Fantastic Four: First Steps is a fun joy ride, with memorable characters, a wonderful production design and exciting action sequences. One of the best science fiction films in years. Recommended. Continue reading Fantastic Four: First Steps
Eddington may represent a first for cinema, a mainstream movie making light of a modern pandemic. To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a humorous take on SARS, Ebola, the opioid crisis or AIDS. This isn’t to say that such a movie couldn’t have been made. As George Carlin once noted, there’s no topic that’s off-limits when it comes to comedy. However, using a traumatic event like the Covid pandemic as the source of laughs requires a take no prisoners approach, no matter how insensitive it may be perceived. That’s the fundamental problem with Eddington, which is too selective in the targets and too gentile in how it handles what it does take aim at. The movie is timid where it needed to be ruthless, circuitous when it should have been forthright.
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Superman is a lot. Stuffed with characters and subplots, the movie takes time getting into a rhythm. But when it does, it’s a strange, wild ride. Writer-director James Gunn’s film honors Superman’s roots while taking him in wonderfully weird new directions. For the first time in years, I cared about Superman and wanted to see what happens next. Recommended. Continue reading Superman (2025)
Remember Nedry, the fat guy played by Wayne Night in Jurassic Park? Rebirth hopes that you do, because its opening scene is a weird callback to his character. Seventeen years ago, before the events in Jurassic World took place, the scientists at InGen were just starting to experiment with dinosaur DNA. One scientist curiously tries to eat a candy bar just before entering a controlled environment. The guy is a slob and carelessly drops the wrapper just before he enters a sealed chamber with a dinosaur in it. The wrapper gets sucked into the door’s ventilation and shorts it out. Uh oh. In the rush to lock everything down, the candy bar guy is left staring face-to-face with a very nasty dinosaur. The lesson here is to not be a slob, because the repercussions are fatal.
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F1: The Movie would have been an entertaining movie regardless of who was cast in the leading role. It’s infinitely better with Brad Pitt in the driver’s seat, though. As one of the few remaining actors who is also a star, Pitt gives the movie its electricity. It also helps that he’s comfortable with putting his rugged good looks on display again. If Pitt had insisted upon obscuring his good looks with glasses, a beard and long, scraggly hair, few would want to see that movie. (If you got my reference to Pitt’s supporting turn in The Big Short, congratulations!)
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If science-fiction films have taught us anything, it’s that meeting aliens from another world should scare us. Time and again, the aliens that show up just want to kill and eat us. Films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T., which depict aliens as being benevolent and even helpful towards humanity, are notable exceptions to the rule. Elio joins that short list because the aliens the eponymous character meets are a very friendly group who actually need his help. Unfortunately, Elio can’t make up its mind as to what story it wants to tell, forgoing adventure and excitement implied by its premise in search of emotional payoffs. The resulting film is fine, but it could have been special.
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At first blush, Materialists looks like a typical romantic comedy, where an attractive single woman is forced to choose between two suitors. Option A is the handsome, rich, older man she’s just met and could give her everything she wants. Option B is a man closer to her age who’s scrapping by, but who she connects with because they were once in love. Since both options are good–for different reasons–the fun is in waiting for the heroine to make her choice. Although Materialists follows the same formula, Celine Song’s follow-up to her wonderful Past Lives aims higher. It invites you to reflect upon your dating experiences and asks, how did you end up with the love of your life?
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Horror movies have always given sound advice of where not to go on your vacation. For example, you really shouldn’t stay at that ominous-looking hotel up on the hill (Psycho), or your friend’s cabin in the middle of the woods (Evil Dead), or that hostel in Slovakia (Hostel). Dangerous Animals suggests that despite the obvious reasons for visiting Brisbane’s Gold Coast in Australia, you probably don’t want to go there either. Because even an exciting tourist activity like swimming with the sharks may very well end up being unexpectedly life-altering. But if you really can’t resist, definitely let your loved ones know what your plans are before you climb aboard that boat. That way, they’ll know where to start searching for your body parts when you go missing.
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In Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, a thoroughly charming romantic comedy in French and English, we’re shown how problematic it can be to expect life to unfold like a plot in one of Ms. Austen’s works. Agathe (Camille Rutherford), the tortured writer at the center of the film, has been waiting for an unexpected turn of events that will propel her past her insecurities and doubts. Life, however, refuses to cooperate and Agathe drifts along without purpose. Fortunately, her loved ones take the initiative to force her out of her self-induced inertia, which sets Agathe on a journey remarkably similar to one of Austen’s heroines.
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For the past several years, the message surrounding Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning was that it would mark Tom Cruise’s last go-around as IMF leader and indestructible hero Ethan Hunt. Unfortunately, despite the craftsmanship and daredevil antics of Cruise, this movie isn’t as enjoyable as the previous entry, Dead Reckoning – Part One. Instead, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie and his filmmaking collaborator Tom Cruise have used the overriding sense of finality as justification for a slew of clumsy narrative choices that threaten to sink the film to the bottom of the ocean. Although Final Reckoning is often exciting, it’s clumsy instead of nimble, tripping over its own feet while doing things that previous entries had wisely avoided.
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Detroit Cineaste 