‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ Takes Manhattan

June 27, 2024

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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

I Am Become Viewer of ‘Oppenheimer,’ Did It Destroy My World?

July 19, 2023

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Has he become Death yet? (CREDIT: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures)

Starring: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Benny Safdie, Dylan Arnold, Gustaf Skarsgård, David Krumholtz, Matthew Modine, David Dastmalchian, Tom Conti, Michael Angarano, Jack Quaid, Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby, Dane DeHaan, Danny Deferrari, Alden Ehrenreich, Jefferson Hall, Jason Clarke, James D’Arcy, Tony Goldwyn, Devon Bostwick, Alex Wolff, Scott Grimes, Josh Zuckerman, Matthias Schweighöfer, Christopher Denham, David Rysdahl, Guy Burnet, Louis Lombard, Harrison Gilbertson, Emma Dumont, Trond Fausa Aurvåg, Olli Haaskivi, Gary Oldman, John Gowans, Kurt Koehler, Macon Blair, Harry Groener, Jack Cutmore-Scott, James Remar, Gregory Jbara, Tim DeKay, James Urbaniak

Director: Christopher Nolan

Running Time: 180 Minutes

Rating: R for Some Disturbing Images and Deviously Edited Sex Scenes

Release Date: July 21, 2023 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: J. Robert Oppenheimer didn’t build the atomic bomb all by himself, but he’s borne the weight of its legacy much more than anybody else. In adapting the biography American Prometheus, Christopher Nolan makes it clear just how sprawling the efforts of the Manhattan Project were in the halls of science, government, and the military, while also underlining how it all revolved around Oppenheimer. This is a three-hour epic with one of the most sprawling casts in recent cinematic history. Despite that deep bench, Cillian Murphy is in nearly every single scene as the father of the atomic bomb. It’s an intimate approach that paradoxically illuminates the massiveness of the moment. As Oppenheimer traces the title character’s journey from homesick PhD student to Los Alamos to Princeton, it makes the case about how much the world irreversibly changed through his efforts.

What Made an Impression?: Again with the Time Manipulation: Christopher Nolan is famous for manipulating temporal perception in his films, and Oppenheimer serves as an ideal subject for that approach. As inheritors of the legacy of relativity from Albert Einstein (memorably played by Tom Conti), paradoxes about the nature of the universe were pretty much a given for Oppenheimer and his colleagues. Nolan is basically the filmmaking equivalent of a relative physicist, with a storytelling approach that is technically out of order but makes perfect sense when you look at it from the right angle. The story of Oppenheimer plays out in a linear fashion in the broad strokes, but there are some key scenes that are teased and revisited with varying degrees of essential information. The past, present, and the future converged at the Manhattan Project, and Oppenheimer apparently saw that more clearly than anybody. This is all to say, if your mind works like both Nolan’s and Oppenheimer’s, then this movie will make perfect sense to you.
Messy Mythmaking: Oppenheimer didn’t just seek to understand the world through particles and waves, but also through storytelling. He famously uttered a quote from the Bhagavad Gita (“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”), and his accomplishments have often been compared to that of Prometheus, the Greek god who stole fire from Olympus and then gave it to humans, thereby granting them the power to destroy themselves. Mythmaking of individuals is often used to mean valorization that elides more complicated truths. But the myths of ancient cultures that have survived to this day are filled with the foibles of mortals and deities. Oppenheimer makes it clear that this modern Prometheus had plenty of shortcomings as well, particularly unfaithfulness and stubbornness. (Although, I must say that his reputation for an disagreeable personality is a little overblown; sure, he always speaks his mind, but he’s generally pleasant to be around.) With its mix of historical accuracy and cinematic embellishment, Oppenheimer earns its place in the mythical tradition.
We Needed Some Bonhomie: Despite the doomsday cloud hanging over the whole proceedings, Oppenheimer also works quite well as a hangout movie. J. Robert was friends or acquaintances with seemingly every other prominent scientist of the mid-20th century, and it’s a delight just seeing them interacting and mentally stimulating each other. That levity is especially welcome with a three-hour running time, which is always a tall order, even for especially receptive moviegoers. We all have bladders, after all! So while I quite enjoyed Oppenheimer, I’m not eager to immediately watch the entire thing all over again, though I would happily check out a supercut of every scene with Albert Einstein as a jolly old wizardly mentor.

Oppenheimer is Recommended If You Like: The History Channel, Scientific American, Interstellar

Grade: 4 out of 5 Destroyers of Worlds

Who Better to Make Us Feel ‘Old’ Than M. Night Shyamalan?

July 22, 2021

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Old (CREDIT: Universal Pictures)

Starring: Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Thomasin McKenzie, Alex Wolff, Abbey Lee, Eliza Scanlen, Ken Leung, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Aaron Pierre, Kathleen Chalfant, Emun Elliott, Embeth Davidtz

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Running Time: 108 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Intense, Strange Violence and a Bare Buttcrack Running Into the Ocean

Release Date: July 23, 2021 (Theaters)

After delivering one of the most iconic twist endings of all time in The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan became straitjacketed by his reputation for the last-second reveal. But now that he’s a little bit older (wink, wink) and wiser, he’s quietly and consistently embraced that reputation. And why not? He truly is one of the all-time masters of the technique, and Old might just be his greatest trick since The Sixth Sense. But Old doesn’t rely on the twist for the entire movie to be effective (which was also the case with his breakthrough film). If the conclusion hadn’t told us what was really happening on this beach that ages people at a rate of about 2 years per hour, I would’ve been disappointed. But I also probably would’ve quickly gotten over that by appreciating everything else there is to offer in this meditation on the passage of time.

Each of the vacationers who find themselves on Old‘s private beach are in situations that are ripe for prompting considerations of mortality. Prisca (Vicky Krieps) has a tumor in her stomach, which is contributing to the troubles with her husband Guy (Gael García Bernal). Charles (Rufus Sewell) is beset by mental illness while attempting to keep both his much younger wife Chrystal (Abbey Lee) and elderly mother Agnes (Kathleen Chalfant) happy. Jarin (Ken Leung) and Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird) are trying to enjoy themselves without worrying too much about Patricia’s frequent seizures. Big deal rapper Mid-Sized Sedan (Aaron Pierre) is decompressing from the pressures of fame while also dealing with a blood clotting condition. And on top of all that, we’ve got Prisca and Guy’s two kids and Charles and Chrystal’s daughter running around, which is the perfect formula to make any parent get a little verklempt about how the days are just whizzing by.

So just how would people really react if their lifespans suddenly became overwhelmingly compressed? As Old sees it, their first instinct would be to escape, which is probably why Shyamalan decided to make it nearly impossible for them to do so. As they attempt to make peace – or not – with their doom, their reactions are filled with violence and terror. And of course that’s the case; this is a panicky and desperate crisis, a fabulous escape room of mammoth proportions. But there are also moments of  reflection and tenderness, as the families attempt to make the best of the time they have left with each other.

From the first frame to the last, Old is richly satisfying as both metaphor and thought experiment. The questions it raises are plenty of fun to puzzle out as the characters do so on screen. If our biological ages suddenly become so much older, would we become correspondingly more emotionally and mentally mature? Just what is it that makes us mature when time passes at its normal rate anyway? Life experiences, for sure. And well, there’s a lot of life experience packed into each grain of sand on this beach. And the same is also true of the richest cinema in the world. You’ll probably feel a little older after watching Old, and I bet you’ll be thankful about that.

Old is Recommended If You Like: Feeling both scared and enriched by the passage of time

Grade: 4.5 out of 5 Hours

Review (of ‘Pig’)

July 16, 2021

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Pig

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Alex Wolff, Adam Arkin

Director: Michael Sarnoski

Running Time: 92 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: July 16, 2021 (Theaters)

Alex Wolff is Salt Bae. That could be the entirety of my Pig review!

Oh, but Nic Cage is in this, too, so I think I might like to talk about that as well. (Erbviously.)

But back to Mr. Alex Wolff for a second. He wears these fantastic skinny round sunglasses that sure look like Salt Bae’s. And he’s already got the dark tuft of hair and olive skin to complete the Chef Nusret Gökçe resemblance. Not for nothing does much of this movie take place in the fancy-schmancy restaurant world.

Anyway, Cage plays a truffle hunter who really wants his pig back, as you can surely tell by the profoundly simple title. Considering the actor and the premise, you might think he spends the whole movie shouting at everyone all over everywhere, but instead he prefers much subtler tactics. He has an uncanny knack for peering into the souls of anyone he comes across. He knows how to conjure emotional memories that bring the universe back into equilibrium. He’s like a wizard that way, and it’s kind of breathtaking to witness.

Grade: 3 Tablespoons of Facial Scars, 5 Cups of Psychology

‘Jumanji: The Next Level’ is Worth It Mostly for the Actor-Persona Swapping

December 10, 2019

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CREDIT: Frank Masi/Sony Pictures Entertainment

Starring: Jack Black, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson, Ser’Darius Blain, Madison Iseman, Morgan Turner, Alex Wolff, Danny DeVito, Danny Glover, Nick Jonas, Awkwafina, Colin Hanks, Rhys Darby, Rory McCann, Marin Hinkle

Director: Jake Kadan

Running Time: 123 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Intense CGI Animal Attacks

Release Date: December 13, 2019

Let’s be real: the biggest joy of 2017’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle wasn’t the game itself, but how it was played. I’m talking about the actors who played the video game avatars and how the conceit demanded that they depart so far from their typical personas. Dwayne Johnson had to act like a scrawny kid with allergies, Kevin Hart got to wonder why he wasn’t a foot taller, Karen Gillan was allowed to question the wisdom of midriff-baring in action scenarios, and Jack Black fulfilled his destiny by getting to play a superficial teenage girl. So if The Next Level, the third movie in this series (although let’s be real: this feels like the second movie, since the actual first movie is so far removed from these latter two, though I’ll do my best to call it the third. Also, side note: there’s a cameo of someone from the original film, but I didn’t even remember that she was in the original, so take from that what you will) wants to succeed, it ought to double down on that performance-with-a-performance framework, right? Definitely, although there’s also a hullabaloo about a plot and some frenetic action set pieces.

The Next Level, naturally enough, is about the next level in the video game, so it’s a little harder now for the gamers to successfully complete their mission of saving Jumanji. For us, that means a lot of the film is like watching someone else playing a video game, which can be enjoyable, but it usually doesn’t deliver the transcendence that cinema is designed to achieve. Maybe some viewers will really dig all this flying through the air and slamming into the scenery, but for me, it feels like an exhausting visual onslaught. Although, I must admit that the CGI-rendered ostriches and mandrills do look genuinely scary.

But back to the main attraction, as it behooves me to mention that Dannys DeVito and Glover have joined the Jumanji gang, and they have major parts, even when we don’t get to see their familiar faces. Glover plays Milo, former business partner to DeVito’s Eddie, grandfather to Spencer (Alex Wolff), whose lingering insecurity about life in general has led him to venture back into the game. His friends follow behind to rescue him, but since everything is a little haywire, Milo and Eddie are dragged in as well, and nobody gets to choose their avatars, though they also get some opportunities to switch around who’s playing whom. In Welcome to the Jungle, the young actors were not too well-known, so the actors playing the video game characters were playing types more than they were doing impressions. But now with the presence of some more familiar names, the routine gets to lean more toward impressions, which Hart, Johnson, and newcomer Awkwafina take full advantage of. Honestly, in this day and age of strife and division, the world would be a lot better if we all spent some time pretending to be Danny DeVito. So, in that sense, The Next Level is a net good.

Jumanji: The Next Level is Recommended If You Like: Watching other people play video games, Danny DeVito impressions, Danny Glover impressions

Grade: 3 out of 5 Life Bars

This Is a Movie Review: Hereditary

June 8, 2018

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CREDIT: A24

I give Hereditary 4 out of 5 Decapitations: https://uinterview.com/reviews/movies/hereditary-movie-review-an-unforgettable-toni-collette-performance-is-one-of-many-disturbing-attractions/

This Is a Movie Review: Patriots Day

December 20, 2016

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040616_PATRIOTSDAY_KB_462.CR2

This review was originally published on News Cult in December 2016.

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, John Goodman, Kevin Bacon, J.K. Simmons, Michelle Monaghan

Director: Peter Berg

Running Time: 133 Minutes

Rating: R for a Graphic Recreation and the Explicit Language Reacting to It

Release Date: December 21, 2016 (Limited)/Expands Nationwide January 13, 2017

Films about real-life terrorist attacks are tough beasts. Even with the best of intentions, the results can be sensationalistic. And even if the end product is as respectful as possible, survivors and witnesses may be too traumatized to relive that day in any capacity, which begs the question: is it even worth it? It is a conundrum whose scope goes beyond any simple answer, but it is important to keep in mind.

Then on pure storytelling terms, there is the matter of where to even place the focus. Patriots Day, which retells the story of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the subsequent capture of its perpetrators, chooses to spread its character reach far and wide, which works surprisingly well. The implications and motivations behind a terrorist act can be too massive to capture completely, but this particular event actually lends itself well to the real-life recreations that director Peter Berg (Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon) has recently excelled at.

A frequently reiterated theme is that Bostonians have each others’ backs, and that is borne out through how interlinked the main characters are to each other. That connection is heightened through crisis, but the glue is already there. Even the terrorists themselves (chillingly and matter-of-factly played by Themo Melikidze and Alex Wolff), classmates and neighbors to many, are part of the Boston milieu.

Following the bombing, Patriots Day turns into a chase movie, with the urgency of the best of that genre already baked in. Armed forces, intelligence agencies, and civilians join together for an inspiring display of coordinated decision-making and action. The actors playing them summon their best reserves of basic decency to pull it off. The entire cinematic effort makes for a mix of emotions, often uncomfortable, frequently awe-inspiring, never without honor, even through the cathartic bursts of laughter.

Patriots Day is Recommended If You Like: Lone Survivor, World Trade Center, Credits Scenes with the Real-Life People Portrayed in the Movie

Grade: 4 out of 5 Acts of Bravery