Director Clint Eastwood, career action star turned elder statesman of the thinking person’s dramatic film, returns to the scene of the crime — and punishment — in the sturdy and somber Georgia-set procedural Juror #2 (A-). Nicholas Hoult plays a novelist and expectant father serving as a juror in a prominent murder trial and finds himself struggling with a serious moral dilemma capable of swaying the verdict and potentially convicting or freeing the accused killer. Hoult is fantastic in the nuanced role, relatable and believable in service of a somewhat far-fetched premise. Many of the tropes of courtroom thrillers are present in the story but presented with multiple points of view as the scales of justice prove to be complex forms of measurement. Eastwood artfully and efficiently dispatches the story with wonderful performances all around, including Toni Collette as a showy district attorney, Gabriel Basso as the accused and J.K. Simmons as a wily colleague in the fraught deliberations. The movie quietly observes and subtly exposes vulnerabilities of the justice system and hearkens back to the director’s other Savannah-set feature Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It’s an excellent companion piece to some of his best and most thoughtful morality plays such as Million Dollar Baby, Sully, Unforgiven, American Sniper and The Hereafter. It is old-fashioned on the surface but resonates splendidly in modern times and is highly recommended fare for adults and thoughtful teens who want to see (along with other films like Conclave and The Brutalist) what it used to look like in Hollywood’s heyday to craft and consume a deft and deliberate drama.
A tightrope wire of unsettling mood and ominous dread, writer/director Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs (B+) is fairly certain to secure its place as the year’s iconic horror movie. Maika Monroe is magnificent in a very controlled performance as an FBI agent with psychic skills assigned to a decades-spanning unsolved serial killer case with evidence of the occult. Blair Underwood is effective as her by-the-books boss and Alicia Whitt memorable as her concerned mother, but it’s Nicolas Cage as the incredibly creepy title character who steals his brief but indelible showpiece sequences under unrecognizable prosthetics. He’s unhinged in all the best ways. Our protagonist heroine discovers a personal connection to Longlegs and endeavors to stop him before he strikes again. The film reveals its mysteries at a deliberate pace and maintains a singular vision including immersive cinematography by Andrés Arochi punctuated by Zilgi’s spellbinding music. Perkins doesn’t lunge for obvious jump scares but instead maintains a terrifying tone for most of the film’s duration, with many of the film’s shocks occurring in broad daylight. His blend of supernatural and psychological suspense pairs nicely with horrifying imagery of brutal carnage, porcelain dolls and bygone nostalgia of seemingly innocent bucolic days. It’s an eerie tale well told.
An iconic film writer/director and his three on-screen protagonists each get points this time around for adapting. A high concept thriller based on a novel, M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin (B-) pits faith versus fear as a same-sex couple and their adopted daughter are visited by a quartet of strangers with a disturbing proposition. This unconventional home invasion story with plot holes aplenty is lifted by three performances including Dave Bautista as the peculiar leader of the trespassers, Ben Aldridge as the alpha dad lawyer and Kristen Cui as the wise pint-sized girl. Jonathan Groff is a weak link as the other dad; his character barely registers despite some pivotal final reel action. Shyamalan awkwardly handles some of the fight choreography and flashes to the world outside the wooded domicile, but the movie’s missteps are largely forgivable in the context of the fierce family tale. By borrowing from someone else’s story, the suspense auteur finds unexpected surprises.
Until select elements of the final act come into focus, this is largely a tell-tale fail. Moody and mostly unfulfilling, Scott Cooper’s crime mystery The Pale Blue Eye (C) spends most of its 1830-set story exploring a pairing of a grizzled detective (Christian Bale) and a military cadet named Edgar Allen Poe (Harry Melling) who join forces to solve a series of gothic murders at a military academy. Both actors are distant and maudlin, a definite match for Cooper’s austere tone; and it’s a shame more isn’t made from the literary legend’s involvement. Howard Shore’s brassy score feels out of place against the deliberately paced proceedings. Lucy Boynton and Charlotte Gainsbourg don’t quite break through in underwritten roles, and the film squanders an ensemble of veteran actors Toby Jones, Gillian Anderson, Timothy Spall and Robert Duvall. Bale and Melling are too interesting a duo of actors to be this ho-hum. This film gets bogged down in its brand of bleak midwinter and doesn’t quite clue in on how to break through.
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.
Now playing in select theatres from 20th Century Studios.
For much of its running time, David O. Russell’s noxious Dutch oven of a comic mystery, Amsterdam (C-), maintains a whiff of silent, violent and relatively mild stakes. The characters, barely whispering dialogue through most of the opening sequences, partake in an insular, circuitous series of events; with the slight story concluding a little better than expected. There are isolated moments of enjoyment amidst the ‘30s set sepia tone antics, but it’s all much less than the sum of its parts. The central acting trio – Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington – witness a murder, become suspects themselves and uncover hints of an American underbelly. Only Bale truly dazzles as an eccentric and jovial doctor and WWI veteran; many other talented performers in the sprawling ensemble seem quite lost. For every quirky Rami Malek, there’s a boring Robert De Niro. Russell’s piquant wit and themes get away from him, and the labyrinthine plot runs out of steam quickly. Self-conscious narration and awkward flashbacks further sabotage the story. Undoubtedly this will go down as folly.
This plucky, picturesque new family movie is both elementary and dear. Millie Bobby Brown is superb in the titular role of teen detective little sister of Sherlock in Harry Bradbeer’s Enola Holmes (B), and much of the Victorian Era young adult adaptation story rises to the level of its protagonist’s wit and intelligence. Bradbeer fills the screen with whimsy and fun visual cues, even as some of the plot of this opulent adventure gets occasionally sluggish. As Enola’s brother and mother, respectively, Henry Cavill and Helena Bonham Carter come off a bit dull, and villains are cartoonish; but Brown brims with charm and enthusiasm, stealing all scenes. Under the magnifying glass, the film delivers a satisfying yarn and provides a potent mystery in its own right, with tinges of feminism and clever wordplay buoying its every move. This is a good first installment of what will undoubtedly be a fun series of films,
If writer/director Rian Johnson prepared your holiday turkey, it would be overstuffed, but the cinematic chef gleefully loads up his wily whodunit Knives Out (B) with impeccable ingredients: a cavalcade of sassy stars, a labyrinthine manor, cunning clues, red herrings, mousetraps and sinewy twists. A spry Daniel Craig (with a vexing Foghorn Leghorn accent) and relatable Cuban actress Ana de Armas are the closest things to protagonists in the sprawling ensemble as detective and central caretaker, respectively. This duo provides sympathetic touchstones in a universe of rather despicable suspects. Everyone in the story has a connection to a mystery novelist patriarch played by Christopher Plummer, and they all display sharp edges in oddball humor and acerbic dialogue. Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Chris Evans and Michael Shannon are among the prominent players. Although it would have been charitable to accomplish the story with fewer partisan jabs, less projectile vomiting and more character interactions, it is efficient in its intent and durable for its duration. It’s a rare entry into a fun genre by a filmmaker who may have met his match.
Transplanting a British miniseries to modern day Chicago centering on a quartet of women completing a heist started by their late husbands, Steve McQueen’s mystery/drama Widows (A) is juicy, layered, intense and phenomenal. Buoyed by an excellent Viola Davis as the central protagonist (her late husband is inspired casting: Liam Neeson) and boasting an across the board fabulous ensemble, the film roars with thrilling intensity while always keeping the characters grounded in reality. McQueen organically laces into his vigilante milieu themes of racial and gender inequality and empowerment, cycles of crime and violence and the tenuous ecosystem of gangland and political turf. The film is ultimately a fugue on who’s playing one another in an elaborate urban powder-keg, with subtle shifts and surprises keeping viewers on the edge of their seats. Despite topicality, it’s extremely entertaining. Kudos to Elizabeth Debicki, who shape shifts in a complex emotional role as an abused woman discovering her power, and Daniel Kaluuya who plays against type as a cold-blooded criminal. Robert Duvall and Colin Ferrell are also superb as a father-son political dynasty brokering alliances in a corrupt neighborhood. The film is not for the faint of heart and doesn’t pull back from showing the evil that men do. Viola Davis is superb: she’s daring, direct and dramatically controlled. McQueen’s thoughtful female-led thriller truly catches fire.
This is the gripping “found movie” for a perpetually plugged-in world. In Aneesh Chaganty’s Searching (B+), the protagonist father portrayed wonderfully by John Cho often contemplates sessions further down the web’s wormhole while resisting the notion to simply shut down. Grounding this mystery thriller, Cho’s desktop pop ups the ante – online, engaged and amplified – and embarks on an emotional arch of triumphant connection over isolation. The propulsive plot about the disappearance of his daughter grants viewers a tense window into his soul and mindset, while the film’s action takes place largely in the virtual environment of computer and surveillance screens. It’s the Who Framed Roger Rabbit of social media tropes: humans mixing with fetching FaceTimes, charming chatbots, brilliant browsers and suspenseful streams. Among the emojified denizens and avatars, you almost suspect a cameo from an animated paperclip! Chaganty’s inventive high-tech hub is ideal for clue reveals stashed in the cache: flashbacks by archived selfie confessionals, public actions by viral video and forensic breadcrumbs dotting the underbelly of the social graph. The realistic interfaces are sturdy supporting performers, as is Debra Messing playing nicely against type as a hard-driving detective. While the film’s procedural formula doesn’t always measure up to its creative format, the #SearchingMovie is well worth discovery.
A nihilistic murder mystery posing in pretensions and occasional droll droplets of gallows humor, Cory Finley’s Thoroughbreds (C-) neglects consistent character development in the service of a nifty premise. Olivia Cooke is a revelation as a young woman incapable of emotion, and she becomes the perfect partner in crime for a differently depressed rich teen (Anya Taylor-Joy, also good in her role) motivated to slay a wicked stepfather. The men in the film don’t stand a chance, especially Paul Sparks as the diabolical daddy who doesn’t get to do enough evil to justify the trouble. The late Anton Yelchin is charismatic in an underwritten role as a would-be third conspirator. The set-up is elegant, but ultimately the structure crumbles under the women’s feet while they continue to act the hell out of their parts. Like the central character, the film is not funny or absorbing enough to justify getting to know it.
Welcome to candyland for moviegoers who won’t be sorry for taking a risk on a new film that blends clue upon clue with sly takes on the game of life. Although it lingers a beat longer than it should, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s Game Night (B+) arrives on the top of the leader board for the genre of comedy mysteries. Along with clever plotting and lots of genuine laughs, Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams make a delightful romantic duo as a highly competitive and witty couple with overarching anxiety blocking their ability to conceive. When Bateman’s larger than life brother (a funny Kyle Chandler) crashes a weekly charades party with a real-life murder mystery, the stakes just get higher and higher. Jesse Plemons is hilarious as a mopey cop next door who keeps being left out of the festivities. Billy Magnussen and Lamorne Morris are also a riot as supporting players in the shenanigans. Except for a few off-color jokes, it’s largely good old-fashioned fun. Roll the dice and check it out.