Buzz Blog

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom ***
It’s more than slightly ironic that in the closing moments of this likely-final entry in the current incarnation of the DC Comics extended universe, it calls back to the first entry in the Marvel Comics extended universe—and provides a pleasantly surprising reminder of why the latter worked. Arthur Curry/Aquaman (Jason Momoa) is now trying to balance life as the new monarch of Atlantis with being a new father, just as his old revenge-minded nemesis Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) re-emerges with a powerful new weapon. Aquaman winds up needing the assistance of his exiled half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson), creating a dynamic similar enough to the Thor/Loki sibling antagonism that the screenplay is wise to acknowledge it out loud. It’s still a reasonably effective hook for the story, part of a generally loose-limbed piece of action filmmaking energized by Momoa’s boisterous performance, and which leans into ridiculousness like a genetically-modified squid and an undersea pirate hideout led by a creature voiced by Martin Short. Even the seemingly-obligatory “clash of anonymous armies” finale feels toned down by director James Wan to allow for a focus on the main characters. While it may not be exceptional enough to make you sad that these characters are going away, it is perhaps a road map for why comic-book movies still can deliver simple pleasures, provided they stop taking themselves too seriously. Available Dec. 22 in theaters. (PG-13)

The Boys in the Boat **
It’s easy to understand why this fact-based story—explored in Daniel James Brown’s 2013 book—would be appealing as a classic underdog-sports drama. It’s just a bummer that director George Clooney and screenwriter Mark L. Smith have rendered it such a bland mix of genre clichés. In 1936 Seattle, University of Washington engineering student Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) is living out of a car in a railyard Hooverville when he sees joining the university’s junior varsity crew team, led by coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton), as a chance for housing and a stipend. The rest of Joe’s teammates are similarly working-class folks, in contrast with the privileged Ivy Leaguers who are their primary competition, and The Boys in the Boat clearly establishes the appeal of the UW crew to Depression-era Americans, as well as the financial pressure on Ulbrickson for his teams to be successful. Unfortunately, with a couple of token exceptions, the screenplay focuses so heavily on Joe—including a thoroughly uninteresting romance with a classmate (Hadley Robinson)—that his teammates don’t get to develop their own personalities. And considering this is a sport likely unfamiliar to many viewers, there’s little effort invested in explaining how these inexperienced guys might have gotten so good so quickly, with the races reduced to breathless announcers and triumphal orchestral music. It all builds to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and if you were hoping this might become the kind of movie with enough restraint not to literally involve Hitler in the proceedings, I’ve got some bad news for you. Available Dec. 25 in theaters. (PG-13)

The Color Purple **1/2
For nearly 40 years, the conventional wisdom has been that Steven Spielberg was the wrong filmmaker to adapt Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel; after this filmed version of the stage musical interpretation, perhaps the real problem is that the novel lends itself to questionable adaptation decisions. The same narrative structure remains, beginning in early 1900s Georgia where Celie (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi as a teen, Fantasia Barrino as an adult) is married off to “Mister” (Colman Domingo), beginning a decades-long struggle with abuse and being able to find her own personhood. This version does at least recognize the full-on sexual relationship between Celie and Mister’s mistress, jazz singer Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson), and nails the casting pretty much from top to bottom; it’s hard to imagine a better choice than Domingo to take the place of Danny Glover. The real issue is that people keep trying to turn this edgy story into feel-good melodrama, which is certainly what happens when you turn its scenes into musical production numbers. It’s not even that those numbers are poorly crafted, because some of them are quite exceptional as directed by Blitz Bazawule, including the movie-style fantasy Celie imagines for her feelings about Shug. They simply don’t feel right for this story, which—while it is about surviving pain and finding unexpected happiness—feels better served by quiet dignity than by the swelling of an orchestra. Available Dec. 25 in theaters. (R)

Ferrari ***
As a general rule, the best biopics aren’t actually biopics in the conventional cradle-to-grave sense; they’re stories about a particular moment in a character’s life, where that character just happens to have been a real person. Director Michael Mann narrows his focus on racing/auto engineering legend Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) to 1957, a nexus for several pivotal events: he’s still grieving the recent death of his son with his wife Laura (Penélope Cruz); he’s trying to keep his second family with mistress Lina (Shailene Woodley) secret; his company is on the brink of financial collapse; and the upcoming Mille Miglia road race might be the one chance to save it. Like many of Mann’s features, this one deals with aspects of toxic masculinity, as Driver captures a ferocious competitor wrapped up in his need for control. But this might also include the best female performance Mann has ever directed, with Cruz blowing the roof off the joint in evoking Laura’s mix of grief, pride and conviction that the Ferrari company owes just as much to her pragmatic day-to-day management as Enzo’s public face. The narrative hits a few bumps in trying to pull all of its threads together, and requiring Woodley to affect an Italian accent turns out to be … let’s just say “ill-advised.” But Mann generally keeps things moving forward with energy, understanding that you can learn plenty about someone without having to track them across decades. Available Dec. 25 in theaters. (R)

The Iron Claw **1/2
The problem with writer/director Sean Durkin’s story of the real-life Von Erich wrestling family isn’t that he goes excessively bleak; if anything, he reins in the actual parade of tragedy these people endured. Even dialed back to about 80% of true-to-life awfulness, though, this narrative starts to feel punishing once its thematic notions have become clear. We get the backstory about patriarch Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany) as a one-time professional wrestler who has passed his obsession on to his sons—Kevin (Zac Efron), Kerry (Jeremy Allen White), David (Harris Dickinson) and Mike (Stanley Simons)—in a way that shapes their entire lives. And we get a great flavor of life on the mid-tier wrestling circuits of the early 1980s, and how a wrestler like Kevin who’s great in the ring might not get a chance at the big time if he’s bad on the microphone. But while every performance is solid and Durkin brings some style to what might have been a rote biopic, there’s not a lot more to be gleaned from the story ’round about the point where Fritz makes it clear he has a ranked order for which son is his favorite, depending on how they’re following Fritz’s plan for their lives. Toxic masculinity and bad parenting—which also includes Maura Tierney as the passive mother—certainly make for dramatic conflict, up to the point where the mounting consequences are almost too much to stomach. Available Dec. 22 in theaters. (R)

Migration **
There’s a place for animated features that exist for no other purpose than providing a little fast-paced physical comedy, and that place is at the intersection of “meh” and “whatever.” This one follows a family of mallards—father Mack (Kumail Nanjiani), mother Pam (Elizabeth Banks) and their two ducklings (Caspar Jennings and Tresi Gazal)—as they finally convince over-protective Mack to leave their safe pond for a flight to Jamaica. Various shenanigans ensue, including an encounter with a tough Central Park pigeon (Awkwafina) and an imprisoned parrot (Keegan Michael Key), plus the geographically-improbable pursuit by a voiceless high-end restaurant chef, and the chases are offered up with sufficient gusto by director Benjamin Renner (Ernest & Celestine). You simply can’t point to anything here that feels inspired enough to warrant more than the most cursory attention, from the voice performances to the plot dynamics—and that’s leaving aside the coincidence of how similar a lot of this feels to the just-released Chicken Run Netflix sequel. It’s a lot of technical craft without soul, hitting bullet-points on checklist for a 21st-century CGI animated feature, in the same way that a pro-sports general manager can point to all the measurable statistics for a draft pick as justification, even if they’re a bust because they never cared enough to put in the effort to become great. Available Dec. 22 in theaters. (PG)

Poor Things ***1/2
Many classic films have been driven by this satirical concept: We take for granted certain things in our world which, if viewed from a perspective seeing them for the first time, are clearly ridiculous. In their adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s novel, director Yorgos Lanthimos and screenwriter Tony McNamara craft a unique sort of feminist fable. What would a world built around the desires and expectations of men look like to a woman trying to understand it as a blank slate? Bella Baxter (Emma Stone)—salvaged from the Thames in Victorian London as an unidentified nine-months-pregnant corpse—is revived by Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) through an experimental transplant of her fetus’s brain into her body. The resulting creation begins with the physical and mental capacity of an infant, and Stone’s performance is hilarious both as a full-sized baby and as a person learning the codified, gendered rules of her society. Lanthimos leans into an exaggerated design and color palette for his world (once it emerges from the black-and-white of Bella’s early existence) that evokes vintage Terry Gilliam, and does occasionally go over-the-top with the fish-eye lenses that emphasize a distorted view of things. But the great supporting performances and the wicked humor throughout the picaresque narrative allows for a delightfully naughty skewering of challenging whether the way things have always been makes any sense at all. Available Dec. 22 in theaters. (R)

Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire *1/2
George Lucas famously used The Hidden Fortress as an inspiration for the original Star Wars; Zack Snyder turns to The Seven Samurai as a foundation for his Star Wars wannabe, but it plays like one of those memes with a structure like “Kurosawa + space opera + ? = $” where Snyder didn’t bother to solve for “?”. It opens on a faraway moon called Veldt, where an ex-soldier named Kora (Sofia Boutella) has found a refuge among an agrarian people—but a visit from the army of the Homeworld and its sadistic Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein) pulls her back into the budding civil war to protect her new home. Thus begins a journey to gather a team of warriors—including Djimon Hounsou, Ray Fisher, Bae Doona, Staz Nair and Charlie Hunnam—which allows for episodic action asides and about 30 seconds of character development for each new recruit. The problem, though, isn’t so much the density of the back-story, as it is the entire tone of this stab at a franchise epic. Snyder’s general vibe as a filmmaker has long been “how can I make this look awesome, from his slow-mo action sequences to the trademark shot of a character set against the sky in mid-leap read to deliver some punishment. It's all so forced and joyless, as though Snyder believes only way to be taken seriously is for everything to be bleak and dour; even substituting Anthony Hopkins' earnest expository narration for Star Wars' written opening crawl feels like a miscalculation. Whatever other criticisms one might level at George Lucas, he always seemed to understand that the “?” in the aforementioned equation should be “fun.” Available Dec. 22 via Netflix. (PG-13)