MADDIE'S SECRET

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

I am left a little bemused by Maddie’s Secret, an elaborate and sharply observed homage to 80s and 90s “movies of the week” set in the world of modern social media food content production—in which first-time feature writer and director John Early cast himself in the title role. As a straight, cisgender woman. In which he almost totally plays it straight.

In short: I don’t get it. Why was it necessary for him to cast himself in this part? It’s not like he’s channeling Divine—or even John Travolta—here; there is no camp to be found, although ironically I suspect John Waters would love this movie. Would it play differently had Early actually cast a woman in the part of Maddie? I can’t imagine the act of homage and the very subtle satire here would be particularly different in that case. So what was the point, then, aside from the fact that it gets more people talking about the movie?

And here’s the weirdest part. Early is good in this role. It actually doesn’t take very long to just accept him as this character, in spite of facial structure and detectable Adam’s apple, which are fairly obscured by the 38-year-old Early’s enviable softness of skin. When Early presents as himself, he presents as pretty culturally “male,” but he can shift into zones of androgyny with unparalleled ease. He speaks with a soft voice as Maddie, and surrounds himself with quite a number of women in supporting parts—even more than male parts. Every one of them seems to understand the assignment, even if I don’t.

The thing is, as good as Early is, I was still regularly thinking about the fact that this was a self-identified man playing the part of a woman. This could only take me out of the story at regular intervals, even though the superb production is just as committed to the loving homage of the TV movies of our childhood as, say, Far From Heaven was committed to the loving homage of Douglas Sirk films. The key difference is that it’s a bit easier to take the characters in Far From Heaven seriously, since it makes no anachronistic casting choices.

I keep thinking of Divine and John Travolta, who were cisgender men playing the part of cisgender women in John Waters films, and the presentation was similar in that they played it straight—but, those movies were far more heightened than this one, under the direction of a man who practically invented camp. John Early is working far more subtly, even if the final product is still heightened. Maddie works as a dishwasher where chefs record themselves cooking original recipes, and when she quickly becomes a viral star after posting some food content of her own, the suppressed eating disorder from her childhood begins to resurface.

Early is 12 years younger than I am, but I can remember the very movies he’s referencing here. I can remember watching TV movies about women with bulimia, and their exaggerated close-ups of them binge-eating before purging seared themselves into my memory. Seeing similar scenes in Maddie’s Secret (which are done shockingly few times, only once or twice) brought those memories right back, which I suspect was by design. There was a moment during this film that I thought: Is this movie going to take a turn? I thought, maybe it will suddenly get truly wild. It never quite does, though. Early has a stupendous hold on the fine line of tone that he was clearly going for here, and he consistently gives us just a taste of the melodrama without ever truly taking it over the top.

Does any of that qualify as something to recommend Maddie’s Secret, though? This is where I struggle. Were I to tell you that you should see this movie, I would struggle to tell you why—even though so much of it is so finely attuned, so competently put together. Is it funny, at least? Not really; that doesn’t seem to be what Early was going for, although there were a couple of moments that got me laughing pretty hard. They almost felt accidental, even though they were clearly very precisely constructed. I suppose, if pressed, I could say Maddie’s Secret is worth watching for the marvel of how Early basically disappears into a role that, by his own assertion, is not drag. Honestly it’s not campy enough to be drag. It has no connection to trans people, either, which puts this film into a deeply niche space that defies categorization.

Will I ever watch this again? I will forever be impressed by the perfectly imperfect flyaways of Early’s blonde wig, but nevertheless: not likely. Early has long been a peculiar performer for whom a choice like this weirdly makes sense, but I’m going to have to spend some more time pondering whether the final product makes much sense for the rest of us.

It’s not much of a secret anymore.

GAIL DAUGHTRY AND THE CELEBRITY SEX PASS

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

When a movie knowingly leans into how dumb it is, it’s always a tricky prospect, a truly fine line between genuinely entertaining and outright embarrassing. Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass walks that line, with humor that lands maybe half the time. It does find its footing, at the very least, and eventually I was laughing pretty regularly in spite of how embarrassed I was for everyone involved.

There’s a sort of built-in defense of a movie like this “But that’s the point!” Well, the point only means something if it actually works, and unfortunately the first act works less than the rest of the movie does, which makes it easy to see audiences checking out early. I’m not sure it would even mean much if I assured you it’s worth the wait, especially since even I found it barely worth the wait, but there remains the fact that I did.

Honestly, either you’re going to be up for a deeply silly movie like Gail Daughtry or you’re not. The tone is set immediately, when only minutes after Gail (Zoey Deutch) and her husband Tom Soursap McNoodleman (get it??—played by Michael Cassidy) agree on who their celebrity sex passes are, Tom has sex with Jennifer Aniston in the back room of a stop on her cook book tour in Kansas City. And therein lies the premise telegraphed by the movie’s title: the only way to even the score is for Gail to travel to Los Angeles with her bisexual hairdresser colleague and friend, Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) and have sex with her celebrity sex pass, John Hamm.

I will credit Gail Daughtry with this, my favorite thing about it: this is a movie with real affection for all of its incredibly dumb characters. In someone else’s hands, this movie would find ways to poke fun at Kansas City as much as it does Los Angeles and the people who live there, and it really does neither; not one of these characters is ever individually the butt of the joke. These are all people who are naive and yet somehow things keep working out for them, right down to a couple of Midwesterners who consistently meet Angelinos who are happy to help Gail in her quest to bed John Hamm. The more this aspect of the movie becomes clear, the more enjoyable it becomes.

Said Angelinos, by the way, include John Slattery, here depicted as a washed up actor who hasn’t had any work since he costarred with Hamm in Mad Men—which ended in 2015. He’s actually been in lots of stuff since then, but that’s not the point. Slattery is actually one of the principals in this film, but Jennifer Aniston is the first of countless, major cameos that might make one wonder how the hell whoever directed this managed to get them all on board. Well, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is directed and cowritten by David Wain, who happened to direct and co-write the 2001 film Wet Hot American Summer. And that film featured the much younger Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, and Michael Ian Black; he later directed the 2012 film Wanderlust, which featured both Rudd and Aniston. Guess who all appear briefly in Gail Daughtry? And this just scratches the surface of the wall-to-wall cameos here. This guy clearly has some pull, and tons of people are perfectly happy to appear in his new movie, even if maybe they don’t know whether it’s great or just . . . kind of fine.

Wain eventually draws an unsubtle parallel with The Wizard of Oz, slotting Hamm into the role of the Wizard—sort of. Gail is a kind of Dorothy (oh, did I mention Gail is from Kansas City?), and she assembles a ragtag group of friends, which includes Caleb (Ben Wang), the overly ambitious guy from Creative Arts Agency; Vincent the papparazzo (Ken Marino) who’s “white whale” happens to be a candid shot of John Hamm; and of course, John Slattery. This movie, of course, needs some knowingly contrived villains, which include Italian actress Sabrina Impacciatore as Ludovica, who is awaiting delivery of a suitcase full of all the paperwork plans for taking down the global financial system; and her two henchmen, played by Niccolo (Mather Zickel) and Sergio (Joe Lo Truglio, also a David Wain mainstay who was in all the aforementioned of his films).

While we get ridiculously pointless voiceover narration by Frank the Mailman (Fred Melamed), the evil Ludovica’s briefcase of paperwork is the subject of a mixup that serves as the plot’s deliberately flimsy excuse for finally getting Gail and John Hamm in the same room together. How does that happen, you might wonder? Aside from knowing it veers between comic sex and comic violence as a bit of spice sprinkled on all the cheese, you’ll have to watch the movie! Just go in with fairly low expectations, fully expect it to marinate in its own cornball sensibilities, and you’ll have a pleasant enough time. I did, and eventually found myself cackling in an otherwise empty movie theater. I just had to get to the point where I could surrender myself to what this movie was doing, and then it kind of worked out.

Midwestern hairdressers on a mission in Los Angeles just can’t help but to have fun with it all.

Overall: B

THE INVITE

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

The less said before you see The Invite the better, but here I am writing about it, and here you are reading it. What are we doing! Maybe go watch the movie and then read this. I mean, I won’t spoil any plot points, at least no more than are in the trailer, which is a truly rare example of one that is expertly cut. It intrigues effectively without giving anything away. And that is also my challenge here today.

Why don’t we start with the people who made it?

Olivia Wilde directed and stars in this movie, always a deeply impressive feat when it’s done well. This is her third feature film as director, and by all accounts she’s two for three: I never saw her 2022 film Don’t Worry Darling, in spite of being accused of shirking my duty for not seeing a movie everyone was talking about. Well, its almost universally weak reviews were enough for me not to waste my time. But! I do know Wilde is exceedingly capable, given her debut feature was the fantastic and hilarious 2019 film Booksmart, which may not have a cult following but it certainly deserves to.

Wilde returns to comedy with The Invite, in which she proves herself to be an incredible talent, both behind and in front of the camera. She’s phenomenal as Angela, one of only four people seen onscreen after just a couple of introductory scenes set outside of the San Francisco apartment that serves as the setting. She’s anxious, insecure, perpetually frustrated, and simultaneously authentic and believable. It’s also easy to believe she’s married to Joe, played by Seth Rogen. Now, all of the four leads are excellent here, but if I were forced to choose one that was the least impressive, it would be Seth Rogen, who has charisma to spare but also basically always plays a version of himself.

It certainly helps that he’s lifted up by the heavy hitters around him, which include Edward Norton and Penélope Cruz as Hawk and Pina, the neighbors Angela and Joe are barely acquainted with who have been invited to their apartment for dinner. Cruz has arguably cornered the market on being equal parts sexy and smart, and Norton is a veteran, versatile actor who seems always to understand the assignment.

The script, co-written by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, could easily be a play—come to think of it, I would jump at the chance to see a live stage version of this tightly polished script, which would translate easily. It’s actually based on the 2020 Spanish film Sentimental, marketed to English speaking audiences with the title The People Upstairs. And—oh! Guess what? Sentimental was written by Cesc Gay, based on his own play! It turns out the play was called Los vecinos de arriba, which literally translates to “The Upstairs Neighbors.” Okay, that makes sense. I might have to find that original Spanish film, which apparently has been remade in at least six other countries. Thank you for going on this journey with me.

The American version stands as a testament to the potential of reinterpreting stories in other cultures, which often falls flat. It is perhaps no accident that Wilde cast Cruz, who is herself Spanish. The Hawk character spends a fair amount of time speaking with Pina in Spanish, and this becomes a well-integrated plot point.

In any case, all four of these actors crackle with onscreen chemistry, and both Rogen and particularly Wilde are incredibly funny. Hawk is a bit of an odd character, which provides Norton with several opportunities for effectively subtle humor as well. Cruz isn’t especially funny, for her part, but she more than makes up for it in hotness and being arguably the most talented performer there.

You can guess what happens in The Invite based on the trailer, and you would be right, except that it’s much more complex than that. Fundamentally, this is a film about marriage, or more specifically what happens in years-long romantic relationships that largely move beyond the romance. Angela and Joe are bickering the moment we see them together, and anyone who has been married a long time will deeply relate to the things they talk about and how they speak to each other. Pina and Hawk exist as a challenge to Angela and Joe’s long-entrenched ideas about their relationship, and when Pina kind of sums things up, some may find it a bit of an oversimplification. The thing is, simple things don’t become untrue just because they are simple. And The Invite, which is hilarious and moving and sometimes genuinely sweet, is a deliciously complex presentation of simple ideas.

A dinner party that goes off the rails in all the best ways.

Overall: A-

STOP! THAT! TRAIN!

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

Let me tell you a story, you ones. There once was a movie spoof comedy so hilarious, people went back to see it over and over again, just to catch the wall-to-wall gags they missed while they were too busy laughing the first time. It was a smash at the box office, it could reasonably be called the funniest movie ever made, and it was called Airplane! The thing is, if you are indeed young, you’ve probably never even heard of this movie, let alone the fact that it was sending up the countless, self-serious disaster movies being made at the time. And you certainly won’t understand that Stop! That! Train! clearly thinks its paying homage to it, but instead is straight up ripping it off.

It has the characters regularly returned to as a running gag—in this case, a horny woman (Missi Pyle) coming on to the train conductor (Chris Parnell) she doesn’t realize is dead; or the bitchy businessman (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) yammering to a pregnant woman (Mayan Lopez) about how he only likes babies when they are still inside the womb, or the distracted woman (Natasha Leggero) who can’t stop yakking on her phone. In retrospect, I suppose it actually is kind of hilarious that the woman playing a famous actress constantly thinking people are recognizing her, when really they just wanted to complain about her being in her seat or whatever, was an actually-famous actress I did not recognize, and it turns out she was Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Airplane! didn’t have these exact same scenarios, but it certainly had a number of similar concepts—enough, in fact, that here they play like overused ideas in Airplane IV. What Stop! That! Train! does do is have crew dragging the conductor’s lifeless body down the aisle while passengers fail to notice, and this exactly happens in Airplane!

What I’m saying is, I watched Stop! That! Train! constantly thinking of the far better movie that clearly inspired it but did everything a hundred times better and with actual laughs per minute. I won’t deny that I got a few good chuckles out of this movie, but the frequency was more like a couple laughs per act. I was excited by the thought of a major motion picture presented basically as a spoof but through a pointedly queer lens, but this is an exercise that would have worked far better as a five-minute sketch, or hell, even a thirty-minute short film. Stretching it out even as far as what otherwise should be a tight, ninety minutes, if you’ll pardon the pun, drags it down. Way too much of what’s onscreen just lands with an airless thud.

The opening credits sequence is amusing, as director Adam Shankman (who saw better days directing the 2007 film adaptation of the Hairspray musical—the ensuing two decades have not been kind) cuts back and forth between real footage of impressive high-speed trains zooming through verdant landscapes and shots of obvious model trains and toys. Unfortunately, this is the high point of the film. We then meet Tess and DeeDee (played by drag queens Ginger Minj and Jujubee), on their way to work at Stank Rail, only to find themselves laid off. When two crew members don’t show up for work at competing rail company Glamazonian Express, they quickly whip up disguises to go in their place. Very quickly this luxury train finds itself headed straight into a “Stormaganza,” and hijinks ensues. Shankman, and co-writers Christina Friel and Connor Wright, clearly want you to think that hilarity ensues. It might be more likely for your mind to wander.

If you’re a huge fan of RuPaul’s Drag Race, you might consider this movie star studded. I never got into that show, so while I’m sure plenty of people recognize the plethora of other drag queens in the cast (Brooke Lynn Hytes; Marty Lauter; Symone; Monét X Change; I think I may actually recognize Latrice Royale from somewhere), the only one readily recognizable to me was RuPaul, who plays President Judy Gagwell—part of the “gag” here being, obviously, she’s hardly any more ridiculous than the actual President we have right now, though her winning campaign slogan of “She fun” isn’t that far off from how he got here. Maybe my favorite was Matt Rogers as President Gagwell’s Press Secretary; his reaction after Gagwell says “Give it to me straight” and then “Now give it to me gay” is pretty great. This entire film could have used more of his vibe.

The thing is, I really want a movie like Stop! That! Train! to work, and to succeed. It was made for a paltry $20 million, and the $2.5 million it’s earned in the past five days might as well be regarded as nothing—but, if you watch this movie, you won’t be surprised. The people making this movie seemed to be having a good time, but apparently no one was around to tell them how much of it wasn’t working. The outtakes during the end credits have more energy to them than the entire film that precedes them.

Stop! That! Train! is the kind of project that would have worked far better as a janky live theater production, particularly one that could be workshopped in front of audiences so they could decipher which gags actually work. There’s a smattering of gags in the film that do work, but they are few and far enough between that you might start to get antsy, or downright impatient. The film does have a sort of knowingly low-budget quality, with what appears to be the aim of that being part of the charm. I really like a ton of the people seen in it (there are countless I haven’t even mentioned; I will say that Guy Branum is utterly wasted in it as one of countless idiot guys who won’t listen to the one woman—played by Rachel Bloom—at the United States Train Command Center who is trying to save the runaway train), but none of them get used in a way that comes close to meeting their potential.

This is a movie that actually could have been great, had they just used better writers. This makes it all the more disappointing, and given the hopes I had for it, maybe the most disappointing movie I’ve seen this year. I want to give the cast their due, say they’re doing their best, but that hardly matters in a comedy where most of the comedy doesn’t work.

Stop! That! Movie! and watch Airplane! instead.

Overall: C

I LOVE BOOSTERS

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

I Love Boosters is only the second feature film by writer-director-producer Boots Riley; the first came eight years ago, Sorry to Bother You, a movie I struggled to connect to or make sense of. I Love Boosters is largely more of the same, but at least I can make slightly more sense of it. “Slightly” is the operative word here.

Riley is clearly a guy with a thing for gonzo excess. In this film, Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, and Taylour Paige play Corvette, Sade, and Mariah, respectively, also known as the Velvet Gang, the “Boosters” of the title—people who shoplift from high-end fashion outlet stores and resell them at a discount price. They quickly get the attention of the billionair fashion maven and Metro Designer outlet stores owner Christie Smith, played by a perfectly cast Demi Moore, who, along with her 2024 film The Substance, is really going for it with out-there roles in her sixties.

Moore is hardly the only fun casting choice in I Love Boosters, though. Don Cheadle shows up totally unrecognizable as Dr. Jack, a guy selling a pyramid scheme. Will Poulter is pitch-perfect as Grayson, the snooty manager at the Metro Designer store where Corvette, Sade, and Mariah manage to get jobs in an elaborate plan to boost its clothing. Eric André gets barely more than cameo time as a character credited as “Futuristic Police Tank Cop.” And while we’re on the subject of credited character names, LaKeith Stanfield plays “Pinky Ring Guy,” and I can’t even remember anything about a pinky ring; only that at one point one of the women says “He looks like sex”—and she’s right: LaKeith Stanfield need only stand still and stare at the camera to put a stir in the loins of viewers of any gender. (I guess I’ll take this moment also to name-check Jason Ritter as “Upstanding Community Member”; Kara Young as “Crying Black Mother”; and Jermaine Fowler as “Based Young Dude.” These characters all show up on news feeds offering backward talking points in defense of billionaires and corporations.)

I Love Boosters is surreal to the nth degree, to the point where the Velvet Gang are soon joined by Jianhu (Poppy Liu), a Chinese factory worker who steals two prototypes of a device with three different functions, depending on the setting: “Teleporter,” “Situational Accelorator,” or “deconstruction,” which renders anything it’s aimed at into the elements that made it. The plot is so wildly convoluted it would take an age to describe it all, but suffice it to say that the corporation is using this prototype to send product from China to the U.S. to save on shipping costs, but Jianhu teleports herself to the U.S. to start sucking all the Metro Designer outlet merchandise through the teleporter and right back to China.

This is where I Love Boosters has a lot in common with Sorry to Bother You, in which low-level workers are revealed to be literal “work horses.” The metaphor there was very on the nose, and much going on in I Love Boosters is moving in that same direction. Boots Riley throws in a lot of stuff about seemingly disparate groups of people actually fighting the same cause, and sets quite a lot of scenes in the Chinese factory where they are assembling the fashion. I’d say that there’s something ironic about the money spent to make a movie like this, using studios that arguably represent the very thing the movie is purportedly speaking out against, but this movie was made with a budget of $20 million and has grossed less than $5. Maybe Boots Riley knows what he’s doing, wasting production studio money!

I Love Boosters even features a bizarre, surrealist turn rather similar to the “work horses” of his previous film, just this time with a group of characters running after the Velvet Gang as stop-motion bodies of nothing but muscle and bone—complete with dangling, skinless penises—after being forced to shed their “suits,” which turns out to be their actual skin. This isn’t even the most memorable image in the movie; that would involve “Pinky Ring Guy,” who turns out to be way more than a guy wearing a pinkie ring, and is featured in the single most unfortgettably wild and hilariously disgusting scene in the movie. (It might also affect how much you agree that he “looks like sex.”)

This is a movie packed with gags, a ton of them visual, from Christie Smith’s office being in a leaning high-rise to the outfits worn by the Velvet Gang designed to contain all the clothes they’re boosting. A lot of the time, the gags work. A fair amount of the time, they kind of don’t. If there’s any signature trait to Boots Riley feature films—all two of them—it’s that they go in countless different wild directions and struggle to come together as a coherent narrative. I suppose a movie like this can work if you know what the very specific vibe is, and what it’s going for. I’m still not quite sure what I Love Boosters is going for exactly, but I picked up on the vibe. It worked better for me than Sorry to Bother You, but kind of barely. These movies are a lot, and you need to be ready for that. If you are then you’ll have a good time.

I Like Boosters Enough

THE SHEEP DETECTIVES

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

If you were one to judge a film by its title, you’d probably think The Sheep Detectives sounds pretty stupid, right? Well, slap that idea right out of your own face, because it’s not! This might be the sweetest, most pure of heart, live-action talking animal movie since Babe. That movie came out 31 years ago, for anyone who’s counting. Indeed, a lot of young people smitten with The Sheep Detectives likely don’t even know about Babe. Look it up! And then look up its 1998 sequel, Babe: Pig in the City—directed by George Miller—which I think is even better, but then I have a thing for children’s movies that go weird and dark. Which the original Babe absolutely did not do, and neither does The Sheep Detectives. Even though there’s literally a murder in it.

When I first saw the poster for The Sheep Detectives, I was like: Whaaaat? And then I saw the trailer, and was shocked by how delighted I was by it. Might this movie actually be hilarious? Well, I am here to tell you that “hilarious” is a strong word; it provides regular chuckles at best. But, that kind of misses the point. The Sheep Detectives is so sweet you might leave the theater with two new cavities, but it’s also got a rare kind of genuine sincerity to it. It’ll charm the hell out of you.

A big part of that charm is the comfortable ease into which it settles into the story, directed by Kyle Balda (Minions) and written by Craig Mazin (The Last of Us), adapting from the 2005 novel Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann. This is quite the mix of people, or at least resumes, but collectively they clearly understand the best sensibility for a story about a murder mystery in a sleepy town, where the sheep on the farm where a farmer is killed set about solving the mystery. Why? Because George Hardy (Hugh Jackman, still handsome but for once actually looking like he’s in his late fifties) reads to them every evening, from murder mystery novels. Not only do the sheep love this, but when George turns up dead, they know all the rules of what they call their “nighttime stories,” and use that to help them figure out what happened.

The rest of the cast is a stacked ensemble, comprising of both the townspeople and voice work for the fairly impressively rendered CGI sheep. These voices include Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Lily, the sheep who is always able to solve the murders in the books and so leads the charge in solving George’s murder; Bryan Cranston as Sebastian, a loner sheep with a tragic backstory of his own; Game of Thrones’s Bella Ramsey as Zora, a perpetually curious sheep constantly asking questions; Ted Lasso’s Brett Goldstein as two bothers with the same voice with an affinity for ramming things; Patrick Stewart as Sir Richfield, a sort of elder statesman among the sheep; Regina Hall as the “diva,” Cloud; Rhys Darby as Wool-Eyes, so named because his long hair largely blinds him; and Chris O’Dowd as Mopple, the one sheep who is unable to forget things at will.

This ability to control memory figures significantly into the plot, and is how The Sheep Detectives smuggles a surprising earnestness into the proceedings. This is a story about how sheep are smarter than we are, and capable of more than they give themselves credit for. They engage in a kind of willful ignorance, choosing to forget unpleasant experiences, but at the expense of the good ones too. These are all pretty simple themes, but perfect for a young audience, all the while entertaining a more adult audience with its overtly knowing uses of murder mystery tropes. Except in this universe, farm sheep gradually reveal themselves to certain townspeople as having surprisingly complex intelligence. Not a lot of made of this, which is right for a movie of this sort. Mostly it’s played for humor, and done very effectively.

A significant subplot involves how a flock will reject a “winter lamb,” which is how this flock perceives Molly Gordon (Rebecca Hampstead), the daughter George put up for adoption but who is recently in town, rendering herself one of the suspects. Often in movies like this the animal characters are far more interesting than the human ones, but the people here offer plenty color of their own, including Succession’s Nicholas Braun as bumbling Officer Tim Derry, the town’s one-man police force (and here putting on a very convincing English accent); Emma Thompson as Lydia Harbottle, George’s lawyer; and Hong Chau as Innkeeper Beth Pennock (also adopting a convincing accent), among others.

Also worth noting is Nicholas Galitzine as as ambitious reporter Elliot Matthews, here in town to cover a “cultural festival” he finds disappointingly tiny. Galitzine also played Prince Henry in the 2023 Amazon Prime Video original gay romantic comedy Red, White & Royal Blue, which I only mention because Galitzine immediately struck me as being entirely too pretty to be convincing in this part. But in the end, what we learn about him makes his beauty make a little more sense.

It’s often the case that a movie can get weighed down by having too many stars in its cast, where the long list of names is attempted to make up for what’s lacking in the story. But miraculously, The Sheep Detectives works almost shockingly well, even if it isn’t quite a laugh riot. The trailer was a bit misleading on that front, but that’s not the movie’s fault—and that’s why I think Babe is a good comp. That movie was very funny as well, but also had a charming innocence to its sensibility and to its characters. The Sheep Detectives, which also revolves around animals on a farm, is a refreshing throwback in this way, in that it has no cynicism to it whatsoever, and proves that such movies can still be well-rounded entertainment. That includes genuinely moving moments that mean you might want to have tissues handy. Yes, with talking sheep. Ultimately, The Sheep Detectives is the perfect mix, of human and animal, of heart and humor.

These sheep have no idea what they’re in for.

Overall: B+

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2

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

There’s a moment, relatively near the end of The Devil Wears Prada 2, when Miranda Priestly says, “I just love working, don’t you?” This is the line that is staying with me the most, as I wonder whether the meta aspect of it was at all intentional: the line is delivered by Meryl Streep, who might as well also be speaking for herself and her acting career. It serves as an explanation, beyond the obvious paycheck (Streep was paid a reported $7 million to reprise this role), for why she would bother with revisiting this role a solid 20 years later.

In 2006, the original The Devil Wears Prada came roughly 30 years into Meryl Streep’s career, and it became by some distance the most successful movie she was in—a record broken only by the ridiculous Mamma Mia! only two years later, in 2008. No role in her career has ever been more iconic than that of Miranda Priestly, however, as she singlehandedly turned what otherwise would have been a cinematic piece of mediocrity into a wildly rewatchable entertainment.

So how does the sequel stack up? In context, in its time, I’d say it roughly matches the original—with some elements that fall short. But, the original also had elements that fell short; they were just different. And, even 20 years on, we love these characters too much not to have a pretty good time. They brought back all of the heavy hitters, after all: Streep, of course; Anne Hathaway as Andy Sachs, now much more grown and confident; Stanley Tucchi as Miranda’s long-suffering professional sidekick; and Emily Blunt as Emily Charlton, now working leverage against Runway Magazine as the largest advertiser at Dior (the product placement and fashion cameos are, predictably, off the charts). Even Tracie Thomas returns as Andy’s best friend Lily—something I took way too long to clock, mostly because, while she still looks objectively great, she looks more naturally aged by 20 years than any of the other major actors do.

It’s worth noting that the original The Devil Wears Prada had things going for it that this film does not, most notably the notoriety of its source material: it was based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Lauren Weisberger, in which the Miranda Priestly character was widely known to be a thinly veiled representation of Anna Wintour. The speculation surrounding these facts fed the buzz around the film, although Meryl Streep came in and truly created a unique character quite distinct from Wintour. It’s probably telling that Weisberger wrote two sequels, but The Devil Wears Prada 2 is not based on either of them; both films’ scripts were written by Aline Brosh McKenna, but this time the story is entirely original.

Well, not entirely—it still has a credit that states it’s “based on characters created by Lauren Weisberger,” after all. It even slightly pokes fun at that, with a character scoffing at the idea of writing a book about a boss you don’t like. And, much like the previous film, a lot of the story is pretty contrived—especially the setup now that forces all of these same people back together. In the opening scene, Andy and all of her newspaper journalist colleagues are fired via text while she’s accepting an award for her work, and coincidentally Runway is experiencing a PR disaster. Andy, now a respected journalist, is offered a job at double her previous salary in an effort to restore credibility to the magazine.

Much of Andy’s and Miranda’s reintroduction is pretty entertaining, in that Miranda doesn’t (or maybe pretends she doesn’t) remember her. Streep’s acting is great as always, but I found her characterization in this film somewhat curious, in that she is uncharacteristically more personable than she was before, even as she’s being rude to people (and particularly to Andy). I don’t know if this was meant to be an indication of how she’s changed a little over the years or what. That said, The Devil Wears Prada 2 spends a lot of time acknowledging how the world, and especially both journalism and fashion, have changed over these past 20 years. This would include regular corporate workplace norms, as there is a funny running bit about how Miranda has to choose her words more carefully now to avoid HR interference.

What love interests there are, are different this time around—fine by me, as Andy’s boyfriend from the first film, while very cute, was pretty dull as a character. This time she has a meet-cute with an Australian played by Patrick Brammall, and he’s moderately more interesting than the first guy, if distractingly performative with his eyebrows. Emily, for her part, is seeing a billionaire played by Justin Theroux, who also happens to be the ex-husband of Sasha Barnes, rendered significantly wealthy in her own right, a desired target for an interview with Runway after some years of reclusiveness. Sasha is played by Lucy Liu, a very interesting actor in a part that gives her virtually nothing interesting to work with.

Miranda is now married to a guy played by Kenneth Branagh; B. J. Novak plays the incurious heir to Runway’s parent company; even Lady Gaga makes a special appearance as herself (performing an original song, which, to be honest, sounds like a generic version of Lady Gaga—it turns out she recorded four original songs for the soundtrack). To say this film has a stacked cast would be an understatement, although it could be argued it was the first film that transformed about four of them into the stars that they are.

I was feeling kind of indifferent to the story for much of this movie, but still taken by the characters; this is how “lega-sequels” successfully traffic in nostalgia. It does have some similar beats to the first film, in terms of the tensions between Andy and Miranda; Andy trying and awkwardly failing to impress Miranda; Miranda finally deigning to be impressed. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t taken with the movie by the time it was ending, though. These movies never made grand promises, just modest ones, which they deliver on. I still left the theater with a warm and appreciative smile.

The gang strikes an uneasy pose in a new and rapidly changing world.

Overall: B

THEY WILL KILL YOU

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

There are multiple things I don’t understand about They Will Kill You, but the thing I understand the least is the decision to release it all of one week after Ready or Not: Here I Come, which broadly speaking might as well be the same movie. They Will Kill You is even more similar to Ready or Not: Here I Come than to its 2019 predecessor, Ready or Not, which was the only one of these movies that was a morbidly delightful surprise. That movie’s sequel, and this movie, are both about a pair of sisters being hunted in an enclosed space by a large group of violent Satanic cultists. I find myself wondering if one of these movies should sue the other.

Still, I really wanted They Will Kill You to be better. I came for what the marketing promised: creatively cartoonish violence. I should admit that this film does deliver that, for a time anyway—I’m not sure the possessed pig’s head in the climactic sequence really worked. It was effectively gross, I’ll give it that.

The best thing I can say about this movie is that Zazie Beetz is the lead, and she has a very charismatic screen presence. This is her first lead role, and she carries it well. I wish I could say the woman who plays her sister, Myha'la, is as compelling, but in her defense, the writing doesn’t give her much to work with. I’m a little bit at a loss with what passes for a plot in this movie—movies that exist just to showcase fun violence don’t have to be deep, certainly, but they can be better than this. Honestly, Zazie Beetz is better than this. And between this and last month’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, I fear she may start getting typecast as a woman who is better than the movies she’s in. Someone needs to send her a movie script that’s actually good.

Much of the rest of the cast in They Will Kill You punches above its weight, though. Perhaps most significantly, we get Patricia Arquette as Lily Woodhouse, the elevated superintendant and cult leader at The Virgil, the 100-year-old Manhattan building Beetz’s Asia Reeves arrives at to start a job as a maid. She arrives soaking wet without a coat in a nighttime downpour, by the way. Why would that happen? We are never told. But hey, it gives the “plot” an excuse to get Asia quickly into a shower, next to which someone writes THEY WILL KILL YOU into the fog on the mirror.

Lily is also the matriarch of a family, of sorts, with “very special needs,” as she puts it—there’s a reason they must offer a sacrifice to their Dark Lord every night, and tonight Asia is meant to be the offering. Among the family, which also double as bumbling henchmen in the face of a woman who learned how to fight hard while in prison, is Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy himself), and Heather Graham.

You could say that all of these established actors are slumming it in a movie like this, but no one’s going to begrudge anyone having a lot of fun—especially when they’re getting paid to do it. That said, you can only see characters get dismembered and spray blood like they’re in a low-rent Kill Bill so many times before it starts to lose its luster. The action choreography in They Will Kill You is actually pretty good; I would argue it’s even better than in Ready or Not: Here I Come. It’s the writing, and the pointless backstory about these sisters, that’s the problem. They Will Kill You saw how undercooked the sisters’ relationship was in Ready or Not: Here I Come and said, “Hold my beer.”

They Will Kill You even begins ten years before the majority of the action that takes place, with Beetz still playing Asia but a different, younger actor playing her sister, Maria. They are on the run from an apparently abusive father, though the only evidence we get of that onscreen is a really large man stomping through a convenience store looking for them. A shooting occurs but the dad lives, and manages to keep hold of Maria; Asia panics and runs, and now it’s ten years later and she’s come back for Maria after hearing she’s been seen at this Virgil building, where some shit is going down that has nothing to do with any of that.

And with a movie like this, do we need any of that? It would be far more effective to throw us right into the action, and start with Asia’s arrival at The Virgil. There’s a very strange element to this film’s narrative where it tries too hard and somehow the result is a feeling like it’s been phoned in. I was moderately entertained by this movie, but in better hands it could have been a blast. Instead, it feels like a copy of a copy.

Overall: C+

READY OR NOT: HERE I COME

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

I’m going to nitpick right out of the gate, because I have to stay on brand. All of the marketing materials, right down to its IMDb.com page, lists this movie’s title as Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which is boneheaded. The phrase is “ready or not, here I come!” Why stick a “2” right in the middle of that? It’s quite obviously a sequel either way. And guess what? The title card in the movie itself just reads, Ready or Not: Here I Come. That actually makes sense!

It’s also maybe the cleverest thing about this movie. Or at very least, there is nothing else in this movie more clever than that. This film was made by the same team as the 2019 original Ready or Not, with co-directors Matt Bettinelli and OlpinTyler Gillett; also with co-writers Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy. It’s been nearly seven years since the original Ready or Not was released, which is not ideal; that movie was a surprising delight, but not something you’d expect many to have a fresh memory of seven years later. You could partially blame pandemic-related delays, except nearly the exact same team (just one co-writer different) made Abigail, released in 2024. And all three of these films are very similar, ultra-violent horror-comedies, each with an ensemble cast either hunting or being hunted, and each in turn has offered diminishing returns. Ready or Not was a camp kick; Abigail was fine but undermined by the need to reveal its secret plot twist in order to market it; and Ready or Not: Here I Come is running on narrative fumes.

The major difference here is that Samara Weaving, as the bride Grace MacCaullay, is joined by Kathryn Newton as her estranged sister, Faith. I had high hopes for this casting choice; Newton is relatively unknown but a deeply underrated talent. She was a big part of what made the 2021 body-swap horror movie Freaky watchable, and was one of the better parts of the 2024 camp-horror film Lisa Frankenstein. She works well being cast as Samara Weaving’s sister, but the problem is in the writing. This movie wants us to be invested in their relationship and backstory, but all we get are vague references to Faith feeling abandoned by Grace when the latter moved away from their home with an apparently perfectly decent foster family at the age of eighteen. This backstory is narrative weak sauce, and exists solely as a lazy way to explain sisterly resentments. In a movie like this, you’d expect a shared history that was a little more twisted or morbid.

Granted, the whole premise of Ready or Not was that a seemingly innocent woman was hoodwinked into participating in a family ritual on her wedding night, which involves a game of Hide and Seek in which all of her in-laws compete to be the one to kill her. If they fail to do so by sunrise, they all die, and the manner in which this happens, at the end of that first film, was a big part of what tipped it over to the point of delight for me. These movies offer cartoonish violence for its own sake, and that is itself the appeal.

But what if it’s just more of the same as before? Ready or Not: Here I Come does little to innovate its premise beyond adding the sister. It attempts to raise the stakes by explaining to us that Grace’s rare victory triggered something in the Satanist organization’s “bylaws,” and now all the people that make up the worldwide “council” of five families must gather to play the exact same game again . . . the very next night. I will admit to finding it fun that this movie picks up right at the very scene that ended the first film: Grace lights herself a cigarette on the front steps of the mansion where she was hunted, faints, and she doesn’t get any further than the hospital before someone is hunting for her. But that hunter has jumped the gun and is about to forfeit his family’s participation; when he kills the cop who comes to escort Grace to the station for questioning by throwing a knife into his neck, a whole lot of time passes with not a single other cop coming to the scene. Does this hospital have no kind of security whatsoever? Okay, I’m nitpicking again.

One of the many delights of the first film was the mild-stunt casting of Andie MacDowell as one of the family members tasked with hunting Grace, and we get double the stunt casting this time around: Sarah Michelle Gellar as one of the council family members who, again, is hunting Grace and Faith; and Elijah Wood as a lawyer representing “Le Bail,” who is the demon behind all these people who otherwise control the world. It’s fun to see them in parts like this, except that Gellar’s fate in this film is disappointingly uncreative and unmemorable. Even I know Buffy deserves better, and I never even watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

It’s very difficult to catch lightning in a bottle twice, and calling the original Ready or Not “lightning in a bottle” is itself a stretch. But getting a particular camp sensibility just right is a delicate needle to thread; it either works or it doesn’t. I want to say that some of the times it works in Here I Come, except if it’s not always working, then by definition it’s not working. The cast is game and it makes a difference that they all seem to be having a good time, but it’s the reheated leftovers of a script that is the problem. I had a moderately good time with this movie, taking it for what it was—one thing all these movies have in common is that they don’t pretend to be anything but what they are—but there is no lasting mark being made here.

You’ll totally be ready for this.

Overall: B-

SLANTED

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

Slanted has been widely referred to as “Mean Girls meets The Substance.” There is some accuracy to those comparisons, except that Slanted lacks the gonzo savagery of The Substance. And I really want to say it lacks the wit of Mean Girls, except that at the time I even thought Mean Girls was rather overrated, a warmed-over Heathers, which had far greater satyrical bite. This is precisely what Slanted is missing: satyrical bite.

I really wanted Slanted to go harder. A story about a high school girl who undergoes cosmetic—some say “trans-racial”—surgery to become White is some fertile ground for the kind of satire it’s going for. But Slanted is less biting satire, and a little more lower-rung Black Mirror. It does a pretty good job of reflecting the social and racial structure of America, but doesn’t go very deep into it. This kind of movie only really works if it makes you go deep. A bunch of White kids salting otherwise unadorned salads for lunch in synchronized movements isn’t really going to cut it.

There’s a very strange irony to this production as well. Writer-director Amy Wang is herself of Chinese descent, which bodes well for a movie about a Chinese-American family. She casts actors of Chinese descent to play characters of Chinese descent, particularly Shirley Chen, who plays the protagonist, Joan Huang, for the first third or so of the movie; also Joan’s parents, Sofia (Vivian Wu) and Roger (Fang Du). But these are the only characters—or actors—of Asian descent in the entire production, and once the surgery takes place, Joan renames herself “Jo Hunt” and is played for the rest of the movie by Mckenna Grace. The irony is that this is a film about the denial of racial and ethnic identity, made by a woman of Chinese descent, but the vast majority of the actors given work to play parts in the cast are pointedly conventionally—maybe even blandly—attractive White people. You know, the very people afforded the greatest opportunities in this society.

It even seems worth mentioning that Amy Wang is Asian-Australian—not, it must be noted, American. To be sure, there are other international directors out there with an astonishing ability to reflect deeply authentic, American characterizations. But Ang Lee, Amy Wang is not. Much of Slanted takes place in a high school environment that feels like a critique of what an outsider might thing American high school is like, based on countless other American movies they’ve seen. The “Mean Girls” vibe among the popular girls Joan/Jo is desperate to become friends with feel very contrived.

It’s the writing I have the biggest issue with in Slanted, which doesn’t even manage to be consistent. Joan is using an app to create White-faced filters on her phone called Ethnos, which clocks her heavy usage and then offers her a discount on their cosmetic services. Ethnos declares that they cannot do the full surgery without a parental signature due to her being a minor, but they’re perfectly happy to do a hair transplant without it—complete with masking her with gas to put her to sleep. We then see bloody spots where they begin pulling her black hair out. None of this requires parental consent?

I’m fully aware that Slanted is meant to be a fantasy world of subtle horrors, not something to be particularly concerned with realism. After all, when Jo’s face skin starts to droop, a significant plot point in the latter half of the film, Ethnos simply provides her with a cream and some tape. We see hands go to her face without the camera actually showing her face, and suddenly she looks normal again. The sticking point for me is that the parental consent is used only as a plot point in the process of Joan losing her parents’ trust; it otherwise has no point in the plot, if this guy’s going to do a hair transplant on a minor without parental consent anyway.

Where I really must give Wang her due is that the performances in Slanted are actually kind of astonishing. Shirley Chen is serviceable as Joan; it’s when Chen is replaced by Mckenna Grace that the cast truly impresses. Grace performs most of her role in English but does occasionally speak in Mandarin, and quite believably (not that I would have any idea how good or bad her accent is, mind you). Most significantly, even after Joan is no longer shown onscreen, but the character comes home and takes some time to convince Sofia and Roger that she’s actually their daughter, they’re still completely believable as a family. You never stop accepting that Jo is their daughter, even after she’s transformed into a White girl. This is a true testament to the performances of all three of them.

There is a bit of a plot twist that comes along that you can see easily see coming, but the performers involved, particularly Amelie Zilber as Olivia Hammond, the most popular girl in the school, also perform it well. Joan’s best friend, Brindha, is played by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, from the Netflix series Never Have I Ever, and seems to exist simply to be a fellow Asian character who is not a member of Joan’s family. There is so much potential for a film like this to explore that it does not bother with, most significantly the intersection between White racism and the anti-Blackness of other races. Brindha is a young Brown woman who comes closest to representing the experience of anyone outside the Huang family who is also not White; the only Black people we see in this movie are extras used at the Ethnos clinic, and in one pivotal scene, a nameless and silent Black friend of Brindha’s who Jo is peer pressured into disinviting from a party. This feels like the very essence of Black tokenism.

If Slanted had any real curiosity about the diversity of American experience, even among insecure, White-supremacy-pilled people of all races and ethnicities, it might be easier to like. It’s perfectly fair to tell a story like this from the singular perspective of an Asian-American family, but then it brings in characters of other races and does them a narrative disservice. To be fair, Slanted still has its moments; I certainly got a good laugh out of Ethnos announcing new locations in “Richmond, Virginia; Pittsburgh, and Spokane.” If it spent a lot more time with pointed jabs like that and less time with a misguided undertone of melancholy and barely a hint of the “body horror” it seemed to promise, Slanted would have worked a lot better.

I see White people: this misguided irony of Slanted.

Overall: B-