PRACTICAL MAGIC 2

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

There’s an oddly contemporary dissonance to whatever math there is supposed to be in the timeline of Practical Magic 2—which, as it happens, is based on the novel The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman, itself a sequel to the original novel Practical Magic. These novels were published in 1995 and 2021, respectively; a 26-year gap—though the timelines in their stories were apparently roughly 20 years apart. Plus, The Book of Magic is the fourth in the Practical Magic series of books, but this is only the first film sequel to be made—28 years after the first. But, although specific ages of characters are never revealed in either film, we certainly know that Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Diane Wiest and Stockard Channing have aged 28 years—albeit with Bullock and Kidman having had work done, making them appear unnaturally younger than they actually are (this isn’t quite as much the case with Wiest and Channing, who are 78 and 82, respectively). Bullock and Kidman are now 62 and 59, respectively; but their characters’ two daughters, who were played by girls who were 10 and 7 years old in the 1998 film, are now played by 28-year-old Maisie Williams and 26-year-old Joey King. One of them was a toddler and the other not even born when the first film was released, but, I guess everyone is playing younger here across the board. (Incidentally, 46-year-old Lee Pace is playing Bullock’s love interest in this movie. Get it, Sandy!)

Anyway, realistically, Bullock and Kidman’s Sally and Gillian Owens sisters would realistically be contending with grandchildren closer to the age of the kids in the first film by now, but, whatever. In Practical Magic 2, Antonia (Maisie Williams) is a medical intern, and Kylie (Joey King) appears to be still in college—and falling in love with Gideon (Xolo Maridueña). Anyone familiar with the first film knows where this is going, which is the predictable concept around which the plots of both films revolve: the Owens family has been suffering a curse for generations, in which any men who fall in love with their women meet an untimely death.

I must admit, I have some questions. Does the Owens family never produce any male offspring? Evidently not. And why do we never learn anything at all about Sally and Gillian’s mother, except that she “died of a broken heart” because—of course—her husband met with an untimely death? The original Practical Magic ended happily with Sally mated with an Arizona cop played by Aidan Quinn, but by the time we’re seeing Practical Magic 2, we learn quickly that that character has also met with an untimely death. In response, Sally casts a spell to make her daughters forget about being witches and makes Gillian promise never to tell them. To call this contrived could be the understatement of the year, but we have to get a further storyline from somewhere, don’t we?

Again: whatever. Movies like Practical Magic are built to withstand nitpicks like this, because they exist only to charm audiences coming for fluff and magic. I have always thought the original film could have been better, but still had its charms; I’ve seen some reviewers of this sequel characterize it as lacking “the magic” of the original, evidently forgetting how the original played in its time. Practical Magic is more of exactly the same, which actually makes it the exceedingly rare “lega-sequel” that actually matches and lives up to its predecessor. Anyone fond of the original is just as likely to be fond of this one, particularly if you are fond of the older principals in the cast.

We don’t get broadly successful movies like this with so many main characters who are women, after all. And by all accounts, the fluff-and-magic of the movies honor the books on which they are based; there is no serious depth getting missed anywhere here. It does make a difference that characters this thinly drawn across the board are played by such deeply talented actors, without whom the film would easily pass by totally ignored.

When it comes to “witchy” stuff, these stories never got super deep into that, either. We see spells and hexes, and actually more onscreen magic than in the first film, with more involved and better (if not perfect) special effects as well. But, as always, this is about the generational relationships between aunts and nieces, and more importantly the bond between sisters. This is always rather slight in characterization, but it all still makes for perfectly pleasant entertainment. I’m not going to be rushing to rewatch this movie any time soon, but I always felt the same about the original, which I’ve probably seen at least four times now. I suppose that still averages out to once a decade. Still, when I inevitably go to watch it again another decade from now when craving something both nostalgic and witchy, I’ll probably inevitably double-feature it with this one. It’s just as good, after all, and as I already clearly demonstrated, it’s fun to overanalyze everyone’s respective ages. Youth is temporary, but nitpicking is eternal!

In any case, predictable pleasantness does not preclude having a good time. Practical Magic 2 is just as blandly cute as you’d expect or want from it.

A family reunion you’d actually want to attend.

Overall: B

THE SUN NEVER SETS

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

There’s a case to be made that The Sun Never Sets is a well-written and impressively nuanced drama about a modern love triangle, but there also remains the question: who wants to watch these people? I’m honestly at a bit of a loss as to what writer-director Joe Swanberg himself found compelling about these characters.

To be fair to Swanberg, I suppose, it’s certainly a well-observed account of two men vying for the same woman, who want to think of themselves as evolved, but still wind up being predictable jerks. Dakota Fanning’s Wendy has her own jerky moments, sure, but if we put it to a contest, both the guys are the clear winners.

The title of the film is a subtle nod to the setting of Anchorage, Alaska, where they have around 20 hours of daylight in the summer. Maybe it’s also a subtle metaphor for the nebulous state of Wendy’s relationships, one with Jack (Jake Johnson), a divorced father of two young kids who love her; the other with Chuck (Cory Michael Smith), a pilot ex-boyfriend who has been out of the state for three years and is suddenly back and seemingly changed—or is he? I don’t know if Jake Johnson got deliberately a bit more schlubby for the part of a middle-aged school coach or if Swanberg is just taking advantage of where he is right now, but he’s balanced out by Chuck’s fit outdoorsiness, and both characters provide plenty of pros and cons for Wendy to consider.

That said, everything that happens is Jack’s fault. He says so himself more than once, and he’s right. When we meet them, Wendy has her own place but regularly stays over at Jack’s house, where he is very set in his ways, and worries about Wendy committing to him when he has no interest in getting married again or having more kids. About this, Jack is also right. On the other hand, his insistence that they “take a break” so she can see what she might find out in the world before making a final decision about staying with him seems a little counterproductive, particularly in light of their having been together for two years. This does seem to strip Wendy of a little bit of credit in regards to knowing what she wants, and I find myself wondering how this story might have unfolded had it been written by a woman. Swanberg clearly knows how self-invovled men can be, but Dakota fanning is over here elevating a female lead part that is perhaps a bit underwritten on the page. It doesn’t even occur to Wendy that she might be throwing her life goals away by staying wth Jack until Jack insists on it.

Wendy goes on one date with a a friend she has no chemistry with but has had a longtime crush on her, and it’s pretty convenient, for plot purposes, when she runs into Chuck at the very bar at which she’s on this date. What a perfect time to run into an old flame who maybe might work after they themselves have spent some time apart!

I feel a bit of ambivalence about The Sun Never Sets, which is competently made, and, I suspect, succeeds at exactly what it sets out to do—frustrate us with the behavior of these people. Jack’s immediate second thoughts when Wendy starts spending time with Chuck are utterly predictable; he almost becomes a caricature of a jealous man–except that we’ve all known men who behave exactly this way. There’s a moment when Chuck says to Wendy, “I don’t want to be part of an open . . . thing,” and Wendy says she doesn’t either, and I thought: well shit, why not? Wendy doesn’t get all of her needs met by either of these guys, but she gets pretty much all of them met between both of them. Chuck will go on spontaneous camping trips that Jack has zero interest in, and Jack will go to Wendy’s friends’ art showings that Chuck has no interest in. Okay I take it back because I know exactly why not: neither of these guys are completely mature adults. They want to be, but they aren’t.

The Sun Never Sets provides plenty to ponder and discuss, I’ll give it that. Consider this: why does whether or not Wendy might one day decide she wants children have to factor so heavily in all these choices right now? Discuss! It could be argued that Jack is being weirdly paternalistic on this point, which really means she shouldn’t be with him to begin with.

I don’t have to like all the characters in a movie, but if it’s not something like a biting satire, it’s helpful to have at least one person to root for. Wendy, as a character, is just a fairly average young woman living her life in Alaska. These two guys she’s trying to decide between have no interest in truly sharing an equitable life with her. I regularly wanted to punch them both, but it’s also a relief that there is no scene in which they punch each other (in one scene, they kind of get halfway there).

I suppose it sort of sounds like I disliked this movie, which isn’t quite accurate. I didn’t love it, which is different. Aside from the somewhat flawed script, everything else about the movie is perfectly serviceable, and the performances are solid all around. These all feel like real people, particularly people you know, which does reflect a certain talent—the characters are drawn far more successfully than the plot unfolds. I was just glad to not be hanging out with them anymore when it ended.

Maybe next we can get a movie about a successful poly threesome in the Alaskan winter called The Sun Never Sets.

THE MARCHING BAND

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

I can just hear all the criticisms by film snobs of The Marching Band: it’s emotionally manipulative, it’s treacly, it’s occasionally contrived—you know, all the things that make a crowd-pleasing movie work. Well, this movie very much worked on me, and I’m happy to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s practically the definition of a crowd-pleaser, and isn’t that precisely what the crowd wants?

It also has far more depth than it might seem at first glance, thanks to a tight script that was co-written by director Emmanuel Courcol. A ton of plot happens within just the first act: successful orchestra conductor Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe) discovers he has leukemia, and when his sister, Rose (Mathilde Courcol-Rozès, making the most of fairly little screen time), takes a DNA test to see if she is a match for a bone marrow transplant, it is revealed for the first time that Thibaut was adopted. He also discovers he had a brother he never knew he had, Jimmy Lecocq (Pierre Lottin), whose DNA is a match.

Most of The Marching Band is far less about Thibaut’s cancer than it is about the budding relationship between these two brothers who have only just learned of each other’s existence. This is one of the many surprising delights of The Marching Band, the title being a reference to Jimmy’s own extracurricular interests—something he keeps from Thibaut at first. It seems Jimmy, in spite of Thibaut’s discovery that he has perfect pitch, has a bit of an inferiority complex.

A whole lot of the story that unfolds here deals with class differences and the assumptions made by people born of privilege. Thibaut is understandably furious at his parents for not telling him he was adopted—”Lies kill!” he shouts at them—but takes a while to register the opportunities that would not have been available to him if not for his adoptive family. More than once the two brothers contemplate what their fates might have been had they actually grown up together: Thibaut in Jimmy’s working-class environment, or Jimmy in Thibaut’s world of comparative education and opportunity. (By way of brief explanation as to why Thibaut’s parents did not also adopt Jimmy, it is explained that they thought they were unable to have children, but then Rose was “a miracle” that left them ill-prepared to take on yet another child.)

The Marching Band also naturally brings up age-old questions of nature vs. nurture, at least when it comes to innate talent: Rose was not up to par with violin lessons in school; Jimmy is a natural musician. Jimmy is a divorced dad of a 13-year-old daughter he doesn’t get to see often enough, playing trombone in a community marching band in northern France. When the band’s conductor has no choice but to take a job in another region in order to pay off significant debts, the first suggestion is that Jimmy step in, but he has no confidence. Thibaut steps in to help him, with the encouragement of another band member, Sabrina (Sarah Suco), who Jimmy is too blind to see has a thing for him.

The whole cancer backstory seems to take a surprising backseat after the first half an hour or so, until it comes up again in a way that some may find surprising and some may find predictable—I was so taken with this movie, its characters, and particularly its performances, that I was happy just to go with the flow as the story went along. And in the end, all the story threads and the musical threads come together in a kind of emotional and musical crescendo that you’d have to be dead inside to resist. I was so moved by it, I really wish I had known to bring tissues.

It’s easy to see how The Marching Band became a smash hit in France, earning over $20 million in that country alone, and more than $30 million globally, before finally coming to the United States. This is happening, a bit inexplicably, nearly two years after it was first in wide release in France (November 2024). I’m a little baffled that this movie is not more well-known here; I only discovered it when checking to see what was playing in my local market at SIFF Cinemas. Time will tell whether France will enter this as their selection for the Best International Feature Oscar, but it is well deserving, and would give it greater exposure to American audiences. Otherwise, if you happen to see this review, and you enjoy deeply heartwarming dramas, then either check your local listings for this movie or make a note of it for eventual VOD or streaming options.

The orchestra conductor slums it with The Marching Band.

Overall: B+

THE DOG STARS

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

This movie is kind of a mess. I really wanted more from it. The talent involved certainly elicited hope for more: Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Guy Pearce, Margaret Qualley, Allison Janney, Benedict Wong. And then there’s director Ridley Scott, whose long and storied career has included multiple classic genre films, but also, if you’ll pardon the expression, plenty of dogs. You could say that the title The Dog Stars is a little on the nose. Our main character is declaring constellations based after his dog—spoiler alert, the dog does not make it—but that’s not exactly helping,

The Dog Stars wants you to think it’s a different kind of post-apocalyptic story, except it kind of isn’t. Most of it is a bit more meditative, sure; Mark L. Smith’s script, adapted from a novel of the same name by Peter Heller, ostensibly leans into themes of grief—as if we haven’t had enough movies about that in the past fifteen years. And who needs a movie about a world decimated by a fly virus, only six years after the outbreak of an actual pandemic that did kill millions? Clearly no one around here: I was one of eight people in the theater I went to. It was a 4:45 showing on a Thursday, but still. Seeing characters get asked to hold a digital thermometer to their forehead doesn’t have the same kind of otherworldly quality it had a decade ago. I think it may be some time before it does again.

There’s something to be said for timing—including this film’s late-August release date, which telegraphs a lack of studio confidence in it. And there’s really nothing fun about The Dog Stars. It’s either too grim, too sad, or it straight-up doesn’t make sense. In this post-pandemic world in which we see very directly it’s supposed to be 2035—are we to think of this as what the world would be like if covid actually did kill everyone?—a large group of the few survivors left in the world are referred to as “Reapers.” Why, I couldn’t tell you. How people completely isolated would catch wind of this group name, I have no idea. And when the “Reapers” show up, they are all White, covered in tattoos, disorganized and manic. We never see a single one of them utter any actual lines. They simply serve as a collective threat for our primary characters, who basically just act like monkeys on crack the few times we see them.

There’s another sequence in which Elordi’s Hig, bringing along two people he has tentatively befriended, Cima and her dad, “Pops” (Qualley and Pearce), to an operational airport in Grand Junction, Colorado—we previously learned that Hig was originally from Denver, a CGI-desolate city we see in a few different scenes. This is where we meet Allison Janney’s Darlene, and while I probably shouldn’t spoil the turn of events here, I will say that Janey may as well be playing a literal clown. Darlene is clearly meant to be suspicious as a woman not just acting like she’s still a flight attendant but literally wearing the uniform and caked-on makeup. I haven’t read the novel, but I know that the pointlessly surreal turn of events at Grand Junction that happens in the movie is not from the novel.

Why does it have to get weird, anyway? Is it that Ridley Scott just can’t help himself? Honestly, I think he’s just working for a living. He’s made some underrated films even in recent years (see The Last Duel). And all of these actors are undeniably talented, though I suppose you would only know it from other films. Jacob Elordi carries the film competently, but I did find myself wondering where he does his laundry. Hig’s jeans are scuffed up, but never quite enough; he was a mechanic before the world ended, and now he repairs a small plane and flies it around. Honestly, Elordi is too beautiful to be in this world. Hig comes across another scavenger in Denver City Hall and that other guy looks busted. Realistically, Hig would too, but we don’t want to mess up that pretty face.

The Dog Stars starts off promising but starts going off the rails before long. Some of the lack of realism is wildly distracting: why would digital screens still be flickering images in town after at least a decade? Where the hell is this electricity still coming from, in a long-since abandoned city with buildings covered in overgrown vegetation? Hig regularly returns to the house he used to live in, with a convenient view of the Denver skyline right from his front porch, to continue grieving the loss of his wife, and the house is spotless. Is Hig cleaning up every time he visits?

This is a movie that fails from a lack of narrative foundation, made by people with poor attention to detail. And attention to detail, which makes the depiction of a grim future like this work, is the only way movies like this can succeed. The actors all give solid performances (albeit with Janney going a little over the top), some of them weirdly under-used. I wish I could say they made this worth movie worth seeing, but it feels like everyone else was cutting corners. You should probably cut your own corner and find some other movie to see.

Is there any way to fly out of this movie?

Overall: C+

TONY

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

I thought a lot about the 2004 film Sideways while I was watching Tony. On the surface, there’s nothing earth-shattering here, but is there anything wrong with it? I would be hard pressed to find any genuine criticisms of this film, which is just lovely from start to finish, with surprisingly elegant nods to how Anthony Bourdain got into heavy drug use in his early adulthood.

Nearly everything about this movie charmed me. Maybe the best thing about it is the choice to focus on Bourdain’s very early career. This is generally the only way a biopic is successful, when the story narrows its focus to a single incident or particular time of the person’s life. In this instance, a college-aged Bourdain follows his high school crush from New Jersey to Provincetown, is quickly brought down by his own hubris, and winds up takig a job at a local restaurant run by a Portuguese chef played by Antonio Banderas. (Banderas is actually Spanish, but there is no indication he changed his accent at all. I suppose I could criticize that? Chef is a composite of Bourdain’s early-years mentors, though, so I suppose I can let it go. It’s not like I’d be able to distinguish between a Spanish or Portuguese accent anyway; it’s only that the character is referred to as Portuguese and Antonio Banderas is widely known to be Spanish.)

Bourdain himself, through most of the movie telling people to call him “Tony” until a key moment that makes him change his mind, is played by Dominic Sessa, who was previously seen in the wonderful 2023 Alexander Payne film The Holdovers. I noted then that he was impressive, and in Tony he proves to be inspired casting; I find myself eager to follow his acting career going forward. Granted, both of these particular parts are young kids of bravado masking insecurity, so hopefully we’ll get to see him play many kinds of roles.

Emilia Jones plays Nancy, the crush Tony follows to Provincetown, and she’s also lovely, if playing a part that mostly exists to move the plot forward. But that’s just it—the plot moves forward so assuredly, thanks to excellent direction by Matt Johnson. This is the guy who directed the incomparable Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, which opened earlier this year; and the surprisingly excellent BlackBerry in 2023. And Tony’s breezy 106 minutes were edited by Curt Lobb and Robert Upchurch, both of whom also worked with Johnson on both those other movies. These guys clearly make an excellent team.

I’m not usually struck by the cinematography in movies like this, but even without it ever calling attention to itself, I was here—and Tony was shot by One Battle After Another cinematographer Michael Bauman. All of this underscores that even the best director is nothing without an excellent crew working with them.

Rounding out the cast are Tuner’s Leo Woodall, as a kitchen colleague who introduces Bourdain to drugs; and Stavros Halkias, who had a memorable turn as a cop in Bugonia. (Here, his character also works in the kitchen, and takes a lot of good-natured hits at his weight.) Although there’s a few others who work in this kitchen who really don’t get much in the way of lines—all of them Black characters, it is perhaps worth noting—this restaurant staff become a kind of found family for Bourdain as he’s away from home.

We only get the slightest hints at Bourdain’s relationships with his parents, including an encouraging father (Rich Sommer) and a skeptical mother (Dagmara Dominczyk). But even the smallest parts in Tony are almost uniformly great performances; it’s a big part of what makes this movie irresistible. And there’s something about Sessa’s performance as Tony in particular, you can’t help but root for him even as he’s being a dipshit twenty-something with far more confidence than could possibly be justified.

Maybe the best thing about Tony, and its focus on the very start of a career that he stumbled into when convinced he was going to do something else (specifically writing, and he lies about being a writer for much of the film), is how it sidesteps this man’s lifelong struggles—not to mention his sad and tragic end—without completely ignoring them. Johnson alludes to the directions Bourdain’s life is destined to go, but only ever in a way that showcases the young man’s vast potential. I didn’t care as much about Tony’s pursuit of Nancy as I did about his evolving relationship with Chef, who allows Tony to sleep on his porch in exchange for clearning dishes as the restaurant.

It should be said that Antonio Banderas is a good a reason to see Tony as any, in one of the warmest roles he’s ever played. I’m starting to feel a little like I’ve been sleeping on this Matt Johnson guy—I’m consistently delighted by his films, and he should be credited for clearly knowing how to assemble teams that fit perfectly as collaborators and make great art. I’ll be eager to see what we get next from Johnson and from Dominic Sessa. It’s such a treat to experience such synthesis of talent.

Just like that chef’s jacket, this movie is a gift.

Overall: A-

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.

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-

GIRLS LIKE GIRLS

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

Between Leviticus and Girls Like Girls, I guess it’s the Month of Good Gay Movies, and I must say I’m delighted. It’s somewhat ironic that Girls Like Girls is set in 2006, because at that time movies about queer people had a pretty reliable, indie-janky vibe to them, some of them more charming than others. These days it’s much easier to find well-produced queer cinema, even if the budget is on the smaller side; I love that both of these movies were released on the same weekend, one week before most major cities have their Pride Weekend, but also simply in the month of June, which is Pride month. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so satisfied with overtly queer cinema.

That’s not to say that either of these movies is perfect, of course; they are both definitively not—but, they are also both closer to it than they would have been twenty years ago, and for different reasons. Unfortunately I do think the script is Girls Like Girls’s weakest link, albeit not by a very wide margin. And a film need not to be perfect to be effective, and effective might be the best word to describe this film. I’m feeling all sorts of things about this movie, not least of which is that I really should have known to bring tissues into the theater with me.

This is a pretty straightforward love story, which just happens to be about two 17-year-old girls. And unlike Leviticus, which is a horror movie about the insidious influence of religious bigotry, regilion never even really gets mentioned here. The closest we get is Sonya (Myra Molloy) worrying about what her mom and her friends will think, if they find out how she feels about Coley (Maya da Costa), who is actually the film’s protagonist. And rather than struggling with her sexuality herself, Coley’s greatest challenge is with how Sonya expresses affection and then retreats out of fear. There is a heartbreaking, and deeply relatable, moment when Coley says, “Why can’t I be normal?” But that can be relatable whether you are queer, or just a teenager.

And this is the thing I love about Girls Like Girls, which simply illustrates what it’s like to be a teenager, dealing with other teenagers. These kids are all just learning how to be decent human beings through trial and error. But, Colely feels even more alone due to the recent death of her mother, and now living with a dad (Zach Braff) who did not raise her but is now trying his best to get to know her. This is a subplot that is at once an added dimension for Colely and a bit undercooked, but it does provide the context for the one scene in which I was constantly wiping away tears from my sleeve.

I did not know this until researching this movie—well, and director and co-writer Hayley Kiyoko’s recorded introduction to the film—but Girls Like Girls has had a bit of a journey over the past ten years. It began as a music video for the song by the same name, by Kiyoko herself, who began as a singer at the age of 16 and was taking acting roles not long after. The song was on her five-track 2015 EP This Side of Paradise, and it would be another three years before Kiyoko released her debut full-length album, the first of three to date, which I guess I need to check out now. Kiyoko also co-directed the music video, which eleven years later has 163 million views on YouTube. By 2023, Kiyoko had adapted the story from the video into a Young Adult novel, continuing its storyline, and along with co-writers Stefanie Scott and Chloe Okuno, it has now been adapted into a feature film.

It’s a good song, and Girls Like Girls the film follows many of the same beats as Girls Like Girls the music video, with several key scenes mirrored, just with different young actors. There’s a delightfully shocking turn in the video that was omitted from the film, and I can’t decide if that keeps the film on a higher level or if its inclusion would have improved it. It’s a curious thing to travel back in time when regarding all this story’s iterations; apparently the video was incredibly popular with many young queer people, and after the release of the film’s trailer you can find many fun comments on the video’s YouTube page like, “revisiting the ancient texts.” Because of course, something released in 2015 is an ancient text. And seeing a film created as a “period piece” set in 2006, complete with CD storage binders and a lot of scenes with texting over AOL Instant Messenger, makes me feel like I’m from the fucking Stone Age.

Honestly, I can’t decide whether Girls Like Girls overdoes it a bit with the AIM. Was it still that much in use in 2006? I think AIM and I think 90s. Grandpa Matthew went onto the Wikipedia to look into this, and evidently AIM was popular through 2005, at which time its decline began with the advent of SMS text messaging and Gmail. 2006 was pretty soon after that, so I guess I’ll allow it; it appears I didn’t even have my first iPhone until 2008, so for all I know I was still using AIM myself in 2006. I just can’t remember! Because I’m old!

Anyway, “period” details aside, there are moments of dialogue that come across as a little stilted. There are also scenes in which teenagers are socializing and talking about things no human adult would be interested in, and this comes across as authentic; it’s a different thing. The moment when Coley and Sonya have a “meet cute” of sorts didn’t fully work for me, and it was because of the writing. There’s a few scenes that unfold this way, but to Maya de Costa and Myra Molloy’s credit, they really sell it; they have real chemistry and it’s easy to believe they are falling in love with each other, yet being tentative with each other for their own separate, largely unclarified reasons.

When all was said and done, Girls Like Girls left me deeply moved, and I love that it’s part of a lasting legacy of making young queer people feel seen and feel good about themselves. The existence of movies like this makes it just a little bit easier to have hope for humanity.

If this isn’t truth in advertising I don’t know what is.

Overall: B+

PRESSURE

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

It’s been said that Brendan Fraser is miscast as General Dwight D. Eisenhower in Pressure, a movie about how much the weather forecast went into play with the timing of D-Day, the 1994 invasion of Nomandy, France, which laid the foundation for victory over the Nazis. Look up photos of Eisnehower, and he looks a bit old and just this side of frail, almost too thin for his uniform. Ironically, Eisenhower was 53 years old on June 6, 1944 (spoiler alert! D-Day didn’t happen on June 5 as originally scheduled), and yet Fraser cuts a far more imposing figure at age 57, and a heigh of 6’3” as opposed to Eisenhower’s 5’10”. And to all this, I say: so what? If you’re bitching about how little Brendan Fraser actually resembles Eisenhower then you don’t understand how movies work. Just shave the man’s head and you’re good to go.

It’s the story that matters anyway, and how many people going to see Pressure are going to be hung up on what the real people the actors are playing actually looked like? Andrew Scott plays James Stagg, the Scottish meteorologist who made the critical weather forecast, and he’s far better looking than the real Stagg was. You don’t see me complaining!

Indeed, I have no complaints at all about Pressure, really, which is as down-the-middle an entertainment as you can get. There’s nothing in it particularly worth raving about, either; it just works. Your dad will like it. Your grandpa will like it. I liked it! If the two women in the aisle behind me are any indication, old ladies will like it. Possibly they loved it: they actually applauded when the movie ended, and this was in a theater with maybe fifteen people in the audience.

I suppose you could say they’re running out of the seemingly endless stories that have been told about World War II over the past eighty years—now they’re talking about the weather? Well, as we were informed in ending title cards, when Eisenhower was asked what gave us the edge on D-Day, he replied that was had better meteorologists than the Germans. Why not tell that story?

To be fair, the script, by David Haig and Anthony Maras and based on a stage play of the same name by David Haig, is pretty standard and by-the-numbers. I do find myself wondering how the play could possibly have been as fun to look at as the film with all its shots of stormy weather. Anyway, Stagg is the “genius” meteorologist recommended by Winston Churchill; Chris Messina steps in as Irving Krick, the antagonist American meteorologist who ignorantly insists that historical “analog” weather patterns are enough to be convincing forecasts. He’s very obstinate about this, because he has such a long track record of being right; he’s told more than once that the regions in which this worked so well for him have no relevance to the unpredictable weather patterns of Northern Europe. But does he listen? Of course not! We have a dramatic story to unfold here!

And that’s fine, I was into it. You go into this kind of movie knowing what to expect, and it delivers exactly that. It’s got a cast exclusively of men except for the one woman played solidly by Kerry Condon as Eisenhower’s secretary, and Tamsin Topolski as Stagg’s pregnant wife, who serves no purpose except to flesh out Stagg himself as a character. Otherwise this is entirely a men’s story, and that’s also fine given what the story and setting are. If “dad-core” were a genre, Pressure would be a prime example. There’s no need for you to see it in theaters, really, but you could do worse than to look for it eventually on one of your streamers. Watch it with your parents, you’ll all have a fine time.

Brendan Fraser is so dedicated, that’s his real scalp!

Overall: B

IS GOD IS

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

I feel a bit like I’m in an impossible position with Is God Is, which is a movie that I have to admit really did not speak to me, but then, I am perhaps not the person it’s speaking to.

I didn’t even realize until after seeing the film that Is God Is is based on a stage play of the same name, and a rather critically acclaimed one at that. I wonder if I would have felt differently about the play? Well, the play was written by Aleshea Harris, who also wrote and directed this film adaptation. I had never even heard of the play, much less seen it, so I have no idea how well it translates to film as compared to its original medium.

I left this movie a little stuck on how dedicated it was to its story of revenge. We have two twin sisters, Racine (Kara Young) and Anaia (Mallori Johnson), now young adults but long psychically connected, contacted by their birth mother, Ruby (Vivica A. Fox) after having long ago relinquished custody. All three of them have severe burn scars, Ruby worst of all—she is bedridden and now actively dying—as a result of her husband and the girls’ father (Sterling K. Brown) having set Ruby on fire. Anaia tried the hardest to save her and so is also significantly disfigured in the face; Racine’s face is unblemished but her arm and hand are severely disfigured. And, after all this time, Ruby has summoned her daughters to tell them, “Make your daddy dead. Real dead.”

The thing is, Racine and Anaia–who just address each other as “Twin”—take up this request, and go on a journey through which a pretty notable body count takes place, and with people who don’t necessarily deserve it. This is a film with an all-Black cast (as was the case with the play) and thus is sort of a Black woman’s answer to Quentin Tarantino, and I’m all for that. I guess I just expected something a little more stylistic, which is how the film was marketed. There’s something more nuanced going here, but if the theme is cyclical violence, it didn’t feel particularly clear while watching the movie. It felt more like a movie that just went along for the ride with these women destroying anything that gets in the way of their ultimate target, their monster of a father.

This much is clear: Racine is much more comfortable with the violence than Anaia is, and this grows into a rift between these telepathically connected sisters (we even get several silent exchanges of facial expressions, translated into dialogue with subtitles). I know this is arguably a silly nitpick, but there’s a moment when Racine and Anaia refer to themselves as having been “from the same cell,” but that would only be possible if they were identical twins, which they quite clearly are not. I could suspend disbelief here if they were two actors who looked similar and at the very least were the same height, but Mallori Johnson is literally four inches taller than Kara Young. Either Aleshea Harris is just deliberately ignoring how this works, or she doesn’t understand that fraternal twins happen when two separate eggs are fertilized by different sperm and develop in the same womb. Furthermore, it’s typically identical twins that report having some kind of psychic connection, and there they are basically telepathic with each other.

All that aside, Anaia is increasingly uncomfortable with Racine’s proclivity toward violence, and that did seem to be a clear thread in the narrative. It just didn’t strike me as consistent, or with thematic clarity, when it came to which characters actually seemed to be dangerous or capable of violence in the end. I could never quite grasp what Is God Is was trying to say, if indeed it was trying to say anything at all. At times it seemed only to revel in its own odyssey of vengeance.

Perhaps that’s the point. Maybe I just don’t get it. It wouldn’t be the firs time. There’s also a religious thread in this story, between Ruby, the mother, being referred to as “God” (hence the title) because she gave these twin sisters life; and Racine and Anaia’s encounter in a church with another woman their father abandoned, and who is now a cult-like preacher. I couldn’t quite grasp what Harris was going for here either.

There’s a lot going on in Is God Is, and yet each scene kind of takes its time, giving it a somewhat belabored pace. I’m fully aware of the acclaimed critical consensus enjoyed by this movie, which does make me doubt myself a little; maybe this just went over my head for some reason. What am I missing? Maybe I’m just missing something that wasn’t made for me, and that’s okay.

Ironically, this movie could have stood to have a bit more fire lit under it.

Overall: B-