Buzz Blog

Dreamin’ Wild ***
As he showed in 2014’s Love & Mercy, writer/director Bill Pohlad isn’t interested in the infinitely mockable rhythms of the conventional music biopic, and this fact-based story finds a satisfying drama in the idea of family members who really and truly love one another. It opens in 2011, with Donnie Emerson (Casey Affleck) living a simple life running a floundering music studio and playing wedding gigs with his wife Nancy (Zooey Deschanel), 30 years removed from making a DIY record with his brother Joe (Walton Goggins) as teenagers. But the record unexpectedly becomes an underground internet hit, leading to a chance for Donnie to have the success that always eluded him. Pohlad spins back and forth between that timeline and circa-1979 Donnie (Noah Jupe) and Joe (Jack Dylan Grazer), and those flashback segments never quite succeed at conveying Donnie’s budding musical genius. It’s much more effective at the willing sacrifices made by their father (Beau Bridges), and Joe’s willingness to surrender the idea of himself as a rock star to Donnie’s greater talents. At the center of it all, Affleck subtly captures the complex feelings of a middle-aged guy getting an unexpected second chance, and how those feelings involve a conflict between his own artistic goals and not letting down the people he cares about. It’s an interesting pop-culture footnote with a little visual imagination and quite a bit of heart. Available Aug. 4 in theaters. (PG)

The Meg 2: The Trench **
The idea that Ben Wheatley was an outside-the-box pick for an over-the-top genre movie suggests a lack of familiarity with his actual movies, but he really doesn’t bring much distinctive personality to this over-stuffed sequel. Jason Statham returns as deep-sea rescue expert Jonas Taylor, along with a few other survivors of 2018’s The Meg (Cliff Curtis, Page Kennedy, kid-in-peril turned teen-in-peril Shuya Sophia Cai, etc.), to once again face off against giant prehistoric sharks. There’s a subplot involving some corporate environmental villainy in the deep ocean leading to a survival subplot that spends far too much time in the dark of the ocean—then eventually fighting bad guys on an ocean research platform—dealing with misadventures that have nothing to do with giant prehistoric sharks (the ostensible reason anyone is watching at all). Eventually, we get to an imperiled beach, and Wheatley occasionally finds some crazy fun amidst the chaos (including an inside-the-shark’s jaws cam). The script just feels painfully overstuffed, cutting back and forth between theaters of action that involve not just the sharks, but a giant octopus and a horde of amphibian dinosaur things. Maybe someone could make a coherent piece of summer fluff out of a story that tries to be a little bit Jaws, a little bit Jurassic World, a little bit Sphere and a little bit earthbound Jason Statham action movie—but Wheatley doesn’t. Available Aug. 4 in theaters. (PG-13)

Shortcomings ***
The “character study of a young screw-up” has been a Sundance staple for years, but fortunately this one provides enough of a unique cultural context—along with terrific first-time feature-directing work by veteran actor Randall Park—to make it feel fresh. Justin H. Min plays Ben Tagawa, a film school dropout managing a Northern California repertory theater and floundering as much in his relationship with his girlfriend Miko (Ally Maki) as in his professional life. When Miko abruptly decamps to New York for an internship and a “break” from their relationship, Ben has the opportunity to take a hard look at himself, if he chooses to do so. Adrian Tomine adapts his own graphic novel with a playful look at ideas like fetishized sexual attractions and what kind of “representation” in media is good enough, rarely feeling like he’s stopping to deliver a lecture. Park also finds just the right visual style for the story, employing simple compositions but using unexpected hard edits as a perfect way to heighten a punch line. There are moments when Shortcomings feels a bit too enamored with its own cleverness—like giving Jacob Batalón’s character a reference to the current Spider-Man franchise of which he’s a part—and an episodic nature that’s bound to feel somewhat slight. But the cast is appealing enough to carry over the rough patches and find humorous bits of wisdom, like the destined-to-be-classic nugget from Ben’s best pal Alice (Sherry Cola), “Just because I’m a hypocrite doesn’t mean I’m wrong.” Available Aug. 4 in theaters. (R)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem ***
The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird was a mix of artistic creativity and elements cribbed from popular 1980s comics, so it’s fitting to see this latest extension of the franchise follow that paradigm. It’s another origin story of sorts, exploring how the four anthropomorphic, ninjutsu-trained turtles—Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Raphael (Brady Noon), Donatello (Micah Abbey) and Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.)—came to be, and their quest to emerge from the sewers and find acceptance in the human world. That goal sets them against another mutated creature, Superfly (Ice Cube), and the conflicting attitudes about dealing with normal humans between Superfly and the turtles’ father/mentor Splinter (Jackie Chan) is more than slightly reminiscent of that between X-Men’s Professor Xavier and Magneto. Fortunately, there’s considerably more imagination in the animation style overseen by director Jeff Rowe (The Mitchells vs. the Machines), which mixes CGI with an almost stop-motion-like character design, plus a lo-fi aesthetic—complete with explosions rendered like hand-drawn curlicues—that feels just right for something inspired by a DIY comic. The script by Rowe, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg keeps the referential goofiness at an unobtrusive level, allowing for a kid-friendly adventure that keeps its nostalgia focused not on the dopey pop-culture incarnations of the 1990s, but on the OG material of the 1980s. Available Aug. 2 in theaters. (PG)