Buzz Blog

The Alto Knights **
All actors want a challenge, so maybe it sounded interesting in theory to Robert DeNiro to attempt a variation on GoodFellas where he played both his character and Joe Pesci’s character. He’s back working with writer Nicholas Pileggi in a biographical drama about 1950s New York gangsters Frank Costello and Vito Genovese (both played by DeNiro), childhood friends who come into conflict after Genovese returns from exile overseas after the war and expects to get control of his criminal empire back from Costello. Director Barry Levinson tries to give the proceedings a little pop and sizzle in his flashbacks and montages, but those moments are heavily outweighed by stretches that seem to last forever, including several courtroom scenes and the climactic mob meeting that gobbles up most of the last half-hour. But a huge part of anyone’s experience with this story is going to depend on rolling with the double-DeNiro casting, and it just never really works. It’s not that DeNiro isn’t capable of creating distinctive personalities for Costello and Genovese, because they’re unique individuals beneath all the prosthetics. Those individuals are simply characters we’ve seen before in this kind of movie, to the point where it feels like they’re simply imitations of other cinematic mobsters. If you want to see a movie where a hot-headed criminal gets homicidal over a seemingly mundane comment, I’ve got a much better recommendation for you. Available March 21 in theaters. (R)

Ash **
If you accept the premise that Tarkovsky’s Solaris, Scott’s Alien and Carpenter’s The Thing are the best examples ever of “isolated characters trying to survive” science-fiction, you’ll understand why someone trying to paste those movies together—and doing so poorly—is such a bummer. Music producer-turned-filmmaker Flying Lotus (aka Steven Ellison) directed this tale that opens with a woman named Riya (Elza González) waking up disoriented on a remote planet’s advance colony station, with no memory of who she is or why most of her fellow crew members are dead. The screenplay by Jonni Remmler tries to play up the mystery component, with recollections coming back to Riya in jump-scare bursts and the one other surviving crew member (Aaron Paul) attempting to help her. But as the character carrying 90 percent of this narrative, González simply can’t deliver a performance with enough weight for the story to matter emotionally. That leaves the genre stuff, and aside from some fun moments involving the station’s automated medical robot—it asks, after a particularly icky bit of surgery, for Riya to “rate your experience”—this narrative plods lazily for way too long before trying to deliver a big finish of action and body horror. You could spend 90 minutes on a pastiche of greatness, or take the time to experience the real deal. Available March 21 in theaters. (R)

The Assessment ***
One wonderful thing about this job is being able to discover a movie without any sense for where its premise might go, as happened with this funky science-fiction psychodrama, and one of its lead performances. In a near-future where environmental collapse has led to a tightly-controlled, dome-protected society, couples like scientists Mia (Elizabeth Olsen) and Aaryan (Himesh Patel) must apply for the privilege of being allowed to procreate, and submit to a week-long observation by “assessor” Virginia (Alicia Vikander) who gets to make that call. Saying more would deprive you of some of the joy of discovery, particularly as Vikander’s character goes sideways at about the 25-minute mark in a way that immediately made me giddy with the possibilities. What follows has the bare bones of a thriller, but ultimately addresses plenty of the anxieties confronting prospective parents: how their lives might be disrupted; worries about turning into the worst version of one’s own parents; the realization that your partner might be better at it than you are. It’s kind of a bummer that director Fleur Fortuné and the screenwriting team expand their allegory in far less interesting directions, resulting in a third act that’s not nearly as effective as the previous two. But for those two acts, it’s hard not to wonder whether the experience Mia and Aaryan go through is one no parent-to-be should have to endure, or one every parent-to-be should have to endure. Available March 21 in theaters. (R)

Locked **1/2
There is no such thing as “non-political art,” but it can feel particularly jarring when a story feels like it keeps swinging between being progressive and being reactionary. This one focuses on a cash-strapped hustler named Eddie (Bill Skarsgård) who breaks into an SUV only to find himself trapped inside by the car’s owner: a wealthy doctor named William (Anthony Hopkins) with a plan for a little vigilante justice. Director David Yarovesky (the 2019 “what if Superman were evil” thriller Brightburn) manages to keep the genre energy bumping along in the car’s confined space, and Skarsgård lets loose with Eddie’s deterioration as his ordeal stretches from hours into days. But screenwriter Michael Arlen Ross, adapting the 2019 Argentinian film 4x4, can’t quite figure out how to strike a balance between the idea that Eddie is kind of a screw-up and absentee father, and William’s righteous notion that “society is broken” and that he has the right to eliminate the people he sees as the problem. The two get into debate over the car phone at one point that seems intended to set the stage for a thoughtful bit of class warfare—privilege vs. bootstraps, and so forth—but ultimately the movie doesn’t seem as interested in critiquing William’s curdled conservatism as it does in making sure Eddie has a change of heart. And it gets a little awkward feeling like you’re watching someone “both-sides” the idea that kidnapping and torture are valid means toward rehabilitating criminals. Available March 21 in theaters. (R)

Magazine Dreams **
After a high-profile debut at Sundance 2023, this drama has languished in the shadow of the domestic-violence legal issues faced by star Jonathan Majors. For my money, it hasn’t been a great loss—primarily because while Majors commits 1000% to the role he’s playing, the role he’s playing makes 0% sense. He plays Killian Maddox, an aspiring bodybuilder who has thrown himself entirely into his obsession—from his training to his diet to his regimen of steroid injections—and a similar obsession with his bodybuilding idol, Brad Vanderhorn (Michael O’Hearn). Along the way we get to see Killian’s trouble connecting with other people and the violence he’s capable of when he feels like his dreams are being thwarted, and some of those scenes are effectively unsettling. But while writer/director Elijah Bynum is capable of serving up individually harrowing moments, he connects them to a central character who is huge basket of trauma, mental illness and uncontrollable rage, right up to the point where it arbitrarily becomes controllable and Killian just, like, starts getting better without ever getting any help. The result is almost offensive in the way it suggests you can just force-of-will your way out of profound psychosis—and given the real-life issues faced by Majors, almost doubly hard to swallow. Available March 21 in theaters. (R)

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl ***
Sometimes, seeing an idea presented in a different cultural context can really bring it to life—and while Rungano Nyoni’s Zambian drama ultimately literalizes its metaphor a bit too obviously, it’s still an effective story of when cultural priorities seem desperately askew. This one finds a young woman named Shula (Susan Chardy) discovering the body of her Uncle Fred in the road, setting in motion elaborate mourning rituals that seem determined to ignore that Fred was a serial sexual predator. Nyoni introduces some striking visuals to heighten the potentially grim story, from the fancy-dress costume Shula wears at the outset, to nightmare sequences, to framing Shula in one key moment so only half of her body is visible. The center of the narrative, however, is the process that focuses all attention on the deceased, with the women in the family responsible for serving the men and being judged severely based on how well they fulfill that function. It’s not exactly subtle, including the significance of the movie’s title, yet it still strikes at something more universal about how death is somehow expected to erase the legacy of monsters, and how it can come to pass that the people who are supposed to protect you can be too afraid and/or ashamed to fully stare in the face the harm that they allowed to happen. Available March 21 in theaters. (PG-13)

Snow White ***
This latest Disney re-interpretation of an animated classic has been in development far too long for it to be a direct response to our current American moment, but it sure as hell feels like it could be, in a way that’s bound to piss off some people who might already be pissed off by other changes. There’s a lot more backstory built into the narrative of the orphaned princess (Rachel Zegler), her evil enchantress stepmother (Gal Gadot) and the seven little men she encounters when she flees for her life into the woods, along with a lot more depth of character for Snow White’s romantic interest (Andrew Burnap) rather than just making him an anonymous handsome prince. It also ditches most of the 1937 film’s songs in favor of original tunes by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land, The Greatest Showman), and they’re mostly terrific additions if you’re as in-the-tank for their style as I am, with director Marc Webb showing a welcome restraint in focusing on the performances of the musical numbers. Mostly, though, it’s a surprisingly effective endorsement of the idea that leadership through decency is better than leadership through intimidation. Sure, Gadot is kind of terrible in the villain role, and yes, the CGI dwarfs look weird, particularly the Alfred E. Neuman-esque Dopey. But if a bunch of kids leave this movie and ask their parents about hoarding wealth, maybe it should all be considered time well-spent. Available March 21 in theaters. (PG)

Universal Language ***
Everybody’s mileage is gonna vary when it comes to the kind of deadpan absurdist humor writer/director Matthew Rankin serves up here, but there’s a weird melancholy at the core of it that gives it a bit more weight than just a collection of oddball gags. Rankin also stars as a character also named Matthew Rankin, who leaves his job in Quebec to return to his hometown of Winnipeg, while another subplot involves a pair of young siblings (Saba Vahedyousefi and Rojina Esmaeili) trying to retrieve money that they have found frozen in ice. Rankin sets the oddball tone by imagining a Canada in which everyone seems to speak Farsi, and skewers the Quebeçois for apparently all having no idea that Manitoba exists. The occasional long master shots and po-faced jokes definitely evoke Roy Andersson, but Rankin also seems interested in the idea of what happens when you start to feel like a stranger in the place that you’re from, especially when you find someone like tour guide Massoud (Pirouz Nemati) for whom the most mundane places have deep meaning. Not every attempt at a punch line is going to land—the attempt to wrestle humor out of bizarre causes of death like “steamrolling accident” or “choked to death in a marshmallow-eating contest” feels forced—but there’s still a touch of real emotion in between the obsession with turkeys, tears and Kleenex boxes. Available March 21 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)