July 3, 2024
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Bobby Cannavale, Chloe Farnworth, Elizabeth Debicki, Giancarlo Esposito, Halsey, Kevin Bacon, Lily Collins, MaXXXine, Mia Goth, Michelle Monaghan, Moses Sumney, Ned Vaughn, Pearl, Simon Prast, Sophie Thatcher, Ti West, X
Blinded by the starpower (CREDIT: Justin Lubin/A24)
Starring: Mia Goth, Kevin Bacon, Giancarlo Esposito, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Halsey, Lily Collins, Sophie Thatcher, Ned Vaughn, Chloe Farnworth, Simon Prast
Director: Ti West
Running Time: 104 Minutes
Rating: R for Extravagant Gore, A Fair Amount of T&A, and Some Hits of Blow
Release Date: July 5, 2024 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) will simply never, never, never, never, never, never, EVER accept a life that she doesn’t deserve. It’s a lesson that her father instilled deep into her psyche from a very young age. Cut ahead to 1985, when she’s now one of the biggest names in adult entertainment, but anxious to cross over into mainstream cinema. Her talent is undeniable, especially to the casting team of “The Puritan II.” It’s a schlocky demonsploitation horror sequel, but the director (Elizabeth Debicki) is trying to make an artistic statement, and she sees a kindred spirit in Maxine. Everything she’s dreamed of looks like it’s about to come true, but a mysterious figure who knows her backstory as the lone survivor of a bloody massacre six years earlier threatens to derail everything by killing the people closest to her.
What Made an Impression?: It’s the 80s, Do A Lot of Coke And…: MaXXXine is the satisfying culmination of writer-director Ti West’s bloody little trilogy starring Mia Goth that began in 2022 with X and Pearl. While the former captured the early slasher era of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the latter adopted a sheen of Old Hollywood melodrama but with just as much gore. MaXXXine expands its slasher trappings by taking inspiration from the exploitative thrillers of Brian De Palma, while also situating itself amidst the Satanic Panic of the Day Glo decade. The soundtrack blasts classics of the era from the likes of Animotion and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, while also boogieing unexpectedly hard with an opening credits sequence set to ZZ Top’s “Gimme All Your Lovin’.” And the pastiche is more than surface-level. Indeed, it’s engagingly lived-in, with conversations that are both of the moment and eternal representations of the characters’ deepest desires.
Plenty of Scenery to Chew: Mia Goth pulled double duty in X, but she’s been able to flex her acting muscles a lot more in the solo spotlights of those two characters. Pearl wasn’t quite a one-woman show, but the inimitable titular farm girl was pretty detached from the rest of humanity. Maxine Minx, meanwhile, is just as fiercely independent, and Goth once again delivers a transcendent degree of steely resolve. But this time around, even though she may be reluctant to admit it, Maxine has people that she cares about and who care about her. And accordingly, this is quite the ensemble piece, with West giving his players plenty of space to find notes that they’ve never reached before. That’s especially true of Kevin Bacon as a private investigator tracking Maxine who’s saturated in the molasses of the New Orleans bayou. His performance absolutely gives a whole new meaning to the phrase”I smell bacon.”
A Cautionary Tale?: Without getting into too many spoiler-y specifics, I’ll tease that Maxine kind of does achieve exactly what she’s driving towards. But I hesitate to call it a happy ending. Nor would I call it a pseudo-happy ending. It’s complicated. Yeah, she gets the star-making gig, but she also has a cocaine habit that I don’t think she has under control. And while the future looks bright for her, I’m worried that her obsession with fame will leave her empty. But we do get enough moments of vulnerability to suggest that Maxine realizes she’s never quite fully allowed herself to just be a human. It’s been a great joy to watch her story unfold these past couple years, but I’m ready to simply hope that she can find some peace after escaping all the horror that wouldn’t let her go.
MaXXXine is Recommended If You Like: Video nasties, Escaping and confronting the past, Righteous defiance
Grade: 4.5 out of 5 Star Turns
July 2, 2024
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Annie Baker, Clark Gregg, Coral Peña, Elias Koteas, Fred Hechinger, Janet Planet, Josh Margolin, Julianne Nicholson, June Squibb, Malcolm McDowell, Nicole Byer, Parker Posey, Richard Roundtree, Sophie Okonedo, Thelma, Thelma 2024, Will Patton, Zoe Ziegler
Thelma Being Thelma (CREDIT: Magnolia Pictures)
Thelma
Starring: June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree, Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, Malcolm McDowell, Nicole Byer, Coral Peña
Director: Josh Margolin
Running Time: 98 Minutes
Rating: PG-13
Release Date: June 21, 2024 (Theaters)
Janet Planet
Starring: Julianne Nicholson, Zoe Ziegler, Elias Koteas, Sophie Okonedo, Will Patton
Director: Annie Baker
Running Time: 110 Minutes
Rating: PG-13
Release Date: June 21, 2024 (Theaters)
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July 1, 2024
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Chloe Fineman, Chris Renaud, Dana Gaier, Despicable Me, Despicable Me 4, DM4, Gru, Joey King, Kristen Wiig, Madison Polan, Mega Minions, Mike White, Minions, Miranda Cosgrove, Pierre Coffin, Sofia Vergara, Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, Steve Coogan, Will Ferrell
Still Despicable after all these years (CREDIT: Illumination & Universal Pictures)
Starring: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Will Ferrell, Joey King, Miranda Cosgrove, Pierre Coffin, Sofía Vergara, Stephen Colbert, Chloe Fineman, Steve Coogan, Dana Gaier, Madison Polan
Director: Chris Renaud
Running Time: 95 Minutes
Rating: PG for Mega Mayhem
Release Date: July 3, 2024 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: Despicable Me 4, eh? Did you ever think all those years ago that we’d ever make it this far? In the latest antic adventure from Illumination, reformed baddie Gru (Steve Carell) continues his work with the Anti-Villain League by targeting Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell), an old school rival who’s now bent on achieving world domination by employing an army of cockroaches and turning himself into a human/roach hybrid. But when Maxime promises revenge, Gru and his family (including new arrival Gru Jr.) are forced to assume fake identities and go into hiding in the “lovely, safe, boring” town of Mayflower. And of course, as usual, the Minions also get up to their shenanigans.
What Made an Impression?: Multiple Movies Per Movie: If you’ve been paying close attention to the DM4 marketing blitz, then you may have noticed that the advertisements seem to be having an identity crisis. We’ve got the Maxime Le Mal promos, we’ve got the Gru Jr. promos, and most eye-catchingly, we’ve got the Mega Minion promos. And that’s not even mentioning a new character voiced by Joey King named Poppy who idolizes Gru for his early hits and seeks to be trained in the ways of supervillainy, or how Gru’s wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig) and their girls are stuck navigating country club suburbia. Each of these threads is siloed into its own little area that hardly interacts with the rest of the movie. That doesn’t exactly make for the most satisfying storytelling, but that doesn’t matter too much when the gags are good. And hot banana, the gags are as fresh as ever!
Wit and Timing: Is Mike White Illumination’s new in-house punch-up guy? After getting the vegan message out with last year’s Migration, the guy behind School of Rock and The White Lotus joins the Gru family with a co-writing credit alongside Ken Daurio. The DM flicks have never really been known for their crackling screenplays, instead relying mostly on cuteness overload and chaotic hijinks. Those latter elements are still fully stocked up, but there’s also some zingier-than-usual dialogue that I suspect may be due to White’s influence. They make for a well-balanced cinematic meal alongside the reliable visual wit of those little yellow guys. The aforementioned Mega Minions are the result of some superhero engineering experiments that result in powers like strength, flight, stretchiness, the ability to eat anything, and ocular laser beams. They deploy these newfound skills with a wealth of enthusiasm and a profound lack of training, and if you know anything about the Minions, then you know just how delightfully promising that formula is.
What’s to Come?: The ending of DM4 features cameos from the rogues’ gallery that this series has assembled over the years, and it had me looking towards this franchise’s potential future. I sensed a Fast & Furious-esque vibe that hinted at the possibility that these villains could perhaps turn into anti-villains and team up with the heroes on their next adventures. That would make a certain sense, considering how this franchise began with a story about a reformed baddie. I’m a loyal fan, and if the box office receipts are any indication, I’m clearly not the only one. So if we continue to get new entries from this crew for the next hundred years or so, I’m confident that they’ll have fun turning the knobs in new directions.
Despicable Me 4 is Recommended If You Like: Stretch Armstrong, Kid-friendly Cronenberg body horror, Mild Stepford vibes
Grade: 4 out of 5 Vending Machines
June 27, 2024
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
A Quiet Place, A Quiet Place: Day One, Alex Wolff, Djimon Hounsou, Eliane Umuhire, Joseph Quinn, Lupita Nyong’o, Michael Sarnoski
A Kitty Place (CREDIT: Paramount Pictures)
Starring: Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff, Djimon Hounsou, Eliane Umuhire
Director: Michael Sarnoski
Running Time: 99 Minutes
Rating: PG-13 for Acrobatic Alien Hunting
Release Date: June 28, 2024 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: Remember those blind aliens from A Quiet Place that hunt by sound? Did you wonder what it was like when they first arrived? Perhaps you specifically imagined how it must have gone down in New York City. It’s the city that famously never sleeps. And it also never shuts up either! So the ETs would presumably be able to indulge in quite the feast. And so, in A Quiet Place: Day One, cancer-stricken Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) and her cat Frodo head into Manhattan along with hospice nurse Reuben (Alex Wolff). She only agrees to the trip because she hasn’t had a real New York slice of pizza in a while. But that proves difficult to procure when the aliens show up and also when a law student named Eric (Joseph Quinn) won’t leave her alone amidst the mayhem.
What Made an Impression?: Resourcefulness: One of the signature features of the first Quiet Place was getting to see all the ways that human life had adapted to being as silent as possible. I was concerned that Day One would be utterly devoid of those pleasures, but it turns out that people are pretty resourceful in a crisis. Or at least, enough people are sufficiently resourceful to make a movie out of. It’s hard to calculate exactly due to the chaos of the invasion, but I would estimate that it takes at most an hour for everyone to realize that they need to stop making noise. As Sam navigates the urban landscape as gracefully as possible, it’s enough to make you pine for the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when otherwise busy city streets were completely empty. Of course, in both cases, the circumstances precipitating the calm were quite devastating. But this movie is still satisfying as a how-to guide to navigate the world being upended by a sudden disaster.
Wait a Minute, the Cat!: Sam’s journey is ultimately one of allowing herself to live again amidst all the death and destruction. That’s not exactly groundbreaking when it comes to terminally ill protagonists, so I’m not surprised that I was far more interested in her stubborn insistence on acquiring one final slice of ‘za. And I think that burning desire partly explains why her feline friend is so loyal to her. Believe you me, Frodo is quite the cat. He knows not to meow! He knows how to avoid being trampled! He even knows how to walk on a leash! The Quiet Place movies are all pretty straightforward in what they promise and deliver, but then occasionally you have little Frodos that are surprisingly sublime.
A Quiet Place: Day One is Recommended If You Like: Being able to hear chatter from the lobby in between the explosions
Grade: 3 out of 5 Shushes
June 25, 2024
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Adam Goldberg, Adrian Pasdar, Ally Pankiw, Caleb Hearon, Chloe Bailey, Dani Kind, David Hyde Pierce, Ennis Esmer, I Used to Be Funny, Jason Jones, Joshua John Miller, Marcenae Lynette, Olga Petsa, Rachel Sennott, Russell Crowe, Ryan Simpkins, Sabrina Jalees, Sam Worthington, Samantha Mathis, The Exorcism, Tracey Bonner
Having a devil of a time (CREDIT: Vertical Entertainment; LevelFILM/Screenshot)
I Used to Be Funny
Starring: Rachel Sennott, Olga Petsa, Jason Jones, Sabrina Jalees, Caleb Hearon, Ennis Esmer, Dani Kind
Director: Ally Pankiw
Running Time: 106 Minutes
Rating: Unrated
Release Date: June 7, 2024 (Theaters)
The Exorcism
Starring: Russell Crowe, Ryan Simpkins, Adam Goldberg, Sam Worthington, Chloe Bailey, David Hyde Pierce, Marcenae Lynette, Tracey Bonner, Samantha Mathis, Adrian Pasdar
Director: Joshua John Miller
Running Time: 95 Minutes
Rating: R
Release Date: June 21, 2024 (Theaters)
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June 20, 2024
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Emma Stone, Hong Chau, Hunter Schafer, Jesse Plemons, Joe Alwyn, Kinds of Kindess, Mamoudou Athie, Margaret Qualley, Merah Benoit, Willem Dafoe, Yorgos Lanthimos, Yorgos Stefanakos
What a racket! (CREDIT: Searchlight Pictures)
Starring: Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, Hunter Schafer, Yorgos Stefanakos, Merah Benoit
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Running Time: 165 Minutes
Rating: R for Sexual Nudity, Ritual Nudity, Limb Removal, Petty Animal Cruelty, Etc.
Release Date: June 21, 2024 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: A man tries to break free from the grasp of the controlling boss who micromanages his entire life. Another man who looks just like that man suspects that the woman claiming to be his wife returning from a disappearance isn’t who she claims to be. Members of a cultish group are on a quest to find someone with the power of resurrection. It’s an anthology! And it’s called Kinds of Kindness, but I sure didn’t detect a whole lot of kindness in these vignettes. Maybe writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos and his co-writer Efthimis Filippou have a different conception of what that word means. Anyway, this movie is a real head-scratcher, in the sense that it produces the same sensation as sticking your finger up your nose and poking around in your brain tissue.
What Made an Impression?: O R.M.F., Where Art Thou?: Most of the main Kinds of Kindness cast members have a role in each of the three segments. Their respective roles have vaguely similar personalities, though it’s not clear if that’s how they were directed or if it just happens to be that way because they’re played by the same actors. If you squint, you can probably pick up on some Cloud Atlas vibes in the sense of the same souls existing within different beings. But since each Kinds of Kindness segment appears to take place in the present day, it comes across more as just alternative realities or hypothetical do-overs. The one constant is a guy known only by the initials “R.M.F.,” who serves as the namesake for each chapter despite not doing much of anything. Although, in the last part, entitled “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” he does indeed eat a sandwich, so at least one promise is kept.
In the Mood for Vexation: Good movies often teach you how to watch them, but Kinds of Kindness seems intent on doing just the opposite. That doesn’t make it a bad movie per se, but if you don’t want to get frustrated, then you’ll have to adjust your calibrations and accept that you will almost certainly get frustrated. After releasing the most accessible film of his career last year in the form of Poor Things, Lanthimos has returned to the more impenetrable territory of The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. (I haven’t seen his earlier Greek-language flicks, but they have a similar reputation.) I wasn’t expecting a satisfying ending, and I did not get a satisfying ending. I wasn’t expecting a legible message, and I did not get a legible message. There were moments here and there that brought a smile to my face (particularly a world run by dogs set to the tune of Dio’s heavy metal banger “Rainbow in the Dark”), but otherwise, this was a, shall we say, vacation into a land that claims to be speak the languages of English and cinema, and yet it’s not any form of communication that I recognize.
Kinds of Kindness is Recommended If You Like: Constantly opening one of those fake cans of nuts that’s actually a prank snake even though you know it’s going to be the snake every time
Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Changelings
June 19, 2024
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Arinzé Kene, Daina O. Pusić, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Leah Harvey, Lola Petticrew, Tuesday
Oh, by the way, which one’s Tuesday? (CREDIT: A24)
Starring: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lola Petticrew, Leah Harvey, Arinzé Kene
Director: Daina O. Pusić
Running Time: 111 Minutes
Rating: R
Release Date: June 7, 2024 (Theaters)
I DIDN’T SEE Tuesday on a TUESDAY!!!
I just had to get that out of the way first.
But now that I have seen Tuesday (on a Monday), would I prefer that all days henceforth be Tuesday (even if only metaphorically)? I don’t know, would that mean that a baritone macaw Grim Reaper would always be hovering around? I mean, that sounds cool and all, but it might get a little monotonous. But definitely good on JLD for branching out into dark fairy tale territory!
Grade: 3 Ice Cube Singalongs out of 2 Good Days
June 14, 2024
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Adèle Exarchopoulos, Amy Poehler, Ayo Edebiri, Dave Goelz, Diane Lane, Frank Oz, Grace Lu, Inside Out, Inside Out 2, James Austin Johnson, June Squibb, Kelsey Mann, Kensington Tallman, Kirk Thatcher, Kyle MacLachlan, Lewis Black, Liza Lapira, Maya Hawke, Paul Walter Hauser, Paula Pell, Pete Docter, Phyllis Smith, Pixar, Ron Funches, Steve Purcell, Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green, Tony Hale, Yong Yea, Yvette Nicole Brown
You put the Inside Out, you put the Outside In (CREDIT: Pixar/Screenshot)
Starring: Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Phyllis Smith, Kensington Tallman, Tony Hale, Lewis Black, Liza Lapira, Ayo Edebiri, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Paul Walter Hauser, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green, Grace Lu, Yong Yea, Yvette Nicole Brown, Ron Funches, James Austin Johnson, Steve Purcell, Dave Goelz, Kirk Thatcher, Frank Oz, Paula Pell, June Squibb, Pete Docter
Director: Kelsey Mann
Running Time: 96 Minutes
Rating: PG
Release Date: June 14, 2024 (Theaters)
I often like to ask if the movies that I watch make me want to be what they are. But of course, what Inside Out and Inside Out 2 posit is that, we are all already inside out. How twisted! Just like Pouchy – what a dynamite addition. Speaking of new characters, I’m already nostalgic for Nostalgia. Damn, that anxiety attack was exhilarating. Don’t spin around with a baseball bat for a dizzy race right before watching this movie!
Grade: 4001 Insides out of 5000 Outs
June 13, 2024
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Alicia Vikander, Amr Waked, Bryony Hannah, Eddie Marsan, Erin Doherty, Henry VIII, Jude Law, Junia Rees, Karim Aïnouz, Katherine Parr, Maia Jemmett, Mia Threapleton, Patrick Buckley, Patsy Ferran, Ruby Bentall, Sam Riley, Simon Russell Beale
This queen is on Fire(brand)? (CREDIT: Larry Horricks)
Starring: Alicia Vikander, Jude Law, Eddie Marsan, Ruby Bentall, Bryony Hannah, Sam Riley, Maia Jemmett, Amr Waked, Erin Doherty, Junia Rees, Patsy Ferran, Patrick Buckley, Simon Russell Beale, Mia Threapleton
Director: Karim Aïnouz
Running Time: 120 Minutes
Rating: R for Rowdy Royalty
Release Date: June 14, 2024 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: Henry VIII is one of the most famous and dramatized kings in British history. That makes sense, as there’s plenty of drama to be mined. He had six wives who met a variety of interesting, often deadly, fates, and he reigned at a time when England was in the midst of world-rearranging religious strife. So there are a variety of potential angles to take if you’re going to make a movie set during his reign. Firebrand focuses on his last wife, Katherine Parr, who finds herself holding court in the midst of daily intrigue and sinister gossip. She ends up caught between her attempts to appease the king and her dalliances with a Protestant preacher who’s deemed a heretic, while also trying to serve as a mother as best she can to her fretful princely stepchildren.
What Made an Impression?: Parr for the Course: For this review, I’m basically going to do a performance analysis for the two leads, because that’s what held my attention. My bet is that most people’s exposure to Katherine in terms of pop culture (if they have any exposure at all) is the musical Six. But of course, that stage show is about all of Henry’s wives as opposed to just Katherine in particular. Either way, Alicia Vikander certainly doesn’t play her like a modern pop star. No, instead her Katherine is in a constant state of dilemma and anguish, fundamentally unable to please anyone she cares about, and with no room to maneuver to allow herself any personal satisfaction. She’s just canny enough to survive, but even that is largely attributable to a lucky twist of fate.
He’s Henry VIII, He Is?: Jude Law would be far from my first choice to play Henry VIII, as he strikes me as a bit too handsome and suave to play the famously rotund king. And in fact, when he first showed up in Firebrand, I had flashbacks to his time as The Young Pope, which had me thinking, “Is this Henry supposed to be… hot?” The rest of the movie quickly disabused me of that notion, as Law’s Henry is mad, brutish, and beset by ulcers. He’s quickly sliding into the grips of the Grim Reaper, and that’s frankly a relief to everyone around him. Law is appropriately devoid of vanity, but this Henry is simply too sick for there to be enough room to make him truly compelling.
Firebrand is Recommended If You’re: Just a big fan of Henry VIII’s wives
Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Heresies
June 13, 2024
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Alexander Oliver, Alistair Brammer, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Charlotte Creaghan, Chris Nash, Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, In a Violent Nature, Ishana Night Shyamalan, John Lynch, Lauren Taylor, Lea Rose Sebastianis, Liam Leone, Oliver Finnegan, Olwen Fouéré, Reece Presley, Ry Barrett, Sam Roulston, The Watchers, Timothy Paul McCarthy
Watching Nature (CREDIT: IFC Films/Screenshot; Warner Bros. Pictures/Screenshot)
In a Violent Nature
Starring: Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Reece Presley, Liam Leone, Charlotte Creaghan, Lea Rose Sebastianis, Sam Roulston, Alexander Oliver, Lauren Taylor, Timothy Paul McCarthy
Director: Chris Nash
Running Time: 94 Minutes
Rating: Unrated
Release Date: May 31, 2024 (Theaters)
Stomach was knotted (from ice cream)
The Watchers
Starring: Dakota Fanning, Olwen Fouéré, Georgina Campbell, Oliver Finnegan, Alistair Brammer, John Lynch
Director: Ishana Night Shyamalan
Running Time: 102 Minutes
Rating: PG-13
Release Date: June 7, 2024 (Theaters)
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