Buzz Blog

Back to Black **
In this post-Walk Hard world, musical biopics need to at least put in some effort not to feel lazy and ridiculous—and this one doesn’t put in nearly enough. This profile of singer/songwriter Amy Winehouse (Marisa Abela) covers approximately the last decade of her life, opening with her as an 18-year-old Londoner with dreams of getting into the music biz, moving through her eventual record deal, and into stardom with its accompanying fame-and-fortune pitfalls, particularly the substance abuse that would ultimately take her life in 2011 at the age of 27. Matt Greenhalgh’s screenplay focuses on key people in Winehouse’s life—her beloved grandmother (Lesley Manville), her dad (Eddie Marsan) and particularly her volatile relationship with eventual husband Blake (Jack O’Connell)—and Abela does rock-solid work in the lead role, always working to craft a character rather than do a successful impression of Winehouse. But Greenhalgh and director Sam Taylor-Johnson seem painfully incurious about Winehouse both professionally (never really interested in why her retro style was embraced) or personally (reducing the demons driving her to self-destruction to the idea that she was sad about not getting a chance to be a mommy). Since a compelling feature documentary about Amy Winehouse already exists in Asif Kapadia's 2015 Amy, which informs of how much this movie is leaving out, it feels worse than redundant. Available May 17 in theaters. (R)

Evil Does Not Exist ***1/2
Maybe I know exactly what’s going on in the last few minutes of Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning Drive My Car; maybe I don’t. That’s not meant to be coy, but merely a suggestion that “solving” this movie isn’t a necessary condition for finding it wonderful, and wondrous. It’s set in a rural Japanese community, where a corporation is planning to open a “glamping” site in the nearby woods. Local handyman Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) makes it clear at a community meeting that the plans could have dangerous environmental consequences—and he’s not the only one to surprise the Tokyo-based corporation’s representatives, Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani) with their opposition. For a hot minute, it feels like Hamaguchi is going to serve up an art-house version of Doc Hollywood, with the big-city folks learning from the salt-of-the-earth small-town folk about what really matters. But this is ultimately both simpler and more complicated than that—in the sense that it’s haunting simply as a tone piece serving Eiko Ishibashi’s remarkable score, and because there’s a more unsettling notion at work here regarding the way people who don’t really grasp the reality of “nature” can tend to fetishize it. That idea informs the way the aforementioned final scenes take a truly unexpected turn into something akin to folk horror—but they make an impact beyond what could be conveyed simply by having the events “explained.” Available May 17 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)

I Saw the TV Glow ***1/2
Between 2021’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and this sophomore feature, Jane Schoenbrun has carved out a fascinating creative space in exploring the way people turn to media as a way to deal with not being otherwise seen by those close to them for who they truly are. It opens in 1996, as 7th-grader Owen (Ian Foreman) becomes fascinated with 9th-grader Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), who has her own obsession in a supernatural TV series called The Pink Opaque; two years later, with Owen now a high-schooler himself (Justice Smith), the two reconnect over their shared connection with the show. Schoenbrun’s gifts for crafting an unsettling production—built largely on sound design and Alex G’s music—continue to impress, and the aesthetics of the series-within-the-movie are period-perfect without feeling like blatant nostalgia-mongering. Richer still is the psychology that Schoenbrun is mining, understanding that the fandoms for certain stories are intense precisely because they speak to things that the fans themselves may not even fully understand; it doesn’t require a knowledge of the filmmaker’s own gender identity to see this as an allegory for trans self-discovery. Lundy-Paine in particular provides a haunting, haunted performance as reality and fiction start to blend into something resembling an evangelical fervor. Sometimes we connect with a story so much we don’t know where we end and it begins, specifically because it might offer a window into a new beginning. Available May 17 in theaters. (PG-13)

IF **1/2
In the intro to the preview screening for IF, star Ryan Reynolds describes it as “live-action Pixar”—and between the Pixar-trademarked “what if [fill-in-the-blank] had feelings” premise and the Michael Giacchino score, it’s easy to see that’s what writer/director John Krasinski was aiming for. The thing about Pixar movies, though, is that their emotion builds from a precise internal logic, where IF is merely a ragged knapsack full of sentimentality. It focuses on 12-year-old Bea (Cailey Fleming), who’s staying with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw) in Brooklyn while her widowed dad (Krasinski) is hospitalized. In grandma’s apartment building, she meets Cal (Reynolds), who shares her apparent ability to see all the imaginary friends like Blue (Steve Carell) left adrift by children as they grow up. What ensues is almost aggressively fanciful, gloriously lens-flared by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and full of music, dancing and terrifically-designed characters like Louis (the late Louis Gossett, Jr.), a threadbare teddy bear. What it’s not full of is a story that makes sense, either in its particulars—how the world of the IFs operates; when people can and cannot see them, and why—or in what its big-picture metaphor is actually supposed to be. And it’s a genuine bummer to watch Reynolds try to wrestle some fun out of his grumpy, put-upon character, almost never allowing him to play to his strengths as a performer. Maybe this is meant to be a plea to retain childlike wonder, but this adult just keeps wondering what—beyond being colorful and silly—any of this is intended to mean. Available May 17 in theaters. (PG)