Buzz Blog

Armand **1/2
There’s so much going on in this psychological drama from writer/director Halfdan Ullman Tøndel that I wish I could cherry-pick the interesting stuff, and leave behind everything that feels forced and unfocused. It opens after-hours at a Norwegian school, where Elisabeth (Renate Reinsve) has been called to a meeting about an “incident” involving Elisabeth’s 6-year-old son Armand and classmate Jon. Gradually, more details emerge: the incident involves a possible sexual assault; Jon is Armand’s cousin, the son of Elisabeth’s sister-in-law Sarah (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and her husband Anders (Endre Hellestveit); Elisabeth is a somewhat well-known actor, whose husband and Sarah’s brother recently died. For a while, it feels like Armand might be mostly a comedy of manners about a school hopelessly fumbling how to handle an awkward situation, with Thea Lambrechts Vaulen turning in a terrific performance as Armand’s well-meaning but unsupported teacher. Then there’s the stuff surrounding a parent wondering if her already-wounded family is about to be shattered again, with Reinsve’s five-minute hysterical laughter-to-hysterical tears meltdown at the center. But Tøndel ultimately gets way too busy and surreal with subtext about Elisabeth’s status as a celebrity, complete with an absurdly over-the-top interpretive dance sequence, and ultimately deciding that solving the mystery of what actually happened between the barely-seen Armand and Jon matters as much as what everyone suspects happened. Somewhere in this two-hour movie, there’s a great 40 minute short waiting to get out. Available Feb. 14 at theaters valleywide. (R)

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy **1/2
Over the course of four movies and nearly 25 years, Bridget Jones-Darcy—the perpetually-flustered British singleton from Helen Fielding’s books, played by Renée Zellweger—has remained reliably, predictably the same, even as her life and the world around her have changed. In this latest installment, she’s a widowed single mom to Billy (Casper Knopf) and Mabel (Mila Jankovic), still mourning Mark (Colin Firth, appearing briefly in Bridget’s imagination) four years after his death. Most of the comedy is built around her tentative first steps back into the dating world, and the fact that she always seems to be doing something humiliating in the presence of Billy’s science teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor); despite Zellweger’s best efforts, a little of that cringe goes a long way. Almost all of the real energy comes from returning supporting cast members, including Emma Thompson as Bridget’s tart-tongued gynecologist, and Hugh Grant, un-killed-off from the previous movie and still having loads of fun as the caddish Daniel (who, in a nice never-grows-up touch, still uses a flip-phone). The stuff about grieving and helping children through the loss of a parent is earnest but predictable, making the appeal of this story almost entirely about whether you enjoy revisiting Bridget every decade or so to see if she’s still the kind of person who can’t zip up a dress and manages to burn pasta (spoiler alert: she is). Available Feb. 13 via Peacock. (R)

Captain America: Brave New World **
A movie that’s been in development for years can’t control the precise historical moment in which it appears, but it’s hard to imagine a theoretically escapist entertainment that manages to be as tone-deaf as it is completely uninteresting as an adventure. Much of what’s going on here revisits themes from the Disney+ Falcon and the Winter Soldier series, as Sam Wilson—once the Falcon, now taking up the mantle of Captain America—struggles with trying to live up to a specific legacy, and the added pressure of trying to do that as a Black man, which remains potentially compelling material. But the plot makes his primary adversary “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford, taking over for the late William Hurt), the general-turned-President of the United States and eventual (as marketing has made clear) “Red Hulk,” and it’s kinda awkward when the fictional POTUS is also an emotionally-volatile monster with an unnatural skin tone who proceeds to destroy Washington, D.C. Yes, it’s also tedious as an action movie, with director Julius Onah unable to devise any genuinely thrilling moments, and a script full of characters making stupid decisions for the expedience of plot. Most disappointingly, though, it tries to paste hard stuff about America’s legacy of racial injustice onto something where we’re supposed to care if the biggest asshole in the world is capable of change. Available Feb. 14 in theaters. (PG-13)

The Gorge ***
Zach Dean’s screenplay makes a stew out of a lot of different ingredients—a healthy helping of zombie-influenced body horror, a cup of “forbidden-love” romance, a soupçon of bug-hunt action, a dash of government conspiracy thriller—that somehow manage to work together. At an unknown wilderness location, a pair of solitary souls—ex-Marine Levi (Miles Teller) and Lithuanian assassin Dasha (Anya Taylor-Joy)—take an assignment to man the observation towers on opposite sides of a fog-enshrouded chasm, where their task is to keep the creepy things in their from ever getting out. Along the way, they form an attachment through written messages, and the movie is at its most surprisingly charming when Levi and Dasha are realizing their interest in one another. It’s also got plenty of shoot-’em-up action involving creatively-designed creatures like spiders with human skulls for bodies, and director Scott Derrickson (Doctor Strange, Black Phone) allows that material to be as fun as it is creepy. Eventually, the previously mysterious circumstances surrounding the gorge have to be given a bunch of exposition, and it never feels like it adds that much to the experience to be told specifically whom Levi and Dasha are fighting against. The good stuff involves developing the idea of whom they are fighting for, and realizing that with maybe one fewer ingredient, The Gorge nails being a horror-action-romance. Available Feb. 14 via AppleTV+. (PG-13)

Oscar-Nominated Short Films – Animation ***
In terms of pure visual artistic creativity, it’s a solid batch; in terms of audience-engaging storytelling, a bit less so. The most straightforward simple fun comes in Loïc Espuche’s Yuck!, a good-natured tale of a group of kids at a vacation campground muddling through their first understanding of romantic feelings. And it’s hard to resist the sheer weirdness of Nina Gantz’s stop-motion Wander to Wonder, which deals with a trio of mini-sized humanoids left to fend for themselves after the death of the human who had cast them in a kiddie TV program. A bit less effective is Daisuke Nishio’s Magic Candies, a colorful but somewhat meandering narrative about a young boy with a bag of jawbreakers allowing him supernatural communication experiences with his couch, his dog, his dead grandmother and more. In the Shadow of the Cypress, by Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani, brings a terrific hand-drawn aesthetic to exploring a family impacted by PTSD, yet fails to deliver a big emotional punch. Perhaps weirdest and most disappointing of all is Nicolas Kleppens’ Beautiful Men, another stop-motion drama, this one involving a trio of Belgian brothers visiting Istanbul for hair-transplant surgery. Whatever it was trying to say about vaguely dysfunctional family dynamics—wrapped up in the appearance of an almost supernatural fog—gets almost completely lost in the technical achievement and inventive character design. Available Feb. 14 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)

Oscar-Nominated Short Films – Live Action **1/2
It’s a vain wish, I realize, but it would be lovely if the Academy recognized short films for the quality of the filmmaking, rather the message attached to it. No fewer than four of this year’s nominees include some sort of on-screen post-script about the matter at hand—which makes the exception a standout. Writer/director Victoria Warmerdam’s darkly comic Dutch entry I’m Not a Robot finds a woman named Lara (Ellen Parren) questioning her identity when she’s unable to successfully pass a Captcha test, including a few sneaky ideas about autonomy and the reasons people might turn to automated “companionship.” Other than that, it’s earnestness in spades, albeit with different degrees of storytelling success. Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz’s A Lien addresses risks to undocumented immigrants through tense thriller dynamics, as a couple begins to fear that their appointment for a green-card interview might be a trap. And Cindy Lee’s The Last Ranger boasts a terrific child performance by Liyabona Mroqoza in a story about South African rhino poaching. But things dip a bit with The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, set during the 1993 ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It offers a timely challenge to speak out against fascism, and a look at the shameful face of capitulation, there’s virtually nothing interesting going on from a filmmaking standpoint. And then there’s Anuja, Adam J. Graves’ tale of orphaned sisters in India, with the older trying to help the precociously math-gifted younger girl get into a boarding school; the epilogue showing unhoused Indian children watching the film feels grossly self-congratulatory. Available Feb. 14 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)

Paddington in Peru ***1/2
See feature review. Available Feb. 14 in theaters. (PG)

SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) ***
Director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (the Oscar-winning Summer of Soul) ventures again into the music of the 1960s for his documentary profile of Sylvester “Sly Stone” Stewart, and ends up with something that’s much more compelling when dealing with its title than when dealing with its subtitle. Thompson tracks the full arc of Stone’s professional life, from the childhood and work as a San Francisco DJ that exposed him to a wide range of music and people, to the cross-cultural appeal of Sly and the Family Stone in the late 1960s, to the drug abuse that ultimately derailed Stone’s career. It’s a terrific study of what made him such a musical innovator and influence on artists from George Clinton to Prince, told from the perspective of many of his collaborators and bandmates at the time, with plenty of footage capturing his unique charisma as a performer. But Thompson also wants to investigate the factors that might have contributed to Stone’s fall from grace, with contemporary artists like D’Angelo, Andre 3000 and Vernon Reid addressing the particular pressures of fame on Black creators. It’s not that those aren’t valid or potentially compelling questions; they simply feel back-loaded, such that the movie feels like it’s rushing through its ostensible thesis. “The Burden of Black Genius” ends up feeling like an idea for a great documentary, but maybe a different documentary. Available  Feb. 13 via Hulu. (NR)