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.
Available in select theatres Feb. 5, 2021 and on demand Feb. 12, 2021.
There’s memory and money in laundering as one Korean-American family comes to grips with transitions of their business and domestic life in Julian Kim and Peter S. Lee’s delightful drama Happy Cleaners (B). Yun Jeong and Yeena Sung effectively portray twentysomething siblings Kevin and Hyunny who grapple with entrepreneurial and romantic dreams while under the same roof as their parents (authentically played by Charles Ryu and Hyang-hwa Lim) who try to make ends meet at their Flushing, New York dry cleaners. Family meals provide both forum and balm for much of the conflict around finances and tradition. For these immigrants, there’s no order slip or recipe for creating and maintaining an ordered home of aligned expectations. Characters must learn to reconcile and compromise and occasionally jettison outdated notions. In the film’s details, Kim and Lee demonstrate the pride of characters to make their own way in the world without financial assistance and showcase many of the singular struggles of second generation Americans to find their space. Although full of a low boil of conflict, the film’s tone is largely optimistic and sentimental and the characters endearing. Viewers will likely see themselves in this family’s dynamics.
Known more as a boy band grad who transitioned to soulful superstardom in his own right, Justin Timberlake says bye bye bye to just being a celebrity in occasional cameos and thrusts his thespian chops to a fierce forefront. Palmer (B-) by director Fisher Stevens is decent in every sense of the word, an earnest yet predictable movie about redemption and resiliency featuring JT as an ex-con with a heart of gold and child actor Ryder Allen as the gender-nonconforming boy next door who benefits from a non-judgmental father figure. The genuine goodness of the stoic single man’s burgeoning paternal qualities with the princess-loving preteen is the heart of the story and often quite affecting. Timberlake is in nearly every scene of the movie and endearing in his performance, and yet it’s still hard to connect to his past crimes and circumstances. We don’t really get much of a glimpse into his worst instincts. Allen is a revelation as his fanciful foil. But despite some seeming detours to the dark side, most of the movie sticks to formula. Alisha Wainwright is a standout with a committed performance as a teacher and love interest; but like participants in many of the plot threads, her character remains a bit underdeveloped. Still it’s a largely sunny discovery of a film and, if in case the notion were ever lost, it’s bringin’ sexy sentimentality back.
This is one of those movies in which you really need flashbacks to when the characters may have been much more interesting. Playing loving partners of twenty years in Harry Macqueen’s slog of a road trip through the British countryside, Supernova (C), Colin Firth’s pianist must come to grips with revelations from Stanley Tucci as his lover, an author battling onset dementia. Firth gives the better performance and is often quietly moving. Tucci is adequate but not particularly revelatory in an underwritten role. The sad descent is sensitively handled, and the two actors acquit themselves admirably with tender material. Alas sequences on the road have the allure of one of those calming apps that helps you sleep, and none of the stops – including a mundane family reunion and a charmless rental house – hold much appeal or allure. Aside from the fact that it’s two rather well-known actors who aren’t gay playing gay, there’s really not much to see here that hasn’t been covered in other melodramas. Cosmic metaphors and the theme that even two people living in the tight quarters of a camper van can hold secrets from one another don’t really enliven the proceedings much either. I may have liked the epilogue sequence more than I should have. This movie gets points for tackling a Big Issue from an alternative perspective but ultimately feels lost somewhere between treacly and perfunctory.
Uplifting GBLTQIA+ love stories free of melodramatic or tragic tropes aren’t always easy to find; sometimes you have to go to western South America for a really good one. Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo’s Los Fuertes (aka The Strong Ones) (B+) is a thoughtful and engrossing romantic drama about love that emerges between just the right people at almost exactly the right moment. Samuel González plays a student buying time in Southern Chile before graduate studies in Canada who meets a mysterious fisherman (with a most uncommon side hustle of historical battle reenactments in local fortresses) played by Antonio Altamirano. This is a film of wisely observed episodes in which there’s not a huge sweeping plot, just a swoon-worthy coastal courtship and the onslaught of potential longing and loss. Both ruggedly handsome actors are excellent in portraying men letting down their guards. They commit fully to authenticity on screen. Hidalgo wisely foregoes heavy-handed symbolism or amped-up high stakes and simply captures this love in bloom in sequences of joy, yearning and consequence. The gorgeous scenery and surroundings lend a lived-in quality to the proceedings equally interpreted as epic or fleeting, and the reality of the relationship that plays out is worth exploring.
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Talk about a son possessed – and often obsessed – with the topics fascinating his famous father! Director Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor (B) follows in the footsteps of his filmmaker dad David Cronenberg, with both men specializing in intellectual tales of psychological trauma played out against the human body as a bloody and phantasmagoric canvas. Expect rage and repercussions. Andrea Riseborough is ostensibly the star of the film although her character is largely inhabiting the mind and body of Christopher Abbott, who gets the real juicy part, in a film that also features Sean Bean and Jennifer Jason Leigh in effective small roles. The plot involves assassinations carried out through a diabolical mind control process, but it’s largely style over substance as memories and intentions collide in some epic suspense showdowns. Wall to wall with hallucinogenic imagery and graphic violence, the film is catnip for fans of thriller and horror genres. The set-up is strong, set pieces superb and stakes high throughout. The film can’t quite bear the weight of both its protagonist and parasite, but it’s boldly audacious nonetheless. The auteurist apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and it’s rotten to the core in the best possible way.
Kornél Mundruczó’s Pieces of a Woman (B-) is a devastating and uneven glimpse at a tragedy befalling an American couple soon after bringing a child into the world. The performances are so stunningly good that it’s a shame there wasn’t a more compelling or urgent through-line to maintain the interest generated in a searing prologue. The film will undoubtedly be remembered for the hook of a prolonged childbirth sequence magnificently filmed in a single take and the central performance by Vanessa Kirby, whose acting is incredible especially as she has to show viewers her interior struggles. Shia LaBeouf is good in an underwritten role as her husband, but the other acting powerhouse here is Ellen Burstyn in the kind of fierce role that begs for its own movie. The film’s autumnal elegance and grace is maintained throughout, but its plot and pacing keeps viewers at a slight distance just when you want to find out more about what’s driving the relationships and maternal instincts. It’s a tough watch, recommended mainly for awards season completists because the female performances are peerless.
First-time director Regina King’s assured film adaptation of stage play One Night in Miami… (B) is a fierce four-hander with magnificent acting by Kinglsey Ben-Adir as Malcolm X, Eli Goree as Muhammad Ali, Aldis Hodge as Jim Brown and Leslie Odom Jr. as Sam Cooke experiencing a fictionalized meeting after a Florida boxing bout circa 1964. King creates safe space for a dramatic moment in time showcasing religious, civil rights, sports and music titans getting real in dialogue about their lots in life and a collective summons to seize their destinies. These kindred spirits’ struggles pulse with resonance in a social justice reckoning culture some five and a half decades later. It’s a handsome production with lovely period detail and art direction. All the actors are superb, with Ben-Adir an empathetic and humane standout (he actually out-Denzels an already iconic screen performance). King brings a sensitive voyeur lens to conversations these Black men have when utterly unfiltered, akin to a style pioneered by Spike Lee in the superior Get on the Bus. The talky technique doesn’t always transcend the audacity of its premise, but it’s ultimately a night of uncanny wake-up calls.
Paul Greengrass delivers a star vehicle for Tom Hanks in full, gallant, paternal nobility mode in the old-fashioned but pleasant enough News of the World (B), a western that could have used a bit more bite. It’s a handsome production gorgeously shot, and the subtext that not too much has changed in the 150 years since it takes place seems to want to rear its thematic head in what turns out to actually be a fairly routine endeavor. Hanks is solid as the military veteran and roving newspaper reader who finds a new calling when he discovers an orphaned girl, and the plucky Helena Zengel is at least competing on the same aisle and shelf with Wilson the Volleyball in the supporting boon companion department. The action sequences when they happen, from a canyon shootout to a brief wagon chase, are rousing enough. Overall though the characters could have been more interesting and the stakes much grander. It seems the higher calling of showcasing Hanks as another cinematic saint takes the edge off a more grandiose frontier of possibilities.
This is an epic story of a simple man transforming himself into a self-made super man of a different sort, and it’s an opportunity to witness eagerness and disillusion in ample doses on a wide and wary canvas. Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden (B+) adapts a classic Jack London novel to an Italian setting in which the titular sailor played marvelously by Luca Marinelli falls so deeply in love with a woman above his station (a wonderful Jessica Cressy) that he nearly loses himself in search of success in writing, education and politics. It’s illuminating even when tough at times. Veteran actor Carlo Cecchi also has a nice supporting part as a begrudging mentor. The director weaves a pulpy story with dreamlike flashbacks and a keen eye on characters. It’s not completely clear if the central romance is totally convincing, but Marinelli is so utterly committed to his role that not a moment lacks authenticity. Literary fans will enjoy the juxtaposition of an iconic American novelist’s work to foreign soil and following a classic character through his particular passages.
Writer/director Emerald Fennell’s debut film Promising Young Woman (A-) is an absorbing hybrid dark comedy thriller with an unforgettable storyline and a fiercely focused central performance by Carey Mulligan as a one-woman avenging force. As the wronged protagonist, Mulligan shape shifts into a variety of show-stopping personas in stunning episodes to underscore her poignant points, and the themes are never preachy or pedantic. In fact, the satire is so sharp, the movie continually blurs lines between genres and leaves viewers fairly unsure of what’s coming next. The film’s unconventional, entertaining script helps showcase and sell a story which otherwise might have been marginalized into well-meaning long-form essays or flash-in-the-pan hashtags. Fennell’s creative, symmetric, candy-coated aesthetic is countered and complimented by some of the most unhinged and provocative dialogue set to film about toxic male culture. Escaping the main character’s burn book (bit parts include Adam Brody, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Max Greenfield) is Bo Burnham’s character who gives a fleeting glimmer of hope into the male psyche. The filmmaker also employs phenomenal music choices ranging from pop tunes to Broadway anthems to punctuate the proceedings. This will go down as a definitive movie about the ramifications of sexual assault on both victim and perpetrator and will surely speak to a generation to think twice before being complicit in micro-aggressions and beyond. It’s a smart and sneaky surprise and not for the faint of heart.
Talk about a throwback: raiders of a lost artifact are romancing an ancient stone capable of granting its owner worldwide domination, but despite a few footloose flashdances of frivolous fun and a flurry of war games capable of shifting the def con, this comic strip bonanzarama devolves quickly into an aggressively tone-shifting eclectic boogaloo. Patty Jenkins follows up her original solemn Wonder Woman with an off-the-rails sequel, WW84 (C), set in the excess of the eighties, and it’s largely a lasso of lunacy. The DC Universe settles in D.C. as the protagonist quietly works in the museum antiquity business while side hustling with crime fighting on The Mall and at the mall. Despite her gorgeousness and swell stunts, Gal Gadot looks like she has a migraine for most of the movie as her plucky naiveté transforms into full warrior mode. She’s still the best thing about the film and adds pomp, pageantry, grace and grandeur to even the most throwaway lines. Kristen Wiig fares poorly as an underwritten friend turned rival (it’s like her SNL “Penelope” character says, “I can be a CGI character too, and mine is a fierce cat!”). Pedro Pascal is also adrift as a villainous megalomaniac whose intentions vary scene by scene. It’s like you get two villains for the effect of one. Only Chris Pine in an extended cameo retains a bit of dignity. Nearly everything earthbound in the story including a prolonged wish fulfillment conceit is a relative dud; but when characters take flight, including in the famous invisible jet, the film mildly soars. Action sequences, more infrequent than expected, largely deliver on the storyboard. But most of this anticipated blockbuster is a clunky cacophony, and even nifty nostalgia can’t save it.
A meditative and melancholy excursion into an Oregonian outpost circa early 1800s, Kelly Reichardt’s parable of a fur trapper brigade’s sad sack chef, a spry Chinese immigrant on the run, a widowed royal dairy cow and the collective gleam in drifters’ eyes as they embark on a land of milk and honey just might be the American story nobody anticipated this year. Filmed with naturalistic wonder in the great outdoors within the intimate framed contours of a simple cinema square, First Cow (A-) is both a chronicle of renegade relationships featuring superb performances by John Magaro as Cookie and Orion Lee as King-Lu as well as a genuinely crafty and camouflaged story of start-up culture. Not a lot happens in the first hour aside from atmosphere and character development as the central duo of accidental entrepreneurs gathers a notion involving furtive nocturnal extractions from the titular divine bovine whose cream is the secret ingredient of a pastry delicacy received like a Manhattan Cronut in the food desert of the Wild West frontier. The plot sharpens for the second half and rewards patient viewers. Early lessons about the uphill battle of the struggling class versus the capitalist society’s one percenters are abundant to witness as the burgeoning businessmen face the menace of wealthy Toby Jones. But the real traveling medicine show here is a glorious tale of abiding friendship, showcased in mundane tasks and small gestures, each one a grace note from fine actors well directed. Reichardt’s delicate way of grazing through unchartered scenery and lingering on undiscovered details, even from a distance, lends great delight to this immersive story. She crafts an absolute American original, rich with a lived-in quality and sterling originality.
