Hit videogame franchise makes for disappointing horror flick
Five Nights at Freddy’s Starring Josh Hutcherson, Piper Rubio and Elizbeth Lali Directed by Emma Tammi PG-13
In theaters and streaming on Peacock Oct. 27
Based on a hugely popular videogame franchise, this misguided monster mash is a muddled fright-night mess about buried trauma, lost childhood, disappearing kids, ghosts, and a group of animatronic animals going rogue at an abandoned pizzeria. Think Chuck E. Cheese as a crazy creepshow.
Hunger Games actor Josh Hutcherson stars as Mike, a down-on-his luck security guard at a long-abandoned pizza parlor, Freddy Fazbear’s, where night work has an unusually high turnover rate. Elizabeth Lail (from TV’s Once Upon a Time) plays a helpful cop with a deep secret, and young newcomer Piper Rubio is Mike’s little sister, Abby, at the center of everything with a copious amount of crayon artwork “from beyond.” Matthew Lilard, a solid character actor in dozens of TV shows and movies for more than two decades, chews the scenery in his small but pivotal part.
Mike wrestles with nightmares about something that happened long ago…maybe it’s got something to do with the haunted pizzeria and its fatal fun-zone arcade? Do ya think?
How does one movie tie all that together? Well, in the case of this off-kilter robo-slasher backed by horror producer Jason Blum, not very well. It seems aimed at young teens and diehard gamers, with a handful of jump-scare jolts and only a tepid degree of real terror; the dialogue is often stiff and (unintentionally) laughable, the actors seem to forget they’re in a horror movie, and this wannabe fright flick fumbles and stumbles sustaining tension or dread in its cavernous “spook house” setting—like a particularly odd scene in which little Abby makes a play fort for a sleepover with the overstuffed Frankenbots.
Hey, there’s Mary Stuart Masterson, all grown up from the ‘80s and early ‘90s and her starring roles in Fried Green Tomatoes and Some Kind of Wonderful. And is the animatronic band really jiving to Lou Reed, and Johnny O’Keefe’s 1950s rockabilly hit “Wild One”? And singing The Romantics? Yep, and I gotta give the movie some props for making “Talking in Your Sleep,” the group’s biggest hit, sound even more ominous than it did back in 1983.
The creatures—a motley, distressed-looking ensemble that resembles shipwreck survivors washed ashore from the island of misfit toys, or mangy mascots for teams playing in a Twilight Zone league—will be familiar to fans of the videogames. But everyone else will likely feel like they’re being introduced to murderous, mangy, misunderstood Muppets. Maybe that’s because they’re full-size creations designed by the late Muppet-master Jim Henson’s iconic puppetry company. But I don’t remember Kermit the Frog ever opening his mechanized maw and chewing up someone’s face, Saw-style.
Five Nights at Freddy’s adds up to two hours of a clunky, junky pizzeria freak show, with an odd mix of toppings, extra carnage and served super cheesy.
The acclaimed director tackles a dark chapter of American history, and makes another movie masterpiece
Killers of the Flower Moon Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro & Lily Gladstone Directed by Martin Scorsese Rated R
In theaters Friday, Oct. 20
“If you’re gonna make trouble, make it big.”
That’s what big-deal bigshot William Hale (Robert De Niro) tells his neophyte nephew (Leonardo DiCaprio) early in director Martin Scorsese’s sprawling, slow-burn neo-Western epic about a grim and horrific chapter of American history in the expanding frontier of the 1920s.
And indeed, there’s some very big trouble in this very big big-message movie, which clocks in at nearly three and a half hours.
DiCaprio’s character, Ernest Burkhart, is a young WWI veteran who returns from the battlefield to stake out a new life “out West” on the Great Plains of Oklahoma, where oil has been discovered on land settled and owned by the Native Americans of the Osage Nation. Ernest freely admits—a couple of times—that he “loves money,” and there’s certainly plenty of it here, bubbling and spewing in geysers from the ground…and making the Osage some of the most fabulously wealthy people on the planet.
And it’s also made a boomtown for carpetbaggers, non-indigenous “white” opportunists like Ernest’s uncle, thirsty for some of that black gold—or all of it. So, what will money-loving Ernest do to get filthy rich, far beyond what he can rake in playing poker or even pulling highway-robbery holdups?
Scorsese is probably best known for his crime sagas—Goodfellas, Casino, Gangs of New York, The Irishman, The Departed. This isn’t a “gangster” movie, as such, but it certainly has the feel of the director’s familiar wheelhouse, with a core group (yes, a gang) of bad men doing bad things. In the Osage Nation, they’re robbing the natives of their wealth by almost every means possible, including murder.
Ernest falls in love and marries an Osage woman, Molly (Lily Gladstone), and then, one by one, all Molly’s sisters and other family members start dying. Who’ll be next? Maybe even Molly? Who blew up that house? Or left that dead body out in the woods? And what’s Ernest got to do with it? As the death toll rises into double digits, J. Edgar Hoover sends a federal agent (Jesse Plemons) from the Bureau of Investigation—which would later become the FBI—to nose around.
Based on the bestselling 2017 novel by David Grann, it’s a complex, complicated tale of systemic racism, white nationalism, greedy imperialism, income disparity, ethnic genocide and a conspiracy of silence and coverup, all folded into a love story that takes a wrenching wrong turn. DiCaprio has rarely been better, playing a scowling, morally compromised yahoo in an oversized Stetson, and Gladstone (who grew up in the Blackfeet Nation) has an almost Mona Lisa-like serenity, anchoring the story with a radiance and grace that will doubtlessly be recognized by the Oscars and other year-end awards. Their chemistry is lusty and palpable.
It’s all massive, majestically moving and monumental, but also intimate, richly detailed and finely tooled, full of authentic “period” touches—and enough violence, including an ad hoc autopsy with a handsaw, to meet minimum requirements for a Martin Scorsese movie.
DeNiro—who, like DiCaprio, is one of Scorsese’s favorite go-to actors—is great, as usual, craftily playing “King” Bill Hale, a dapper Osage benefactor and community builder whose smile masks a much more sinister side. There are dozens of other characters too, many played by authentically indigenous Osage actors, and small-part cameos by musicians Jack White, Sturgill Simpson, Pete Yorn and Jason Isbell, plus Brendon Frasier and John Lithgow.
But appropriately enough, it’s Scorsese, the virtuoso filmmaker who’s crafted yet another cinematic masterpiece of movie storytelling, who gets the last word, quite literally, in a final wrap-up epilogue that show how true crime became entertainment for the masses—like this all-star opus about “big trouble” that the modern-day Osage still refer to as their nation’s Reign of Terror.
Edgy erotic thriller puts a relationship in jeopardy in the cutthroat world of Wall Street
Alden Ehrenreich and Phoebe Dynevor star in director Chloe Domont’s dynamite film debut
Fair Play Starring Phoebe Dynevor, Alden Ehrenreich & Eddie Marsan Directed by Chloe Domont R
Opening for one week in limited theaters Friday, Sept. 29 (and on Netflix Friday, Oct. 6)
A tight, terrifically edgy erotic thriller, Fair Play is about a pair of young lovers whose lives are turned inside out when one of them gets a big promotion, just after they’ve become engaged to be married. Luke (Alden Ehrenreich—he was young Han Solo in Solo and singing cowboy Hobie Doyle in Hail, Caesar!) and Erin (Phoebe Dyneovor, who played Daphne on TV’s Bridgerton) are both drone-bee, grunt-work analysts at a cutthroat, high-pressure Wall Street hedge fund.
When she’s unexpectedly bumped into a coveted spot of portfolio manager, glass-walled office and all, Luke’s resentment festers and grows—especially since he was expecting to get the job for himself. He feels entitled to it, mainly because he’s always wanted it. He accuses Erin of dressing like a “cupcake” and sleeping her way to the top. Love becomes loathing, and their relationship gets pushed to frightening extremes.
It only adds to the pressure of them already having to keep their romance a secret, as it violates their company’s ban on workplace dalliances. And as Erin ascends into the company’s elite “boy’s club” of billion-dollar deals, locker-room jokes and strip clubs, she holds her own on the playing field of misogynistic sexual dynamics and office power plays while Luke sits and simmers on the sidelines.
Director Chloe Dumont, who honed her craft on TV series like Billions, Ballers and Suits, makes a terrifically impressive feature-film debut behind the camera, torquing up the wickedly smart tension as Luke and Erin’s unbridled romantic passion (wild, messy bar-bathroom sex!) turns toxic. With both competing to curry favor of the firm’s ruthless boss (veteran British actor Eddie Marsan), their shared apartment becomes a psycho-sexual battlefield. And their second bathroom-sex tryst, late in the film, takes a dynamically different turn from the first.
Eddie Marsan
The movie effectively makes us feel that Luke and Erin do, on some primal level, really love each other, and demonstrates one way love can devolve into lust, emotional assault, raging arguments, sexual battery and even worse. Ehrenreich is always adroit and watchable, but it’s Dumont who grounds the film in a performance so hot it leaves blisters, smoldering like the burning ends of the cigarettes Erin puffs when she’s nervous, sharper than the pointed heels of the stiletto pumps she wears with her power suits. Eventually, you know something’s gotta give—and something’s bound to break. All’s fair, as the saying goes, in love and war, and Fair Play paints a searing picture of lovers on an uncharted collision course in a relationship going madly off the rails.
The abrupt, ambiguous, cut-to-black ending might not satisfy everyone, but this is a movie that certainly gets in your head with thorny issues of sex, gender roles, burning jealousy, greed and the caustically competitive world of work. It’s steamy and sexy as hell, as jagged as shards of broken glass…and as pointed as the tip of a stiletto heel.
Snoopy returns, Mel Brooks’ new ‘History’ project & guess who’s coming to dinner?
Gigi Hadid and Tan France are looking for the next stars in fashion designing.
FRIDAY, March 3 The Snoopy Show The world’s most iconic cartoon beagle returns for season three—with even more happy-dancing, fighter-ace plane flying and adventures with his birdie buddy, Woodstock (Apple TV+).
Next in Fashion Tan France and Gigi Hadid host season two of the high-stakes design competition series, in which talented designers complete for $200,000 and the chance to share their work with the world (Netflix).
SATURDAY, March 4 Black Girl Missing Inspired by true stories of missing women of color, this original movie stars Garcelle Beauvais and spotlights the disparities of Black women by the media and authorities. It’s part of network’s ongoing “Stop Violence Against Women” campaign.
SUNDAY, March 5 Be My Guest Dancer Misty Copeland, actors Stanley Tucci and Laura Linney, and singer-songwriter Norah Jones are among on host Ina Garten’s drop-in list for the new season of her series about sharing fabulous food, sparkling conversation and lots of laughs (11:30 a.m., Food Network).
The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia Find out the story behind the explosive rise, and the abrupt decline in fortune, of the 2017 trivia-game app that was supposed to herald the beginning of a new era of television—but didn’t (9 p.m., CNN).
MONDAY, March 6 History of the World Part II It’s been four decades since Mel Brooks’ seminal, sidesplitting comedy opus, and now there’s finally a sequel. The celebrity-packed sketch-comedy series stars Brooks, Nick Kroll, Wanda Sykes and Ike Barinholtz, with appearances by Zazie Beetz, Quinta Brunson, Danny DeVito, David Duchovny, Hannah Einbinder, Johnny Knoxville and just about everyone else who ever tickled a funnybone (Hulu).
Rain Dogs Dark comedy series about a single British mum, her young daughter and an upper-class gay man—a dysfunctional “family” on the fringes of society attempting to go straight in a crooked world (10 p.m., HBO).
TUESDAY, March 7 Unseen Two women form an unlikely alliance when a gas station clerk receives a call from a nearly blind woman who’s fleeing her murderous ex. Can the gas gal guide the sight-impaired former spouse to safety? (VOD).
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Bounce around through women’s basketball history and learn how it was shaped in Hoop Muses: An Insider’s Guide to Pop Culture and the (Women’s) Game (Twelve Books) by Emmy-winning journalist Kate Fagan, who brings a colorfully illustrated, time-traveling hipness to this under-recognized story of female hoopsters.
BRING IT HOME
Now on Blu-ray and DVD, the critically hailed Women Talking—based on a real incident—features an ensemble cast (Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara, Claire Foy and Frances McDormand) in an inspiring tale of Mennonite wives and daughters who make a fateful decision after years of abuse by men in their community. (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment)
WEDNESDAY, March 6 The Challenge: World Championship This first-ever global “Challenge” event will feature veterans of the “extreme” elimination series competing in a new series of complex, sometimes grueling games (Paramount+).
Farmer Wants a Wife Grammy-winning country hitmaker Jennifer Nettles (above, who starred in the hit TV series The Righteous Gemstones) helps wrangle romance in the heartland in this new dating series, already a smash in other countries but making its USA debut tonight (9 p.m., Fox). https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox?projector=1
THURSDAY, March 9 School Spirits In this new streaming series aimed at the YA market, a teen girl (Peyton List) stuck in the afterlife goes on an investigative journey to find out what happened to put her there—while adjusting to high school in the hereafter (Paramount+). https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox?projector=1
When motherhood is a dream that becomes a nightmare
Anna Diop has dreams of drowning in the psychological horrors of ‘Nanny.’
Nanny Starring Anna Diop, Michelle Monaghan & Morgan Spector Directed by Nikyatu Jusu Rated R
In theaters Dec. 16, 2022
Motherhood can be a tough gig. It certainly is for Aisha, a young immigrant mom in New York City trying to scrape together money to bring her son to America from their homeland of Senegal. So, she lands a job as a nanny for an upper-class family, serving as a surrogate mom to someone else’s daughter. Decent pay, long hours, but great gig, right? Well, yes and no.
That’s the setup for this masterfully mesmerizing psychological horror drama rooted in African mythology and the wrenching emotions of having, and raising, a child. Getting a wider release after wowing film festival audiences, it’s a knockout breakthrough role for Anna Dopp as the nanny, whose reality becomes blurred with troubling visions and panic-inducing nightmares. Maybe that black mold growing on the ceiling of the bedroom, which has been provided by her employers, is an omen. Every little boy she sees reminds her, for a halting, haunting moment, of her son. And those creepy-crawly spiders, that slithering snake in her bed, and the fish-tailed mere-creature that glides through her dreams of drowning… well, they can’t be leading to anything good.
Director Nikyatu Jusu, making a mightily impressive debut, masterfully shifts the lines when what’s bothering Aisha begins to bleed into her reality. Michelle Monaghan and Morgan Spector play the white Manhattan couple for whom she toils, working overtime as caregiver to their preschool daughter (Rose Decker) while they’re occupied with their jobs. But they’re stingy with pay, and their fractured marriage isn’t nearly as picture-perfect as it might seem.
Sinqua Walls & Anna Diop
It’s a tough job and a tough situation, and it’s not made any easier with the mind-mucking Dark Continent hoodoo that seems to be bewitching Aisha. A budding romance with the apartment-building doorman (Sinqua Walls) seems like a sweet distraction…until it turns into something of a lifeline. Things don’t get any easier for Aisha when her employer finds out her nanny has been making unauthorized dietary choices for her picky-eater munchkin, or hears through the nanny grapevine that one day on the playground, Aisha became momentarily separated from her daughter. (Geesh, the nanny network has eyes everywhere.) Losing track of a child, even for a few seconds, can be traumatic, and here it portends something even more distressing.
The great singer-actress Leslie Uggams has a small but significant role as a mystical grandma, who suggests to Aisha that her dark episodes are due to unseen forces that have bigger plans for her.
The film touches on issues of white privilege and the struggle of many immigrants trying to build new lives, especially if separated from family, friends and culture. But it’s really about what happens when one mother’s American dream becomes a living, waking, walking nightmare. The effectively unsettling Nanny may very well haunt your dreams, too.
Deliciously dark new take on the classic folktale takes you far beyond Disney
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio Voices by Gregory Mann, Ewen McGregor, Christoph Waltz & Finn Wolfhard Directed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson Rated PG
See it: On Netflix Friday, Dec. 9
Guillermo del Toro has always had a soft spot for monsters and misfits.
The Oscar-winning director of The Shape of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth, Crimson Peak and Nightmare Alley puts a deliciously dark, fantastically original spin on the enchanted tale of the wooden puppet who longs to become a real boy.
This isn’t the Pinocchio you grew up with, particularly if your baseline is the beloved Disney version from 1940, or even Disney’s ambitious hybrid (computer animation plus live action) from earlier this year, featuring Tom Hanks as Pinocchio’s creator, Geppetto. With a vision rooted in the source material, the 1883 fantasia novel by Italian author Carlo Collodi, del Toro gives the fable a boldly creative, explosively imaginative retooling of magical enchantment, grotesque beauty, mythological mysticism, sweeping human emotion and existential wonder.
This Pinocchio has an eye-popping wow factor that’s practically off the charts. Visually resplendent and bursting with detail, its magnificent stop-motion animation (courtesy of Mark Gustafson, whose other work includes Fantastic Mr. Fox) elevates the craft far above cartoon-y kids’ stuff and into the rarified upper echelons of high art. Resetting the story in 1930s Italy (as opposed to the vague, 19th century “once upon a time” of earlier versions), it uses the rise of brutal far-right fascism in Italy—dictator Benito Mussolini even makes an appearance—for a real-world, pre-World War II militaristic backdrop that becomes an integral part of its tale…and a callout to today’s unsettled modern world.
Ewan McGregor provides the voice of the movie’s narrator, Sebastian Cricket.
There are all-new songs (with a resplendent original soundtrack by Oscar-winning composer Alexander Desplat) and other enhancements to the familiar tale, including a recurring afterlife setting with grousing, poker-playing black rabbits, and a poignant backstory to the pine tree that provides the wood for Pinocchio. (And pinecones become a potent symbol of life, rebirth and regeneration.) Jiminy Cricket is now Sebastian Cricket (voiced by Ewan McGregor), a dapper bon vivant who lives in a knothole in Pinocchio’s chest—quite literally, inside his heart. The glowing, translucent, blue-hued wood sprite (voiced by Tilda Swinton), peering into Pinocchio with hundreds of inscrutable eyes, is an otherworldly, awe-inspiring winged serpent that bestows Geppetto’s creation with life—and grants Sebastian Cricket a single, significant wish.
As for the puppet boy (evocatively voiced by young Gregory Mann), he’s a gangly, twiggy, wobbly oddity of a creature with more than a passing connection to another “unnatural” being, Frankenstein’s monster. And he has a fascination with yet another wooden creation, the life-size Jesus on the crucifix Geppetto makes for the village church. Pinocchio is puzzled why villagers adulate the somber figure on the cross, heaping high praises to him in song, but they hurl cries of “monster” and “demon” at him. “Why do they like him, and not me?” PInocchio asks Geppetto.
And like a crucified Christ, Pinocchio also rises again, in yet another twist to the story. The puppet boy discovers that since he’s not really “alive,” in a human sense—he’s made of wood, after all—so he can’t really die. At least, not for long: He keeps bounding back from various mishaps that turn him into heaps of splintered wood scraps. But there’s a difference, he finds out, between existence and truly experiencing life.
Like many “boys,” Pinocchio is full of energy, enthusiasm, curiosity and spunk. As a newcomer to the world of the living, he has a lot to learn—that hot chocolate is yummy, fire can burn, and other creatures—other creations—have feelings. He learns empathy. He stands up to the cruel carnival master (Christoph Walz) abusing his monkey assistant (Cate Blanchett), and he offers to work at the carnival’s puppet show, in a kind of indentured servitude, to keep his father out of a crippling debt. His infectiously sunny personality disarms a young village boy who starts out as his tormentor, turning him eventually into a friend and ally.
The A-list vocal cast also includes David Bradley as Geppetto, the lonely woodcarver who longs for Pinocchio to fill the aching hole created by the untimely death of his young son. Finn Wolfhard is Candlewick, the son of the town’s sternly militaristic podesta (Ron Pearlman), who sees the “stringless puppet” as an ultimate soldier who can’t be killed, conscripting him as fodder for the nation’s war machine. (Instead of a wild-boy romp Pleasure Island, there’s a major scene in a “youth camp” where Pinocchio and Candlewick are forced to compete in a high-stakes war-game exercise.) John Turturro is the village padre, a priest under the thumb of the oppressive regime.
This finely refashioned fairytale is a story of outsiders and nonconformists, imperfect boys and imperfect fathers, the heartbreaking burden of loss, about learning to love, and accepting people (and puppets) for who they are, not who, or what, we want them to become. It’s a reminder that no one lives forever but life goes on, that some rules—like telling the truth—aren’t absolute, and everyone “must try to do their best—and that’s all anybody can do.”
Even after nearly 150 years, this little puppet still has a few things he can teach us. And Guillermo del Toro has created one of his best, a film that spins magisterial new magic into an age-old folktale.
They’re just a couple of kids in love…who love eating other people
Bones and All Starring Taylor Russell & Timothèe Chalamet Directed by Luca Guadagnino Rated R
See it: In theaters Wednesday, Nov. 11
Lee and Maren seem like a lot of young couples. They drive around, listen to music, have some tiffs with their parents. And when they grab a bite, well, it’s likely not from Chic-fil-A.
You see, they’re cannibals. Yes, they eat people.
On one level, this insanely, savagely original young-love story is about a couple of outsiders in a harsh world that doesn’t understand or accept them. We can all relate to that, right?
What sets Maren and Lee apart, though, is the compulsion—the craving—they have for human flesh. It’s an acquired taste, we learn, one that’s rooted in both heredity and environment. They find out they’re not alone; they’re part of a gritty, grimy subset of other cannibals. They’re all outcasts, society rejects who refer to each other as “eaters.” The most, ahem, committed of eaters talk of going all in, dining on “bones and all.”
And Lee and Maren feel desperately fated, destined for a life that makes their road a rough, hardscrabble—and often horrific—one.
It’s a weird movie, crazily and often conversely beautiful and romantic, about two 1980s kids living outside the norms of convention—way outside. There’s blood and guts, as you might imagine, but that’s only one element of the bigger story, about a pair of ruggedly attractive castaways wrestling with who they are, and why. And Lee and Maren aren’t particularly happy about what they’re driven to do. But the rush it gives them—like a drug—is a hard habit to kick.
Taylor Russell (who played Judy Robinson in the Netflix reboot of the space sci-fi series Lost in Space) is Maren, abandoned by her father (Andre Holland) after she turns 18. On a quest to learn more about her family, particularly the mother she never knew, she hooks up with a lanky drifter (Timothèe Chalamet), and off they go in search of answers…and their next meal.
The movie reunites Chalamet—who’s received acclaim (and awards nominations) for his work in Lady Bird, Little Women and Dune—with Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, who directed him inCall Me by Your Name. Guadagnino is a “painterly” director, known for his lush visuals, and the movie even begins with a series of oil renderings depicting serene pastoral scenes that we’ll later see in the film. They “paint” the way for Lee and Maren’s journey, seeking some peace in their unsettled—and unsettling—lives, like the tranquility in those picture-perfect paintings. But they’ll always be outsiders looking in, hunted and haunted.
Rebels on a road trip—if James Dean had a copious amount of blood soaked into his white T-shirt, plus a quirk of dining on carnival workers in an Iowa cornfield, well, he might have fit right into this cannibal club.
It’s a wild ride, for sure. Mark Rylance (belowright) is an older, creepy cannibal who teaches Maren how to use her nose to sniff out fresh food. Michael Stuhlbarg and David Gordon Green play a pair of odd-couple “eater” buddies. Chloë Sevigny has a shocker of a scene, as a patient in a mental institution.
Maren, especially, contemplates the larger complexities and the implications of feeding her eating habit. Even cows in a slaughterhouse, she notes, have family, and maybe even friends. She advocates no-kill meals, dining on people who have already died. It may sound like a small distinction, but hey, some cannibals have principles.
The movie doesn’t really have a message, as such. But its depiction of cannibalism as addiction, as fate, as a consumptive lifestyle “appetite” alongside other hungers, like sex, lust and love…well, let’s just say I’ll never hear “Lick It Up” the same way again after watching the way that rockin’ KISS hit animates Lee.
Riding a wave of film-festival praise, Bones and All gnaws its way into theaters the day before Thanksgiving. It’s probably not exactly what most people have in mind for a celebratory family feast. But if you’ve got an appetite for the unusual, the unsettling, and for a gutsy spin on being young, angst-ridden, adrift in America and in love, well, lick it up.
‘The Black Panther’ find its superhero footing after Chadwick Boseman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Starring Letita Wright, Winston Duke, Lupita Nyong’o & Angela Bassett Directed by Ryan Coogler Rated PG-13
Angela Bassett reprises her role as Queen Mother Ramonda.
See it: In theaters Friday, Nov. 11
The specter of Chadwick Boseman looms large over this highly anticipated superhero sequel to the 2018 blockbuster.
Boseman, who starred in Black Panther as the first Black comic-book character to get a Marvel movie, died in 2020 of colon cancer. But his legacy endures, in more ways than one.
Wakanda Forever opens with the funeral of his character, the beloved King T’Challa, who became the crusading, wrong-righting Black Panther, the champion of his people, donning a sleek black bodysuit super-powered by a rare metal called vibranium.
T’Challa’s death is an emotional, gut-punch wallop to his mother, Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), and his scientist sister, Princess Shuri (Letita Wright). It also creates a power vacuum in the isolated kingdom, which has become a global superpower. The rest of the world wants what it’s got—the unique metal that’s made Wakanda the most technologically advanced place on the planet. Just think what other countries—and their military programs—could do with the wide-ranging wonders of vibranium.
And without the Black Panther to protect it, how can Wakanda defend itself?
That’s a question the movie takes nearly three hours to answer, as it constantly reminds us that Boseman’s T’Challa isn’t around anymore. The arrival of a strange visitor (Tenoch Huerta), a “merman” mutant who can zip through the air like a bug and live underwater like a fish, poses a new, existential threat: What it vibranium exists elsewhere, other powers use it for less-than-noble purposes, and Wakanda gets blamed for it?
Can the women of Wakanda rise to the challenge? Oh, yeah.
Director Ryan Coogler, who also wrote the story, returns to his role after the 2018 film, which was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture (losing, if you’re keeping score, to Green Book). Coogler seems to understand that the absence of Boseman, the franchise star, requires something else to fill the void, something big and substantial. And he pours it on.
Wakanda Forever is a spectacle, for sure, a sprawling, visually sumptuous, epic-sized moviescape itself superpowered with high-tech FX and eye-popping gee-whizzery. It’s big and bulky and sometimes beautiful, almost enough for two full movies packed into one. It has a major theme of Black female empowerment, of course, but also builds on the importance of global allies, the evils of colonization and the interface between ancient tradition, primal ritual and modern invention. Wakanda’s fierce female warriors still throw spears, but they also fly around in an arsenal of battlecraft, and inside armored suits.
The movie melds African culture, Pacific lore and Black experience into a tapestry of wide-ranging action and adventure.
It’s a good time to be “young, gifted and Black,” says Riri, a young college-student genius (Dominique Thorne) who becomes a new central character.
You’ll plunge underneath the ocean to see the amazing sights of a vast aqua kingdom (it reminded me a bit of the fabulous wonder world touted in comic books advertising Sea Monkeys). There’s a warrior king with wings on his feet, and an aqua army riding around on whales—and wait until you see them swarm up the sides of a battleship and over it like ants on an anthill. The costumes are over-the-top fantabulous. A beloved character dies. And I won’t spoil it, but there’s at least one other golly-whopper of a surprise, too.
Key players from the original cast return: Martin Freeman as Wakanda’s CIA ally; Winston Duke as the mountainous warrior leader M’Baku; Lupita Nyong’o as Nakia, T’Challa’s former lover, now running a Wakanda “outreach” program in Haiti.
But the central character of this tale remains the one played by Boseman, who may not be around anymore, but his influence casts a long, deep shadow. The movie has the muscle and heft of a comic-book blockbuster, but it also reflects profoundly on the human resonance of ancestry, remembering and moving on.
Can the Black Panther move on without Boseman, and without T’Challa? You’ll have to watch—all two hours and 45 minutes—to find out. But “forever” is in the title for a reason (and it’s not just how long the movie feels). And Wakanda Forever suggests that the kingdom, and the franchise, are in good hands.
Semi-autobiographical spin on childhood at the dawn of the 1980s has sobering messages about life
Banks Repeta with Anthony Hopkins in ‘Armageddon Time.’
Armageddon Time Starring Anne Hathaway, Anthony Hopkins, Banks Repeta & Jeremy Strong Directed by James Gray Rated R
See it in theaters Nov. 4
From the New Testament of the Bible, the term “Armageddon” entered the wider lexicon to mean an epic battle to end all battles, a final clash between forces of good and evil.
It’s a metaphor for the turmoil of life in James Gray’s largely autobiographical coming-of-age portrait, which centers on an 11-year-old Jewish boy named Paul (Banks Repeta) in the New York City borough of Queens, and the ups and downs of his friendship with a Black classmate (Jaylin Webb) in 1980.
The two lads get in some trouble (toking on a joint in the bathroom) and are separated when Paul’s parents (Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway) send him off to a posh private school. But Paul has little interest in becoming someone else’s definition of successful. His kindly grandfather (Anthony Hopkins) encourages his dreams of drawing and becoming a famous artist.
Johnny has dreams, too. He wants to be an astronaut, like his Apollo space heroes. And despite his friendship with Paul, he knows they are from two different worlds, that some dreams will only take you so far, and some flight paths are unchangeable. Like the model rocket Paul launches in the park with his grandfather, life goes where it goes. It goes up, it comes down. It can be beautiful, exciting, thrilling—or it can misfire, or blow up, or crash, becoming a disaster. It’s not equal, it’s certainly not fair, but that’s the way it is.
Armageddon Time is set against the backdrop of Ronald Reagan’s election as U.S. president, and the hawkish prospect he represented for increased militarism in a fight against “communism.” Paul’s mother fears he’ll push America into global conflict, a nuclear Armageddon.
As Paul navigates this brief but formative period, he learns some valuable lessons about racism, antisemitism and how life isn’t always a delicious dinnertime dumpling. His grandfather, a Ukrainian Jew who fled the horrors of ethnic cleansing in Europe, tells him to stand up to bullies, to keep pushing back against evil and darkness, and to be a mensch, a person of integrity and honor.
His mother loves him, but thinks he’s “slow,” in need of remedial education. His blue-collar father thrashes him with his belt for misbehaving and worries he’ll never amount to anything. Both parents openly disapprove of his Black friend.
Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong play the parents.
Director Gray (whose previous films include the Brad Pitt space saga Ad Astra and the crime thrillers We Own the Night and The Yards) creates an effective, evocative sense of a specific time and place, the rush of childhood, the complicated dynamics of family and a depiction of adolescence on the uncertain threshold of adulthood. He especially draws out memorable performances from his two young central characters, the conduits for his story’s moods of youthful adventure, yearning, frustration and ache. Johnny turns Paul on to the happenin’ hip-hop of Harlem’s Sugar Hill Gang and “Rapper’s Delight.” Paul goes to the movies with his family to watch Goldie Hawn (a Jewish girl) in Private Benjamin. The dawn of the computer age sparks Paul’s imagination, in more ways than one. They make each other laugh, they run through the park, they skip a school field day to hang out and ride the subway.
It reminded me a bit of Licorice Pizza, Paul Thomas Anderson’s gloriously golden retro ode to growing up and the rush of young love in California in the 1970s. But Armageddon Time is a bit darker than that, several shades more sobering, even a dollop depressing in its depiction of the creeping threats to Paul and Johnny’s friendship, in a world tainted by hatred and fear, and the reality that some dreams can never blast off into the bright, blue sky.
And as a nod to what’s coming, for Paul and America, the movie introduces the specter of Donald Trump, in characters representing his father, Fred Trump (John Diehl) and sister, Maryanne (Jessica Chastain).
Armageddon time may, it suggests, be any time. As Paul’s grandfather tells him, never give up, stand tall and keep fighting the “bastards.” There’ll always be bastards, the battle didn’t end in 1980, or after the Holocaust, and it sure doesn’t look like it’s over now.
Kenneth Branagh returns to the canon of Agatha Christie for another twisty murder mystery
Kenneth Branagh directs and stars in ‘Death on the Nile,’ his second film based on a classic Agatha Christie novel.
Death on the Nile Starring Gal Godot, Annette Bening, Tom Bateman, Russell Brand, Letitia Wright, Armie Hammer & Emma McKay Directed by Kenneth Branagh Rated PG-13
In theaters Feb. 11, 2022
What do you do when there’s a crime, and everyone’s a suspect?
You get the world’s greatest detective, of course!
As Agatha Christie fans know, that would be Belgian crime-cracker Hercule Poirot, one of the late author’s most beloved, most famous and long-running characters of crime fiction. He has appeared in more than 30 novels, 50 short stories, numerous stage productions and more than a dozen films.
Poirot has been portrayed by a cavalcade of actors over the decades, including Orson Wells, Peter Ustinov, Tony Randall, Alfred Molina and John Malkovich. Britain’s acclaimed Kenneth Branagh first took on the role in 2017, in Murders on the Orient Express, which he also directed. He now returns to it, again as both actor and director, in this lavish new screen adaptation of Christie’s fan-favorite novel, first published in 1937.
In Death on the Nile, Poirot must untangle a web of lies, deceit, greed and grievances swirling around a gorgeous young London heiress, Linnet Doyle (Wonder Woman’s Gal Godot), on her honeymoon cruise. When Linnet is discovered dead in her room, shot cleanly in her temple with a small-caliber weapon as she sleeps, the plot really begins to thicken
Armie Hammer & Gal Godot are at the center of wave of crime aboard a riveboat.
Soon she’s not the only death in Death on the Nile, as the paddlewheel steamer Karnak makes its way through the land of the pharaohs—and everyone comes under suspicion.
Good thing Hercule Poirot also happens to be on the boat!
As his investigation unfolds, Poirot finds no shortage of possible perpetrators, plausible motives—and murder weapons. Clues begin to add up as bodies begin to pile up: a dead woman caught in the boat’s paddlewheel; a pistol wrapped in a blood-stained scarf, dredged from the bottom of the river; a tense, jealous love triangle between Linnet, her new husband (Armie Hammer) and his former fiancé (Emma Mackay, the British Margot Robbie lookalike who stars in the Netflix series Sex Education).
The riverboat wedding party also includes Linnet’s lawyer and cousin (Ali Fazal), with a sheath of documents he seems anxious for her to sign; a renowned painter (Annette Bening) and her son, Bouc (Tom Bateman), Poirot’s confidante; a physician (Russell Brand) who was once engaged to Linnet; a maid (Rose Leslie, from Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones); and a brassy blues nightclub singer (Sophie Okonedo) and her niece/manager (Black Panther’s Letitia Wright), one of Linnet’s former classmates. The British comedy team of Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French play Linette’s socialite godmother and her companion/nurse.
As a director, Branagh (currently a top Oscar contender for his semi-autobiographical drama Belfast) takes a few creative liberties with Christie’s story, and fans of the English author will enjoy seeing the creative spins he puts on her classic puzzle—a few character tweaks here, a minor plot point there. He also crafts a compelling backstory for Poirot, with an opening scene that puts us alongside him, as a young soldier, in the muddy trenches of World War I—and provides the genesis of his florid, double-decker trademark moustache.
Gal Gadot: The ‘Wonder Woman’ star plays a London heiress
Gorgeous to look at, Branagh’s film—shot on a massive London soundstage, complete with a gargantuan water tank—is filled with sights and splash and splendor, from the pyramids and tombs and antiquities of ancient Egypt to the funky, dirty-dancing delights of a hoppin’ London speakeasy. Omens on the screen portend something bad is surely going to happen down the river as a crocodile lunges from the murky waters to snatch a squawking egret; a hissing snake strikes out, unexpectedly, toward the viewers; a massive piece of tumbling stonemasonry barely misses Linette and her husband.
And despite its title, and its centerpiece crime, Branagh has another theme on his mind. “It’s love,” as Linnet notes at one point. “It’s not a game played fair. There are no rules.” Romantic ties—and societal rule-breaking—run throughout the entire story, and cross-connect almost every character, in some way or another. Even Poirot himself, as the film’s beginning and ending suggest, is not immune to being gob-smacked by love’s primal power.
This new Death on the Nile—which has previously been the subject of two theatrical films, a TV movie, a Broadway play and a BBC radio serial—is a twisty, turn-y tale of love and lovers, murder and mystery, and passions that can sometimes turn poisonous. It may take place some eight decade ago, but its themes are timeless.
And not all the movie drama, as it turns out, appears onscreen. Like several other films, Death on the Nile faced a struggle to even be released—its opening was delayed six times due to the COVID pandemic. Meanwhile, the movie’s leading man, Armie Hammer, became an untouchable persona non grata in Hollywood after charges levied against him for sexual misconduct and rape, and his bizarre sexting comments about cannibalism. Disney reportedly considered—but ultimately abandoned—options that included reshooting the entire film, or digitally removing his character and replacing it with another actor.
But here we finally are, and fans of whodunnit riddles—from Agatha Christie to Knives Out and even the classic board game of Clue—will greatly enjoy trying to piece together the evidence to unravel this period-piece knot alongside Christie’s favorite sleuth.
There may have been some 46 other movies—and more than 50 TV and radio versions—based on the works of Christie, who died in 1976, many of them featuring Poirot or Christie’s other famous mystery solver, Miss Marple. But Branagh’s lively, exotic, star-spangled take on Death on the Nile proves there’s plenty of life left in finely crafted stories of love, murder and the messy matters of the human heart.
The Media Tourist 