Buzz Blog

Blacklight **
We could quibble over precisely how many of Liam Neeson’s roles over the past decade constitute him going back to the “very particular set of skills”/grizzled-badass routine, but suffice it to say that it’s a lot, and it grows increasingly difficult to tell them apart. Here he reunites with Honest Thief director Mark Williams to play Travis Block, who’s spent a couple of decades as a kind of personal fixer for the FBI director (Aidan Quinn), extracting deep-cover agents from assignments-gone-sideways. When one of Block’s colleagues (Taylor John Smith) appears to be on the verge of sharing sensitive information with a journalist (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Block needs to decide which side of the fight he’s going to be on. There’s at least the potential for rich character material in a tool of the establishment who’s grown comfortable enough in his tool-ness not to ask too many questions, but the screenwriting team provides Block with an adorable granddaughter just to make sure we know he’s a decent guy, while also giving him obsessive-compulsive disorder in a way that’s gimmicky-bordering-on-exploitative. It’s also a movie loaded with exposition between its grimly obligatory chase scenes, and dialogue gems like a news editor responding to knowledge of the U.S. government committing extrajudicial domestic executions with, “Yeah, that is messed up.” Neeson’s presence always provides a sense of intense professionalism, but a few years from now you’ll be flipping past Blacklight on cable and thinking to yourself, “OK, which one is this now?” Available Feb. 11 in theaters and streaming via Peacock. (PG-13)

Death on the Nile **1/2
See feature review. Available Feb. 11 in theaters. (PG-13)

I Want You Back ***
If you have no idea where I Want You Back is headed based on the premise alone, then you’ve clearly never watched a mainstream romantic comedy before—but predictability can always be overcome by charm. Here, that mostly comes from the lead performances by Jenny Slate and Charlie Day as Emma and Peter, whose meet-cute is more like a meet-sad, when they’re both sobbing in the stairwell of the office building where they work, mourning getting dumped by their respective romantic partners. But a Strangers on a Train-esque plan soon emerges: They’ll work individually on breaking up the new relationships of one another’s respective exes, Noah (Scott Eastwood) and Anne (Gina Rodriguez). Director Jason Orley (Big Time Adolescence) and screenwriters Isaac Aptaker & Elizabeth Berger (Love, Simon) lay the foundation for the growing friendship between Emma and Peter with simple but time-tested moments like drunk karaoke, and the welcome twist of not making Noah and Anne obviously horrible people to root against. But while the two-hour running time sags with stuff like Emma’s mentoring of a troubled middle-schooler and an over-extended denouement, it’s a satisfying experience watching Slate and Day click with a unique kind of chemistry. You can smile along with a well-crafted love story even if you know exactly what the last scene is likely to be. Available Feb. 11 via Amazon Prime. (PG-13)

Jockey ***
Co-writer/director Clint Bentley’s feature feels like a test case for how far a profoundly clichéd sports-movie premise can get by on the specificity of its milieu and the strength of its performances. Clifton Collins, Jr. plays Jackson Silva, a veteran jockey working on a small racing circuit in Arizona, trying to wring a few more races out of a body that’s falling apart from too many injuries. That’s a premise that has found its way through plenty of stories of characters who could literally die from one more race/fight/game—The Wrestler comes most immediately to mind—with another familiar hook in the arrival of a young would-be jockey (Moises Arias) who claims to be Jackson’s son. But for every bit that feels cribbed from other movies, including an obsession with shooting at sunrise or sundown for that magic-hour glow, there’s solid material conveying the risk and brutal self-discipline of jockey life, like balancing two halves of an apple to see which one is lighter as a jockey tries to lose weight. Collins turns in a terrific central performance, perhaps topped by Molly Parker as a horse trainer with her own sense of history and a warm, platonic friendship with Jackson. Then there’s the big climactic race, which Bentley directs in such a beautifully concise way that other criticisms can feel like nit-picking. That’s when “I’ve seen this before” deserves to be modified by “but not like this.” Available Feb. 11 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (R)

Kimi ***1/2
“Good artists copy, great artists steal” goes the quote oft-attributed to Pablo Picasso, but I’d offer a friendly amendment: Great artists steal with style. Thus, what might have been a third-generation copy of Rear Window by way of Blow Out becomes, in the hands of Steven Soderbergh, a techno-thriller with a bucketful of satisfying touches along the way. Zoë Kravitz plays Angela Childs, an agoraphobic remote-working employee of a tech company whose product is an Alexa-like voice assistant called Kimi. One user's Kimi has recorded what may be a sexual assault and murder—and when Angela uncovers the evidence, she becomes the target of those who want to keep it quiet. The obligatory traumatized back-story for Angela at least feels a bit more relevant with a prominent COVID-era backdrop, and Kravitz sells Angela as more than a collection of tics. But the best stuff here appears around the edges: a shot of an executive's set-up for Zoom media interviews that reveals its artificiality; sound design that turns the act of putting on headphones into a complete escape from the world; the touches in David Koepp’s script that provide constant reminders of how much we share about ourselves via technology, often unwittingly. Soderbergh’s formal touches feel distinctly his own, even as Cliff Martinez’s lush score evokes Hitchcock-via-Bernard Herrmann. Movies like this become fun when we know we’ve seen movies like this before, but not like this. Available Feb. 10 via HBO Max. (R)

Marry Me **
On a certain level, it feels ridiculous to knock a studio romantic comedy for reasons of plausibility, since fantasy is fundamental to the genre’s DNA. But there are varying types and degrees of “don’t buy that,” and this glossy, frothy lark is guilty of one that’s hard to overlook. It’s the story of Kat Valdez (Jennifer Lopez), a pop-music superstar whose planned live-event wedding to a fellow singer (Maluma) goes south when his infidelity goes viral moments before the “I do’s.” Impulsively, Kat singles out an audience member—single-dad math teacher Charlie Gilbert (Owen Wilson)—and the two complete strangers exchange vows on stage. There’s obviously a meta-level appeal to Lopez playing a celebrity whose every romantic move is endlessly scrutinized, and the movie breezes along pleasantly enough through a handful of JLo song performances as the manufactured marriage inevitably evolves into genuine feelings. There is, unfortunately, a massive problem with Wilson’s character: He makes no sense at all. Charlie is so saintly that there’s nowhere for the character to go, especially when his one defining flaw—lack of spontaneity—is kinda solved by the whole “got married to a pop-star he’d never met, in front of the entire world” thing. Without any prickliness to overcome in the central pairing, and even a woeful underestimation of how Charlie’s privacy would be destroyed, it’s all vanilla sentimentality. Even a fantasy needs a little something called “conflict.” Available Feb. 11 in theaters. (PG-13)

Ronnie’s **1/2
It certainly wouldn’t be possible to make a documentary about Ronnie Scott’s legendary London jazz club without telling the story of Ronnie Scott himself, nor without capturing performances by the many gifted artists who have played there. There’s just something ever so slightly off about the way director Oliver Murray has those elements bump up against one another. Launching from the 60th anniversary of the club in 2019, Murray offers a profile of Scott himself, a successful saxophone player in the British music scene whose 1950s visit to New York inspired him to launch his own jazz venue with friend and fellow musician Pete King. The mostly-chronological narrative includes plenty of journalists, professional colleagues and general admirers (including Quincy Jones and Mel Brooks) talking about the experience of the club itself, and Ronnie’s quickly gets a bit tedious when there are only so many ways to talk about how unique and wonderful an experience it was. There’s much stronger material in the stories of Scott and King, particularly Scott’s struggles with depression and the financial challenges of keeping the club afloat. And not surprisingly, the highlights come in rare footage of Buddy Rich, Sarah Vaughn, Miles Davis, Nina Simone and many more, capturing the up-close-and-personal vibe of watching legends perform. As a celebration of the venue and its founders, it’s a bit clunky, especially when even Scott and King knew we’d all rather be watching Van Morrison sing “Send in the Clowns” accompanied by Chet Baker. Available Feb. 11 via SLFSatHome.org. (NR)

The Sky Is Everywhere ***1/2
At first glance, director Josephine Decker (Madeline’s Madeline, Shirley) might not seem like a natural fit for an adaptation of a young-adult novel, but the bursts of visual imagination she brings to a story of emotional tumult proves to be just what the genre needs. Based on the book by Jandy Nelson, it tells the story of Lennie Walker (Grace Kaufman), a high-school senior and gifted clarinetist whose world has been shattered by the death of her beloved older sister Bailey (Havana Rose Liu) from a congenital heart ailment. While trying to find her way through her grief, Lennie connects with Bailey’s similarly heartbroken fiancé (Pico Alexander), while also finding herself attracted to a fellow music student (Jacques Colimon). The core romantic-triangle narrative is bound to feel pretty familiar from other YA tales; you can almost time to the second when someone will appear to witness something awkward at exactly the wrong time. But while grief is at the center of this story, there’s a recognition—both in Kaufman’s lovely performance and the style Decker brings to its telling—that someone like Lennie is bouncing between 100 different feelings at once. The key scenes convey those emotions with rose bushes coming to life, characters breaking into dance, pieces of furniture literally raining from the sky, musical notes swooping through a school hallway to affect people physically. Whatever your feelings about young-adult fiction, this is a case of a filmmaker committing completely to how this medium can convey the mad fluctuations of the teenage heart. Available Feb. 11 via Apple TV+. (PG-13)