ALIEN: ROMULUS

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B+

Alien: Romulus plays a lot like it’s just “The Alien Franchise’s Greatest Hits.” Whether that’s a good or bad thing is a matter of opinion, but I mean it very much as a compliment.

There’s a fine line between homage and artistic theft, and this film often straddles that line. There’s a lot of fan service going on here, and if you’re familiar with the previous Alien films, you will find yourself watching, as if on a visual scavenger hunt, for the references and visual nods to virtually all of them. I, for one, had mostly a great time with this.

The score, by Benjamin Wallfisch (Blade Runner 2049), almost immediately features recognizable musical references to the Jerry Goldsmith score from Ridley Scott’s classic original 1979 Alien. (Side note: it’s a bit of a stunner to realize this franchise is now 45 years old.) The story takes place either on or just above a colonized planet very reminiscent of that featured in James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens, complete with elevator shafts and high wind levels—only in this case, it has an established, bustling society rather than a decimated group of fledgling colonizers. Even the films widely considered “lesser” in the franchise get nods, including a pretty obvious recreation of the most famous shot from David Fincher’s 1992 sequel Alien3, in which the alien hovers harrowingly close to Sigourney Weaver’s face. And this film’s already controversial final act is a basic recreation of the infamous final sequence from Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 1997 sequel Alien Resurrection, only with the concept inverted. Not even the prequel films are excluded, as we get introduced to a creature with a passing resemblance to (but clearly not narratively connected to) the humanoid aliens from Ridley Scott’s 2012 semi-prequel Prometheus.

I have not seen the two prequels anywhere near as many times I have seen the so-called “Quadrilogy” of original films in the franchise; as far as I can recall, I have still seen Ridley Scott’s 2017 follow-up to Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, the one time. Which is to say, for all I know, Alien: Romulus also has some kind of direct nod to Covenant as well, and I just don’t remember it well enough to recognize it. The same could be said of Paul W.S. Anderson’s 2004 crossover Alien vs. Predator (which I did see but very much wish I hadn’t) or Colin and Greg Strause’s 2007 follow-up Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (the one feature film featuring “xenomorphs” that I never bothered to watch, by all accounts wisely), although these are quite rightly not considered officially part of the Alien anthology, and I rather hope that, rather than there being references that I did not recognize, Romulus director and co-writer Fede Alvarez and writers Rode Savages and Dan O’Bannon simply did not bother with them.

The story beats of Alien: Romulus pretty faithfully mirror those of the 1979 Alien, right down to the team of working class miners getting picked off one by one until one of the women emerges as the unlikely hero. This gives the story a certain quality of predictability, but Romulus still has plenty about it that makes it stand apart. Perhaps most significantly, the principal cast is all quite young—all adults, but somewhat barely: Cailee Spaeney (Civil War), for instance, is all of 26 years old, and her character, Rain, could easily be read as several years younger. None of the previous films in the franchise featured a principal cast exclusively of characters so young, and the characters here get introduced to us behaving with a kind of dipshittery authentic to their age.

Of course, we simply cannot have an Alien movie without a “synthetic” (“I prefer the term artificial person,” we are told), here a character named Andy, played by David Jonsson in easily the film’s best performance. Andy is a nearly obsolete model, a lifetime companion to Rain who was long ago orphaned by the dangers of the mining work her parents did. Jonsson has a uniquely nuanced understanding of a robot programmed to convey the subtle emotions of someone with a childlike devotion to a functional sibling, yet a relentless drive towards his “directive.” Depending in what disc gets inserted into a port in his neck, his directive is either to serve what’s best for Rain, or what’s best for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, causing subtle shifts in allegiances depending on where we are in the story—and, thankfully, Romulus never goes down the clichéd route of a robot taking on implausibly human motivations counter to programming.

It’s difficult to gauge how successfully Alien: Romulus might play to someone coming to this franchise for the first time with this movie. It’s certainly true that the experience is enhanced by a broad knowledge of nearly all the films that came before it. Even the obvious references land with somewhat varied success, and an iconic line from the 1986 Aliens gets uttered in a way that doesn’t work as well as the smattering recognition of appreciative chuckles through the audience might suggest. There is even an appearance of an actual character from an earlier film, which I won’t spoil except to say that it’s a digital recreation of an actor who has since passed on, and the one instance in the film of obviously subpar visual effects. (The rest of the movie looks great.)

The bottom line is that Alien: Romulus is a consistently and undeniably entertaining action-horror thriller, its most critical successes being its propulsive pacing due to skilled editing, and several sequences with exeptional cinematography. This feels like a lived-in world, fleshed out in new ways in spite of its admittedly unavoidable familiarity. If anything, it could be argued that it has a bit too much going on, but given the nesting layers of threats—not all of them from the xenomorphs—posed to these characters, it all clicks together surprisingly well. The most important thing I can tell you about this movie is that I had a blast, and it’s not often that can be said of the seventh film in a franchise.

Remember me? Remember this? It warms the heart to reminisce!

Overall: B+

BORDERLANDS

Directing: D+
Acting: C-
Writing: D
Cinematography: C+
Editing: C
Special Effects: C

There are so many things wrong with Borderlands, it’s hard to know where to begin—but, much as it pains me to do so, I am going to start with Cate Blanchett. Who knew she was even capable of bad acting, let alone being possibly the worst performance in this movie? Granted, an absolutely abysmal script—cowritten by director Eli Roth and Joe Abercrombie—didn’t do her any favors, but Blanchett is an actor of such talent and stature that one could reasonably expect her to elevate the material. Instead, it’s the opposite.

A big problem—among, oh my god, so many—is that Blanchett was cast in a movie like this to begin with. No one can blame her for wanting to have a little fun, but can she not recognize quality fun? Perhaps not. She’s like an alien trying and failing to act human in this part. It’s as though she spent decades playing parts with genuine gravitas, then dipped her toes into the pool of blockbusters—in this case, specifically video game adaptation—and discovered she had no idea what she was doing.

This brings me to Jamie Lee Curtis, who perhaps thought this was a the logical next step after the wild and brilliant ride that was Everything Everywhere All at Once. But when her charaacter, Tannis, is introduced a fair amount of time into the movie, we are literally warned that she is an “oddball” and “says a lot of weird things.” She then proceeds to spend the rest of the movie never saying anything particualarly weird at all. The oddest thing about her is a pair of dark protective glasses, and Curtis’s line delivery that has a incongruous dash of childlike chipperness. What, exactly, are these people doing?

Floudering in a narrative sink hole, that’s what. It’s truly depressing so see the likes to Cate Blanchett, after spending way too long with pointlessly expository voiceover narration, sit down at a bar and utter the words, '“I’m too old for this shit.” We have heard that line so many times in so many movies, it’s no wonder she says it with no conviction whatsoever.

It’s slightly ironic, then, that it’s the cast who aren’t such huge movie stars who better hold the camera in Borderlands. To be fair, Kevin Hart is a huge star too—as a comedian. He isn’t particularly funny here (almost no one is), but he has fairly natural delivery as Roland, the guy who kidnaps a young woman from what appears to be a space ship prison (this is never explained). That woman is “Tiny Tina,” played by Ariana Greenblatt, who gives the best performance in this movie—not that that’s a high bar. But least when she’s not hampered by leaden dialogue, she’s both compelling and fun, exuding a genuine charisma.

Blanchett plays Lilith, a bounty hunter hired to retrieve Tiny Tina for a corporate mogul (Edgar Ramírez) who may or may not be her father. When Lilith returns to her “shithole” planet of Pandora (very original) in search of Tina, she discovers a snarky robot named Claptrap who is programmed, to his own dismay, to serve Lility until her death. And Claptrap, while hardly the best movie robot in history, is the one consistently good thing in this movie. His lines, and particularly Jack Black’s delivery voicing him, got a good number of giggles out of me.

The production design, mostly rendered by subpar CGI, is very junkyard inspired, decaying husks of appliances and vehicles covered in graffiti, this being the general vibe of Pandora, where legend says there is a “vault” that holds the secrets to human potential once under the protection of an ancient alien race, or some such nonsense. The tone that Eli Roth is clearly going for is very much like the seminal 1997 Luc Besson film The Fifth Element. Except that movie had a director who knew what he was doing, it had a cast of natural movie stars who understood the assignment, and most importantly, it had an assured handle on both pacing and wit. Borderlands has none of these things. If not for Claptrap, I’d say it was completely witless. And not all of Claptrap’s lines land successfully either; he’s just got a greater success rate than any of the other characters combined.

The most frustrating thing about Borderlands is that it actually could have been good. Being silly doesn't inherently mean bad, but it needs just the right calibration. It’s not just that Borderlands is all spectacle and no substance. It’s that overall it rings hollow. The characters have all the dimension of video game characters left dormant, with no one even playing them—even while they move and speak. There’s nothing driving this story but going through the motions. At one point Lilith walks past an abandoned park merry-go-round and I wished I could have just spent two hours riding that instead. It would have been objectively more rewarding.

Behold, the hole they will never dig themselves out of.

Overall: C-

SING SING

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: A+
Editing: A

Not to diminish the phenomenal performances or anything, but very early on in Sing Sing I thought to myself: I need to look up who the cinematographer was on this movie. It was Pat Scola, whose resume is rather diverse: he shot Pig (2021) as well as this year’s A Quiet Place: Day One. These were decently shot films, but honestly nothing truly special on that note. When it comes to Sing Sing, however, not only is it evidently by far the best film he has shot, but it should rightly put him in the sights of many talented directors to come.

If Scola doesn’t get nominated for the Best Cinematography, it will be a crime. Granted, there was no doubt a great amount of collaboration between him and this film’s director and co-writer, Greg Kwedar—here offering merely his second feature film, eight years after his debut, a film called Transpecos. (Side note: that film appears to have been fairly critically acclaimed in its own right, and I now wish I had even heard of it, let alone seen it.) But, it was Scola behind the camera, shooting a film set almost entirely, with the exception of the final scene, inside the maximum security prison that is this film’s namesake.

Few people would expect a film set entirely inside a prison to be shot so beautifully, but this becomes clear from the start of the story—and it sets us up for a beautiful story, based on a real theater program, and featuring a whole bunch of former inmates who had been a part of the program. This is the case with a majority of the cast, with the one notable exception of Coleman Domingo, whose own incredibly performance is undiminished by how much the inmate cast shines, especially Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin—who plays himself. Many of this cast plays themselves, in a way never seen in film before, especially so successfully. A few of them play fictionalized characters.

Maclin is incredible. So is Domingo. The rest of the cast is astonishing, considering the behind-the-scenes details. Sean Dino Johnson, who both plays himself and is also a board member for Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), which runs this program, gets a short monologue that is particularly moving.

Sing Sing could have easily been a documentary feature, and one just as memorable and affecting as a narrative film featuring these actors. But this film, as it actually exists, is far more in the spirit of the purpose RTA serves, which the film touches on: it teaches these men how to be vulnerable, how to harness their feelings in healthy ways, how to make it one vital aspect, among many, of their rehabilitation. Most crucially, it showcases these men doing exactly what they learned to do: act. This is an award-worthy ensemble if ever there was one. It’s too bad the Academy Awards do not have a “Best Cast” award—but the SAG Awards do, and they’d better take note.

In this story brilliantly fashioned to showcase all of this talent, John “Divine G” Whitfield (Coleman Domingo) is the unofficial ringleader, delving deep into these productions every season, but now hoping to present compelling evidence of his innocence at an upcoming clemency hearing. In one of the few parts actually played by established actors, the troupe director, Brent, is played by Paul Raci, playing a role similar to the one he played in the also-excellent 2020 film Sound of Metal. Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin plays a version of himself as an inmate who signs up for the program, a man putting on airs as a gangster but with surprising knowledge of Shakespeare, but with significant insecurities once he is accepted.

In the first meeting he attends, Maclin puts forth the proposition that they put on a comedy, because they all have enough tragedy in their actual lives. Whitfield, who has written a script his hopes they will use, is a bit disappointed, but Maclin clearly has a point. Honestly, I mention this mostly because after seeing the bits and pieces of the time traveling comedy play Brent then writes, I really wish I could go see this play in its entirety.

Which is to say: Sing Sing absolutely nails every part of everything it sets out to do, from showcasing talent to telling a perfectly calibrated story that could have been corny or maudlin in lesser hands. At an hour and 45 minutes, even its runtime is perfect, after countless films of recent years, from blockbusters to dramas, becoming reliably overlong. The script, by Greg Bentley and Greg Kwedar—from a story developed by Kwedar and Clint Bentley along with both Maclin and the real “Divine G,” based on the book Break-in’ The Mummy’s Code by Brent Buell (the character played by Paul Raci)—is incredibly tight. It’s a work that could be studied as proof that extra time need not necessarily be taken to tell a profound story with lasting impact. Sometimes it’s limitation that bears perfection.

Sing Sing even gets its meta elements right, standing for both solid storytelling and growth through art at the same time. We see character development and human development at once, in real time. I haven’t even gotten how incredible it is to see an overused monologue from Hamlet performed in a way never seen before, from an unusual performer who delivers the lines with unique conviction and beautifully infusing it with a personality and background Shakespeare himself could never have dreamed of. Sing Sing is a miracle of a movie, gathering the parts of what should be tropes, and instead moving us all forward.

An “Eye” and a “G”: both divine.

Overall: A

DÌDI

Directing: A-
Acting: A
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Here’s a compelling question for me to ask myself: if Dìdi were a movie with the exact same script, but the characters were all White, would I be as impressed by the film? The boy at the center of the story would have to have equivalent but slightly different means of diminishing himself in an attempt at impressing potential friends, but that would not be so big a challenge. And given how deeply impressed I was by the 2018 film Eighth Grade—my #1 movie that year—I am incline to say the answer to that question is yes, even though there is no way to say for certain. It must be said, however, that even though Dìdi is very much in the same vein as Eighth Grade (just more of a “boy version”) and less about the Asian-American experience than a very American reflection of it, the fact that it is about an Asian-American family is a big part of what sets this movie apart and makes it memorable.

It certainly doesn’t hurt that every single character is exceptionally well cast. One might wonder if the excellent star Izaac Wang, who plays the teenage title character, is related to writer-director Sean Wang, except that is merely a coincidence of a common last name (Izaac was born to a Chinese father and Laotian mother; Sean is of Taiwanese descent). Other cast members include Shirley Chen as Vivian, Dìdi’s older and antagonistic sister who is preparing to leave for college; Joan Chen as their mother, Chungsing; and a diverse array of friends Dìdi either struggles to make or struggles to keep.

A special mention must be made about these friends, as Dìdi is fundamentally about this, in a way just about anyone can relate to, either as someone in their mid-teens or someone who vividly remembers being that age: the anxieties, the insecurities, the random ways of acting out without necessarily even knowing why. A big part of this film’s greatness is the specificity of context to convey a pretty universal experience. But when it comes to the “bro-y” types of boys Dìdi hangs out with, this film absolutely nails the depictions: from his initial friends who are mostly of Asian or Middle Eastern heritage (played principally by Raul Dial and Aaron Change) to a later trio of slightly older skateboarders, notably non-Asian, he is eager to impress (Chiron Denk, Sunil Maurillo, and Montay Boseman). They all provide a lot of comic relief in their often teen-boy dopey antics, which also never feel any less than utterly real. This extends to many other kids in bit parts, a favorite moment of which is when a girl says after a friend has been introduced, “She’s a dumb bitch.” (This becomes a cleverly subtle callback later.)

Such is the case with every part of Dìdi, including the mother’s dreams of making her painting hobby into something more, all while struggling to mother her two children in the absence of their father, who we never see in the film as he is in Taiwan for work. The other family member we see in the house provides plenty of her own levity, Zhang Li Hua as “Nai Nai” (they pronounce it “nay-nay”), Chungsing’s mother-in-law and thus the household’s live-in Grandmother.

The trailer to and other marketing materials for Dìdi make it look a lot more chaotic than the surprisingly nuanced depiction of Dìdi’s family and social life it is, albeit with several chaotic flourishes. Dìdi, whose given name is Chris but whose initial friend group has nicknamed him “Wang-Wang” because his last name is Wang, is an early-years YouTuber (a couple of establishing shots indicate that the year is 2008), learning how to make cool videos, and this is what inspires him to offer his “filmer” services to the skater teens. A natural question, then, is whether this film is autobiographical, and reportedly Sean Wang drew from his life as inspiration, but did not directly base this story on it.

There is also a lot of visual depictions of ‘08-era social media websites, most notably both MySpace and Facebook (it’s easy to forget they actually co-existed for a short period), the camera following where we are meant to understand where his eyes are going—an unusually skilled manner of cinematography with social media representation in film. We also see a lot of AOL Instant Messenger chat exchanges, including with a girl on whom Dìdi is crushing hard, Madi (Mahaela Park). A couple of times, we see Dìdi type out a message that is honest and vulnerable—in once instance I found myself thinking: Send it, send it!—only to let insecurity get the better of him and delete it.

In any event, I left Dìdi feeling deeply impressed with it, and the more I think about it, the better the movie becomes in my memory. The stellar performances across the entire cast are both a reflection of actors with a startling awareness of the social nuances of other people their age, and of an assured director who has offered an astonishingly accomplished narrative feature film debut (he has done a couple of documentary features). Dìdi is a coming-of-age story of the very best kind: utterly specific yet utterly relatable.

Izaac Wang learns to play his instrument in real time.

Overall: A-

KNEECAP

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Kneecap is at times rotely predictable, it stretches truth to fit plot points of a pretty standard story arc, and it tries a little too hard to be 8 Mile crossed with Trainspotting.

That’s about the extent of my criticisms. So let me tell you now why I left this movie incredibly impressed.

This is the story of an Irish rap trio called Kneecap—hence the title, and a reference to paramilitary punishments during “The Troubles” that lasted in Northern Island from the sixties through the nineties. I went into this movie with the vague idea that it was based on a true story, began to have doubts about that due to the plot contrivances, and then found myself taken aback by actual live footage of performances during the end credits, showing what appeared to be the exact same people who played the parts of the three rap band members. I looked it up while leaving, and indeed, vocalists Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap play themselves. It turns out, the comparison to 8 Mile—in which Eminem played himself in a film based on his own rise to rap stardom—is both apt and fair. Except I would argue Kneecap is a better movie.

The third member of the group, DJ Próvai, is played by a a relatively average looking guy who is very believable as a music teacher who discovers the other two kids’ written rhymes in their indigenous Irish language and encourages them to make music out of it. He looks like a guy who fits right in with any indie film out of the United Kingdom. Surely he’s some relatively well-known actor? Nope, he also plays himself (looking a lot more like an average guy in the film than he does in interviews, incidentally).

It’s pretty rare to get a biographical film in which the subjects both play themselves and are good at it. Kneecap does feature some much more famous actual-actors, most notably Michael Fassbender as Móglaí Bap’s father, who faked his own death a decade ago. (I still know very little about the strictly true story of this trio, and have my suspicions as to how “true” the depiction is of this dad character.) The cast also features Simone Kirby as Móglaí’s reclusive mother, and Josie Walker as a violent policewoman so villainous as to be reduced to caricature (okay, so I do have that other criticism). The performances are solid across the board, with those of the three band members as good as any.

And the thing is, Kneecap is undeniably entertaining, from its first to its last shot. It features surprisingly catchy music and beats, and its clever editing and occasional animated flourishes do elicit memories of Trainspotting, but only in complementary ways. The filmmakers openly cite Trainspotting as an influence, and while there is a fine line between homage and artistic theft, Kneecap fits squarely on the side it should.

Director Rich Pepplatt, who cowrote the script with Móglaí Bap and Mo Chara, takes a refreshingly neutral approach to the rap trio’s gleeful drug use, which they defiantly rap about in their lyrics. I might have mixed feelings about all the drug use devoid of consequences, but I also have the wherewithal to know that I am far too removed from its context to judge. Maybe they really are a few hooligans who are wasting their lives with dipshittery, but who am I to know? Kneecap also leans hard on the idea that the group’s defiant use of Irish language is a deeply political act that is changing their society, and I have no idea whether that was ever truly their goal. Either way, it’s an effectively inspirational story idea, and a reflection of real-world struggles of oppressed people.

Here’s something I doubt a whole lot of other people thought about while watching Kneecap: I kept thinking about Sinéad O’Connor, who was alienating listeners by speaking out against Irish injustices decades before the guys in Kneecap were. She has a half-rapped tirade about the Irish Potato Famine on her fourth album, and in 2002 she released a collection of Irish folk songs, several of them in the Irish language. How aware are the Kneecap guys of her career, I wonder? All that said, I would hesitate to assert that Kneecap could never have existed without her, their genres are so completely different. If Kneecap is indebted to anyone, it is American Black rap artists, and to this movie’s credit, there is a brief moment when that debt is directly acknowledged, reflecting a global solidarity of the oppressed.

If nothing else, the film Kneecap makes a deeply valid point, in its message of preserving Indigenous languages, no matter how it’s done. Many of the statements heard in the film by British authority figures arguing against making Irish an officially recognized language are focused on how few people speak it anymore–which only serves as an argument for preserving it. The guys in Kneecap may be rapping in Irish about gleefully hedonistic pursuits, but there’s something to be said for it inspiring listeners to learn the language. If this film itself inspires any more Irish people to learn and keep the language alive, then it has served a dual purpose, being thoroughly entertaining as it furthers a cause.

They’re ready for their close-up: Kneecap plays themselves.

Overall: B+

TRAP

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B-

I’ll say this much about M. Night Shyamalan: his movies are no longer the utter disasters they once were.

They’re still hardly masterpieces. And his latest trend seems to be to take a premise that has great potential, and then squander it, in a disappointingly muted way. He can’t even fail dramatically. This was the case with last year’s Knock at the Cabin, and it’s the case with Trap, in theaters this weekend.

There’s an unusually strange tension with Trap, where it’s difficult to tell whether it’s deliberately not taking itself seriously. It has moments of levity that are funny because it feels unintentional, and yet everything about it feels like it’s also by design. One of the most frustrating things about Shyamalan is how clearly intentional he is in every aspect of his filmmaking. But if he’s so meticulous, how could he write such jarringly contrived, forcefully stupid dialogue?

I’m plenty ready to lock into a movie, even a contrived one, if it works on its own terms. But Trap takes a great premise and then totally abandons it in its third act. We spend the first two thirds of a movie following Cooper (Josh Hartnett) and his daughter Riley (Ariel Donaghue) as they attend an arena pop concert, and Cooper learns early on that the entire concert is a trap set for “The Butcher,” a serial killer who dismembers his victims. The twist, which comes early on and was already spoiled in all of the marketing materials, is that Cooper is, himself, “The Butcher.” The first two acts focus on his attempts to figure out how to evade the trap.

Of course, the idea that any law enforcement agency would set up an entire arena concert with a pop superstar performer as a trap for a serial killer is bonkers-preposterous. So is the “profiler” Dr. Josephine Grant (Hayley Mills—of The Parent Trap fame—get it??), an objectively old lady who is somehow the leader of this entire scheme. How often do you see a white haired lady step out of a car with the iconic FBI letters on the back of her jacket, and then wonder whether she should be using a walker?

In any event, there’s a lot going on in Trap that stretches the limits of suspension of disbelief. Still, I found myself very engaged and entertained by this movie, even as it takes sudden turns into the idiotic. When Cooper realizes the trap has been set for him, he manages to get past security doors, and eventually even backstage, with mind boggling ease. When Cooper meets merch salesman Jamie (Jonathan Langdon) and asks him why there are police all over the arena, Jamie’s dialogue is filled with so much overtly obvious exposition it’s literally laughable.

And yet. Still. Entertaining! There’s something to be said for the performances here—including Jamie, but especially Ariel Donaghue as the daughter who is fangirling out and yet perceptive enough to clock that her dad is acting weird. And 46-year-old Josh Hartnett, as the villainous protagonist, is exceptionally well cast as a guy who acts like a dorky dad on the one hand, and a total psychopath on the other. Alison Pill gets a chance to shine a bit in the final act as Cooper’s wife, Rachel, but by then Trap has lost its steam.

I do have some respect for Trap in that it is almost entirely built on tension, really no violence ever seen onscreen, only the threat of it. There are guns in this movie, and a some of them are fired, but very minimally and in ways you don’t expect. The story even loops in Lady Raven, the pop singer character played by M. Night’s daughter Saleka Shyamalan as a fairly significant supporting character (one of the weaker performances, unfortunately—on the more impressive side, Saluki wrote and performed all of the songs herself).

And here’s the thing. All the comically forced dialogue notwithstanding, and the wildly telegraphed intension behind the camera movements, I’d have enjoyed Trap a lot more if the entire film had that one setting, in the concert arena. When key characters started actually making their way outside, I was convinced something would hold them up and force them back inside, so that the climax of the film would still take place in the concert venue. This live concert is the thing that sets Trap apart from other movies like it, about a cat and mouse game between law enforcement and criminal. Why Shyamalan completely abandons it for the film’s third act is truly a mystery.

They just . . . wind up at a house. This is where the “climax” takes place. Granted, there’s also a pop superstar there, so that gives it some novelty. It’s still far less interesting than a serial killer scheming in the middle of tens of thousands of fans—even if we’re supposed to believe the FBI is questioning every single man there before they leave the venue, and yet Cooper somehow manages to evade the cops the arena is crawling with at every turn. Have I mentioned not a single thing in this movie is remotely believable?

I just wish Shyamalan knew that a movie doesn’t have to be believable to work, but being earnest about it undercuts its effectiveness. It can be difficult to tell whether he’s earnest or being dopey for fun. Either way, Trap is dumb as hell and still entertaining for roughly two thirds of its 105-minute runtime. At least its length is reasonable. And it’s long enough for the wind to go out of its sails after the characters leave the venue, and well before we have a chance to.

Oh I guess this movie doesn’t star Ashton Kutcher.

Overall: B-

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-
Special Effects: B-

I’m so sick of the fucking multiverse.

Deadpool & Wolverine takes a moment to acknowledge that it knows this about me—and, presumably, a whole lot of other viewers. The problem is not only that the moment comes far too late in the film, but after spending a majority of the film leaning on the Marvel “multiverse” as a critical element of its premise, its setting, and the driver of its incredibly convoluted and frankly stupid plot.

It’s always a convenient device, isn’t it? Well, less and less so as the years of is use drag on. I don’t think any Marvel movie has used “the multiverse” in a particularly clever or certainly original way, aside from the exceptional Spider-verse movies. Marvel runs out of ideas for specific characters, and then recycles them using the same characters in “alternate universes.”

With Deadpool & Wolverine, we get a “threequel” in the Deadpool franchise, and a resurrected Wolverine as a follow-up to the relatively uncompromised vision that was Logan (2017), one of the best superhero films of the 21st century. Not that that’s a particularly high bar. I wish I could say it’s a delight to see the return of Dafne Keen as Laura, except that she’s utterly wasted in this movie, given nothing of real consequence to do onscreen. The same can be said of the plethora of cameos by other actors who were once big stars in franchises of their own, now showing up to take part in CGI-laden battle sequences that barely have visual comprehensibility.

I can say this for Deadpool movies: at least they’re consistent. Every one of these movies is of B-minus quality, but I cannot deny they make me laugh. Deadpool & Wolverine has a lot of very funny gags, delivered by actors with very good comic timing. These are the things that elevate a movie that would otherwise just be garbage.

When the movie starts, before the opening credits, this film rather pointedy acknowledges how very dead Wolverine is. Well, that Wolverine, anyway. Almost immediately. director Shawn Levy, along with writers that include Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Ryan Reynolds himself, introduce the “Time Variance Authority” previously introduced by the Disney+/Marvel series Loki, which had a first season that was surprisingly fun and a second season that was relatively lame. One wonders how many viewers of this movie now have seen Loki and have the kind of working knowledge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that has been expected of viewers for so long that a good majority of them are now utterly over it. In any event, you can pretty easily imagine how we get Wolverine back into a feature film as played by Hugh Jackman—for the ninth time. The man was 32 the first time he played this character. He’s 55 now, and among Deadpool’s endless meta gags in this movie, he quips that Jackman will be playing this character until he’s 90. It feels as though that may actually happen.

The thing is, I’m not nearly as sick of Wolverine as I am of the multiverse, because Jackman has an unstoppable onscreen charisma, and a genuine chemistry with Ryan Reynolds. And I won’t deny my delight in how much more Deadpool leans into a winking queerness with every film, this time constantly leering and lusting after how hot Wolverine (or, as the case may be, Hugh Jackman) is. Most of the time, Deadpool, in all its iterations, is dumb but fun.

Still, I wish they had come up with a better story idea. What we get here as a story arc is frankly lame, only partly saved by the rapid-fire comic delivery. As is often the case, though, Deadpool & Wolverine suffers from an uninspired villain, here played by Emma Corrin as a cross between Lex Luthor and Sinéad O’connor. Corrin was fantastic as Princess Diana in The Crown, so they’re clearly a gifted actor—yet another just wasted on this movie.

Ultimately, Deadpool & Wolverine boils down to a skilled delivery of an uninspired project packed with countless uninspired supporting characters. In the climactic sequence, it steals a conceit straight from Spider-Man Into the Spider-verse, then amplifies it, and “playfully” vulgarizes it. That is, of course, what the Deadpool movies have been doing all along: throwing out all the bloody violence and profanity it can just because it’s an R-rated superhero movie. This time around, characters say “fuck” so often it starts to sound forced, almost compulsive, as though being uttered for no other reason than to increase the count of its usage. There comes a point where that just gets boring.

I’ll never understand why studios think giving every single one of these identical story beats is a good idea. Foul language and giddy dismemberment does not alone make a movie stand apart; it has to have a uniquely compelling story, and on that front, this movie is utterly lacking. in the end devolving into the same climactic, mediocre special effects bullshit as countless others before it. If this movie has any saving grace, it’s the two leads. If you focus on their delivery and stay “in the moment” at all times without regard to wherever (or whenever) the hell the “sacred timeline” movie is going, you’ll have a relatively good time.

Just because he’s delighting fans by wearing a yellow suit doesn’t mean we haven’t seen this before.

Overall: B-

NATIONAL ANTHEM

Directing: A+
Acting: A
Writing: A+
Cinematography: A+
Editing: A

There’s a lot to say about National Anthem—all of it good. I can literally find nothing critical to say about this beautiful film, which I fell deeply in love with at first sight.

Maybe I should try harder? I did have it pointed out to me that the queer utopia of a rural ranch depicted in the film is populated almost exclusively by conventionally beautiful people. Not a single fat person among them, although Mason Alexander Park, as a nonbinary supporting character, while not in the least bit fat, at least has a body type that looks normal (insofar as “normal” even means anything). But, I found this detail very easy to overlook—very similar criticism has been thrown at defiantly queer pop singer Troye Sivan and his music videos featuring overtly queer sexuality. In either case, I would still consider it realistic: friend groups may not always consist of a broad physical commonality amongst its bodies, but they often do. It doesn’t inherently mean they are being intentionally exclusionary; sometimes it’s just how it happens.

And National Anthem is, after all, still a movie. And it should be noted that it is sprinkled with edited interludes of visual portraits, showcasing queer people who are not among the primary cast but are meant to be queer people in the rural sphere of this film’s world—and these run the gamut, nonbinary people to trans people to drag queens (at least as they appear: these distinctions are never made explicit), here with a wide diversity of both skin tones and body types.

This really gets to what I perhaps love most about National Anthem, in that it is packed with the iconography of rural America, the kind of imagery and culture we have long been conditioned to believe is to the exclusion of the queer community—and makes it queer. We see active participation on rodeos, ranch hands handling bales of hay and horses. It should be stressed that none of this is presented as camp, as we are also conditioned to expect. We just see queer people—including people in drag—earnestly participating in cultural activities they love, that just happen to be in rural, small-town America.

National Anthem doesn’t get directly into the politics of queerness, although we see many clips of beautifully shot Progress Pride flags flapping in the wind, the way we often see slow-motion clips of the American flag flying. This is not to the exclusion of the American flag either, which we also see waving—this is the unique visual palette of America, not seen in any other country; it simply belongs to queer people too. What National Anthem clearly understands is that frankly depicting queer relationships as opposed to queer politics is still in and of itself a political act. These images of Pride flags still have meaning.

The story follows Dylan (a wonderful Charlie Plummer), who takes care of his little brother Cassidy (Joey DeLeon) who is a bit neglected by their checked-out, recovering alcoholic mother (Robyn Lively). Fiona, the mother, makes sporadic income as a hairdresser while Dylan supports the family with sporadic construction work. One day, he gets hired to work on a local ranch called “House of Splendor,” a place populated with a kind of queer commune, a community Dylan has never been exposed to, and his world opens up.

So here’s another thing I love about National Anthem. This may be different with younger generations of viewers, as this film is not the first with this distinction, but it’s still a very recent change in the evolution of queer cinema: there is no turn of plot that hinges on queer trauma—there really isn’t any queer trauma in this film at all, although there’s a sprinkling of queer discomfort. Still, I come from an era where years of queer cinema would have me expecting a horrible event to befall the queer protagonist: a gay bashing, or his parents disowning him or kicking him out of the house. Nothing of the sort happens here, although his mother betrays a bit of homophobia on her part: the first time she picks up Dylan from work on the ranch she says, “You see they had one of those flags? You can just never be too careful with people.”

And then: Dylan’s relationship with his mother does become a plot point in the film, but both a minor one and a seamlessly integrated one. And that is because this is not a movie about “coming out,” but rather a coming-of-age story about a young man who finds himself welcomed into a community of people who already know who they are and are comfortable with who they are, and who lead by example. Dylan finds himself falling for a trans woman named Skye (Eve Lindley), the only slight complication being the romantic dynamics of her open relationship with a beefy Latino man named Pepe (Rene Rosado).

Mind you, I may be using these terms, like “trans” and “nonbinary,” just to offer clarity on how these characters are presented—but National Anthem is entirely unconcerned with the terminology of identity, and these words are never used by the characters. None of them ever even uses the word “gay,” and all of this feels like a subtle yet subversive move on the part of the film’s director and co-writer, Luke Gilford (in a stunning feature film debut), with two other writers, Kevin Best and David Largman Murray (this also being their feature film debut). There’s a wonderful moment when Dylan’s little brother Cassidy asks Carrie (Mason Alexander Park), “Are you a boy or a girl?” When Carrie replies, “Neither,” Cassidy’s retort is a chipper “Cool!” And of course, this is the common response of children when introduced to such concepts, as opposed to what reactionaries of the far-right (and, frankly, far too many in the queer community itself) might have you believe.

I’m not sure I have fallen so hard so quickly for a film like this since Moonlight (2016). And while that film distinguished itself by showcasing queer Black characters, I would say the distinction with National Anthem, while centered on mostly White characters, is its beautifully shot showcasing of gender diversity. I will admit, there’s a lot here that is very personal to me. It would take me a while to think of the last film that so directly and deeply spoke to me.

The casting in this film is superb all around, with Charlie Plummer truly shining as the lead. (Strange side note: he was also the lead in a very good 2018 film called Lean on Pete, and between that film and this one, one wonders whether Plummer has a thing for films in which a horse meets a horrible fate.) I find myself tempted to call National Anthem a flawless film, and its relatively mixed reception by audiences—predictable for a film focused on queer characters (some of this may just be the typical online “review bombing” by bigots)—only makes me want to defend it harder. There’s a strong argument to be made that this is the best film of the year, regardless of how much of the year is left. The race is over, we can close it out with a beautiful rendition of the National Anthem by a trans person, just like this movie does.

You’ll want to reach out and take part in the warmest queer group hug ever.

Overall: A+

TWISTERS

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B
Special Effects: B

It was a somewhat surprising experience watching Twisters in the theater last night, a 6:15 p.m. showing with perhaps ten other people in the theater—from what I could tell, all of them young. And I did not survey them, but it seemed likely that many, if not all, of them had never seen the original 1996 film, Twister—which, I really have to say up top: was much better. After re-watching that film only a couple of weeks ago and being genuinely impressed by how well it stands up, particularly in terms of its special effects, I could not help but be just slightly disappointed by this new one. I found myself envying those kids: they were clearly having a great time, while I was over here, nitpicking.

And in so doing, I am going against what I have long stated I stood for: which was that films should be judged on their own merits. The problem is that, in creating a “legasequel” such as this, the filmmakers are openly inviting comparison. And when you do the comparison: Twisters falls short. Not by a wide margin, but it falls short nonetheless.

And there’s a bit of a double-edged sword to this comparison. The 1996 Twister knows exactly what it is: a blockbuster disaster movie showcasing special effects (many of them shockingly practical) that does not pretend to be anything else. The premise being preposterous is incidental; the stock characters elevated by broadly charismatic performers. It had two teams of scientists chasing tornadoes in Oklahoma in pursuit of new data they can get from a new device they called “Dorothy,” which they hope will help extend advanced warning times by launching sensors up a tornado funnel from its base. One of the groups is the clearly villainouse one because their leader is ”in it for the money, not the science.”

The 1996 Twister was also a product of its time, its shamelessly knowing execution, of a dumb plot in the name of thrilling sequences, being something that would just never play the same way today. The unfortunate result is that the 2024 Twisters infuses an element of self-seriousness not present in the previous film, which really doesn’t work either. Which begs the question: Why make this movie at all? Box office would have to be the only answer. I’m sure the relative disinclination of young moviegoers to rewatch “old movies” (Twister came out 28 years ago) has not changed and never will.

So why not just make a new movie about tornado chasers? What purpose does it serve to ride the coattails of a movie from three decades back whose coattails petered out long ago? Especially when this movie’s connection to Twister is tenuous at best? I actually found this point lacking in clarity, the only “character” in this film that was actually seen in the first being “Dorothy” herself, the contraption that releases sensors . The young scientists in pursuit of grant money even make derisive references to how old she is. This is never stated explicitly, but Dorothy must have just been handed down by their scientific forebears and that’s it; there is no other narrative reference to the first film at all.

There is a meta connection, however, when James Paxton, the late Bill Paxton’s son, appears briefly as an aggressive customer trying to check into a hotel while he and his girlfriend willfully ignore a gigantic tornado approaching. There are also other subtle references, such as when the film’s primary protagonist, Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), visiting to assist an old friend for a week to get new data, responds to someone saying “Welcome back!” with “I’m not back!”—the latter being an exact line Bill Paxton delivers in the first film. Also, this movie’s story beats are nearly identical: opening flashback of a traumatic event in the midst of a tornado; survivor later pursues an understanding of this enigmatic force of nature; two teams of people compete with each other to catch up to multiple tornadoes in a single day of several tornado outbreaks.

All of this is to say: the script here did very little for me, it’s such a rehash of the first film, which itself took no pains to be any work of staggering genius. This time around, director Lee Isaac Chung (pivoting rather hard after the quietly wonderful 2021 film Minari) and co-writers Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) and Joseph Kosinski (who directed Top Gun: Maverick) introduce a character named Tyler (Glen Powell, by far the most charismatic presence in this movie—the man is a star) who we are clearly meant to read as an analog to Carey Elwes’s pompous character from the first film. Kate’s old friend Javi (Anthony Ramos, whose ample talents are criminally wasted here) has been employed by a guy with real estate connections, and between Tyler and Javi, Twisters ultimately “flips the script” from the first film that is clearly meant as a “twist” from initial expectations. But, it never amounts to much.

So what does that leave? Tornadoes, of course! This would be the whole reason I’m not sorry I saw Twisters, because it still features countless tornado sequences that are genuinely thrilling, and what else is anybody going to this movie for? Plus, in spite of this movie’s characters on average not being half as compelling as those from the first film, even with the down-time, “character” scenes, the run time is a perfectly decent 122 minutes, keeping it from overstaying its welcome or feeling bloated.

Still, this does feel worth mentioning: the effects in the 1996 Twister hold up surprisingly well after 28 years. The effects in Twisters hold up about as well as you would expect: they aren’t bad but they don’t push anything forward; they aren’t any more impressive than they were in the first film, although there are several shots with more comprehensive composition. This movie isn’t going to continue impressing thirty years from now in the same way, though. Not that it appears to have any intention to; it only exists to entertain us all in the present moment, and on that point it succeeds.

And that brings us back to the cast, and specifically Glen Powell, without whom Twisters would not be nearly as good as the just-fine movie it is. Here he plays a storm chaser with a whole crew who post videos to a YouTube channel with a following of 1 million, who at first seems like an arrogant ass but of course (spoiler alert!) turns out to have a heart of gold. I would argue that, on a character level, Powell is the single person who makes Twisters worth seeing. He actually manages to elevate his contrived material with a performance that is as nuanced as it is undeniably charming. (Admittedly, some viewers don’t find his character so charming; this is not a universal response. But, the critical and box office success of his most recent four films in only the past two years speaks for itself.)

There is plenty of talent elsewhere in the cast, mind you; they just aren’t given enough to do. Besides Ramos in a fairly thankless role, Tyler’s crew also includes critical darling Sasha Lane (American Honey, How to Blow Up a Pipeline), whose career trajectory never quite went where it should have. Here the most interesting thing she’s given to do is remote pilot a drone for aerial shots of the tornadoes.

As always, though, here is the bottom line: is Twisters entertaining? Yes. Does it give you what you come to see? Absolutely yes. No one’s coming to these movies for dimensional character portraits, they’re coming for the thrills, of which Twisters has countless. I’m just nitpicking because it’s what I’m here to do. Granted, the 1996 Twisters has thrills that are just as good, with a better cast, and more successful wit in its dialogue. But even then it was only the thrills that mattered, and it’s really all that matters here. I didn’t quite get everything I wanted out of this movie but I certainly got what I came for.

The two leads in this picture are ready for their close-up.

Overall: B

FLY ME TO THE MOON

Directing: C
Acting: B+
Writing: D
Cinematography: B
Editing: C+
Special Effects: C

I lost my patience with this movie within about two minutes.

I want to give the writers of the abysmal script the benefit of the doubt. I’m magnanimous like that. But, a team of three writers is the first of many red flags. The fact that this is the first writer credit on a feature film for all three of them is another. One can only assume they were deluged with boneheaded “notes” by studio executives, because the entire film is packed to the gills with old-school formula.

Let’s skip straight ahead to the moon landing, a pivotal event in this story. This was a real, historic event, a watershed moment, something everyone who lived to witness it never forgot. This was an unforgettable moment for everyone on the planet, but especially for Americans—something that seared itself into memories in a way that was on par with the assassination of President Kennedy, or the attack on Pearl Harbor, or 9/11. The key difference is that this event filled people with awe, gave them hope, and opened their minds to the idea of unlimited possibility. Has such an event ever happened again? Well, I can tell you this: Fly Me to the Moon takes something with massive historic import, and reduces it to a cheap Hollywood plot contrivance.

The more I think about this, the closer I get to being legitimately angry about it. Does nothing have meaning anymore? Maybe I’m just becoming an old crank. Fly Me to the Moon bombed hard, earning all of 10% of its budget its opening weekend. The people who didn’t bother were the correct ones. Much like the endless parade of gullible goofs who cross paths with Scarlett Johansson’s Kelly Jones character, I fell for a skilled but misleading marketing campaign.

It’s a fun premise, after all: an advertising wiz is hired to sell the dream of the Moon Landing to both the American people, who are losing interest after nearly a decade of promise; and Congress, who are skeptical that NASA is worth the cost. Kelly Jones butts heads with Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), the director of the program, all while telegraphing their utterly predictable romantic arc. A shady government official (Woody Harrelson, in a part that truly can’t decide on the character’s vibe) representing President Nixon shows up to order a live shoot of the Moon Landing on a soundstage, “just in case.” Kelly hires a down-and-out director (Jim Rash) who is an over-the-top gay stereotype.

If there’s anything genuinely good to say about this movie, it’s the undeniable onscreen presence and charisma of its two leads—although it must be said that Tatum’s haircut looks stupid. To be fair, Johansson’s teased-out hairdos are often not much better. Still, they perform their dialogue with genuinely impressive commitment. If they were passionate about this project, though, I just don’t know how to defend that.

This is a movie with a running bit about a black cat crossing paths and causing bad luck, which figures prominently in a pivotal moment of the shoot. There are too many details in this movie that I can’t get past, which never once feels like a plausible representation of what actually happened at NASA in 1969. In one scene, Kelly is the one who calls “action” in the moon landing rehearsal, even though her hired director is right there. In another scene, Kelly Jones is shredding documents at a shredding machine . . . that happens to be right there on set. What? We literally got to see her get introduced to her office, why the hell would she pull a photo copier-sized paper shredder out into the middle of what is functionally an airplane hangar? Well, that “moon landing” set makes for a nice backdrop.

Whoever greenlit this movie should be horsewhipped. It completely wastes genuine talent while making a mockery of the historic record, and disingenuously pretending to have respect for science. Fly Me to the Moon clearly thinks it’s being uniquely clever, taking a longstanding (and, by definition, idiotic) conspiracy theory about the moon landing being faked, and presenting a scenario in which an attempted fake (spoiler alert!) actually failed.

I genuinely could not get over how dumb this movie is. There are times when a movie is contrived in typical ways, but it somehow wins me over, with its performers, or how entertaining it is, or perhaps even a self-knowledge about what kind of movie it is. There doesn’t seem to be any self-awareness to Fly Me to the Moon at all. The way the scenes are edited, the transparently manipulative score, the way none of the dialogue has any ring of truth to it—all of this was clear from the very start. I’m a fan of Scarlett Johansson, a rare specimen of equal beauty and talent. There are scenes in this movie where she actually, somehow, manages to captivate. But they are few and far between, and I spent all that other time marveling at every stupid narrative choice. I feel dumber for having seen it.

They only chose this angle for this screenshot so that Channing Tatum’s hair would look less stupid.

Overall: C-