How to Train Your Dragon

Yesterday I went to a matinee of How to Train Your Dragon and, as a fan of the animated movie, I was a bit nervous about this live action remake but I really enjoyed it.  The Vikings on the island of Berk are regularly attacked by dragons but Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (Mason Thames), the son of the chief Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler), is deemed too weak to fight them.  He is apprenticed to the blacksmith Gobber the Belch (Nick Frost), instead, but he wants his father to be proud of him so he makes a mechanical device which he uses to shoot down the rare Night Fury dragon during an attack.  When he discovers that the dragon was only wounded, he can't bring himself to kill him and sets him free.  He eventually befriends the dragon, naming him Toothless because of his retractable teeth, and makes a prosthetic for his wounded tail fin so he can fly again.  Hiccup ultimately discovers that everything the Vikings know about the dragons is wrong and that they must join together to face an even bigger threat.  The visuals are absolutely gorgeous and I especially loved the breathtaking scenes where Hiccup rides Toothless through the clouds, in between rock formations, into the ocean waves, and then to the Northern Lights with Astrid Hofferson (Nico Parker), his rival turned ally. The cast is fantastic and I love that Thames and Parker as well as the dragon-fighting recruits, including Julian Dennison as Fishlegs Ingerman, Gabriel Howell as Snotlout Jorgenson, Bronwyn James as Ruffnut Thorston, and Harry Trevaldwyn as Tuffnut Thorston, embody the key traits of their characters, even if they don't look exactly like their animated counterparts, while adding a little spark to make them fresh.  The rendering of Toothless is extremely well done.  He is very obviously a reptile but he is still recognizable as the adorable character we know and he is able to show emotions, unlike the photorealistic versions of animals in other live action remakes (I am looking at you The Lion King).  The scene where Toothless begins to trust Hiccup is incredibly affecting and I admit that I had a few tears in my eyes when he is captured and restrained.  Finally, the score is epic (John Powell embellished the themes from his score of the original movie) and I loved all of the booming brass and percussion during the action sequences as well the strings and piano in the quieter moments.  My only complaint is that, because it is an almost shot-for-shot recreation of the original, it is not quite as compelling as it could be (since I knew everything that was going to happen my mind started to wander during the third act).  I do, however, think this is one of the best live action remakes I have seen and would definitely recommend it.

The Phoenician Scheme

I am a big fan of Wes Anderson (I think The Grand Budapest Hotel is a masterpiece) so I took my nephew to see The Phoenician Scheme at the Broadway last night.  Those who are not already fans of Anderson's quirky and idiosyncratic style will probably not enjoy this but I absolutely loved it!  Wealthy business tycoon Anatole "Zsa Zsa" Korda (Benicio del Toro) has a near death experience during the latest of several assassination attempts on his life in which he is forced to defend his worthiness to enter heaven.  Shaken, he decides to make contact with his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a novitiate nun, and proceed with a plan to improve the infrastructure of Phoenicia.  However, Agent Excalibur (Rupert Friend) and a consortium of other government agents from around the world attempt to disrupt his plan by manipulating the cost of building supplies.  Korda enlists Liesl and Bjorn Lund (Michael Cera), a Norwegian etymologist acting as his tutor, to accompany him as he meets with all of his business partners in order to coerce them into covering the gap in funding.  These include Prince Farouk (Riz Ahmed), the crown prince of Phoenicia, Leland (Tom Hanks) and Reagan (Bryan Cranston), brothers from Sacramento, Marseilles Bob (Mathieu Amalric), a gangster and nightclub owner, Marty (Jeffrey Wright), a fast talking businessman from Newark, Hilda Sussman-Korda (Scarlett Johansson), his second cousin, and Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch), his estranged half-brother.  Along the way, Korda survives an attack by a revolutionary guerrilla (Richard Ayoade), several more assassination attempts, and an attack by Nubar before deciding to fund the scheme himself, which will bankrupt him, in order to retire and live a simple life with Liesl.  I listed the usual characteristics of a Wes Anderson movie (a specific color palette to denote a mood, symmetrical shot composition, stylized production design, long tracking shots, elaborate title cards, deadpan delivery, an ensemble cast with recurring actors, and melancholy themes about dysfunctional families) for my nephew and he said he found all of them!  However, I found this to be one of Anderson's most philosophical movies with an incredibly touching redemption arc (I loved the black and white scenes in heaven with a hilarious cameo by Bill Murray as God).  I loved the relationship that develops between Korda and Liesl as he slowly realizes how amoral his business practices are and she comes to understand that he loves her the only way he knows how (Threapleton's performance is brilliant).  This is really funny but, as always, the humor is subtle and I was sometimes the only one in the audience laughing (a lot of the comedy comes from Cera's performance and I propose that he be in every future Wes Anderson movie).  I thoroughly enjoyed this (The Grand Budapest Hotel is still my favorite but this is one of his best) and recommend it to fans of the director.

Dangerous Animals

Last night I went to a late screening of Dangerous Animals and it is a very intense mash-up of the survival and serial killer genres.  Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) is a free spirited surfer in Australia on the run from a difficult past.  She hooks up with Moses (Josh Heuston) after helping him jump-start his car but leaves early the next morning without saying goodbye.  She plans to surf that morning but is abducted by Tucker (Jai Courtney), an eccentric boat captain who survived a shark attack as a child, and is taken aboard his boat.  She discovers another tourist (Ella Newton) being held captive and is horrified when Tucker lowers her into a group of circling sharks that have been lured to the boat by chum.  Tucker films her being devoured by the sharks and adds the VHS tape to a large collection of similar tapes.  Meanwhile, Moses attempts to find Zephyr so he can surf with her and becomes alarmed when he sees her van being towed.  Zephyr realizes that she will be next and takes extreme measures to escape while Moses continues to try to find her.  However, they both have more to fear from Tucker than the sharks.  The tension is almost unbearable and I was on the edge of my seat holding my breath every time Zephyr gets away only to be captured once again by Tucker (which happens so many times).  The action sequences are very dynamic because Zephyr is forced to use whatever is at hand, including the broken handle of a bucket, a grappling hook, and a harpoon, to fight with and the booming score adds to the frenzy.  The underwater cinematography featuring the sharks is equal parts terrifying and mesmerizing.  Courtney is incredibly unsettling (I knew immediately that the tourists who hire him for a cage dive were in danger before they even got on the boat) and I think he should play the villain more often while Harrison gives a ferocious performance that is easy to cheer for.  This is a lot better than I was expecting and I recommend it as a fun, but grisly, summer movie.

Ballerina

I am a huge fan of the John Wick franchise so I have been looking forward to the latest installment, Ballerina, for what seems like a really long time.  I went to see it with my nephew last night and I think it is a great addition to the series.  A young Eve Macarro (Victoria Comte) witnesses the death of her father Javier (David Castaneda) by assassins bearing the mark of a cult led by the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne).  He wants her back after her father fled the cult to give her a normal life but Winston Scott (Ian McShane) finds her and takes her to the Ruska Roma where the Director (Anjelica Huston) trains her as a ballerina and an assassin.  Twelve years later, while working as an assassin, Eve (Ana de Armas) recognizes the mark on her victim and wants revenge.  She asks the Director for information but she refuses to help her because the Ruska Roma has a truce with the cult.  She then turns to Winston and he leads her to an assassin named Daniel Pine (Norman Reedus) who is on the run from the cult and has claimed sanctuary at the Prague Continental.  When she confronts Pine, she finds an even greater motivation for finding the Chancellor.  She eventually tracks him to the village of Hallstatt in the mountains of Austria and, when she proves difficult to capture, the Chancellor threatens war with the Ruska Roma so the Director sends John Wick (Keanu Reeves) to stop her.  I really enjoyed Eve's character arc because, even though it seems to be her fate to become an assassin, she still has a choice about whether to destroy or protect (two sides of the same coin) and I think this is portrayed very well through Eve's interactions with Pine's daughter Ella (Ava McCarthy).  The narrative does take a while to get going because it includes Eve's backstory and training, which go on a bit too long in my opinion, but once Eve sets out on her quest for revenge it is so much fun to watch!  As you would expect from an entry in the John Wick franchise, there are some epic and innovative action sequences in which Eve must improvise in order to compensate for her small stature.  My favorites include the use of a pick axe in a nightclub made of ice, a fight involving dinner plates in a restaurant, and a duel between a flamethrower and a firehose in the village.  I think Ana de Armas does a great job with the fight choreography (I really liked her in No Time To Die) and I also liked her performance in the more emotional moments.  Reeves doesn't have much to do but it was fun to see him return as John Wick (it was also fun to see some of the other returning characters but it was bittersweet to see Lance Reddick play Charon for the final time).  This does not feature the same dynamic cinematography or dazzling locations as the other movies in the franchise but I enjoyed it and would definitely be interested in seeing a sequel.

Karate Kid: Legends

My sister and I are fans of the original movie (it was incredibly popular the summer after my sophomore year in high school) and my nephew is a big fan of the reboot so we obviously had to see the latest installment in the franchise, Karate Kid: Legends, together last night.  I think it is a lot of fun and all three of us really liked it.  Li Fong (Ben Wang) has been secretly studying kung fu with his great-uncle Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) in Beijing but his mother (Ming-Na Wen) forbids him to continue because her son and Li's older brother was killed by an opponent after a tournament.  She takes a job in New York to get Li away from kung fu and hires a tutor (Wyatt Oleff) to encourage him to focus on his studies, instead.  However, he soon befriends Mia Lipani (Sadie Stanley) and her father Victor (Joshua Jackson) and learns that he owes a great deal of money to a loan shark named O'Shea (Tim Rozon) who owns a dojo.  He also runs afoul of Mia's ex-boyfriend Conor Day (Aramis Knight), a karate prodigy who trains with O'Shea.  Li eventually decides to enter the Five Boroughs Tournament, an epic mixed martial arts competition, so he can give the prize money to Victor and so he can confront his demons over his brother's death.  Mr. Han comes to New York to help train him and he also enlists Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) to train him in karate.  Li makes it to the finals but he has to fight Conor, who has bested him in several skirmishes, and it all comes down to the "dragon," a flying kick that he learned from his brother.  The story follows the exact same formula beat for beat as the previous movies and the outcome of the tournament is a foregone conclusion but Wang is so appealing in the role that he is easy to cheer for.  There are some emotional themes but, for the most part, the tone is light and the action moves very quickly with dynamic and colorful titles and a bombastic score.  I loved all of the fight sequences, especially when Li becomes the mentor in Victor's attempt to make a boxing comeback, when Han and Daniel try to demonstrate who has the best moves with Li as their unwitting victim, and Li's final stand-up-and-cheer move in the tournament.  I also enjoyed all of the callbacks to the previous movies, especially a fun reference at the end.  Fans of the franchise will definitely have a great time with this (audiences seem to be enjoying it more than the critics).

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

Last night I went back to the Broadway to see Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.  I am not a big fan of romantic comedies but if Jane Austen is in the title I will be seated and I really enjoyed this.  Agathe (Camille Rutherford) is a struggling writer in Paris who has put her life on hold after a traumatic car accident that took the lives of her parents several years ago.  Her best friend Felix (Pablo Pauly) wants to give her a spark so he sends some of her previous work to the Jane Austen Residency run by descendants of the author in England and she is accepted.  Felix convinces a reluctant Agathe to go and, because she is secretly in love with him, she spontaneously kisses him as she leaves and sends him a provocative text when she arrives which confuses him.  She soon meets Oliver (Charlie Anson), the arrogant son of the proprietors, and they take an immediate dislike to each other.  However, she is still unable to write so she spends most of her time with Oliver and develops feelings for him before Felix arrives to surprise her.  She eventually realizes that she needs to resolve the trauma in her life before she can write or decide which man is meant for her.  This is a slow burn but it is so charming that it will win you over.  The cinematography is gorgeous and I enjoyed all of the locations, especially Shakespeare and Company where Agathe works.  I loved the scene where Agathe compares herself to Anne Elliot in Persuasion because she is letting life pass her by and Felix to Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park because he is a cad who is unwilling to commit (I also loved that Oliver is obviously modeled on Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice).  There are lots of other moments that put a smile on my face but I definitely swooned during the Regency costume ball when Agathe dances with Felix and then with Oliver because it is so apparent who she belongs with (I wrote a paper in college about the importance of dancing in Jane Austen's works).  Rutherford and Anson are very appealing and have tremendous chemistry but I really appreciate that this focuses just as much on Agathe's journey to find herself as a writer as it does on finding a romantic partner.  This is a lot more subtle and thoughtful than Austenland and The Jane Austen Book Club but it is a lot of fun and I recommend it.

Bring Her Back

As a huge fan of Talk to Me, I was really eager to see what Danny and Michael Philippou would do next.  Their latest, Bring Her Back, is now playing at the Broadway so I went to see it last night and, like their first movie, it is incredibly gory and disturbing but it is also a powerful exploration of grief.  After their father dies, Andy (Billy Barratt) and his visually impaired step-sister Piper (Sora Wong) are temporarily placed with Laura (Sally Hawkins) and her other foster child Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips).  Laura overtly favors Piper but Andy believes it is because she had a visually impaired twelve-year-old daughter named Cathy (Mischa Heywood) who accidentally drowned in the backyard pool so he tries to make the best of the situation.  However, Andy is soon disconcerted by strange goings-on, especially the erratic behavior exhibited by Oliver, who is frequently locked in his room and denied food, and the demonic ritual shown on a grainy VHS tape that Laura obsessively watches at night.  Laura turns Piper against Andy with the hope that she will stay with her permanently so he goes searching for answers and discovers Laura's plan to implement the strange ritual with Piper and Oliver in order to bring her daughter back to life.  The escalating dread is almost unbearable because the characters are unpredictable and keep each other (and the audience) off balance.  Laura is often sympathetic and almost debilitated by her grief over the death of her daughter but then she becomes increasingly unhinged as time goes on while Andy is volatile with unclear motivations until they are slowly revealed.  Hawkins gives a powerful and unsettling performance as she transitions from warm and caring to evil and manipulative and back again (she is so scary).  The young actors are also outstanding and I was particularly impressed with Phillips because he matches Hawkins in intensity.  The visuals add to the unease because the camera angles are disorienting and the focus is sometimes distorted to mimic what Piper is seeing inside the house.  Finally, this is not for the faint of heart because the scenes involving the ritual (which feature elaborate prosthetics worn by Phillips) are so grisly that I averted my eyes several times (and I have a strong tolerance for body horror).  This might be a brutal watch but fans of the genre are sure to find it as riveting as I did.

Final Destination Bloodlines

I am a casual fan of the Final Destination franchise at best (my favorite is the third one but they all kind of blend together because they are so formulaic) but I had heard great things about the latest installment, Final Destination Bloodlines, so I decided to see a matinee yesterday.  I really liked it and I think it is the best movie in the series.  College student Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) is tormented by a recurring dream in which a woman named Iris (Brec Bassinger) and her fiance Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones) die in an explosion during the opening of a restaurant in a high-rise tower fifty years ago.  She eventually realizes that Iris is the estranged grandmother she has never met and finds her living in an isolated and fortified cabin.  Iris (Gabrielle Rose) tells her that she had a premonition about the explosion and was able to evacuate everyone before the tragedy could happen.  However, Death refused to be thwarted and started killing the survivors in the order they died in her vision.  She and a little boy named J.B. (Jayden Oniah) were the last to die and Death is finally catching up to the two of them as well as her descendants who were never meant to be born.  After Iris is impaled by a weather vane, Stefani tries to warn her uncle Howard (Alex Zahara), her estranged mother Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt), her cousins Erik (Richard Harmon), Julia (Anna Lore), and Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner), and her brother Charlie (Tio Briones) that they are next to die but they refuse to listen because Howard and Darlene believe that their mother was delusional.  After Howard dies in a freak accident with a lawn mower, Stefani searches for J.B., who turns out to be William Bludworth (Tony Todd), to get answers before it is too late for her family.  I love that there is a twist to the usual formula and that expectations are often cleverly subverted (especially with Erik).  The characters and their relationships with each other are much more developed than they are in the previous movies and the family dynamic adds an emotional core that I found very compelling.  I also found William Bludworth's arc (it is ingenious how he ties all of the movies together) to be quite moving and I loved his message that death is coming for us all one way or another and that we might as well live our lives to the fullest while we can (Todd knew he didn't have long to live and this makes his performance all the more poignant).  Another shout out goes to Harmon because he steals every scene he is in and he also gives a surprisingly touching performance.  Finally, all of the elaborate sequences leading to the deaths of each character are absolutely epic (I will never have another MRI).  I enjoyed this so much more than I expected and I highly recommend it.

Note:  There are a lot of really fun Easter eggs for fans of the franchise (pay close attention to Iris's book).

Friendship

Last night I took my nephew to see Friendship at the Broadway because the trailer made me laugh out loud.  It is absolutely hilarious but it is also a really sad exploration of the extent to which someone will go to be accepted.  Craig Waterman (Tim Robinson) is an unremarkable middle-aged man living in the suburbs with a corporate job who is so socially awkward that he gets nosebleeds when he gets excited.  He meets Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd), a charismatic TV weatherman, when he moves into Craig's neighborhood and they soon begin spending lots of time together.  Craig becomes infatuated with Austin but, when they are hanging out with Austin's friends, he commits a social faux pas that ends the evening on a sour note.  This causes Austin to distance himself from Craig because he is also insecure and wants to keep his friend group.  Eventually, Craig goes to extreme lengths to reestablish his friendship with Austin even though his actions threaten his job and his relationships with his wife Tami (Kate Mara) and his son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer).  I was unfamiliar with Tim Robinson and his popular sketch comedy I Think You Should Leave so this was my introduction to his particular brand of cringe comedy and I laughed out loud so many times (as did everyone else in the audience) at his antics.  He has outstanding comedic timing and his facial expressions, physical movements, and line deliveries as a character who cannot read social cues but desperately wants to fit in are brilliant.  Rudd is also very funny as the straight man to all of Robinson's mania.  Having said all of that, this is sometimes very difficult to watch because both Craig and Austin are profoundly lonely characters (even though Austin is more socially adept) searching for connection and, while it is realistic, the resolution between them is unsatisfying.  This will make you laugh but it will also make you squirm and I recommend it to fans of this specific genre (it's definitely not for everyone).

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

I am a huge fan of the Mission: Impossible franchise so I was beyond excited to see Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning at a Thursday preview with my sister last night.  It is unbelievably convoluted but it is an epic and heartfelt conclusion to the series (if, in fact, it is actually the conclusion) and we both loved it!  Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) now has the cruciform key needed to acquire the source code for the Entity from the wreckage of the Russian submarine Sevastopol.  However, Gabriel (Esai Morales) has stolen the malware, called the poison pill, created by Luther (Ving Rhames) which will enable him to control it.  Ethan and his team, Benji (Simon Pegg), Grace (Hayley Atwell), Paris (Pom Klementieff), and Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis), must get the source code from the submarine and the poison pill from Gabriel before the Entity gains access to the world's nuclear codes and before President Sloane (Angela Bassett) launches a preemptive strike to mitigate the fallout for the United States.  They must also evade CIA Director Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and Agent Briggs (Shea Whigham), who have personal reasons for stopping Ethan.  The first hour is really exposition heavy but, once it gets going, there are some amazing action set pieces (Tom Cruise is a madman).  I especially loved the cross-cutting between a scene of hand-to-hand combat between Ethan and a sailor on a submarine and a scene where the team fights a group of Russian soldiers on an island in the Bering Sea and, of course, the much hyped aerial sequence between Ethan and Gabriel on a biplane is spectacular (it is even better than I was expecting) but my favorite scene is a breathtaking underwater sequence where Ethan dives to the wreckage of the Sevastopol and gets trapped (I was on the edge of my seat the whole time because the sound design is so foreboding).  I also enjoyed Ethan's arc because he feels the weight of all of his decisions even more in this installment and there are some really touching moments between him and several other characters (especially with one from his earliest mission) which lead to a very satisfying resolution for him.  Cruise shines in a role he has been playing for thirty years (a montage of all of his missions while he is receiving his latest one is very well done) and the rest of the large cast does a great job (the standout for me is Tramell Tillman as the captain of a submarine because one of his line readings made me laugh out loud).  It is not without faults (I had only the vaguest notion of why things needed to happen and a scene where Ethan communicates directly with the Entity is a bit silly) but it is exhilarating and it must be seen on the big screen (my sister and I are already planning to see it again in IMAX).

Note:  I rewatched all of the earlier movies in preparation for this one and I think Fallout is still my favorite.

Juliet & Romeo

My sister and I are not the biggest fans of Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet but, as soon as we saw the trailer for a new adaptation, we knew immediately that we wanted to see it because it is a musical!  We had the chance to see it yesterday and both of our inner thirteen year old selves loved it.  Prince Escalus (Rupert Graves) is fighting to keep control of Verona and he must ally himself with either House Montague or House Capulet to get the support he needs and this escalates the ongoing feud between them.  Lord Montague (Jason Isaacs) looks to his adopted son Mercutio (Nicholas Podany) to advance their cause because his own son Romeo (Jamie Ward) has started to rebel while Lord and Lady Capulet (Rupert Everett and Rebel Wilson, respectively) bring their unsuspecting daughter Juliet (Clara Rugaard) home from school to form an alliance with Lord Paris (Dennis Andres) in exchange for his army.  Romeo spots Juliet across a crowded square and they bond over their appreciation of Dante Alighieri.  They eventually fall in love and, when they realize that they represent opposing houses, they turn to the Friar (Derek Jacobi) who sees their union as a way to achieve peace and he marries them.  However, when violence erupts on the streets leading to the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), Romeo is banished and he must resort to a bold plan involving the Apothecary (Dan Fogler) in order to be with Juliet.  This takes quite a few liberties with the source material, including a really wild ending, and this would normally bother me but the changes work within the context of a story about choosing your own destiny.  The runtime starts to feel long during the third act when Juliet takes the potion and Romeo misses the message from the Friar but I always find this section of the play tedious when it is performed on stage so I can't fault the movie for it.  The songs eventually all blend together and they definitely have a Disney Channel Original Movie sound but I really enjoyed them (see the aforementioned comment about my inner thirteen year old self) and I suspect that teens everywhere (the target audience) will love them.  My favorites are "Beat the Same," "I Should Write This Down," "The Mask I Wear," and "Streets On Fire."  Ward and Rugaard are very appealing and have great chemistry as the titular characters and I also liked Jacobi as the Friar because he acts as a sort of narrator.  The visuals are gorgeous, with production design by Dante Ferreti and costume design by Luciano Capozzi (I loved the masquerade ball), and the cinematography is dazzling (especially the overhead shots of the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt on the bridge).  I know that everyone is going to hate this but, to me, it was a bit of escapist fun and my sister and I had a blast watching it.

Shadow Force

I wasn't really interested in Shadow Force but there are not a lot of new releases in theaters this weekend and my nephew is a fan of Omar Sy so we went to see it last night.  If I hadn't seen Magic Farm at Sundance I would call this my worst movie of 2025.  Isaac Sarr (Sy) and Kyrah Owens (Kerry Washington) are highly trained agents who were once part of a multinational covert organization, known as Shadow Force, led by Jack Cinder (Mark Strong) who now works for the G7.  After they fell in love, got married, and had a son, they decided to leave the organization knowing that this decision would put a bounty on their heads.  Kyrah spends the next four years hunting down the agents who were once their colleagues while Isaac goes deep under cover to care for their son Ky (Jahleel Kamara).  However, when Isaac uses his highly specialized training to foil a bank robbery, he blows his cover and Cinder doubles the bounty on them because he doesn't want his involvement in the organization to come to light and ruin his chances of becoming Secretary General (does such a position even exist?) of the G7 (or it might be because he is in love with Kyrah and is bitter that she rejected him).  They go on the run to evade all of the other operatives now chasing them but they are helped by the spies "Auntie" (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) and "Unc" (Clifford "Method Man" Smith), who have some sort of unexplained connection to them.  Eventually, everyone involved ends up on an island off the coast of Colombia for a final confrontation (that lasts forever).  The script is an absolute mess because it relies on having the characters, who are supposed to be the most elite and highly trained covert assassins in the world, make one incomprehensible decision after another in order to sustain the action.  At one point, Kyrah has all five of the operatives she has been chasing for the past four years in her sights (they are literally standing in a row) but she just walks away from them.  At least this afforded us many opportunities to yell at the screen ("Take the shot!") and that was somewhat entertaining.  There are a lot of (unnamed) characters to keep track of and one's betrayal is telegraphed almost from his first appearance and another one's assistance comes out of nowhere (it made me laugh out loud).  With the exception of Kamara, who is adorable, and Sy, who has a few touching moments with Kamara, the acting is incredibly melodramatic (Washington has several monologues that are meant to be poignant but they made my nephew laugh out loud because they are so cheesy).  All of this might be forgiven if the action sequences were exciting but they are edited in such a scattershot way that it is difficult to see what is going on most of the time.  My nephew said that he wasn't expecting this to be great but he also wasn't expecting it to be so bad.

Thunderbolts*

Last night I went to a Thursday preview of Thunderbolts* with my nephew and I can’t remember when I was so excited for an MCU movie!  Luckily, I was not disappointed because I absolutely loved it!  In fact, this is the first time I can say I loved an MCU movie without qualifications in a really long time!  CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is being investigated for illegal activities by Congress so she has her assistant Mel (Geraldine Viswanathan) get rid of the evidence against her, including the covert agents who work for her.  Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Antonia Dreykov/ Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and Ava Starr/ Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) are lured to a secret underground facility where they are tricked into attacking each other and Ghost kills Taskmaster before they realize that it is a trap.  They also discover a mysterious man named Bob Reynolds (Lewis Pullman) who creates a diversion that allows them to escape before he is captured by de Fontaine.  The group is eventually recovered by Alexei Shostakov/ Red Guardian (David Harbour) and then apprehended by Congressman Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) but they reluctantly decide to work together to rescue Bob when they learn that he was the subject of one of de Fontaine's secret experiments and that, because he now possesses superhuman strength, she plans to use him as the weapon Sentry.  This is very character-driven because they all have a reckoning over the things they have done, especially Yelena because she must reconcile her trauma in order to help Bob face the darkness he feels inside.  As someone who has struggled with mental health issues, I think the portrayal of the Void, the alter ego of the Sentry, is one of the best and most accurate depictions of depression that I've seen (I actually had tears in my eyes several times during the scenes with the Void because they resonated so deeply).  I really enjoyed seeing Bucky take on a leadership role as someone who has also had to make peace with his actions and the relationship between Alexei and Yelena is incredibly poignant (even though Alexei provides much of the comic relief).  Pugh is such a great actress and she gives an incredibly emotional performance throughout Yelena's arc (I was also really impressed with Pullman).  Finally, all of the action set pieces (many of which feature practical effects) are a lot of fun but I found the sequence where the Thunderbolts protect people from the Void and then are hailed as heroes to be especially moving.  It was so much fun to feel the same exhilaration that I once did for the MCU again and I am now really looking forward to Phase Six!

Note:  There is a mid-credits scene and an end-credits scene.  They are both really good!

The Shrouds

David Cronenberg is definitely not for everyone but I really like him as a director so I was excited, and nervous, to introduce my nephew to him by seeing The Shrouds at the Broadway last night.  Businessman Karsh (Vincent Cassel) is so grief-stricken over the death of his wife Rebecca (Diane Kruger) from a virulent form of cancer that he creates a company called GraveTech which uses specially designed shrouds with 3D cameras to allow loved ones to watch the decomposition of the deceased's corpse through a live feed but this keeps him from moving on.  When several graves are vandalized, including Rebecca's, the live feed is hacked and Karsh is drawn into several conspiracy theories.  One involves Rebecca's oncologist, Dr. Jerry Eckler (Steve Switzman), who Karsh suspects was experimenting on his patients after discovering unusual protrusions on Rebecca's bones and on the bones of those in the other defaced graves.  Another involves a suspected plot by the Chinese government, who are investors in GraveTech, to use the live feed for surveillance.  Yet another involves his former brother-in-law Maury (Guy Pearce), who wrote the code for GraveTech's security, because of his growing paranoia over Karsh's relationship with Rebecca's sister, Terry (Diane Kruger).  I had prepared my nephew for Cronenberg's use of body horror in his movies but, while this does show the devastating effects of cancer when Karsh has a series of dreams about Rebecca's worsening condition before her death, I think it is pretty mild.  However, both of us found it incredibly thought-provoking with commentary on several topics.  My nephew was intrigued by the use of technology, particularly Karsh's reliance on the AI assistant modeled on Rebecca, but I was struck by the theme of obsession and its dangers.  Karsh is preoccupied by Rebecca's body which is why he eventually begins a relationship with Terry because her body is so similar to Rebecca's and why he is tormented by jealousy because Dr. Eckler was more intimately involved with her body at the end of her life than he was.  Both Karsh and Maury go to extreme lengths to maintain possession of Rebecca and Terry, respectively, because they cannot let them go.  I know that some will be frustrated by the ambiguity of the ending (there are no definitive answers about the conspiracy surrounding the vandalism of the graves) but, to me, the resolution comes from Karsh letting go of his obsession for Rebecca in order to move on (although I interpret the final scene to mean that, even though he has someone new in his life, he will still carry the memory of his wife wherever he goes).  I loved Cassel's detached and almost stilted delivery because, in my opinion, it shows that Karsh's desire to be with his wife has kept him from truly living.  I think this is brilliant (I haven't been able to stop thinking about it) but it is not something I would recommend to everyone.

Until Dawn

Despite the fact that I have never played the game, I really wanted to see Until Dawn because the premise sounded intriguing.  I convinced my nephew, who loves the game, to see it with me last night and we both hated it.  Clover (Ella Rubin) is still traumatized by the disappearance of her sister Melanie (Maia Mitchell) a year ago so she and her friends Max (Michael Cimino), Nina (Odessa A'zion), Megan (Ji-young Yoo), and Abel (Belmont Cameli) travel to her last known location hoping for some closure.  A severe thunderstorm forces them to stop at an abandoned house in Glore Valley and they notice some unsettling details.  There is a giant hourglass that suddenly flips over, there is a guestbook signed by each visitor (including Melanie) thirteen times, and there is a bulletin board filled with posters of missing people (including Melanie).  Nina signs the guestbook and then they are all brutally killed, one by one, by a mysterious figure in a mask.  Everything resets and the five of them are back to where they started the previous night but the hourglass flips again, Nina's name appears in the guestbook a second time, and all of them appear on the bulletin board as missing people.  Every night they are killed in a new and gruesome way (my favorite is when they explode after drinking the tap water) and then everything resets again.  They eventually realize that they will be stuck in this time loop until they can survive the night.  I thought this was really clever and I enjoyed the first act but then it becomes an incoherent mess.  They eventually learn that those who are killed more than thirteen times become wendigos, supernatural beings who then torment the next visitors to the house, and that Melanie is now a wendigo.  They also learn that Glore Valley was the site of a mining tragedy that killed over 11,000 people and that a psychologist named Dr. Hill (Peter Stormare, who is reprising his role from the game) was brought in to help the survivors overcome their trauma.  Dr. Hill is now running an elaborate experiment to help Clover, who is apparently his patient, overcome the trauma of her sister's disappearance (they never learn how Dr. Hill is able to create and manipulate all of the supernatural elements in the house).  There is absolutely no logic to the narrative and, in my opinion, the filmmakers should have chosen the supernatural story with the wendigos or the psychological story about trauma with Dr. Hill but not both.  I had so many questions for my nephew afterwards but he said that the movie is nothing like the game (the game actually sounds really interesting).  To add insult to injury, it looks terrible because it is so dark that you can't see what is happening and the dialogue is incredibly cringe-worthy (I lost track of how many times the characters say, "Holy shit").  This is definitely one to miss and my nephew recommends playing the game, instead.

On Swift Horses

I didn't really know much about On Swift Horses but I was really excited about the stellar cast so I decided to see a matinee at the Broadway yesterday.  It looks beautiful and has a powerful message but I found it strangely underwhelming.  After a troubled childhood, Lee Walker (Will Poulter) has a plan for his life which includes going out West to California, buying a house, and starting a family but his wife Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and his brother Julius (Jacob Elordi) feel constrained by the conventions of the 1950s.  Muriel begins betting on horse races but she hides her winnings from her husband.  Julius takes a job as security in a Las Vegas casino even though he still acts as a card sharp.  However, the biggest gamble that Muriel and Julius take is to begin clandestine relationships with Sandra (Sasha Calle) and Henry (Diego Calva), respectively.  Will they risk it all for love?  I am really torn on this because the visuals are absolutely gorgeous and I enjoyed the performances because they are filled with so much wistful longing shown with lots of closeups on the beautiful faces of Edgar-Jones and Elordi.  I also think the gambling metaphor works very well for the risk taking and secrecy involved in pursuing a forbidden love and the journey to break free from conformity is one I always appreciate.  There is just something that kept me from loving this.  The pacing is incredibly slow but I didn't feel a connection to any of the characters because they are not very well developed.  I also found the ending to be really ambiguous for all of the characters and I wanted something more after the endless build-up.  I suspect that the novel by Shannon Pufahl, upon which this is based, is much better and I recommend waiting for streaming to watch it.

Revenge of the Sith

Of the three Star Wars prequels, my favorite is Revenge of the Sith because, even though I already knew what would happen the first time I saw it (anyone familiar with A New Hope knew what would happen), I still found it incredibly compelling,  I was really curious about why Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) turned to the dark side of the Force and I wanted to see how he was physically transformed into Darth Vader.  I was eager for the confrontation that had been building between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and to learn why the latter was compelled to live as a hermit on Tatooine afterwards.  I wanted to know how Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) was able to take over the Senate and become the Emperor of the Galactic Empire.  Finally, I was most interested in how and why the twins Luke and Leia were taken from Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman) and raised separately.  I eagerly awaited all of these revelations and I remember being blown away by the emotional conclusion to the trilogy.  Episode III is now back in theaters to commemorate its 20th anniversary (what?) and I was so excited to see it on the big screen again with my nephew last night.  I loved all of the exciting action sequences, especially the light saber battles between Anikan, Obi-Wan, and Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) during the rescue of Palpatine, between Obi-Wan and General Grievous on Utapau (even though he resorts to an uncivilized blaster to destroy him), between Palpatine and Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) in Palpatine's office on Coruscant, between Darth Vader and all of the Separatists on Mustafar, between Yoda (Frank Oz) and the newly created Emperor in the Senate chamber on Coruscant, and, of course, the epic battle between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader on Mustafar.  Christensen's performance has been much maligned but, in my opinion, his portrayal of the conflict within Anakin is very powerful and I loved the cross-cutting between Anakin in the council room and Padme in their apartment before he makes the fateful decision to go to Palpatine.  The music by John Williams is always a highlight and, while I found "The Battle of the Heroes" to be incredibly stirring, I absolutely loved the callbacks to "The Imperial March" when Anakin pledges himself to the Sith and to the Main Theme when Obi-Wan delivers Luke to Owen (Joel Edgerton) and Beru (Bonnie Piesse) on Tatooine.  I cheered every time I saw a reference to the original trilogy (Padme's buns!) and I was particularly struck by the armor worn by the clone troopers who execute Order 66 because they appear to be an early iteration of the armor eventually worn by the stormtroopers (I don't know why I have never noticed that before).  Seeing this again was so much fun and I highly recommend it (especially if you have never seen it on the big screen).

Note:  Apologies to my nephew for my unhinged behavior which started during the opening crawl (although he said I wasn't as crazy as some of the other people watching it with us).

The Legend of Ochi

The trailer for The Legend of Ochi was absolutely beautiful so I decided to see a matinee at the Broadway yesterday afternoon.  I mostly loved this throwback to the adventure movies of my youth.  Yuri (Helena Zengel) is a young farm girl living on Carpathia, an isolated island in the Black Sea.  The inhabitants share the island with mysterious creatures, known as ochi, that are feared and hunted.  Yuri's father Maxim (Willem Dafoe) is especially zealous in his desire to hunt them down and trains a group of boys, including an orphan he has adopted named Petro (Finn Wolfhard), who he takes out on patrol every night.  Yuri rejects much of what her father says so, when she finds a baby ochi in one of his traps, she releases it and smuggles it home.  Yuri interacts with the baby and, when she realizes that it is a gentle creature, she decides to try and find its family.  On the journey, she encounters her mother Dasha (Emily Watson), who left the family because of Maxim's brutality, and discovers that she has studied the ochi extensively.  Her father hates them and her mother respects them but it is Yuri who truly understands the ochi and it is her bond that will ultimately bring about acceptance.  The theme of fearing what is different is not new but it is so gorgeously rendered that I was absolutely enchanted by Yuri’s quest.  I loved all of the stunning visuals of the island and the puppets are amazing (the baby ochi is adorable).  The relationship that develops between Yuri and the creature is so moving because there are many parallels between them and I think the lack of dialogue is really effective (she communicates with the ochi in their language) although some might find the pace sluggish as a result.  I really enjoyed the Eastern European influences because they make the story feel like a fairy tale (Maxim hunts the ochi wearing medieval armor) but the music is sometimes overpowering.  Zengel is luminous and Dafoe is as unhinged as ever but I especially liked Watson's performance (Wolfhard has very little to do and his character's motivations are very ambiguous).  However, I found the scene in a grocery store to be incredibly jarring.  I think it is included as commentary about the encroachment of the modern world into traditional life on the island but this theme is underdeveloped and the scene feels like it belongs in a completely different movie.  I found this dark fantasy to be very magical most of the time and would recommend it but I seem to like it more than most.

The Accountant 2

I went to see The Accountant on a whim and was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it so I was really looking forward to the sequel.  I had the chance to see a Thursday preview of The Accountant 2 last night with my nephew and, unfortunately, I found it a bit underwhelming.  Raymond King (J.K. Simmons), a retired Treasury Agent now working as a private investigator, meets with a mysterious woman named Anaïs (Danielle Pineda) in the course of his search for a family of three from El Salvador who went missing while crossing the border into the U.S.  During their meeting, King is ambushed by assassins but manages to write a message to find the accountant on his arm before he is killed.  King's former colleague at the Treasury Department, Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), sees the message and reaches out to Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) through his handler Justine (Allison Robertson) at Harbor Neuroscience.  Medina and Wolff begin working together to solve King's murder but eventually unravel a vast human trafficking organization run by Burke (Robert Morgan) and they recruit Wolff's estranged brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) to help find Anaïs and the missing family.  The central mystery is very convoluted and there were many times when I had no idea who a character was or how they were involved in the story (and after a while I didn't really care who was who).  I was also disappointed by how much Wolff relies on his cadre of students at Harbor Neuroscience and their hacking skills rather than his own extraordinary abilities to solve the puzzle (which is what I liked about the first movie).  There are some fun action sequences but, in my opinion, the culminating gunfight in a detention camp in Mexico is tedious because it is incredibly far-fetched, to the point of incredulity, and it goes on way too long.  I did really like the dynamic between Affleck and Bernthal as brothers who each have their own way of finding information in some hilarious scenes and as brothers who are trying to forge a relationship with each other despite these differences in some touching ones.  This was a mixed bag for me and I suspect people who are fans of buddy comedies or action movies will like it but fans of the first movie might not.

Pride & Prejudice

Believe it or not I didn't see Joe Wright's adaptation of Pride & Prejudice when it was first released because I didn't think it could possibly compare to the BBC version and I couldn't see Keira Knightley as my very favorite character from literature.  Of course I now love it and I have probably seen it close to a hundred times, just never on the big screen.  It is back in theaters for a limited run to commemorate its twentieth anniversary (what?) and I was beyond excited to finally see it as it was meant to be seen with my sister (I think she loves it more than I do) last night.  Even though I initially thought that Knightley was much too beautiful to play Elizabeth Bennet as she is written in the novel by Jane Austen, I really love her plucky performance and her chemistry with Matthew Macfadyen, who gives Mr. Darcy a vulnerability that makes me swoon, is off the charts as they spar with each other.  The scene where it looks like they are leaning in for a kiss but then touch their foreheads together instead had everyone in the crowded theater audibly sighing.  I also love everyone else in the ensemble, especially Tom Hollander as the priggish Mr. Collins (the audience laughed out loud at the comment about the excellent boiled potatoes), Donald Sutherland as the curmudgeonly Mr. Bennet (I love the tears in his eyes as he gives his permission for Elizabeth to marry Mr. Darcy), Judi Dench as the imperious Lady Catherine de Bourg (she is just so mean), and Kelly Reilly as the haughty Caroline Bingley (her side-eye is second to none).  The shot composition is absolutely brilliant and my favorites are the tracking shot as Elizabeth walks through a field while reading a book, the shot of Elizabeth walking away from Mr. Darcy with a smirk on her face at the assembly hall, the shot of Elizabeth and Jane (Rosamund Pike) talking under the covers, the continuous shot of Betsy (Sinead Matthews) walking through the house amidst preparations for the Netherfield ball, the shot where Mr. Darcy suddenly appears behind Elizabeth and then quickly disappears at the Netherfield ball, the shot of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy dancing in a crowd which then cuts to them dancing alone at the Netherfield ball, the shot showing the passage of time as Elizabeth spins on a swing, the shot when Mr. Darcy sees Elizabeth in the mirror at Pemberley, and, of course, the wide shot of Mr. Darcy walking towards Elizabeth through the mist as the sun rises (sigh).  The visuals are gorgeous (one of the reasons why I was so excited to see it on the big screen) and I loved the locations used for Meryton, Longbourn, Netherfield, Rosings, and Pemberley as well as those in the Peak District (the shot of Elizabeth overlooking the moor with the wind blowing is iconic).  Even though I do love an empire waist, I think the use of an eighteenth century silhouette for the costumes really works and the subtle change from stiffly formal to completely undone in Darcy's costumes is incredibly effective (sigh).  Finally, the score is amazing (the reason I think my sister loves this movie just a bit more than I do is because she owns the soundtrack) and I especially love that the same piece, based on a Beethoven piano sonata, used in the opening scene is also played by Elizabeth and Georgiana (Tamzin Merchant).  I love this movie and it was so much fun to see it with my sister (we recited all our favorite bits of dialogue the whole drive home).  I definitely recommend seeing this while it is in theaters!