‘Heretic’ Review: Hugh Grant Wants to Play a Game

November 5, 2024

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Pie! Pie! Pie! (CREDIT: Kimberly French/A24)

Starring: Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East, Topher Grace, Elle Young

Directors: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods

Running Time: 111 Minutes

Rating: R for Some Climatically Bloody Moments

Release Date: November 8, 2024 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Not since Elders Price and Cunningham have there been Mormon missionaries more excited to spread the message of the Church of  Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints than Sisters Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Paxton (Chloe East). While knocking on doors one fateful evening, they end up at the residence of Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant), who invites them in with promises of blueberry pie and enthusiastic conversation. But soon enough, the young ladies notice warning signs that he might have more sadistic intentions in mind. When they attempt to leave, he assures them that they’re perfectly allowed to do so, but it must be through the back door. Alas, actually getting there involves completing a maze/thought experiment of his devising.

What Made an Impression?: A Flurry of Metaphors: If you’ve always wanted a horror movie that could teach you the history of one of the most popular board games of all time, well then, Heretic has you covered. You see, Mr. Reed is a student of all the world’s religions, and he’s noticed that the history of the major monotheistic faiths is strikingly similar to that of a certain real estate competition. If classic Christianity is Monopoly, then Judaism is its lesser-known forerunner The Landlord’s Game, while Islam is the game for a new era, and Mormonism and all the other more recent offshoots are the wacky spinoffs. It makes a lot of intoxicating sense when Mr. Reed explains. He has a way of summing up this entirely Earthly existence with tidily convincing metaphors. While he has an advisable mix of healthy skepticism and genuine interest when it comes to matters of faith, his intellectual self-assurance is bedeviling.
Not So Naive: Mr. Reed has designed his test so meticulously that Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton are really no match for him. Or so it might seem. As it turns out, they’re nowhere near as clueless as you might expect twentysomethings who grew up in a deeply religious community to be. Thatcher plays Sister Barnes as battle-hardened and a stiff judge of character. Meanwhile, East is an outgoing bundle of friendliness as Sister Paxton, but she knows how the world works. The movie even starts with her talking about a deep philosophical revelation that came to her from watching porn. If anyone could muck up Mr. Reed’s plans and challenge him in ways that are just the least bit unexpected, it’s these two.
How Do You Play the Game?: I can’t endorse Mr. Reed’s methods, but his lesson plans and instinct for metaphor are quite useful. As he points out at one point, either we’re living in a universe run by a god who allows cruel, awful things to happen, and that’s terrifying; or, we live in a godless, totally random universe, and that’s also terrifying. He’s far from the first person to say something like that, but not many others have redesigned their whole house to make this point viscerally clear. Entering Mr. Reed’s domain is a microcosmic confrontation of the existential dilemma that perhaps all human beings grapple with at some point in their lives. Maybe Heretic will help you come up with a satisfying answer for why it’s worth it to keep on keeping on, or maybe it will leave you more racked with doubt than ever. But either way, you’re unlikely to ever forget it.

Heretic is Recommended If You Like: Theology lectures, Saw, Fresh baked goods

Grade: 4 out of 5 Doors

Cinematic Holiday 2023 Catch-Up Roundup

January 29, 2024

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CREDIT: NEON

Heading into the Christmas break, it seemed like I had a lot more new movies to catch up on than usual. Or maybe it was actually a normal amount, and I was just cataloging my filmgoing plans a little more closely than I typically do. Either way, it took me about a month, but I’ve finally checked off everything that was on my to-watch list. So let’s run down some quick thoughts on all of them!

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I Advanced to the Theater to Go See ‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’

May 4, 2023

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So much honorableness in one frame! (CREDIT: Paramount Pictures/Screenshot)

Starring: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Hugh Grant, Chloe Coleman, Regé-Jean Page, Daisy Head, Jason Wong

Directors: Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley

Running Time: 134 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: March 31, 2023 (Theaters)

I’ve never played Dungeons & Dragons, so my previous cultural exposure to this franchise is mostly the Community episodes built around it. To the point that in the leadup to seeing Honor Among Thieves, I kept wanting to call it Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. So… was this movie better than the first Greendale edition of D&D? Of course not! But was it better than the sequel episode, “Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons”? Eh, I guess so.

I ate mozzarella sticks and drank Mountain Dew while watching. It turns out that Doing the Dew is about as treacherous as the quest these characters went on.

Grade: A Sufficient Amount of Dragons and Emotional Beats

‘Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre’ is Impressively Confusing

March 1, 2023

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Which one’s Ruse? (CREDIT: Dan Smith/Lionsgate)

Starring: Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza, Cary Elwes, Josh Hartnett, Hugh Grant, Eddie Marsan, Bugzy Malone, Peter Ferdinando

Director: Guy Ritchie

Running Time: 114 Minutes

Rating: R for Spies Being Spies

Release Date: March 3, 2023 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Would you watch a movie in which the motley crew of Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza, and Cary Elwes team up together for some espionage? What if we also threw Josh Hartnett into the mix as one of the biggest movie stars in the world? And what if Hugh Grant played the billionaire arms dealer they have in their crosshairs? Well, that might all sound ridiculous, but it’s exactly what Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre has to offer. Will the plot make any sense, or will everyone be too stylish and quippy to even care about something like logic?

What Made an Impression?: I often find espionage movies difficult to parse, and I know I’m not the only one. In a way, that’s the nature of the genre.With all the subterfuge and double-crossings, these stories tend to be opaque by design. And Operation Fortune really takes the cake in that regard, because pretty much immediately I had no idea what was happening. Who are these spies? What country, if any, do they work for? What disaster are they trying to prevent? Does anything even matter?

That confusion isn’t necessarily a problem, especially if you have style and wit to spare, but it’s also nice to have a sense of something resembling a base reality. Instead, the Operation Fortune engine plows forward without letting us know its origin or destination. It’s so ill-defined that I was positively shocked when Guy Ritchie was revealed as the director during the credits. It certainly features some of his trademarks and regular players, but it also feels so out to sea that I could hardly believe that it was actually made by someone so familiar.

Anyway, even though I abandoned all hope of ever understanding what was happening, I at least held out hope that I might be entertained. That happened sporadically, with Plaza providing her trademark bitterly playful edge, which is a new flavor for Ritchie World. And at one point Cary Elwes says something that I’m pretty sure was meant as a subtle reference to The Princess Bride‘s poison cup scene. Other than that, everyone in the cast seemed to be enjoying themselves, while I was left out in the cold crying, “I wish I knew what was going on!”

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is Recommended If You Like: Hugh Grant being a total dirtbag

Grade: 2 out of 5 Hard Drives

It’s Worth Spending a Couple of Stylish, Silly Hours with ‘The Gentlemen’ of Guy Richie

January 21, 2020

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CREDIT: Christopher Raphael

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Marsan, Colin Farrell, Hugh Grant

Director: Guy Ritchie

Running Time: 113 Minutes

Rating: R for Drug Dealing, Gunfire Blood Splatter, and a Bit of Poison

Release Date: January 24, 2020

The Gentlemen is basically the Guy Ritchie-fied version of a John le Carré story. Instead of a labyrinthine plot about nattily dressed spies and other government associates double-, triple-, and quadruple-crossing each other, we have here a labyrinthine plot about nattily dressed drug dealers and dirt diggers double-, triple-, and quadruple-crossing each other. Also as with the typical Le Carré, The Gentlemen requires a diagram to make sense of everything that happens and how everyone relates to each other. But on a scene-by-scene basis, it is clear (or at least clear enough to be entertaining) where everyone’s motivations lie and who’s trying to pull the upper hand on whom.

CREDIT: Christopher Raphael

While watching The Gentlemen, I had similar feelings that I do when watching my favorite sports teams pull off successful big play after big play, with nary an error or defensive blunder the whole time. It is not always clear who to root for in these ensemble-driven crime-business action flicks, nor it is always preferable. But in this case, knowing that Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) and his partner Raymond (Charlie Hunnam) are the (relative) moral paragons is a big help. The fact that Mickey peddles cannabis instead of, say, heroin and does so proudly because his product doesn’t kill his customers, allows us to orient ourselves toward some clarity in a movie that is otherwise often quite cacophonous.

And Hugh Grant’s presence as a private investigator who is just dying to get the big scoop on everybody (and also not die in the process) lets us know that it’s a good idea to laugh. There’s plenty of silliness otherwise to prompt the chuckles, but Grant is the crux that assures us of the light-footed, devilishly good time we ought to be having. It’s always a delight to see him so immersed in this sort of gleefulness. Even the meta twist that he pulls off at the end somehow feels so right when in lesser hands it could have undermined the whole tone. Instead, The Gentlemen is a stylish romp that will have you going, “The good-ish guys won.”

The Gentlemen is Recommended If: You’ve always wondered what it would be like if Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy merged with Matthew McConaughey’s Lincoln commercials and added a dash of Hugh Grant in Paddington 2 Mode

Grade: 3 out of 5 Turtleneck Sweaters

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Paddington 2’ Sends Our Very Special Bear to Prison, But Truth, Common Decency, and Marmalade Prevail

January 10, 2018

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CREDIT: Warner Bros.

This review was originally published on News Cult in January 2018.

Starring: Ben Whishaw, Sally Hawkins, Hugh Bonneville, Hugh Grant, Brendan Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters, Peter Capaldi

Director: Paul King

Running Time: 103 Minutes

Rating: PG for Cheeky Humor and Threats of Violence Appeased by Marmalade

Release Date: January 12, 2018

The first Paddington film was a clear refugee allegory, with the titular “very special bear” (voiced then and now by Ben Whishaw) looking for a new home in England after his home in Peru is destroyed. The coded language about what happens to neighborhoods when bears move in was an obvious stand-in for how some actual Londoners (and other native residents around the globe) feel about the arrival of immigrants. Paddington 2 – in which the raincoat-sporting, marmalade-loving bear is imprisoned for grand theft despite his innocence – is not quite so stark in its messaging. It may have something to say about profiling, though Paddington’s wrongful arrest has more to do with misleading circumstantial evidence moreso than ungenerous assumptions about bearfolk. Still, for a family-friendly flick that distinguishes itself with a gentle touch, it is notable how much it does not hold back from some genuinely unsettling moments.

It all starts out pleasantly enough. Paddington, now living with the Brown family in London, wants to get his Aunt Lucy, the bear who raised him, a truly special present for her 100th birthday. He comes across a rare pop-up book in an antique shop, but it is a bit out of his price range, which is to say, he has no money (unless the Browns have been giving him an allowance). So he sets out to join the workforce, which begins with an abortive stint as a barbershop assistant (make sure to keep what appear to be narrative detours in mind, as these adventures are all intricately and carefully plotted) but then ultimately leads to an entrepreneurial effort as a window-washer. This segment is most memorable for Paddington’s improvising by rubbing the soap against the glass with his bum, which explains why this is rated PG and not G.

It gets a little scary from here on out, though. Considering the genre, there’s no need to worry that it will all descend into a bloodbath, but in the course of the narrative playing out, the danger does feel real, and fitfully intense. The main baddie is Phoenix Buchanan (Hugh Grant), a washed-up actor who is now best known for appearing in hacky dog food commercials. He’s the real thief behind the crime Paddington has been charged with, a villain in the Scooby-Doo mold, though a tad more competent: awfully silly but a master of disguise and escape. Grant has a blast with all the dress-up and smoke-and-mirrors.

But the most worrisome threats come during Paddington’s prison stint. He runs afoul of Nuckles (Brendan Gleeson), the inmate assigned to cooking duties, who is legendary for dispensing with those who question his culinary decisions. It really does feel like Paddington is just one false move away from Nuckles beating him to a pulp. This is the neat trick that P2 pulls off. We really do believe that Paddington’s fellow inmates are capable of the crimes they are guilty of (though we would surely never see them happen in a film this), while simultaneously we believe that they would indeed befriend a fundamentally decent, very special bear.

Aesthetically, attention must also be paid to Paddington 2’s artful compositions. Director Paul King was no slouch in the first Paddington, with a whimsical architectural style indebted to Wes Anderson. This time around, he grows even more confident, assembling artfully arranged close-ups: single characters take up the ideal frame space and there is still an impressive amount of background information. London can be harsh, but the care apparent in Paddington 2 makes it much easier to bear.

Paddington 2 is Recommended If You Like: The first Paddington, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Family films that don’t hold back

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Marmalade Sandwiches