Starring: Jack Dylan Grazer, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms, Olivia Colman, Rob Delaney, Olivia Colman, Kylie Cantrall, Ricardo Hurtado, Cullen McCarthy, Ava Morse, Marcus Scribner, Thomas Barbusca, Liam Payne, Ruby Wax
Directors: Sarah Smith and Jean-Philippe Vine
Running Time: 106 Minutes
Rating: PG
Release Date: October 22, 2021 (Theaters)
Often when reviewing a movie, I ask, “Do I want to do what the title tells me to do?” And Ron’s Gone Wrong might just be the perfect movie to do that with. Here’s the deal: do I want to go as wrong as Ron? Heck yeah, I do! In fact, I think that’s pretty much the message of the movie. Most of the cool new robot buddies in this flick are basically designed to invade kids’ privacy, but Ron’s code is a little wonky, so he’s more concerned about being a good friend. It takes him a while to get it right, but quite frankly, truly memorable friendship requires a little chaos. Thank you for being a friend, Ron, and for showing us all the way to be wrong.
Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (CREDIT: Courtesy Paramount Players)
Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.
Movies
–Antlers (Theaters)
–Last Night in Soho (Theaters)
–Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (Paramount+) – Still active after all these years.
–Passing (Theaters October 27 and Netflix November 10)
TV
–Doctor Who Season 13 Premiere (October 31 on BBC America) – This season is subtitled “Flux.”
Music
-Tori Amos, Ocean to Ocean
-Mastodon, Hushed and Grim
-The War on Drugs, I Don’t Live Here Anymore
CREDIT: Kimberley French/20th Century Studios; Parisa Taghizadeh/Focus Features
Last Night in Soho
Starring: Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Terence Stamp, Michael Ajao, Diana Rigg, Rita Tushingham, Synnøve Karlsen
Director: Edgar Wright
Running Time: 116 Minutes
Rating: R for Some Bloody Knife Violence and a Few Moments of Sex and Drugs
Release Date: October 29, 2021 (Theaters)
Antlers
Starring: Keri Russell, Jesse Plemons, Jeremy T. Thomas, Graham Greene, Scott Haze, Rory Cochrane, Amy Madigan, Sawyer Jones
Director: Scott Cooper
Running Time: 99 Minutes
Rating: R for Unflinching, Bloody Gruesomeness
Release Date: October 29, 2021 (Theaters)
Last Night in Soho and Antlers are both arriving in theaters on Halloween 2021 Weekend, and I happened to see both on the same day, so I figured I might as well go ahead and review them together. Neither one is your traditional franchise fright flick, though they do share a well-considered approach to presenting their scares, so they’re worth giving a spin at the old multiplex if you happen to be in the right mood.
Starring: Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga, André Holland, Bill Camp, Alexander Skarsgård
Director: Rebecca Hall
Running Time: 98 Minutes
Rating: PG-13 mainly for The Utterance of a Few Racial Slurs
Release Date: October 27, 2021 (Theaters)/November 10, 2021 (Netflix)
So much of Passing consists of just conversations. Anything more would be too dangerous. Actually the conversations are already plenty dangerous.
Based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel of the same, it all begins with a slightly surreal encounter. Surreal in the sense that when dreaming, we randomly encounter people from our pasts that we haven’t seen for a while and yet it makes perfect sense. And so it goes when Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson) bumps into her old friend Clare Bellew (Ruth Negga) and discovers that she’s been utilizing her light skin tone to pass herself off as a white woman. This includes being married to a proudly racist man (Alexander Skarsgård) and privately hoping that her children don’t arrive any darker than her. She’s living on the razor’s edge, but she’s so matter of fact about it all, as if to say (without actually coming out and saying it) that what she’s doing is perfectly logical.
Writer/director Rebecca Hall (in her directorial debut) takes an understandably patient approach to the material in which not much happens, because everyone is holding themselves back from what they can’t allow to happen. This results in Passing feeling significantly longer than it actually is, which is an observation that is usually meant as a criticism, but in this case I mean it as neutrally as possible. Perhaps the explanation for this temporal confusion is that Clare has the ability to warp the perception of reality within the people in her orbit. She’s the one who’s primarily doing the title action, but it’s Reenie and her husband Brian (André Holland) who get most of the film’s attention, as their relatively comfortable Harlem existence is threatened by just the slightest hint of chaos. There are some lighter moments (particularly any scene with Bill Camp as Reenie and Brian’s regular jazz club companion), but otherwise you can practically see the seams of existence being torn asunder.
It all leads up to a violent climax that might have you grateful that something is finally happening to move the plot forward, although that gratefulness will probably fade in the face of the tragedy. Perhaps you will adjust your gratefulness to think that at least this sort of thing is unlikely to happen again a century later. But while passing between different racial settings might not look exactly the same as it did in previous eras, everyday deceit and the rationalization of such deceit still exists. This is a slow-burning disaster movie; if you ever find yourself in a similar situation and you don’t want the ending to be the same as Clare’s, then you might just want to do more than talk.
Passing is Recommended If You Like: The Harlem Renaissance, Smoke-filled jazz rooms, Tragedy predetermined by the whims of fate
SNL: Alex Moffat, Brandi Carlile, Jason Sudeikis, Chloe Fineman (CREDIT: NBC/Screenshot)
Jason Sudeikis used to be a cast member on Saturday Night Live, but now he’s the host. Not permanently, just for this episode (although possibly also future episodes as well). Brandi Carlile is the musical guest. Rock ‘n’ roll!
This time, I’m assembling my review in order of the birthdays of the first person to speak in each sketch. Just the dates and not the years, though. So, for example, someone born January 1, 1980 will go ahead of someone born on January 2, 1970. (For the musical performances, I’ll organize them according to the introducing person’s birthday.)
“Pumpkin Spice Hot Dogs”: Aunt Beth wanted to know what Jeff thinks about that. Actually, she wants to know what he thinks about what some guy on the Internet thinks about pumpkin spice hot dogs.
Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, David Dastmalchian, Chang Chen, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem, Babs Olusanmokun, Benjamin Clementine
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Running Time: 156 Minutes
Rating: PG-13
Release Date: October 22, 2021 (Theaters and HBO Max)
I was fully asleep for about the last third of Dune. I thought I was just nodding off, but next thing I know, Timothée Chalamet was heading off into the desert with Zendaya and Rebecca Ferguson as the credits started to roll, and it sure didn’t feel like two and a half hours had passed.
If this sort of thing happened back when I used to work at a movie theater, I would just peek in the next day while working to catch what I missed. Luckily, HBO Max can now serve that purpose for WB flicks, so that’s what I did in this case. Also of note in terms of what happened the day after: I attended an event at my church during which a priest talked about how he’s fine with people nodding off during mass because that means they’re just quietly meditating. Ergo, I was just quietly meditating during the journey on Arrakis.
I don’t think Dune put me to sleep because it was boring. It wasn’t. Rather, it was just so dark and overwhelming. Those spaceships were HUGE! That all contrasts heavily with the protagonist, who’s awfully skinny and named simply Paul. I have an uncle named Paul, and he’s not traversing planets in a quest for the most valuable item in the universe. This is all to say, what we have here is a mix of accessible and gigantic.
Grade: Sure, I’ll Take Another Go-Round in the Desert
The Last Duel (CREDIT: 20th Century Studios/Screenshot)
Starring: Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer, Ben Affleck, Harriet Walter, Nathaniel Parker, Alex Lawther
Director: Ridley Scott
Running Time: 153 Minutes
Rating: R
Release Date: October 15, 2021 (Theaters)
My favorite part of the The Last Duel is The Last Part – tres appropriate! Actually, I liked two last parts, as it were. The film is split into thirds: first we get the perspective of Sir Jean de Carrouges (as played by Mr. Matt Damon), then the perspective of Jacques Le Gris (as played by Mr. Adam Driver), and finally the perspective of Sir Jean’s wife Marguerite (as played by Ms. Jodie Comer). So when I say I liked two last parts, I mean that I liked Marguerite’s section the best of the three, AND I liked the very last scene more than any other scene, as we finally got to see the titular duel between Sir Jean and Jacques and the emotional stakes were abundantly clear. The men’s sections were occasionally a bit of a chore to get through, but they provided essential context to make the resolutions work as satisfactorily as they did (h/t to NPR’s Linda Holmes for priming me towards this reaction with her discussion on the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast). I hope everyone reading likes the end of this review just as much.
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