Buzz Blog

Atlas **1/2
Netflix has seemingly become the de facto home of sturdy, 1990s-style genre adventures, and director Brad Peyton (Rampage, San Andreas) is just the guy to keep that ball rolling. Jennifer Lopez stars as Atlas Shepherd, an intelligence analyst in a near-future where a rogue A.I. entity called Harlan (Simu Liu) once launched a war against humanity, then escaped to a distant planet to regroup after suffering losses. Atlas joins a military mission to that planet, but an ambush leaves her alone and dependent on her A.I. battle suit called Smith (voiced by Gregory James Cohan) for survial. The premise, built on Atlas’s deep-seated mistrust of A.I., evokes the “a toon killed my brother” buddy-action dynamic of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, though it kind of seems like every human should be as skeptical of A.I. as Atlas is. Lopez acts the hell out of her emotional and physical turmoil, all part of a movie that doesn’t worry much about subtlety, including that time-honored trope of robotic characters tilting their heads in bird-like curiosity. But it’s also, fortunately, quite a bit of energetic fun, full of explosions, battling mechanical thingamabobs and playful banter between Atlas and Smith. Even if you’re never particularly invested in whether or not Atlas defeats her personal demons, you can still enjoy the kind of broadly-effective entertainment that theaters just don’t seem particularly interested in providing anymore. Available May 24 via Netflix. (PG-13)

Babes ***
It’s always a precarious balancing act when a movie tries to incorporate both raunchy comedy and sincere emotion, but this energetic riff on motherhood and female friendship manages to hit its targets more often than it misses. Eden (Ilana Glazer) and Dawn (Michelle Buteau) are BFFs since childhood whose patterns of getting together have already been upended by Dawn having two kids—and that’s before Eden finds herself unexpectedly pregnant from a one-night stand that might have been more had the guy (Stephan James) not died the next day. Director Pamela Adlon emphasizes a romanticized “autumn in New York” vibe that evokes stuff like vintage Woody Allen and When Harry Met Sally…, while the screenplay—by Glazer and her Broad City collaborator Josh Rabinowitz—provides an effective balance between the two very different experiences of the protagonists as, respectively, expectant and already mothers. At its heart it’s always about the connection between Eden and Dawn, built on decades of shared references and affectionate mutual “bitch”-calling, but complicated by the realization that different phases of life mean things inevitably change. The humor is actually just as often light and good-natured than it is built on bodily fluids, though it pushes things a little when Eden’s misguided babysitting decision regarding appropriate viewing for Dawn’s toddler goes awry. Mostly, there’s the warmth of building a story around how chosen-family relationships can get just as messy and complicated as blood-family relationships. Available May 24 in theaters. (R)

The Beach Boys ***
After a career spent largely as a producer, Frank Marshall has turned in recent years to celebrity “wiki-mentaries”—sturdy profiles of subjects like The Bee Gees and Dan Rather that depend on how much they can extend beyond rudimentary fact-delivery systems. This one provides just enough detail to remain consistently interesting, following the seminal California band from their origins with the musical Wilson brothers, their cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine through the 1960s and into the years when they struggled to find an identity as the pop-music landscape shifted. Marshall gets contemporary reflections on surviving members Love, Jardine, Brian Wilson and other players, while also taking advantage of a rich store of archival footage. And though the narrative threads include the expected focus on Brian’s struggles with mental illness and the legal battles that broke family bonds, there are also great bits of background—like the sonic studio innovation resulting from the mutual admiration society between Brian and the Beatles—and rarities like audio of the Wilsons’ father/band manager Murry Wilson being the overbearing presence that eventually led to his firing by the band. It’s perhaps too simplistic to end the story before the Beach Boys became a nostalgia act far removed from their creative heights, Marshall crafts something that definitely makes it worth spending a couple of hours rather than just skimming a Wikipedia entry. Available May 24 via Disney+. (NR)

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga ***1/2
See feature review. Available May 24 in theaters. (R)

The Garfield Movie **
Jim Davis’s plus-sized comic-strip feline has made its way onto screens both large and small—and while I won’t pretend I’m familiar with every previous animated Garfield incarnation, I’m going to suggest that his sensibility doesn’t lend itself to more than bite-sized presentation. This latest feature brings us a sort of origin story of how the abandoned kitten Garfield (voiced by Chris Pratt) makes his way to human owner Jon (Nicholas Hoult), then later reunites with his long-absent father Vic (Samuel L. Jackson) to face another cat from Vic’s past (Hannah Waddingham). Director Mark Dindal tries to bring the same manic energy to this story—which includes heists, narrow escapes and derring-do on the top of moving trains—that he brought to his classic The Emperor’s New Groove, which is an odd fit for a character best known for his sloth. A worse fit still is the bald-faced sentimentality involved in both the saucer-eyed kitten Garfield flashbacks and the estranged-dad storyline, which clashes with the action set pieces and a staggering array of product placements; worse than being a brand deposit, it's a multiple  brands deposit. The thing is, this movie is a perfectly serviceable family-friendly time-waster, except that it has nothing to do with the title character in the sense that he’s been known for 45 years. It’s like a Peanuts movie where Charlie Brown not only kicks the football, but hits the winning field goal. Available May 24 in theaters. (PG)

Sight **
You can tell me all you want that a movie is “based on a true story,” but if the guiding psychological motivation of the protagonist doesn’t make any kind of sense, it’s hard to get past that. The true story in this case is that of Dr. Ming Wang (Terry Chen), a pioneering eye surgeon in 2007 Nashville who takes on the seemingly hopeless case of a blind 6-year-old girl from India (Mia SwamiNathan). But as we soon learn, Ming is driven by the events of his past, growing up during the tumult of China’s Cultural Revolution. Those flashback scenes—with Ben Wang playing the younger version of Ming—are generally the most interesting part of Sight, capturing the events that (at least temporarily) upend Ming’s plans to follow his parents into medicine. They’re also where we learn of Ming’s connection to Lili (Sara Ye), a girl he grew up with, and that his ferocious determination to do the impossible is somehow linked to their separation. And between Chen’s often stilted, overly-internalized performance and a clunky script, that idea simply never clicks in a way that gives the story an emotional pull. It also doesn’t help that director Andrew Hyatt and the screenwriting team want to push the story in the direction of an inspirational, pull-your-self-up-by-your-bootstraps immigrant tale, which often feels disconnected from the present-day events. Maybe every part of this actually happened; that doesn’t happen to make it all dramatically compelling. Available May 24 in theaters. (PG-13)