Maybe ‘Love Hurts’ Should Have Just Been Entirely About the Real Estate?

February 6, 2025

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Which one of these people makes love hurt more? (CREDIT: Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures)

Starring: Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, Daniel Wu, Marshawn Lynch, Mustafa Shakir, Lio Tipton, Rhys Darby, André Eriksen, Sean Astin, Cam Gigandet

Director: Jonathan Eusebio

Running Time: 83 Minutes

Rating: R for Blood Shooting Out From Every Nook and Cranny of the Human Body

Release Date: February 7, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Marvin Gable (Ke Huy Quan) is a pillar of his community, a successful realtor entrusted with making people’s dreams come true. But he also has a very dark past, don’t you know. And it’s starting to catch up with him just in time for Valentine’s Day! Years ago, he ducked out of the criminal operation run by his brother Knuckles (Daniel Wu), who isn’t exactly willing to let go of what was. So some goons start showing up at Marv’s office and his houses, as does his old partner Rose (Ariana DeBose), who also believes that Marv still owes her plenty after the way he left things between the two of them.

What Made an Impression?: Who Did What Where When to Whom?: Action flicks about hidden backstories tend to be as convoluted as a labyrinth, and Love Hurts is no exception. There’s usually no point in trying to decipher them, but these flicks can still be enjoyed to perfection if the charm is there. And with Ke Huy Quan in the lead role, you might think that charm would in fact be there. After he re-emerged a few years ago in Everything Everywhere All at Once, I realized that he might just be one of my favorite entertainers of all time. And he’s still likable here, just not enough to get me to care about whatever the hell happens in this movie. The same is true to varying degrees about the supporting cast, especially Lio Tipton as Marv’s secretary Ashley. I haven’t seen Tipton very much since their early-2010s breakout in the likes of Crazy, Stupid, Love. and Warm Bodies, and that’s a darn shame, because Ashley’s romantic subplot with one of the goons is a satisfying enough side quest.
Bloody Disgusting: Maybe Love Hurts never really wanted to be charming. At least that’s what I started to suspect when the decent fellow played by Sean Astin gets fatally stabbed in the eye. This is an astoundingly gory movie, not in an over-the-top way that could generate guffaws, though I wouldn’t exactly call it realistic either. Although maybe sometimes blood does gush and squirt all over the place and I’ve just never been in the situations where I would have experienced that. It’s impressively rendered, but not exactly pleasant in any conceivable way.
I Ain’t Mad, Bro: I didn’t expect to be writing this sentence in 2025 (or any year, for that matter), but: thank god for Drew Scott! Yes indeed, one of the Property Brothers has a small part in Love Hurts as Marv’s real estate rival (although his twin is nowhere to be seen). And even weirder: I actually enjoyed his presence! I’ve never particularly cared for real estate reality shows, often instead finding them surreally soulless. But maybe that explains how Scott is so delightfully out of place in this blood-splattered world. Anyway, the rest of the movie sure could have used more of that “How the hell is this working?” energy.

If You’re Anything Like Me, Love Hurts is Recommended If You Like: Argylle, because it’s another recent action comedy featuring Ariana DeBose that had me feeling exactly the same way

Grade: 2 out of 5 Closing Sales

Does ‘Next Goal Wins’ Score Enough Goals of Its Own to Win the Game of Biopics?

November 13, 2023

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#GOALS (CREDIT: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Searchlight Pictures)

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Oscar Kightley, Kaimana, Uli Latukefu, Elisabeth Moss, Will Arnett, David Fane, Rachel House, Beulah Koale, Rhys Darby, Chris Alosio, Lehi Makisi Falepapalangi, Semu Filipo, Ioane Goodhue

Director: Taika Waititi

Running Time: November 17, 2023

Rating: PG-13 for A Few Mean Comments and Some Boobs Drawn on Someone’s Face

Release Date: November 17, 2023 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: The Soccer Gods Must Be Crazy! That could be an alternate title for Next Goal Wins. How else to capture the kooky cosmic destiny that paired Coach Thomas Rongen with the American Samoan national team? Based on the 2014 documentary of the same name, Next Goal Wins finds Rongen and the Boys from the Territory at the lowest point in their respective careers. That experience is a little different for the two of them, though, as Rongen (Michael Fassbender) actually has some experience on winning sides, whereas American Samoa has never scored a single goal in any of their games. In fact, they’re most famous for losing 31-0 in a 2001 match to Australia, the most lopsided result in international soccer history. They’re desperate for anyone to help move them in a more promising direction, so Rongen ventures out over the Pacific to the tiny American territory. He’s got plenty to teach them, but his resentment at the world threatens to get in the way of all that.

What Made an Impression?: Deep Hurting: For a film positioning itself as an uplifting feel-good sports flick, Next Goal Wins sure is filled with a world of hurt. When he’s not with the team (and even sometimes when he is with them), Thomas spends much of his time numbing his pain with alcohol, or complaining on the phone to his estranged wife (Elisabeth Moss). He also listens to voicemails from his teenage daughter, whom he’s apparently unable to contact. (Some viewers might be able to sniff out exactly why that is before the full truth emerges.) It might seem counterintuitive to put so much agony in a crowdpleaser, but it’s actually kind of essential. A tragic backstory can go a long way towards winning over the audience, and Next Goal Wins would be pretty disposable without it.
Sneaky Trans Visibility: There are already plenty of hooks in Next Goal Wins‘ premise, so I certainly wasn’t expecting the story of a transgender player to make its way in there as well. But Jaiyah Saelua really is a member of American Samoan soccer who also happens to be the first openly non-binary and transgender woman to compete in a World Cup qualifier. Non-binary actor Kaimana plays Jaiyah as a bit of a ditz on the field who’s more concerned about making sure that she looks stylish rather than putting in a consistent effort. But she’s tough and unsparing when cornered, which is about what you would expect for someone who joined the team before transitioning and continued to play after coming out. In Samoan culture, she’s known as a “fa’afafine,” which refers to a third gender or non-binary identity. Jaiyah’s is a type of queer story that’s particular to this setting, so it could very well resonate with potential viewers who’ve yet to see this sort of possibility.
A Perfectly Fine Trifle: Ultimately, Next Goal Wins isn’t revolutionary in any way, but it has a fine grasp of what it’s doing. This is a unique true tale that is going to get the right audiences cheering along to every step of American Samoa’s rocky-but-quirky soccer journey. At times it might get a little too quirky, particularly when writer/director Taika Waititi shows up as a dippy local priest who also serves as a one-man Greek chorus. But if you’re in the mood for some gentle culture shock and straightforward redemption, then Next Goal Wins has you covered.

Next Goal Wins is Recommended If You Like: Cool Runnings, Young Rock, Miracle

Grade: 3 out of 5 Losses

In ‘Guns Akimbo,’ Daniel Radcliffe Discovers That EVERYTHING’S Gone Akimbo

February 24, 2020

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CREDIT: Saban Films

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Samara Weaving, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Ned Dennehy, Rhys Darby

Director: Jason Lei Howden

Running Time: 95 Minutes

Rating: R for Big Booming, Bloody Effective Gunfire and An Awkward Attempt to Use the Toilet

Release Date: February 28, 2020 (Limited)

If some goons bolted a couple of huge black pistols to your hands and then forced you to fight in a live-streaming death match, what would you do? That’s the setup for writer-director Jason Lei Howden’s thought experiment/action bonanza Guns Akimbo. Presumably, for many of us, the answer to this question would be what happened to Daniel Radcliffe’s video game developer character Miles, which is to say: run around in a panic, get really stinky while struggling to put on pants and go to the bathroom, and maybe survive for a little while by relying on instinct and adrenaline. What is perhaps less likely is where Miles ultimately ends up, which is summoning all he’s got to turn the tables on the freaks running this game. Maybe most people in this predicament would wind up dying within five minutes, but that’s why this story isn’t about them.

With movies about these sorts of illicit underground sensations, I always wonder about the larger context. Is the rest of the world just carrying on normally, or this some sort of dystopia, or maybe a mini-dystopia in a town that can’t think of anything better to do than have its citizens kill each other? The game in Guns Akimbo takes place wherever its players go, so there is a vibe of massive violence occurring in plain sight. Actually, it’s not a vibe so much as an actuality. To wit, when Miles goes to his office to get one of his co-workers to help him out with something, there ends up being a massacre with plenty of collateral damage. There’s not a whole lot of context-setting, but I think we get just enough to understand that the deadly consequences are unpredictable and indiscriminate, though only a small percentage of the world is obsessed with the carnage.

Keeping Miles on his toes is his opponent Nix, played by Samara Weaving in a profoundly disaffected style that’s miles away from her wonderfully hysterical work in Ready or Not. She’s got herself constantly numbed by drugs, all the better to keep herself focused on blasting away any comers with panache and to not be overcome by the emotional scars of her tragic backstory. Eventually, she and Miles realize they have more in common than they thought, and that leads to a fairly satisfying climax. But really, the main attraction is seeing how Miles figures out how to do fairly simple tasks with huge pieces of metal blocking his hands. At one point, a homeless man played by Rhys Darby offers him a hot dog but refuses to slip it into his mouth, and you can never know how cruel that is until you see it. How Miles was not constantly fainting from the pain, we may never know. The human body’s fight to survive can be quite resilient.

Guns Akimbo is Recommended If You Like: Embracing that scuzzball lifestyle

Grade: 3 out of 5 Handguns

‘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