, excuse me.

Sarah Paulson

At the hospital, Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) tries to convince all three men that they are suffering from a very specific mental disorder. “I specialize in a particular kind of delusion of grandeur,” she says. “Individuals who believe they are superheroes.”

The core of the film is a long, windy counter-argument for superheroes, comic books and how gods have always walked among us. Of course, Dr. Staple tries to shatter and smother this idea, particularly in the movie’s centerpiece, a gaudy “group therapy” session with all three characters lined up in a pink room. She dismisses Price as crazy but brilliant, Crumb as an anarchist with dissociative identity disorder, and Dunn as “the reluctant hero.”

“She even has explanations for Dunn’s super-strength and his second-sight mental abilities, and how Crumb’s “Beast” can climb vertical walls and not be harmed by shotgun blasts. She hasn’t got Price quite figured out yet; he’s kept so heavily sedated and confined to his wheelchair, no one knows what’s going on inside his head, behind his blank stare. Is he totally out of it, or just biding his time, waiting until he can hatch a mastermind plan?

What do you think?

Ana Taylor-Joy with McAvoy

Anya Taylor-Joy, whose character was the only one of the girls who didn’t get killed and cannibalized in Split, returns to help Dr. Staple. As a sexually abused child, she can connect with the adolescent trauma—the “brokenness”—that caused Kevin Crumb to split into a multitude of some two dozen distinct personalities, many of which come out to “play” in the course of the movie.

Glass is Shyamalan’s Avengers, his Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, his ultimate, geeky intersection of comic book culture, superhero backstories and pop mythology. It all builds to a showdown, but it’s more of a letdown—a shoving, heaving smashing-bashing match on a lawn that, well, dents a cargo van, pins a SWAT cop underneath his shield and busts a portable water tank. Yawn.

Shyamalan, whose other films include The Sixth Sense, The Village, Signs and The Visit, obviously knows how to make a solid movie, and this one certainly has some nice touches. He’s still a master of ratcheting up the tension and scaring you more by showing you less. The atmospheric soundtrack, which sometimes sounds like an animal screeching or growling, adds to a building sense of dread.

And I loved a quick shot of a magazine cover about the world’s tallest new building, which becomes a plot point. The headline reads, “A True Marvel,” a nod to the name of the iconic comic-book company that gave the world Spider-Man, Daredevil, Iron Man, Thor and dozens of other famous superheroes and villains.

But this Glass is only half full, a tumbler stocked with misfit characters, capable actors and innovative ideas, but lacking the juice and seasoning to make a blockbuster cocktail. The pacing is often dull, the dialog is hopelessly clunky, and fans waiting for Shyamalan’s “gotcha” twist ending—his trademark—will likely come away feeling a bit underserved, if not cheated.

“If superheroes exist, why are there only three of you?” Dr. Staple asks her three patients. Glass asks us to consider if there are more. Hollywood certainly has an answer—Captain Marvel opens March 8, Shazam! and the next Avengers arrive in April, and there’ll be a new X-Men adventure in June.

Looks like Dr. Staple could have her hands full.

In theaters Jan. 18, 2019

The chemistry of Hart & Cranston can’t warm up the sentimental sap of this predictable, recycled comedy

Starring Bryan Cranston & Kevin Hart
Directed by Neil Burger
PG-13

What do the Statue of Liberty, croissants and Kevin Hart’s new movie have in common? They all came from France.

The Upside, a remake of a hit 2011 French film, stars Bryan Cranston as Phillip, a rich white paraplegic, immobilized from the neck down, who hires black ex-con Dell (Hart) as his personal caretaker, or “life auxiliary.”

“White people got a name for anything,” says Dell, who thinks he’s being interviewed for a janitorial position when he shows up at Phillip’s luxury Manhattan penthouse apartment. Much to his surprise, as completely unqualified as he is, Dell lucks into the job.

There’s not a lot of other surprises in The Upside, however, which follows a pretty standard Hollywood buddy-movie template and clicks off many character stereotypes with which audiences are very familiar. Phil is white, successful, super-rich, buttoned-up and bitter. Street-smart Dell is a quippy, zippy, quick-witted sprite from the opposite end of the socio-economic spectrum.

They’ve both got problems and issues and holes in their souls. But guess what? They help each other fill them, at least superficially. Phil introduces Dell to kumquats and opera, gives him some hefty paychecks and lets him drive his garage full of sweet sports cars; Dell turns Phil on to weed, buys him a hooker (!) and introduces him to the soul-sister grooves of the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin.

Nicole Kidman plays Phil’s Harvard-educated business manager, Yvonne, whose long-sublimated affection for her boss remains at a low simmer for most of the film. Dell’s ex (Aja Naomi King, who plays Michaela Pratt on How to Get Away With Murder) has given up on him and his missing child-support payments. Julianna Margulies (star of TV’s Dietland and The Good Wife) has one scene as the mystery woman Phil decides to meet in person after a long courtship by mail.

Nicole Kidman

It’s no coincidence that a subplot revolves around a rare copy of the book Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain’s classic 1885 tale, about a runaway slave and his young traveling companion floating away to freedom down the Mississippi River, is today heralded as a scathing confrontation of American racism and slavery.

The Upside doesn’t come near any issues like that, but it certainly suggests that it’s built on same foundation—one in which a white businessman, such as Phil, can build a towering financial empire, but a black man, like Dell, can’t get out of the projects (or break the cycle of crime and prison) unless he’s rescued…by someone like Phil.

The movie is much more interested in the low-hanging fruit of easy jokes and the quick splash of sappy sentiment. Dell thrashes and squawks as a high-tech, computerized shower in Phil’s apartment blasts him with gushing jets of water and talks to him in German. Phil drools to fake an epileptic fit to get Dell out of speeding ticket. A scene in which Dell tries to get the all-business Yvonne to laugh seems tailor-made for Hart to cut loose on his comedy skills.

Another scene, in which Dell has to change Phil’s catheter, is played strictly for laughs at Dell’s unease. It’s all routine for Phil, but for Dell, it’s extremely uncomfortable—to not only pull down another man’s pants and touch his private parts, but to even say the word “penis.” The scene is uncomfortable for other reasons—because of Hart being back in the news recently about his homophobic tweets and comments and how he wasn’t going to host the Academy Awards, after all.

Hart, of course, is best known for his laugh-out-loud roles in ribald comedies including Ride Along, Night School, Get Hard and The Wedding Ringer. He provides plenty of laughs in The Upside, but the movie also shows he can hold his own in something other than a wall-to-wall yuk-fest. It would be interesting to see him in a straight-out drama.

Cranston, the former TV star of Breaking Bad, has done a variety of later movie work, but this had to be one of his most challenging parts. For a character who can only work the screen with his face, and his voice, he holds his own with Hart, who splays all over the place. They make a good yin and yang.

Good, but not quite great. The Upside offers a pleasant, warm thaw from the January cold. But it can’t quite overcome the downside of stereotyping, clichés and an overlay of hokey, jokey sap that coats it in a veneer of gloppy, predictable Hollywood goo.

At least it ends on an up note—a soaring tune by Aretha Franklin. “The Queen,” notes Dell, “makes everything better.”

As they say in France, Oui, indeed.

In theaters Jan. 11, 2019