I've reviewed films for more than 35 years. Current movie reviews of new theatrical releases and streaming films are added weekly to the Silver Screen Capture movie news site. Many capsule critiques originally appeared in expanded form in my syndicated Lights Camera Reaction column.
Director Matthew Warchus adapts his stage show of Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical (C+) with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but those who endure it in its entirety may find some simple pleasures scattered in its mix. First, Alisha Weir is wonderful in the title role, a precocious little girl unloved by her parents who escapes into books and braves a sinister school. Her lovely singing voice and power of telekinesis help her thwart an evil steampunk headmistress played by a committed Emma Thompson in a pancake of prosthetics. As a sympathetic teacher, Lashana Lynch is endearing and has a lovely singing voice. The filming style and scrambled tone don’t do the film’s songs any favors, and the story gets bogged down in flashbacks and a moribund schoolyard confrontation. The scope of the visual effects could fit inside Harry Potter’s broom closet bedroom, the spry highjinks rarely take flight and the stakes remain strangely inert. But we don’t get spunky female heroines very often, so there’s likely something here to entertain legions of daughters.
In parts languid and lyrical, Darren Aranofsky’s The Whale (B) takes its sweet time to arrive at its cathartic thesis, but patient viewers will be rewarded by floodgates of emotion. Brendan Fraser is dexterous and expressive as Charlie, a 600-pound man attempting to reconcile with a broken family as he contemplates a life that has become adrift. The cavalcade of people in Charlie’s orbit include a memorable Sadie Sink and Samantha Morton as his estranged daughter and wife, respectively; Ty Simpkins as a mysterious missionary; and Hong Chau as the protagonist’s friend and caregiver. Incidentally, Chau is a wonderful foil and purveyor of some of the best lines of dialogue. The director films most of the action in the confines of a claustrophobic apartment and in stark close-up. His work is a glorified character study with a few additional sparks stoked by familial and religious conflict. Aronofsky and Fraser generate intense empathy and an indelible central character in the complex Charlie, alternately optimistic and at sea. It’s a soulful drama that will be sure to spark discussion.
The stop-motion animated musical fantasy Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (B+) co-directed by the titular moviemaking wunderkind and Mark Gustafson is not only a gorgeous creation to behold but deepens a timeless tale’s themes about the father-son bond. Set in 1930s Fascist Italy, the film’s every frame reflects meticulous craft and intrigue; and the sentimental story comes to life in unexpected and lyrical ways. The directors start pulling the heartstrings immediately in the prologue by depicting time spent between lonely woodcarver Gepetto and the son he lost before willing a merry marionette to life. David Bradley and Gregory Mann are solid in the father-son voiceover roles, and Ewan McGregor as a charming cricket is a spry standout in an ensemble including Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett and Christoph Waltz. The movie takes viewers to some familiar and exotic locations, with just enough change of venue to keep an oft-told story fresh. Alexander Desplat’s score is quite lovely too except his full-out songs which are more wooden than the protagonist puppet. The fable outstays its welcome a bit, and the title character could have used a central nervous system stimulant; but it’s largely a technical marvel with solid heart.
Disney’s latest animated adventure is a triumph of representation and style, but the film’s storytelling barely scratches the surface. Don Hall’s Strange World (B-) follows a legendary explorer family who must set aside their differences as they embark on a journey to the center of the earth filled with surreal creatures to protect an agricultural power source. Clearly an homage to pulpy serialized sci-fi magazines, this tale examines a spectrum of masculinity as hunters and gatherers unite for common good. The land under Avalonia feels like Pandora Jr., and the rules of this subterranean world don’t reveal themselves soon enough. The bumper crop of voice talent – Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, Gabrielle Union and Jaboukie Young-White – add wonder and whimsy to the lush landscape and painterly palette seemingly inspired by popping boba pearls and squishy slime toys. The shape shifting sidekick Splat is fun and Henry Jackman’s music soaring, plus if Epcot’s Land Pavilion needs a fantastical farming voyage, it’s all right here. The movie is saved by some tender moments even though the action only dazzles in spurts. A film with characters devoted to their fortune seems destined for the animation studio’s second-tier shelf.
This peppy whodunnit starts off so strong, viewers will scarcely believe the momentum will last, but it mostly does. Writer/director Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (B+) brings back Daniel Craig as the series’ peculiar detective protagonist and a new ensemble, all with cryptic connections to Ed Norton’s business giant character. These suspects including Kate Hudson, Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr., Dave Bautista and Kathryn Hahn congregate in a semitransparent mansion on a private island for a dangerous game. So soon after the similarly themed The Menu, this film loses a little bit of its punch, but it’s largely a frothy winner with droll humor and an impressive script. There’s also a moment when the plot wraps back over itself, and it slows down the pace just slightly. Thankfully Johnson peppers the proceedings with some potent subtext about untoward allegiances people make to maintain power, and it makes the cinematic meal more of a banquet. Monáe and Hudson get some of the juiciest roles and make quite an impact, plus there are some other mysterious cameos. There’s a running joke about the detective not liking the board game Clue; but for audiences, it’s fun to second-guess every person, prop and room on display. Peel back the layers and enjoy this holiday hit.
Welcome to the Young Steven Spielberg Chronicles, where the proverbial alien is a spouse in a loveless marriage, the cliffhanger action revolves around how quickly one can thwart high school bullies and where home movies captured for the screen can reflect destiny profoundly. Spielberg directs and co-writes his own autobiography as a coming of age drama, changing his family name to The Fabelmans (A-) as one mildly manipulative way to keep tiny flickers of details privately veiled. The film is a rich origin story of an auteur-in-training shaped in unequal measures by his drive to make movies and his reckoning with his formerly fantasy world parents becoming increasingly estranged. Gabriel LaBelle is fully convincing in the central role, often opposite Michelle Williams as his dreamer mom, in an effectively showy and emotional performance. All actors are wonderful including Paul Dano as the pragmatic dad who can fix everything but his family and Judd Hirsch as a scene-stealing uncle who’s a former silent film actor and circus showman and a certain real-life director with some sage advice. Spielberg’s greatest filmmaking gifts are all on display here: depicting wide-eyed wonder, pivoting from triumph to dread within the same sequence and contemplating Big Issues while consistently conjuring entertaining imagery. Strangely, the only underwhelming elements are John Williams’s pretty but subtle score and the mostly perfunctory films-within-the-film. Overall this work is a glorious making of a man with unexpected intrigue. With a lofty screenplay, Spielberg’s co-writer Tony Kushner elevates the tale to the stuff of legend, and in the process the director himself has made a really great Steven Spielberg movie.
The overlong runtime could make one think this Charles Dickens adaptation is more inspired by the author’s prolific publishing house word counts (£400+ for just a few more pages of script?) than the bones of his novella A Christmas Carol, but while stuffed like plump holiday poultry, Sean Anders’s Spirited (B-) is largely a lovable lark. This holiday comedy centers on Will Ferrell as a wide-eyed Ghost of Christmas Present who works in a league of modern-day “spirits as a service” opposite Ryan Reynolds as a cynical earthbound purveyor of humbugs and shady public relations campaigns. Both comic actors shine in their tailor-made roles and prove their musical chops since the film possesses a new songbook by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. Octavia Spencer is also a solid songstress and contributor to the fantastical proceedings, along with Broadway journeymen such as Patrick Page and Joe Tippett. Many of the musical acts are rousing and fun, especially a throwback to 1800s England. The first act gets bogged down in procedure and unsure meta jokes plus a little Cop Rock deja vu, but once the emphasis lands squarely on how Ferrell and Reynolds flip the script on the classic story and start to rehabilitate each other, a litany of laughs and deserved emotion come center stage. It’s not a perfect addition to the holiday movie oeuvre but often a fun sprinkling of confetti from the Christmas canon. The hearty let’s-put-on-a-show vibe pairs well with the film’s trippy troupe and could very well propel this into the Yuletide movie pantheon.
There’s nothing more delectable than watching bad people get their comeuppance, and many may have guessed that just such social commentary is on The Menu (B) directed by Mark Mylod. Ralph Fiennes plays a despotic chef at the helm of an exclusive restaurant that’s the sole tenant of an island, and its ensemble of guests ranging from Janet McTeer to John Leguizamo have no idea what kind of meal is coming their way. Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult are a treat as the central odd couple, she with no interest in high-minded cuisine and he obsessed with every morsel. The story’s chapters are also food courses with life lessons attached, with only one that looks as delicious as described. There are a bunch of flawed characters with too many greedy, grubby hands in the veritable gobstopper jar. The allegory loses steam as the story progresses and doesn’t fully quench the appetite it hypes. The film is entertaining but may not stick to the ribs as much as intended.
All of the spotlights and president’s men can’t make this story surprising again. Maria Schrader’s investigative journalist saga SheSaid (B-) is an imminently watchable but not terribly original drama about a pair of New York Times reporters sleuthing into the misconduct of movie producer Harvey Weinstein, whose character’s face is never visible in the frame. The film is buoyed by two effective central performances, Carey Mulligan as Meghan Twohey and Zoe Kazan as Jodi Kantor. Both women are courageous portrayals of strong working mothers on a quest to improve the lives of others through a cathartic chronicle. Others in the ensemble, except the outstanding Samantha Morton and Jennifer Ehle as compelling corporate sources, don’t make much of an impression. The combination of people playing themselves and cloaking the antagonist as basically an “over the shoulder” stand-in didn’t really work. There aren’t a lot of new bombshells in the screenplay, and the story doesn’t tell us a whole lot about the intrepid reporters; but the crafts are uniformly strong with a clean, glossy sheen to the proceedings. There are shots aplenty of peering through glass, so the viewers can feel like voyeurs to the procedural in minutia. The film is a strong teaching tool for future journalists and builds to the inevitable triumph setting the #MeToo movement into motion. For all the sensational scandal it breaks into the open, the approach is a bit tame.
Taylor Russell and Timothee Chalamet make fine young cannibals in Luca Guadagnino’s audacious and astonishing ’80s-set body horror romance Bones and All (B+). This walk on the wild side chronicles a twee twosome who feast on flesh, and there’s generally sufficient allegory to transcend the most gruesome episodes. Opposite the mesmerizing central couple who very comfortably occupy their pulpy roles, Mark Rylance is also absolutely unhinged as a terrifically terrifying man-eating mentor. Guadagnino guides his story gracefully into truly dark territory and finds sufficient humanity in his curious macabre. This offbeat road trip follows in the tradition of Bonnie and Clyde and Natural Born Killers and will not be for all tastes.
Life’s rich pageant unfurls in Afrofuturistic splendor as gifted director/co-writer Ryan Coogler showcases a mythological superhero swashbuckler that towers over recent installments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (A-) accomplishes three simultaneous goals: honoring the legacy of the late Chadwick Boseman and his character as the denizens of the fictional Wakanda grieve the loss of a hero and protector, setting up an absorbing new conflict between nations and sharpening some critical characters on the precipice of critical leadership. Angela Bassett, Letitia Wright and Lupita Nyong’o lend grace and gravitas as the women delivering emotional and intellectual superpowers to hold their kingdom together. The introduction of a new threat in the form of an underwater world called Talokan led by charismatic mer-man Namor, played brilliantly by Tenoch Huerta, advances the plotting and political intrigue. Although a little bloated in run time, Coogler’s sequel properly nourishes its characters and dazzles with wondrous world building. The below-the-line crafts are flawless, with Ruth Carter’s gorgeously ornate costumes again a standout. In many ways the film is an improvement on its predecessor with motivated action and stunts and weighty consequences. It is an epic worthy of the Marvel monicker.
The crushing waves depicted in gallery art and in the seaside Brighton, England milieu imply a story with more ferocity than what we actually get in Michael Grandage’s rather staid romantic drama MyPoliceman (C). A contemporary cast – Linus Roache, Rupert Everett and Gina McKee flash back to a love triangle in the 1950s between their characters played by Harry Styles, David Dawson and Emma Corrin respectively. It’s the classic gay artist meets closeted cop meets straight teacher tale, and this type of soapy story rarely ends with everyone happy, although there are some tiny twists in the final act that make events a tad more intriguing. It’s a handsome production; but in a film so buoyed by the need for compelling performances, none are particularly remarkable. The audience learns little about being a policeman, a museum curator or an educator and even less about what motivates their psychologies. Dawson is ostensibly the standout and feels like a real person in his role, and Styles vanquishes himself with a performance a touch better than his most recent tentpole effort. Some of the film is pretty and picturesque, but its tepid melodrama makes for a largely listless affair.
