The breadcrumbs leading to a close encounter are more contemplative than candy-coated in Steven Spielberg’s latest: if we were luring E.T. himself into the action, it would be done here with a bag of Reese’s Thesis. Spielberg has a lot on his mind, and his Disclosure Day (B) exports many of his deep thoughts to celluloid with a smash-up of paranoid thriller and existential essay. Without spoiling the plot, suffice it to say the director is interested in knowing if today’s global population of human beings could contemplate, agree on or even properly behold a miracle coming true in the modern world. All aren’t created equal in the film’s ensemble, with Emily Blunt standing head and shoulders over her cast mates as a news personality recently obsessed with perpetual movement toward a singular life event. As a tech expert outrunning the secrets of his sinister former employer, Josh O’Connor is on a similar trajectory toward something leviathan; his part is just less showy and interesting. Much of the movie’s first act is preoccupied with tracking down characters’ locations and leaving the viewer pondering myriad questions; but by the final act, the hot take gets cooking. There’s a propulsive, talky way of getting at some major interconnected issues, with a few magnificently staged chases including one with a crashed car attached to a moving train providing a rousing respite from all the speculating. There is an underdeveloped character (Colman Domingo) assembling others to some sort of makeshift sound stage and a stock villain (Colin Firth) who ultimately doesn’t have much to do aside from, again, finding peoples’ locations. Much of the plot could be curtailed with a good GPS! But by the time the director goes for the big swings about one of his lifelong cosmic preoccupations, he largely sticks the landing. Some action sequences feel long jn the tooth, and the intellectual passages don’t all necessarily pay off. Blunt makes the most of it all as a woman possessed; all the best sequences in the film involve her surreal journey. Wyatt Russell as her love interest is delightful and underused in a flash of comic relief and relatability. John Williams provides workmanlike music for this outing, and the effects are good but not great, with a throwaway line nearly apologizing for the rendering of some of the animal effects. Janusz Kamiński’s cinematography is stunning; there are lots of sequences with characters reflected together through glass which deepen connections and help themes to gel. Despite many great elements, the film is ultimately a prelude to a great conversation rather than a masterpiece in and of itself.
Director John Carney’s continuing exploration of the magnetic attraction of music to bring together unlikely cinematic pairs has now canonically conjoined Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas. The dramedy Power Ballad (B) follows Rudd’s character, a wannabe arena rocker who has settled into fronting a wedding band in Ireland, home to his wife and daughter. One night he drunkenly bonds and musically riffs with the Jonas character, a boy-band member in search of solo stardom. Soon an unexpected global hit song is born, and it’s not totally clear the tune’s baby daddy. It’s nice to see Rudd sink his teeth into an authentic and scrappy character. Jonas is a good fit as well in his role, with confidence cloaking just a dash of desperation. Carney’s film takes a hot minute to gain steam but is worth the patient watch for the payoffs. Jack Reynor is particularly effective as a very direct American music mogul and manager critical to the copyright custody battle of a plot. The movie also hinges on the ear-worm original song titled “How to Write a Song Without You,” and fortunately it’s a banger. With lively performances, at least one hummable new tune joining a bunch of covers sung by the starring duo and a bit of sentiment and Irish charm, it’s an enjoyable entry into Carney’s cinematic songbook.
It’s evident from the first grift that this trio of shoplifting antiheroes is a gift to audiences: Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie and Taylour Paige are the central fabric of fabulous talent stitching a meta-comedy about the fashion world together. Fresh from the Atlanta Film Festival, Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters (A-) examines the global ramifications of an industry that doesn’t always recognize the trickle-down effects of its policies. Demi Moore is effective as an artsy, aloof antagonist, a fashion impresario marshaling sweatshops of seamstresses to achieve her every bossy bidding. The ladies at the heart of this story know the assignment and deliver magnificently, and their droll, casual line readings are perfect foils to Riley’s bombastic approach to over-the-top storytelling. His philosophical and presciently political exploration of class, capitalism and labor rights is a creative fantasia of candy-hued human adventure, snippets of stop-motion animation and sassy surrealism. Although the final act almost threatens to collapse under the weight of all the colliding ideas, Riley lands the pret-a-por-plane. Palmer continues to prove herself a luminous star; it’s hard to take one’s eye off her work as the central lead, and it’s wonderful to see her get deeper into the global throes of an expanding plot and power. Fantastic flourishes throughout the movie, from the sloped shape of the mogul’s lair to metaphysical technologies with the ability to expand, enhance or illuminate the cosmic significance of apparel to gorgeous costumes matching department store environments, provide a veritable banquet. The music of Tune-Yards offers brilliantly bonkers accompaniment to the escapades. This is ambitious, audacious and great fun.
Curry Barker makes a significant mark on the horror thriller scene as writer, director and editor of the surprise hit Obsession (B). His YouTube sketch partner Cooper Tomlinson is a hoot as best bud of the nervy central protagonist, well played by Michael Johnston, but this is really Inde Navarrette’s movie when a supernatural wish prompts her character to become ferociously fixated on the anxiety-ridden hero. Barker has skillful control of pace and tone as he introduces a tight ensemble of characters working together at a music store and casually raises the stakes. It gets quite intense and doesn’t necessarily have a vision for how to end as Navarrette brilliantly chews the scenery through and through. Viewers will undoubtedly relate to the film’s themes if they’ve ever been in a possessive relationship. Darkly, almost devilishly lit, filled with propulsive paranoia and altogether agreeably atmospheric, the movie has a lived-in feeling and moves briskly. Like last year’s Together, it’s a good horror date movie memorable for its strange central duo.
Acclaimed Canadian documentarian Daniel Roher comes out of the gate with a corker of a narrative feature, Tuner (A), an absorbing crime/drama/thriller starring Leo Woodall as a gifted piano tuner with hypersensitive hearing who discovers he can use his auditory skills to crack safes, pulling him into a criminal underworld. Dustin Hoffman (great to see him!) plays his mensch of a mentor and Havana Rose Liu a feisty fellow music prodigy and love interest. Roher deftly balances a dangerous heist plot with a character study of a man grappling with his lost musical dreams. Lior Raz plays a menacing crime ring leader, and Tovah Feldshuh provides a lovely performance as part of the protagonist’s found family. Woodall, known from his streaming performance as Essex hunk Jack on White Lotus, is absolutely electric in this star-is-born lead role. Roher brings verve to a story requiring parallel fascination with grace notes of piano pitches and petty crime. The sound work is astounding and matched with a visceral visual style. It’s fast and fascinating as the lead faces mounting moral dilemmas challenging the limits of his superpower. This is delightful counter programming from all the existing summer fare, a stunning original for grown-ups. Seek out this festival hit in limited release starting on Memorial Day weekend.
Writer/director Aleshea Harris adapts her acclaimed play of the same name into the assured feature film Is God Is (B) about twins played by Kara Young and Mallori Johnson, both in riveting performances, traveling cross-country from the Deep Dirty South to California chic upon request of their mom (Vivica A. Fox) to exact revenge on their estranged dad (Sterling K. Brown). The film contains gritty drama fused with a campy spaghetti western violent sensibility akin to Thelma & Louise by way of the Kill Bill saga. Harris marches to the beat of her own drumline with her two unlikely protagonists often speaking in knowing telepathy to one another, rendered in subtitle fragments. Encounters with larger-than-life adversaries make for some jaw-dropping episodes while the women, disfigured in infancy, alternately grapple with impulses to forgive or fight. These are characters we haven’t seen on screen before in an unexpected thinking person’s road trip revenge adventure.
Two Hollywood talents helm a mystery, a sci-fi adventure and a moving human drama packaged in one extraordinarily ambitious and entertaining opus. Co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Project Hail Mary (A+) stars Ryan Gosling as a man who finds himself alone on a spacecraft light years from earth and must summon the bravery and resourcefulness to help avert a disaster with intergalactic stakes. With a superb shape-shifting and time-bending adapted screenplay by Drew Goddard, Lord and Miller commandeer a whimsical journey scored to Daniel Pemberton’s majestic music along with some nifty needle drops. The film is a visual feast thanks to Greig Fraser’s cinematography and Paul Lambert and Mags Sarnowska’s stunning blend of visual effects with practical photography. Gosling brings charisma and humor to a lead role summoning all his mad skills. Sandra Huller is a delight and a solid foil, and audiences will get great joy from the puppeteering and voice talents of James Ortiz. The film’s first hour is leisurely paced and sets the scope and scene; then the plot picks up rather rapidly soonafter. The movie proves again and again an impressive feat of larger-than-life showmanship and the intimacy of well-honed characterization. This is an absolute excuse for those who haven’t been to a movie theatre in a while to witness something revelatory and crowd-pleasing on the big screen.
Canadian comedy scales new heights of creativity in Matt Johnson’s rollicking and raucous Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie (A-), chronicling a pair of fictionalized musicians (the manic Johnson plus straight man Jay McCarrol) endeavoring to land a gig at a nightclub in their beloved Toronto hometown, and no highjinks, homages or holler-backs are off-limits along their daft-punking journey. Neither the band’s curiously familiar name nor the Quixotic plight to promote themselves nor the blurry backstory nor the dubious prospects for future success make much sense at all for those diagramming a conventional plot, but the “let’s just go for it” mentality is the stuff of an improv fever dream and the reason a dreamy time-traveling quest format works so well. The filmmakers constantly top themselves and set crafty traps for droll detours, with funny flashbacks making their deviled Easter eggs abundantly clear. This mighty mockumentary blends scripted and candid camera footage into a “yes, and…” whirling dervish of a caper, bringing viewers along for a sweet ride of laughter and recognition. Fans of the viral online series and cult TV show will most certainly appreciate the franchise’s giddy glow-up into full buddy film comedy, as if the pratfalls of a Jackass or Borat were given the canvas of Chaplin’s Modern Times or an extended afterlife exploration into John Belushi or Andy Kaufman’s noggins. There are a variety of set pieces and stunts that prompt a “how’d they get away with that?” feeling as the comic duo enlists the CN Tower and a Back to the Future style time machine aboard a tour bus, powered with the fizz of a bygone beverage, into their lofty, overcomplicated and unquestionably maximalist plans. There’s a thematic undercurrent that a best friend who’s full of both insane and inspired ideas evokes a simultaneous desire for constant together time as well as the longing to eject from the relationship completely. This flight of fancy or “flee and don’t look back” duality is fully explored with masterful comic effect. Johnson and McCarrol make for a superb comic pair, subversive and fiercely acerbic like few funnymen since Monty Python. You don’t have to know this duo or their eclectic characters before experiencing this movie to fully relate to their daffy plight and relish it completely.
Emerald Fennell’s stylized retelling of Wuthering Heights (A-) paints with all the colors of her whim: statuesque leads involved in constant craving, outrageous bodice ripping romance, can’t-look-away couture costumes, an ultra-glam soundscape, twisted minor characters, luminous colors melting off the edges of the screen, a bodily fluid or two too many and very little fidelity to convention. The sum of the iconoclastic director’s fever dream of parts is often a hypnotic hoot and even more so a tantalizing tone poem on the nature of longing. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are absolute delights as childhood companions whose off-kilter dynamics have evolved into a tainted lovelorn mess. Their chemistry is a palpable cavalcade of mood and madness, played out with a paper doll palette of blissed-out bravura. The duo’s adventures from the peaks of fog-coated mountainside trysts to the valleys of vigorous palace intrigue make for a full-fledged extravaganza of love and vengeance; and while the film is overlong at times and likely a bit appalling to Brontë scholars, it is nonetheless sexy and funny as hell. The maximalist magic shell covering the bones of this literary classic (or rather about half of it), doesn’t sugarcoat or cloak the subtleties or satire of class structure themes. It tells its own tale and blazes its own trail, keeping the story timeless and contemporary. Linus Sandgren’s evocative cinematography lends the story surprises around each bend, and the music by Anthony Willis punctuated by Charli XCX bops underscores the film’s pop sensibilities with reckless rhythm. Jacqueline Durran’s costumes are shimmering and sublime, casting stunning silhouettes across Caroline Barclay’s creative off-kilter production design captured on 35mm VistaVision film. Among the pulpy players are Hong Chau as a cunning killjoy and Alison Oliver as a daffy comic foil. I’m not sure what Shazad Latif was going for exactly in a thankless role. Fennell’s film is magic and tragic, giddy and gothic, electric and eclectic and should fit the bill for those seeking a sumptuous cinematic bonbon with an independent sensibility in time for Valentine’s Day weekend.
Dueling piano players, hit makers of the karaoke leaderboard and all-out tribute bands rarely get their proper due in the limelight. But get ready for the latter musical misfits to enjoy cinematic comeuppance. The true life story of two down-on-their-luck musicians who perform in a Neil Diamond cover band in grunge-era Milwaukee, Craig Brewer’s Song Sung Blue (B+) is one of those movies they just don’t make anymore, the idealistic tale of two good but imperfect souls overcoming incredible odds to make amazing music and life together. A jubilant Hugh Jackman and a resplendent Kate Hudson co-star as Lightning & Thunder, two halves of a novelty act that doubles as an excuse for mutual burgeoning love interests. The film is unabashedly melodramatic and formulaic, and yet it still hits all the right notes to keep viewers deeply engaged. Hudson in particular is wonderful in her role, acting and singing her way through a crucible of challenges as a salt-of-the-earth everywoman. It’s a triumph for this popular actress. Brewer stages montages such as “Sweet Caroline,” “Play Me” and “Holly Holy” with gregarious gusto, with several standout montages mirroring stage life and behind the scenes travails. The film is the genuine article, with legitimately nice people being good to one another and lifting each other up in community. This is an enjoyable crowd pleaser successfully turning on the heart lights of communal multiplex patrons everywhere.
Eva Victor announces her arrival on the independent cinema scene as sardonic writer, star and director of the tragicomic Sundance sensation Sorry, Baby (B+); and her raw, fragmented plot structure makes for a sneakily emotional knockout of an experience, set in and around New England academia. Given much of the narrative covers heavy subject matter, Victor wisely frames the film and starts it as a friendship story opposite the magnificent Naomi Ackie, with Victor’s grad student character’s signature wit and idiosyncratic outlook remaining center stage throughout, even during dark passages. The interplay between these two is hilarious and healing. The nonlinear story takes viewers through the protagonist’s variety of memories both playful and painful and sometimes overtly ordinary. It doesn’t depict the sexual assault that forever changed her life: in fact, it’s the clever scrambling of events that makes the film’s emotional and physical violations so potent and powerful. Victor’s unflinching near-soliloquy about the story’s inciting incident, tucked tenderly in a middle passage, is one of the best sequences captured on film this year. Reliable trauma film fixture Lucas Hedges and an adorable gray tabby kitten (not to worry, the feline survives) are enjoyable in small emotional support roles. It’s ultimately an uplifting and moving film about caring for one another from a perspective of someone who tells it like it is. Via these “Victorious” authorial hands, this movie is an apt exploration of how every day can be so much better than our worst day.
Multiple generations have difficulty communicating except through their art in Joachim Trier’s methodical and exhilarating drama Sentimental Value (A). Set in and around a charming legacy family home in Norway, the film follows a fractured relationship between an acclaimed movie director (Stellan Skarsgard) and his two estranged daughters played by Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, which becomes even more complicated when he decides to make a personal film about their family history including an American actress played by Elle Fanning. This is one of the rare works in which the films within the film are of enough quality that viewers will realize the characters are exceedingly bright and talented even if they stumble at maneuvering through real-life human relationships. Gorgeously shot by Kasper Tuxen, the film gracefully discovers mature and intimate moments that add up to a most poignant portrait. Highlights include tension around stage fright in action in a high-stakes theatre, a revealing look at a charged script filled with revelations and a torrent of healing between sisters. The sterling acting ensemble including keen child actors does complex and nuanced work all around, especially Reinsve and Skarsgard as among the most deliriously damaged. There’s warmth and good music here too, amidst all the somber solemnity. In all he does within his marvelous framework, Trier fashions subtle and moving ways to show people pushing within their respective limits in the parts they are born to play in life.
