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Movie Reviews
Dune: Part Two
(Timothée Chalamet, Avantika Vandanapu, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, et al. | PG-13 | 2 hr 46 min | Warner Bros. Pictures)

Overview: Dune: Part Two explores the mythic journey of Paul Atreides as he unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a warpath of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the known universe, he endeavors to prevent a terrible future only he can foresee.

Verdict: The first Dune belonged to Timothée Chalamet. Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, the son of one of the aristocratic houses controlling the known universe, as well as an unenthusiastic contender for the position of genetically engineered, holy-war-waging messiah. It was, and still is, inspired casting, and not just because Chalamet has the patrician bone structure of an imperial hemophiliac.

Chalamet, Hollywood’s chosen prince, has been navigating the crumbling path toward movie stardom like someone who’s aware there are more mistakes to be made than rewards to be had, which gives an extratextual charge to his performance as someone trying to avoid being corralled into the parts others would like him to play. He’s good in that first film, a boy-man dwarfed by galaxy-size power games, and even better in its follow-up, which finds his character fighting alongside the indigenous Fremen, giddy with revolution and new love.

But Dune: Part Two isn’t his movie — it belongs firmly to Zendaya, who gives the second half of Denis Villeneuve’s Frank Herbert adaptation an emotional tangibility that the first, in all its exotic majesty, eschewed.

Science fiction is Villeneuve’s genre, and has been even before he started making movies about extraterrestrial communication or desert planets being mined for an interstellar travel-enabling drug. He can’t help but render the world as otherworldly onscreen, turning the Toronto of Enemy into a jaundiced alternative reality in which hostile doppelgängers made perfect sense, and the Arizona suburbs of Sicario into a pre-apocalyptic wasteland.

This remove has been his most consistent quality as a filmmaker, even when it has undermined the actual stuff of his films, and one reason the Dunes are so terrific is that they provide the ideal material for his unshakable aesthetic.

The macrocosm of his Dune movies is supposed to feel forbiddingly distant, populated by a mankind that’s iterated itself into sisterhoods of space witches, societies of goth fascists, and orders of human computers (though, alas, there is no Stephen McKinley Henderson in the sequel) amid a hierarchical structure of suspicious clans.

Villeneuve’s facility with this stuff doesn’t just come from his talent for spectacle, though there are set pieces in Dune: Part Two that aim to blow the top of your skull off. The sequence where Paul tries to prove himself to the Fremen by riding a sandworm for the first time is staged like someone attempting to hook themselves to a high-speed train.

The camera keeps by the character’s side as he tumbles disorientingly through an upended ocean of sand, only to find himself clinging to the armored hide of the giant creature as rushing air whips him around. But the filmmaker’s real gift is his ability to treat this strange futurescape as fully inhabited. Why bother going over the niceties of local succession traditions when we can just watch the young noble celebrate his birthday by slaughtering slaves in front of a crowded arena chanting his name, with the light of the black sun draining whatever color might be left on a planet that’s already near-monochromatic?

Dune: Part Two isn’t any more compromising than the first film when it comes to the conflicts and stratospheric intrigues that result in piles of corpses to be incinerated on the ground. The secretive Bene Gesserit, a matriarchal society whose superhuman company includes Paul’s mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and emperor’s daughter Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), are still carrying out a horse race between the respective results of their eugenic labors. Reverend Mother Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling), a senior member among the Bene Gesserit, prefers the sociopathic but controllable Feyd-Rautha over the rebellious Paul.

The emperor (Christopher Walken, the only actor unable to get into the film’s vibe) is revealed to have engineered the Atreides’ downfall, to Irulan’s frustration. And Jessica, having sampled a poisonous, prescience-enabling sandworm by-product in order to become a Reverend Mother herself for the Fremen, seems to have become a true believer in all the prophecies her order strategically seeded, and walks around having conversations with the newly awakened fetus she’s carrying. We haven’t even gotten into the real freak shit of the later Herbert books, and this is already thrillingly strong stuff.

Rather than soften the strangeness of its source material, Dune: Part Two shifts its perspective to one on the ground — to Zendaya’s character, the Fremen warrior Chani. She was more promise than actual presence in 2021’s Dune, a figure from Paul’s visions who’s only encountered in the flesh after the Harkonnen family ambushes and wipes out most of the Atreides forces. But she’s the soul of the new film, skeptical of all the messiah talk she rightfully believes was planted to control her people, and skeptical of this off-world upper-cruster who comes seeking refuge, swearing he’s not like the others and that he only wants to learn the ways of her people and help them. (Chani’s fundamentalist cohort Stilgar, played by Javier Bardem, meanwhile, is certain that Paul is the prophesied leader meant to free them).

The beats of Paul’s time with the Fremen echo ones from Avatar and Dances With Wolves, only here they’re a calculation. Paul may be sincere in falling in love with Chani and wanting to take up the Fremen cause, but he’s also trying to decide if he wants to use them to fulfill the destiny he’s been avoiding.

Zendaya’s fierce, open-hearted performance provides a counterpoint to all the high-level machinations of the plot. As someone who understands that the interests of this charismatic outsider aren’t actually those of her and her community, she can’t help but be swayed by him anyway. “Your blood comes from dukes and great houses,” Chani says to Paul at one point. “Here, everyone is equal.”

His response — “I’d very much like to be equal to you” — is the perfect kind of howler, a reminder that shrewdness is no match for when you want to believe. In the maelstrom of wariness, hope, and betrayal she projects in the final act, Zendaya shows us that emotions can be universal, even in a context that’s anything but. [A.W.]





Spaceman
(Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, Kunal Nayyer, Paul Dano, et al. | R | 1 hr 48 min | Netflix)

Overview: Six months into a solitary research mission to the edge of the solar system, an astronaut, Jakub (Adam Sandler), realizes that the marriage he left behind might not be waiting for him when he returns to Earth. Desperate to fix things with his wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan), he is helped by a mysterious creature from the beginning of time he finds hiding in the bowels of his ship. Hanuš (voiced by Paul Dano) works with Jakub to make sense of what went wrong before it is too late.

Verdict: There are relatively few actors who are able to seamlessly go back and forth between comedy and drama, but Adam Sandler is one of them. Best known for his successful brand of inane comedies, he’s also starred in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love, the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems, and the Netflix basketball drama Hustle, so he’s got bona fides on both sides.

His latest film, Spaceman, might be his biggest stretch yet, though. He plays Jakub Prochazka, a Czech astronaut (sans accent) who’s been sent on a solo mission to Jupiter to collect particles of something called the Chopra Cloud. Naturally, the trip has kept him away from home for a long time, and his wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan) has grown disenchanted in his absence despite being pregnant with his baby.

It’s established early on that he’s supremely lonely, and his haggard look indicates that he’s sleep-deprived. This could be the reason that he starts imagining a gigantic talking spider that he calls Hanus (voiced by Paul Dano), which says it’s been studying Jakub’s loneliness. As he becomes enthralled with what Hanus is telling him about his present and his past, Jakub becomes increasingly distant from the people trying to guide him on his mission.

Directed by Johan Renck and written by Colby Day, the film is a perplexing choice by Sandler, and anyone else involved with it. Unlike most of his other movies, this one is as artsy as they get, featuring all mood and no action. In fact, it contains a number of enigmatic scenes that seem more designed to frustrate the viewer than to actually tell an interesting story.

There is lots of talk about the romance that Jakub and Lenka used to have, but the flashback scenes that show their life together are impossible to decode. It doesn’t help that those scenes are shown through a weird, blurry filter that almost makes it look like we’re viewing it through water. Clearly Renck wants to indicate the types of scenes being shown, but the execution leaves something to be desired.

The film also fails to answer a lot of storytelling questions. Why would you use only one man for a mission to Jupiter? The movie is based on a book by Czech author Jaroslav Kalfar, but what compelled the filmmakers to keep the characters as Czech when they’re being portrayed by an American and a Brit, both using their normal accents? And what the hell is going on with the spider, whose presence seems to go back to Jakub’s childhood?

As mentioned, Sandler has proven before that he knows how to carry a drama, but that is not the case here. Mostly confined to the spaceship, he never gets a chance to spread his wings, and the subdued nature of the role doesn’t do him any favors. Mulligan is a great actor, but there is no emotional connection to her part, and her performance also suffers. Dano, Isabella Rossellini, and Lena Olin are present, but fail to make an impact.

Anyone logging on to Netflix and hoping to find another wacky Adam Sandler comedy will be in for a rude awakening with Spaceman. Even those who are fans of his dramatic work will wonder why he decided to make this particular movie, or why anyone involved thought it would turn out well at all. [A.B.]





Poor Things
(Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo, et al. | R | 2 hr 21 min | Searchlight Pictures)

Overview: From filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and producer Emma Stone comes the incredible tale and fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter (Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe).

Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents.

Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.

Verdict: Adapted from Alasdair Gray’s novel of the same name, Poor Things is essentially a reimagining of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, wherein the resurrected corpse is that of a woman (Stone) who died by suicide, her body a perfect vessel for the curiosity of mad scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe).

Much to his surprise, this beguiling girl he dubs Bella Baxter becomes more than an experiment to him; she becomes a daughter of sorts. Theirs is a bond forged by science but blossoming in sincere mutual adoration. However, Bella is growing up fast. Though she has the body of an adult, her mind begins as that of a child. As such, she is full of extraordinary potential and hungry for both knowledge and experience.

More swiftly than her father would like, she begins to yearn for what lies beyond the humdrum confines of the Baxter home, which is literally shot in black and white. When a lusty rogue (Mark Ruffalo, absolutely sublime in his sleaziness) offers to show her the wider world, she jumps at the chance — and all the curious opportunities that follow.

As Bella sets forth, her world bursts into color. On their voyages, she finds cities of aqua and gold, with pink skies and lush greenery. Bella herself is oft bedecked in sickly pale blues and vivid but slightly nauseating yellows. And that’s a virtue, not a glitch.

Through this lens, Poor Things becomes a coming-of-age story that radiantly reflects a young woman growing to understand herself as a creature of intelligence, sexual desire, and autonomy. While the origin of the film is the birth of horror itself, Lanthimos’s Poor Things has a lovely aesthetic that pulls its pastels from surprisingly grim sources.

At the film’s press screening at the New York Film Festival, production designers Shona Heath and James Price and costume designer Holly Waddington revealed that their color choices were plucked from anatomy books, reflecting the hues of veins, blood, and bile. This might sound repulsive on the page, but in execution it is glorious — while still feeling a wee bit gross.

When the Poor Things designers explained their inspiration, a puzzle piece of the film clicked into place for me. Life and death are intricately intertwined in the film, just as the repulsive colors of the body’s innards are to Bella’s widening world. Coolly, Lanthimos leaps from Bella’s galavanting back to lonely Godwin’s dissection exhibitions. Both are experimenting — one in life lessons, the other on corpses.

With this perturbing palette, Lanthimos and his team remind us that no matter how far she travels from home, Bella is tied to Godwin (or God, as she calls him) and destined to return. Beyond the literal, this also speaks to death itself: her origin and her eventual end. And yet Poor Things will not get caught up in the gloom of its own meditation on mortality, for this is a happy tale. [K.P.]





Mean Girls
(Angourie Rice, Avantika Vandanapu, Reneé Rapp, Auliʻi Cravalho, et al. | 12-A | 1 hr 20 min | Warner Bros.)

Overview: New student Cady Heron gets welcomed into the top of the social food chain by an elite group of popular girls called the Plastics, ruled by the conniving queen bee Regina George. However, when Cady makes the major misstep of falling for Regina’s ex-boyfriend, she soon finds herself caught in their crosshairs.

Verdict: It’s a Mean Girls for a new generation.

The Mean Girls movie musical just came out in theaters, and many are wondering if it could possibly live up to the iconic original. I’m here to tell you: it does!

The new version of Mean Girls is based on the Broadway musical that was in turn based on the original 2004 film, but it’s been adapted to movie audiences. Gone are the big, over-the-top showtunes, replaced with more modern-sounding pop mixes of the songs. While these pop arrangements might take some getting used to, they mostly stand on their own and create new and exciting versions of the songs that Broadway fans will know and love. Some are even plainly terrific.

This is especially true because of the incredibly talented cast of queer actors, Reneé Rapp, Auli’i Cravalho, and Jaquel Spivey, who play Regina George, Janis, and Damien respectively.

Of course, these three actors had HUGE shoes to fill. The original roles that they’re stepping into are iconic and changed pop culture. Still, the three of them make their own creations with these beloved characters.

First there’s Rapp. As the iconic Queen Bee herself, she has undeniable star power. Her version of Regina is dripping in sexuality, whether she’s interacting with boys or girls. The moment that Cady first sees her can only be described as gay panic.

She’s a star, there’s no denying it. She has so much charisma and talent that every single person in the movie and watching the movie is in love with her. Rapp should catapult to the A-List with this role.

While it’s maybe impossible to outdo the original Regina, Rachel McAdams, one way Rapp succeeds is comedically. There were many times where I found myself laughing more at Rapp’s version of the character than McAdams’.

While many queer members of Gen Z went into the movie in love with Rapp, a huge number will also leave with crushes on Cravalho.

Honestly, the one way that 2024 Mean Girls clearly outshines the 2004 original is the character of Janis. When played by Cravalho, she becomes the canonically queer icon she was always meant to be.

Having Janis come out while in middle school also helps to update the story in the best way. Gay guy/gay girl high school friendships are such an underrated, but real, friendship dynamic that is becoming even more popular as more and more young people are coming out.

There’s also a new version of Regina and Janis’ backstory and falling out that is honestly beyond perfect and makes the entire movie better. I don’t want to spoil it, so I won’t say too much.

Overall, the new Mean Girls is a perfect adaptation and update for today’s young people. It’s engaging, it’s bright, it’s youthful, and you can tell how much fun the cast was having while filming it.

It also fully knows how unserious many of the scenes are. Instead of putting on their actor faces and getting their jobs done, the new cast has a blast and lets loose. It’s a perfect fit. [M.R.]





The Beekeeper
(Jason Statham, Josh Hutcherson, Amber Sienna, Jeremy Irons, et al. | R | 2 hr 31 min | MGM)

Overview: One man’s brutal campaign for vengeance takes on national stakes after it’s revealed he’s a former operative of a powerful and clandestine organization known as Beekeepers.

Verdict: I enjoy watching Jason Statham growling and punching baddies in the face as much as the next guy. But I also enjoy competent scripts and strong direction. The Beekeeper drops the ball in those departments. It’s yet another recent Statham project where the actor rises to the occasion but the film as a whole is a letdown, much like last year’s Meg 2: The Trench and Expend4bles.

Written by Kurt Wimmer and directed by David Ayer, The Beekeeper finds Statham as Adam Clay, a former operative for an organization called “The Beekeepers” who hides out by pretending to be – wait for it – an actual beekeeper. After his elderly neighbor commits suicide after falling for a phishing scam, Clay sets out to kill everyone involved with the scam. The main FBI agent hunting Clay also happens to be the daughter of the elderly neighbor. I won’t spoil who the scam leader played by Josh Hutcherson is connected to, but it is also completely absurd.

The Beekeeper feels like a discount John Wick film on the surface. While the Keanu Reeves pictures developed a rich world involving The Continental, The Beekeeper feels muddled with its organization lore. Wimmer’s characters are all stock action players and the scenarios they are in are routine. The Beekeeper tries to be timely by taking down scam artists and politicians, but its points land with a thud.

Wimmer attempts to inject tongue-in-cheek dialogue with endless puns, analogies, etc. about bees, but this clashes with Ayer’s serious direction (the closest Ayer comes to being in on the joke is lighting a lot of the scenes with shades of yellow). The silly dialogue might have worked if the film were retooled as an action comedy. As is though, the bee-related wordplay comes across as hilariously inept. Such gems include “Who the fuck are you, Winnie-the-Pooh?” and “To be or not to be.”

Though it is mostly dumb and trashy, The Beekeeper has its moments. Hutcherson and the great Jeremy Irons have some fun with their villain roles; Irons is an ex-CIA head named Wallace who is protecting Hutcherson’s bratty Derek Danforth. There are a couple of solid action scenes, with one involving an elevator trap and another involving a knife fight in a tight hallway. And again, Statham is always enjoyable to watch in these macho roles. The hand-to-hand fighting here from him is pretty good and offers reprieves from the dialogue exchanges.

The Beekeeper alternates between being dull and so bad that it’s good. The script by Wimmer is terrible and Ayer’s direction is perfunctory. Statham, Hutcherson, and Irons occasionally give the film some buzz though. [B.R.]





Wonka
(Timothée Chalamet, Gustave Die, Olivia Coleman, Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Grant, et al. | PG | 1 hr 56 min | Warner Bros.)

Overview: Wonka is a 2023 musical fantasy film directed by Paul King, who co-wrote the screenplay with Simon Farnaby based on a story by King.

It tells the origin story of Willy Wonka, a character in the 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, featuring his early days as a chocolatier.

Verdict: Paul King’s musical fantasy Wonka is the sweetest surprise of 2023. The prequel film offers an irresistible blend of whimsy, charm, and earnest joy—all without falling into the saccharine notes that can turn an audience bitter. Perfectly balanced and with a unique flavor profile, Wonka is a treat to be enjoyed by all ages.

The film is an origin story for Willy Wonka, the eclectic chocolatier from Roald Dahl’s 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Fresh off his journeys traveling the world and perfecting his art, the young would-be candy-maker/magician arrives in an undisclosed European town, ready to make a name for himself at the world-famous Galeries Gourmet—essentially a block of shops famous for their delectable chocolate.

Of course, the established “chocolate cartel” doesn’t welcome the competition, and Willy finds that getting a foothold in the market is much more difficult than he had imagined.

Unlike the previous adaptations (1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), this version lacks the cynical, dark undertones that lend a sense of danger to the chocolatier and his confectioneries. Verging on magic realism, Wonka is a cheeky, sentimental musical that uses upbeat, heartfelt songs to drive the narrative.

Sure, the previous films were technically “musicals,” but composer Neil Hannon’s songs are reminiscent of the old Rodgers and Hammerstein productions, updated slightly for contemporary tastes. In other words, they aren’t edgy or grim-dark, and the lyrics actually help tell the story (unlike Wish, which feels like a jukebox musical but with songs no one has heard of or likes).

Honestly, it’s a refreshing return to family-friendly stories with stakes that aren’t depressingly bleak or unnecessarily violent, and music that is pure, joyful fun.

Timothée Chalamet shines as a young Willy Wonka, a younger, decidedly more naive take on the entrepreneur. Honestly, the Wonka trailers did Chalamet a disservice: his performance is much more natural (and tolerable) within the story’s context than how the soundbites come across in isolation. His vocals and choreography are impressive, and he effortlessly carries the entire film on his shoulders. If there were any doubts, Wonka proves Chalamet has serious star power.

King has pulled together a great ensemble cast that never feels bloated or shallow. Even the minor characters have clear personalities and motivations throughout. Calah Lane’s Noodle struggles to match Chalamet’s on-screen presence, but that speaks more to his magnetic charisma than any deficiency on her part.

Olivia Colman is a queen, and has fun in her Dickens-esque villain role, while the sweets-addicted chief of police, played by Keegan-Michael Key, unsurprisingly delivers the film’s biggest laughs.

Wonka pulls off the impossible feat of being a satisfying prequel as well as a fresh take on a (very) familiar IP. King, who directed and co-wrote the screenplay, must have seen Tim Burton’s 2005 hit and said “hold my hot cocoa.”

Wonka takes all the odd choices in Burton’s take — the cringy childhood backstory, Johnny Depp’s off putting Michael Jackson impression, the over-the-top production value — and makes them work in this new narrative. It’s a thoroughly satisfying film, and has the makings of being a truly timeless classic musical (if not in the world, than at least in my heart). [S.B.M.]





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