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An unstable moon, the Earth in peril, a washed-up astronaut looking for redemption — if you’ve never seen a movie in your life, "Moonfall" may strike you as a work of dazzling originality. Or maybe you just haven’t seen a movie in the past two years of the pandemic — in which case, "Moonfall" may be exactly the Hollywood junk food you’ve been craving. 
It’s a big-screen disaster flick directed by a modern master of the genre, Roland Emmerich ("Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow," "2012"). His movies tend to combine survival-adventure stories with sudsy subplots — which is to say, they aren’t too far evolved from their 1970s ancestors, like "Airport" or "Earthquake." The formula still works, although in this case "formula" is a generous word. Written by Emmerich with frequent collaborator Harald Kloser (who also helped compose the score) and Spenser Cohen, "Moonfall" is basically a two-hour, greatest-hits compilation of other blockbusters. 
It begins with astronauts Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) and Jo Fowler (Halle Berry) bickering affectionately while fixing a satellite, which is destroyed in a surprise attack. Scapegoated by NASA, Harper loses his job and his wife while Fowler goes on to rise through the ranks. Years later, K.C. Houseman (John Bradley), a lovable conspiracy theorist — remember when we loved those? — goes public with data proving that the moon is drifting dangerously out of orbit. Cue nationwide panic. Cue also Harper’s return to NASA as the only pilot skilled enough to fly a vintage space shuttle carrying a bomb to the moon. 
There are few surprises or new ideas here, but "Moonfall" has an almost refreshing lack of embarrassment about itself. Nearly every scene is a climactic moment, albeit with virtually no connective tissue to explain why things are happening or even how the characters got from one location to another. "Moonfall" doesn’t care about such details, and it knows you don’t either — we’re all just here for the rousing speech, the implausible car chase, the "Take my hand!" cliffhanger. 
How are the special effects? Passable. How’s the acting? Not bad, considering the dialogue. "Moonfall" is such a canny simulation of a Hollywood movie that it could have been generated by an AI. "It’s some kind of gyroscopic system," says one character. "It’s some kind of self-aware, self-generating singularity," says another. And yet another: "We’ve downloaded your consciousness." 
Depending on your mood and level of generosity, "Moonfall" is either an egregious rip-off or a howling good time. This movie will download your consciousness — and feed it right back to you.

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'Moonfall' review: Astronaut drama is a guilty pleasure at best

'Moonfall': Astronaut drama is a guilty pleasure at best

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WHAT IT’S ABOUT "Home Team" features Kevin James as pro football coach Sean Payton, who,after being hired in 2006, transformed the New Orleans Saints from a losing team into the Super Bowl XLIV champions. That underdog story would have made a great sports drama — that is, if Payton hadn’t later been implicated in "Bountygate," a headline-grabbing scandal in which the NFL accused Saints players of injuring opponents to earn personal bounties ($400 for a "whack," $1,000 for a "cart-off"). 
Following an investigation, Payton was suspended for the 2012 season — the league’s first-ever suspension of a head coach — and returned the next year. (In January, he announced he was stepping down.) 
"Home Team" begins post-scandal, as the disgraced coach packs his bags for Argyle, Tx., where his ex-wife, Beth (Jackie Sandler), lives with their sixth grader, Connor (Tait Blum). Payton is hoping to reconnect with the kid, who just happens to play for his school’s chronically losing football team, the Liberty Christian Warriors. Payton can’t resist giving head coach Troy Lambert (Taylor Lautner) a few pointers — and before long, Payton is once again wearing a whistle and hoping to lead a team to victory. 
MY SAY The last few years have seen a mini-trend of what you might call sympathy-for-the-devil movies. The first was 2017’s "I, Tonya," a high-spirited take on the disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie). In 2018, "Can You Ever Forgive Me?" cast Melissa McCarthy as Lee Israel, a forger who fooled the literary world. This year’s "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" saluted the televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker (Jessica Chastain) for daring to embrace the gay community. 
As redemption stories go, "Home Team" doesn’t quite make the cut. It’s not that Payton is unforgivable; in fact, Long Island native James uses his salt-of-the-earth appeal to quickly get us on the coach’s side. The problem is that "Home Team" is a family film, meant to be watched by kids roughly Connor’s age, and those kids deserve some straight talk from Payton about his mistakes. Instead, "Home Team" skirts the issue and lets its hero off lightly. 
That’s too bad, because the movie has its moments. The young Warriors are a motley crew straight out of "The Bad News Bears," and the scandal-tarred Payton sometimes resembles a wholesome version of Burt Reynolds’ Paul Crewe in "The Longest Yard." Rob Schneider gets in a few laughs as Beth’s new husband, Jamie, an emasculated New Ager, while football fans will enjoy the cameos from sportscaster Dan Patrick, former Steelers coach Bill Cowher and others. It’s all breezily directed by Charles and Daniel Kinnane from a script by Chris Titone and Keith Blum. 
"Home Team" has a couple of major blind sides. For one, as woebegone as the Warriors are, it’s hard not to feel sorry for opposing teams who aren’t coached by a 30-year professional with a Super Bowl championship ring. (The coach for the Porcupines, played by a memorable Isaiah Mustafa, goes almost insane with glee after winning against Payton). Then there’s the moment when Connor courageously asks his father about the bounties. We’re expecting the heartfelt truth, but Payton’s answer -- "It’s complicated" — barely rises to the level of cop-out. 
Maybe it’s foolish to expect more from a Netflix comedy produced by Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison company. (Yes, that’s the producer’s wife as Beth; his nephew, Jared Sandler, plays a spacey hotel clerk.) Still, why not tackle notions of wrongdoing and forgiveness head-on? In the end, "Home Team" is a movie with no take-home message. 
BOTTOM LINE A true story that shies away from the truth.<a data-onecms-id="contentid/storywidget.1.50496002" data-onecms-type="storywidget" href="#/content/contentid/storywidget.1.50496002">Story Widget Link</a>

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'Home Team' review: Kevin James football comedy fumbles

'Home Team':  Kevin James football comedy fumbles

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Wallace Shawn plays Mort Rifkin, a former film professor and aspiring novelist, who attends the San Sebastian International Film Festival in Woody Allen’s 49th feature, "Rifkin’s Festival." Mort is the latest in a long line of Allenesque heroes, a self-absorbed nebbish full of existential dread and nagging suspicions about his wife. She’s a beautiful publicist, Sue (Gina Gershon), who is assigned to babysit Philippe (Louis Garrel), a handsome French director with an outsized opinion of his importance. Philippe believes, for instance, that his latest drama could bring peace between Israel and Palestine. 
Mort’s reaction: "I’m glad he’s turning to science fiction." 
That may be the funniest line in "Rifkin’s Festival," which tells you how tepid and tuned-out this movie is. It was filmed in the summer of 2019 during Allen’s dizzying fall from grace — accused by his daughter of sexual molestation, denounced by Hollywood’s A-list, dropped from a multi-film deal with Amazon — but you’ll find no clues or references to any of that here. Instead, Allen retreats into his most familiar tropes: the fear of death, the meaning of life, the allure of women, the comfort of old movies. If anything, Allen — via Mort — seems to be plugging his ears to the outside world. Contemporary politics is just trivial noise, Mort tells his wife, compared to "the big questions — what’s it all about?" 
Those who grew up on Allen's movies may feel a twinge of sympathy for Mort, a lover of cinema still clinging to its storied past. "Film festivals are no longer what they were," he tells his therapist. Wandering around San Sebastian, and between rendezvous with an attractive doctor, Joanna (Elena Anaya), Mort loses himself in black-and-white reveries modeled on the great works, including Orson Welles’ "Citizen Kane," Luis Buñuel’s "The Exterminating Angel" (look for Massapequa's Steve Guttenberg as Mort’s glib brother, Jake) and Ingmar Bergman’s "The Seventh Seal," which features an amusing Christoph Waltz as Death. These segments, however, only prove Mort’s/Allen’s point: They’re based on movies that are surely losing their relevance to current audiences. What’s more, Allen has done this homage routine before, in "Stardust Memories," "Love and Death" and other, more inspired films. 
It’s tempting to view "Rifkin’s Festival" as a final referendum on a once universally admired filmmaker. In reality, it’s merely another halfhearted effort, the kind we’ve seen from Allen many times before. The question, at this strange juncture in his career, is what comes next.

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'Rifkin's Festival' review: Woody Allen's 49th film is tepid and tuned-out

'Rifkin's Festival': Woody Allen's 49th film is tepid and tuned-out

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In "The King’s Daughter," Kaya Scodelario plays Marie-Josèphe D’Alember, a young woman raised in a convent. Headstrong and rebellious, but musically gifted, she is one day whisked away to Versailles to compose a new piece for King Louis XIV (Pierce Brosnan). There’s little mystery about their relationship — see the film’s title — but there is a twist to this story in the form of a captive mermaid who must be rescued from a terrible fate. 
It’s all awfully familiar: The vaguest outlines of "The Princess Diaries," a little something from "The Sound of Music" (in fact, our narrator is Julie Andrews) and a magical creature for good measure. You might chalk up all the borrowed material to a lack of originality, but I suspect it’s intentional. "The King’s Daughter" feels like the kind of movie we’re going to see a lot more of: basically, a checklist of search terms, designed to pop up in your "recommendations" after you’ve exhausted all of your old favorites. 
Very young viewers may not mind. Scodelario, a veteran of YA movies ("The Maze Runner" franchise), makes for a serviceable princess-in-commoner’s clothing, even if her love interest, the sailor Yves De La Croix (Benjamin Walker, her real-life spouse), is little more than a longhaired cutie in a leather vest. (The stylized costumes are generally unconvincing, less Ancien Régime than Early MTV.) As for that mermaid, played by Fan Bingbing, she has been altered by CGI into a stiff, dead-eyed creature — ironic, since she supposedly holds the key to eternal life. 
Here and there, though, "The King’s Daughter" will suddenly strive for period authenticity and a sense of complexity. (The screenplay is by Barry Berman, of "Benny &amp; Joon," and James Schamus, of "Brokeback Mountain," from a novel by Vonda N. McIntyre.) There are nods to actual events, such as France’s nearing bankruptcy, and several smart scenes between Brosnan as the rather louche Sun King and a wry William Hurt as his confessor, Père La Chaise (surely inspired by the Jesuit priest whose name graces the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris). What’s more, director Sean McNamara ("Soul Surfer") filmed on location in Versailles, which means those lavish gardens, vast courtyards and dizzying ballrooms are the real deal. 
If this movie had given into its better instincts and higher aspirations, it might have risen above its station. Instead, "The King’s Daughter" seems perfectly willing to satisfy the least demanding viewers.

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'The King's Daughter' review: Generic combination of royal-themed fairy tale, magical fantasy

'The King's Daughter': Where's the originality?

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Before we get into the details of "Scream," the fifth installment in the dormant horror franchise, let’s talk nomenclature. Is this a sequel or a reboot? The former is what we typically call any movie with a numeral after its title; the latter is Hollywood marketing-speak for remake. "Scream" takes its title from the original 1996 film but puts itself into a whole different category. As one media-savvy character suggests, it's a requel. 
To hear the term explained fully, you’ll have to see the movie. Disregard the dismal January release date, the too-long gap since the previous entry (2011’s "Scream 4") and the fact that this is the first in the franchise not directed by the late Wes Craven ("A Nightmare on Elm Street"). This new "Scream" is a refreshingly smart, funny, fast-paced splatter flick. Like its predecessors, it plays with the conventions of its genre and pays homage to the very classics it’s mocking ("Halloween," "Friday the 13th," even "Psycho"), but it also touches on new cultural forces that didn’t exist in the original film — namely, social media, toxic fandom and the dubious concept of "elevated horror." 
We pick up with yet another copycat killer wearing the now-famous "Ghostface" mask and terrorizing the California town of Woodsboro. After young Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega) barely survives a stabbing, her estranged older sister, Sam (Melissa Barrera, "In the Heights"), returns home to help. Sam is keeping a dark secret that — mild spoiler — will resonate strongest with longtime fans of the series. 
Tara’s Woodsboro friends, who already know the Ghostface M.O. (don’t forget, their town inspired a movie franchise within this franchise, "Stab"), quickly realize that one of them is the killer. Could it be Amber (Mikey Madison), who has a crush on Tara? What about Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown), a horror-film expert who’s always one step ahead? Or Wes (Dylan Minnette), the oh-so-innocent son of Sheriff Judy Hicks (Marley Shelton, reprising her role)? 
The young actors are uniformly appealing, but the best moments come from the original series’ core cast of Neve Campbell as hardened survivor Sidney Prescott, Courteney Cox as the ambitious journalist Gale Weathers and a show-stealing David Arquette as her onetime husband, Sheriff Dewey Riley. These now-seasoned actors seem to share a bond, particularly real-life former spouses Arquette and Cox, who strike a surprisingly emotional chord in this otherwise breezy-and-bloody entertainment. 
Briskly directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett from a fun-loving script by James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick, "Scream" manages to jump-start an old story, pay tribute to its past and maybe even pass the torch. Is there anything else a requel is supposed to do?

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'Scream' review: Franchise's fifth film is smart, funny, fast-paced

'Scream':  Fifth installment is smart, funny, fast-paced

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WHAT IT'S ABOUT The Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino writes and directs "The Hand of God," an autobiographical story of a teenager named Fabietto (Filippo Scotti) growing up in Naples during the 1980s. 
Fabietto spends these formative years planning to study philosophy in college, watching the soccer legend Diego Maradona play for Napoli and socializing with his mother Maria (Teresa Saponangelo), father Saverio (Toni Servillo), brother Marchino (Marlon Joubert) and large extended family, including an aunt named Patrizia (Luisa Ranieri) who fascinates him. 
Tragedy compels Fabietto to reassess everything over the course of the movie from the Oscar-winning Sorrentino ("The Great Beauty"), which is now streaming on Netflix (in Italian, with English subtitles). It's on this year's shortlist of 15 movies eligible to receive nominations for Best International Feature Film at the upcoming Academy Awards. 
MY SAY "The Hand of God" finds a teenager discovering himself and being set on a path toward his future. But it distinguishes itself from the plethora of coming-of-age narratives thanks to the ways in which the filmmaker incorporates the rich visual landscape of the Neapolitan region into this formative story. 
Sorrentino establishes the tone at the start: a helicopter shot, captured in a single take, that soars over the water, pans alongside a car on a seaside road and across the buildings that dot the landscape, before darting back out to sea as the sound drops out. 
The title of the movie refers to a famous Maradona quote, about a goal that he scored during the 1986 World Cup, but with this opening image Sorrentino makes it clear that it has as much to do with the larger forces that will shape Fabietto's story and are forever at play in our own. 
So the picture plays somewhere above and beyond reality, while being informed by painstakingly human experiences. We never see an older Fabietto, presumably a successful film director, but it's clear that the movie presents his youth as he remembers it decades later. 
It's comprised of impressionistic memories of languid summer days, of a big family with outsized personality types. The whole city seems to gather on their balconies to watch Maradona score goals. A surreal evening trip to the island of Capri includes a nighttime swim in the Blue Grotto. 
Fabietto gets his first introductions to filmmaking: Marchino brings him to auditions, where he's surrounded by idiosyncratic figures, and he wanders onto a set where a commotion of frenzied activity unfolds below a person suspended upside down in midair. 
There's joy and warmth in so much of this, but also a tremendous sadness. This life exists only as a memory now. As tragedy strikes and time marches on, a new reality sets in: For Fabietto, there will be no more happy days in the sun. 
But there's always a future. And there's the divine gift offered by the movies: allowing us to return to the places we remember, to bring back those we have loved and lost. 
BOTTOM LINE This is a deeply affecting coming-of-age story that doubles as a movie about the movies themselves.

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'The Hand of God' review: Deeply affecting coming-of-age story

'The Hand of God': Deeply affecting coming-of-age story

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WHAT IT’S ABOUT Olivia Colman plays Leda Caruso, a British-born academic who travels to a Greek island hoping to soak up a few rays and calm her mind. Instead, she fixates on a young, rough-around-the-edges mother, Nina (Dakota Johnson), and her cute but demanding little daughter, Elena (Athena Martin). After the girl misplaces a doll and becomes inconsolable over the loss, Leda finds it — then steals it, for reasons that initially defy explanation. As the film unfolds, we develop a clearer picture of Leda, and it isn’t a pretty one. 
"The Lost Daughter" is based on a novel by Elena Ferrante (famous for her four-volume "Neapolitan Novels") and written by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who makes her directorial debut. 
MY SAY This has been a good year for literary adaptations from female directors. First came Rebecca Hall’s "Passing," about a Black woman who sheds her racial identity, followed by Jane Campion’s "The Power of the Dog," about a cruel cattle rancher with a troubling secret. Gyllenhaal’s "The Lost Daughter" completes the trilogy — all from Netflix, by the way. Each offers a thoughtful, intelligent antidote to the slam-bang Marvel movies that have dominated the box office over the past two COVID-plagued years. 
Of the three, Campion’s is the most immediately compelling, but Gyllenhaal’s entry is a close second and offers by far the best lead performance, from Colman (who also serves as an executive producer here). An early scene in which Colman’s Leda transforms instantly from pleasant tourist to prickly troublemaker — simply by refusing a polite request to move her beach chair a few feet — tells us we’re in for a highly complex character study from a top-notch actor. 
What’s Leda’s problem? For one, she’s a garden-variety snob, easily triggered by rowdy teenagers and rambunctious children. She also seems jealous of Nina’s youth and beauty. (Leda flirts awkwardly with her villa’s caretaker, Lyle, played by a terrific Ed Harris, and a handsome college student, Will, played by Paul Mescal, of Hulu’s "Normal People.") Still, something darker is eating at her — maybe it consumed her long ago — and we gradually realize that it has to do with her own daughters, now grown and glaringly absent from her life. 
There’s some much-deserved Oscar talk around Colman, who last won as an emotionally cracked Queen Anne in 2018’s "The Favourite." The revelation here, though, is Jessie Buckley as the young Leda. An Irish actor whom Americans might recognize from the television series "Fargo," Buckley carries close to half the movie in a series of flashbacks that crackle with tension. She plays a woman stifled by motherhood and yearning for life’s other rewards — a career, travel, sexual freedom. (Peter Sarsgaard, Gyllenhaal’s husband, is nicely cast as a fellow academic who woos her with dirty talk and references to Paul Ricœur.) Buckley’s Leda is a tragedy in the making, but our heart goes out to her — at least, to a point. 
Fans of those great 1970s movies where nothing yet everything seems to happen will find a lot to love in "The Lost Daughter." It’s an auspicious debut from Gyllenhaal, who observes every little moment with intense focus, and another riveting performance from Colman, who develops a wrenching portrait of motherhood with quiet, chilling intensity. 
BOTTOM LINE Olivia Colman shines darkly in a delicately handled drama from first-time director Maggie Gyllenhaal.

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'The Lost Daughter' review: Olivia Colman shines  in Maggie Gyllenhaal's powerful directing debut

'The Lost Daughter': Maggie Gyllenhaal's powerful directing debut

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WHAT IT'S ABOUT If several tables at a Hollywood awards ceremony had been cast in the same movie it might look something like "Don't Look Up," the newest Adam McKay satire. 
Take a deep breath and take in the cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry, Ariana Grande, Timothée Chalamet, Scott Mescudi (the influential hip-hop star Kid Cudi), Rob Morgan, Ron Perlman, Melanie Lynskey, Mark Rylance, Himesh Patel and more. 
This never-ending parade of A-listers assembles for the story of astronomers Randall Mindy (DiCaprio) and Kate Dibiasky (Lawrence), who discover a comet that's big enough to wipe out humanity and hurtling toward Earth to make impact in just over six months. 
They sound the alarms through the appropriate channels, but find nothing but skepticism on the part of a White House run by President Janie Orlean (Streep), who seems more interested in snuffing out scandals and scoring cheap political points than taking her job seriously. 
Things don't go better when it comes to bringing the message of our impending destruction to the general public via the media, where they're laughed off and turned into internet memes. 
The movie is now playing in limited theatrical release ahead of its Netflix premiere on Dec. 24. 
MY SAY After beginning his filmmaking career with Will Ferrell comedies, Adam McKay has established a clear interest in darkly comic, self-referential takes on major sociopolitical subjects. 
His last two movies tell the story: McKay took on the housing bubble and the 2008 financial crisis in "The Big Short" and the life and times of Dick Cheney in "Vice." 
"Don't Look Up" finds McKay pursuing his biggest target yet: the existential threat of the climate crisis and the self-indulgence of a society that often seems more interested in the latest TikTok trend or celebrity shenanigans. 
The effort falls flat instantaneously and never recovers. 
There's nothing more excruciating than watching very famous people work entirely too hard to be funny. 
That's exactly what happens with a large chunk of the ensemble here. DiCaprio sweats and strains as his nervous, overwhelmed character, and generates not a single laugh. Streep is rarely miscast but has been here, presenting Janie Orlean as a broad caricature. Lawrence, making a return to the screen after a couple of years away, is given little to do but snap at people. 
Other actors fare better — Perry and Blanchett are entertaining as morning show hosts, and Rylance brings such a singular weirdness to his performance as a billionaire tech entrepreneur that you wish the whole movie had been about him. 
Had McKay narrowed his focus and scaled back the ambition to, say, take on Rylance's Elon Musk-like character and scrapped the rest of it, "Don't Look Up" might have worked differently. But he wants this movie to serve as a sweeping indictment of an entire society that has descended into a state of constant, idiotic mania. 
It's entirely too much for a single movie to take on, especially one crafted so broadly. McKay's idea of incisive satire is to have a sequence geared around audiences caring more about the love life of pop star Riley Bina (Grande) than the impending global catastrophe. What a stunning revelation. 
There's also something smarmy and off-putting about all these famous people gathering together to make fun of their audience, to show us how we're all easily distracted rubes. 
BOTTOM LINE Don't be fooled by all these stars: "Don't Look Up" is a serious waste of time.

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'Don't Look Up' review: A-list cast can't save painful satire

'Don't Look Up': A-list cast can't save painful satire

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Roughly 20 years after its conclusion, the hugely popular and immeasurably influential sci-fi trilogy "The Matrix" returns with a very peculiar sequel. Directed by Lana Wachowski, half of the sibling duo behind the original films, "The Matrix Resurrections" is filled with self-referential jokes that take the air of out of the franchise’s legacy even though this entry clearly serves to keep that legacy alive. Call it the meta-"Matrix," a fitfully entertaining and only semi-convincing cross between traditional blockbuster and self-mocking satire. 
"I’m sure you can understand," a smarmy video game executive purrs in the first few minutes, "why our beloved parent company at Warner Bros. has decided to make a sequel to the ‘Matrix’ trilogy." 
Like many characters in this movie, that executive (Jonathan Groff) is almost but not quite breaking the fourth wall. He’s speaking to an employee played by Keanu Reeves, the still-charismatic star of the original films. We recognize him as Neo, the programmer-turned-messiah who once saved humanity after realizing (with the help of a little red pill) that reality is merely a computer simulation designed by intelligent machines. Now, he’s back to being plain old Thomas Anderson. 
What happened? If you figure that part out, DM me. What’s clear is that Thomas thinks the last three movies — which flicker subliminally throughout this one — are just paranoid fantasies that inspired the creation of his popular video game "The Matrix" (yes, it exists IRL). His analyst, played by a slippery Neil Patrick Harris, prescribes medication to ward off future episodes. Weirdly, though, Thomas keeps bumping into his warrior-soulmate, Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss, reprising her role). Sadly, she’s now Tiffany — just another San Francisco Gen-Xer with kids. 
Much of this is very clever and funny (and even a little touching), but you can probably see where things are going: Like the recent "Star Wars" films, "Resurrections" will retell the same story with different characters. (Wachowski wrote the screenplay with David Mitchell, of "Cloud Atlas," and Aleksandar Hemon, of "Sense8.") Neo’s new helpmates are young, diverse and rather vaguely drawn, but Jessica Henwick stands out as Bugs, the headstrong captain of a rebel crew. Guest stars from past films abound (no spoilers), though not fan-favorite Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus. He’s replaced by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who brings a lighter, hipper vibe — fewer trench coats, more ‘70s leisure suits. 
If you’re willing to roll with the sudden shifts between sincerity and self-satire, "The Matrix Resurrections" will have its charms. Still, the movie’s jokes at its own expense often feel like a way to preempt any negative criticism from fans. "They took something that meant so much to people like me, and turned it into something trivial," Bugs laments. Saying it, however, doesn’t make it untrue.

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'The Matrix Resurrections' review: Cross between traditional blockbuster, self-mocking satire

'The Matrix Resurrections': Self-spoofing sequel

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Charles Simic, a former U.S. Poet Laureate, has a story about emigrating to America from Serbia as a teenager and falling in with a crowd of working-class intellectuals in Chicago. "Remember where you came from, kid," he recalls them saying — advice for which he remains grateful. "Thanks to them," he wrote, "I failed in my natural impulse to become a phony." 
J.R. Moehringer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, comes from the less exotic locale of Manhasset and found his mentors at his uncle’s bar, called Dickens (after the author). Even as Moehringer attended Yale University and launched his career at The New York Times, these deep-thinking drinkers kept him grounded. His 2005 memoir, "The Tender Bar," is now a movie directed by George Clooney and featuring Ben Affleck as the memorable uncle. It's basically a series of fond vignettes that don't quite add up to a proper story, but the movie has just enough charm and sweetness to get by. 
"The Tender Bar" begins in the early 1970s and introduces us to a young J.R. (Daniel Ranieri) being raised by a single mother, Dorothy (Lily Rabe), and a cantankerous Grandpa (Christopher Lloyd). Dad is not in the picture. He’s a freewheeling, hard-partying radio DJ nicknamed The Voice (a very good Max Martini) because that’s basically all J.R. knows of him. In one of the film’s most touching scenes, the kid stays up nights, hoping his father will float out of the radio. 
If anyone’s a dad to J.R., it’s Affleck as Uncle Charlie, a highly literate yet unpretentious bar owner. Affleck the celebrity may be in the doghouse (following recent remarks about his divorce from Jennifer Garner) but Affleck the actor is on a roll this year, first as a medieval hedonist in "The Last Duel" and now as the charming, worldly-wise Charlie. You might find yourself jotting down some of his sage advice: Hide some extra money in your wallet, never order well Scotch neat and be sure to take philosophy in college, "because there’s no right answers." 
As J.R. attends Yale — making good on his mother’s all-consuming dream — he must find his own way. Now played by Tye Sheridan, J.R. falls hard for Sidney (Briana Middleton). He’s captivated by this smart, sophisticated (and very wealthy) beauty, though she seems to consider him little more than a good time. Fraught issues of class, sex and gender bubble below the surface here, but never quite explode. (William Monahan, of "The Departed," wrote the low-key screenplay.) 
A warning to Long Islanders: "The Tender Bar" was shot in Boston, and you can tell. Overall, though, it’s hard to resist this warmhearted movie. It's a love letter from one man to the hometown that made him who he is.

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'The Tender Bar' review: Warmhearted movie that's hard to resist

'The Tender Bar': Love letter to Manhasset

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WHAT IT’S ABOUT During the early 1950s, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz face one chaotic week in the making of their hit sitcom, "I Love Lucy." For starters, Lucy is pregnant — a no-no on television at the time. She’s been accused of being a communist. And her marriage seems to be at a breaking point. Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem play Lucy and Desi; director Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay. 
MY SAY It’s hard to underestimate the impact and longevity of "I Love Lucy." It was originally broadcast from 1951 to 1957 on CBS but has virtually never left the air. As recently as 2012, reruns were still earning roughly $20 million per year for CBS, according to a Los Angeles Times report. Some of Lucille Ball’s best routines — the chocolate factory, the grape-stomping, the Vitameatavegamin commercial — rival anything from the Marx Brothers right on up to Will Ferrell. 
That’s a deep vein of history to mine, and Sorkin, the creator of NBC’s "The West Wing" and other series, is clearly the man for the job. (He was chosen by producer Todd Black, who bought the rights to the Ball-Arnaz story from their children.) Sorkin’s love for workplace dramas and his attention to detail serve him well here, as does his trademark machine-gun dialogue. As his fans know, however, Sorkin can also get in his own way. "Being the Ricardos" is no exception. 
More on that later, but the first thing to note is that "Being the Ricardos" tells a rather modern story of a double-income couple grappling with traditional notions of success and gender. When Lucy meets Desi, she’s an aspiring movie star (ever seen 1942’s "The Big Street?") and he’s an in-demand bandleader. Their schedules clash, but they steal a few moments each dawn at the top of Mulholland Drive as their commutes cross. 
It’s her idea to transform their lives into a television show, and so Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz become Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. It turns out Lucy has an almost clairvoyant gift for comedy. ("I can see it," she says, visualizing a routine and the audience’s laughter.) Desi has a good shtick, too, playing her Spanish-spouting, Cuban-American hubby, but he has other strengths: He’s a tough negotiator, a creative thinker (in this telling, he’s the driving force behind the decision to show Lucy pregnant on-air) and his wife’s most loyal supporter. 
Then again, the gossip columns say Desi is cheating. He passionately denies it, and Lucy wants to believe him (as do we). Meanwhile, there’s backstage friction between Lucy’s co-stars William Frawley and Vivian Vance, known to television audiences as the bickering Fred and Ethel Mertz. They’re played by Nina Arianda and a priceless J.K. Simmons. 
As engaging as much of this is, "Being the Ricardos" is also quite muddled. It’s confusingly framed as a present-day documentary, which means characters like producer Jess Oppenheimer (Tony Hale) and writer Madelyn Pugh (Alia Shawkat) also show up as talking heads played by other, older actors. Kidman and Bardem are both very fine, but Sorkin often poses Lucy as a femme fatale: sultry eyes, cigarette, bold talk. Lastly, there’s the fact that all these crises did not take place in a single week. Sorkin claims poetic license, but some viewers might feel a little duped. 
For all its flaws, "Being the Ricardos" is not without emotional power. The final scene, with Desi and Lucy standing in the wings — face to face, no cameras to play to — will remind you why Sorkin was the only choice for this film. 
BOTTOM LINE An uneven love letter to Lucy, but fans of TV history will find it rewarding.

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'Being the Ricardos' review: Aaron Sorkin's uneven love letter to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz

'Being the Ricardos': Aaron Sorkin's uneven love letter 

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"Nightmare Alley," a cynical, seedy film from 1947 starring Tyrone Power as a carnival con man, is a pretty dark movie even by noir standards. Leave it to director Guillermo del Toro ("Pan’s Labyrinth," "The Shape of Water") to color this tale many shades darker. Billed not as a remake but as an adaptation of the original novel by William Lindsay Gresham, del Toro’s "Nightmare Alley" is a dreamy, creepy, seep-into-your-skin marvel that will pull you in and won’t let go — even after the closing credits roll. 
The story begins at the bottom, with a drifter named Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) joining a traveling carnival as a laborer. The time is post-Depression, pre-War. People desperately want to believe in something — and Stanton would like to sell it to them. Ingratiating himself with Zeena and Pete (Toni Collette and David Strathairn), a married couple who run a clairvoyant act, Stanton gleans valuable insight on how to read and fool people. These scenes, involving a little black book of nonverbal codes and cues, are mesmerizing. 
Flash forward two years and Stanton has paired up with Molly (Rooney Mara) for a mentalist show that takes them to the biggest cities and fanciest hotels. Stanton’s tux is new, but we know he hasn’t changed. When his act is nearly derailed by a skeptical psychiatrist, Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett), a spark seems to fly. 
What follows is a masterful exercise in building tension and dread. As Stanton gets in deeper with Lilith, who feeds him private dirt on wealthy patients., we know something horrible is going to happen. We just aren’t sure how. 
Del Toro understands the subconscious power of movies like few other filmmakers, and "Nightmare Alley" is a vivid example. Visual symbols and verbal foreshadowings lurk everywhere (del Toro wrote the screenplay with Kim Morgan), while cinematographer Dan Laustsen creates a world that feels unreal and hyperreal at once. The cast is astounding, notably Cooper and Blanchett, who play off each other like a lowlife Bogart and Bacall. Willem Dafoe is chilling in the small but crucial role of Clem Hoatley, a carny who helpfully explains how he turns hopeless alcoholics into subhuman, chicken-eating geeks for his sideshow. 
Details don’t always add up and character motivations can be murky, but such flaws are almost in the DNA of the noir genre. Audiences seeking light entertainment should probably look elsewhere. For those ready to follow del Toro into the depths, however, "Nightmare Alley" will make a wondrous and ghastly thrill ride.

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'Nightmare Alley' review: This thriller will pull you in and won't let go

'Nightmare Alley': Thriller will pull you in and won't let go

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Sony’s new "Spider-Man" movies have been some of the most pleasant surprises to come out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Whether or not superhero movies truly qualify as "cinema" — Martin Scorsese says no, Jane Campion says she hates them — the two most recent Spidey films have been undeniably entertaining. Thanks to an appealing Tom Holland in the title role and the light touch of director Jon Watts, the movies have found a nice balance between CGI-driven blockbuster and breezy teen film. 
The third entry, "Spider-Man: No Way Home," is an unexpected disappointment. Rather than deepening the story line or taking it in new directions, the movie merely treads water and caters to longtime fans by bringing in special guest stars from past movies. In fact, unless you’ve seen every one of those movies — stretching back to 2002 — this episode might leave you feeling like a latecomer to a very clubby party. 
I can’t say much more about "Spider-Man: No Way Home," for two reasons. One, the movie doesn’t offer much more than a lot of Spidey in-jokes, winking asides and the cinematic equivalent of back-issue references. Two, just about any description of the plot would require ruining several big surprises — and woe betide the film critic who provokes the outrage of a fan base. 
A spoiler-free synopsis of "No Way Home" will begin here. Peter Parker, whose secret identity as Spider-Man was revealed in 2019’s "Far from Home," is now persona non grata in his native New York City. Stirring up anti-Spidey sentiment is newspaper editor J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons), amusingly recast as an Alex Jones-style figure who hawks ugly theories and vitamin supplements. As things go from bad to worse, Peter gets an idea: What if Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) could turn back time, in a way, by wiping out the world’s memories with a spell? 
It doesn’t quite work, but instead opens holes in the "multiverse," which is becoming one of Marvel’s favorite plot devices. (See 2018’s animated "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.") This quasi-scientific concept is what allows the aforementioned guest-star phenomenon to occur. Some of these old characters still thrill, such as Willem Dafoe’s tortured Green Goblin and Alfred Molina’s wonderfully arrogant Doctor Octopus. Others, like Thomas Haden Church’s emotionless Sandman, not so much. 
Hardcore Spidey fans may revel in this big old family reunion, but casual fans may find themselves missing the John Hughes-ian charm of the previous films. (Zendaya, as Peter’s girlfriend, MJ, and Jacob Batalan, as his nerdy buddy Ned, feel sidelined, though some strong emotional beats come from Marisa Tomei as Peter’s Aunt May.) There are many other major reveals worth discussing, but am I really going to take that risk? Not in this universe.

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'Spider-Man: No Way Home' review: Short on story, long on insider humor 

'Spider-Man: No Way Home': Disappointment that's for fans only

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WHAT IT'S ABOUT Sandra Bullock stars in "The Unforgivable," a drama based on the 2009 British miniseries "Unforgiven." The Oscar winner plays Ruth Slater, newly paroled after serving 20 years for killing a sheriff who was enforcing her eviction. 
Reacclimating into society proves extraordinarily difficult — she's put up at a gritty Seattle halfway house and finds a job gutting fish in a factory. 
There are some crimes you simply can't come back from, advises her parole officer Vincent Cross (Rob Morgan), who suggests that she not attempt to reestablish contact with the much-younger sister she once cared for after their parents died. 
That's advice Ruth rejects, with the help of lawyer John Ingram (Vincent D'Onofrio), who lives with his wife Liz (Viola Davis) and children in the house Ruth once shared with her sister. 
That sister Katie (Aisling Franciosi), now in her mid-20s, has just flickers of memories of her traumatic past — her adopted parents Rachel Malcolm (Linda Emond) and Michael (Richard Thomas) quite reasonably have little interest in bringing Ruth back into her life. 
Oh, and if all that weren't enough, Steve Whelan (Will Pullen), the son of the sheriff Ruth killed, wants revenge. 
MY SAY There's a good reason this story was once told as a miniseries: that's a lot of plot for a movie that clocks in at just under two hours. 
Looping in so many characters with competing motivations means many get shortchanged. 
The bloat means an actor like Davis, one of the best in the entire business, has almost nothing to do. The same goes for Jon Bernthal, playing Ruth's colleague at the fish business. 
So there's barely time to get to know Katie as more than a one-dimensional figurehead for Ruth's attempt to right her past wrongs. She plays piano, she suffers blackouts, and impressionistic images from the past occasionally invade her present. There's nothing more to the character. 
The core narrative remains strong: it's possible to humanize someone like Ruth while still being clear-eyed about the heinous crime. 
Bullock depicts her as a permanently fractured person. Guilt and sadness have played a major role in erasing any hint of the individual that may have once existed, but so has the reality of her post-prison existence as a convicted cop killer. You just can't shake that. 
 Yet the director Nora Fingscheidt doesn't seem to recognize the strength inherent in gifting such an excellent actor with a genuinely complex role. So, in working with screenwriters Peter Craig, Hillary Seitz and Courtenay Miles, she needlessly complicates matters. 
The authentic touches become subsumed by the Hollywood-style convolutions: the revenge plot, for example, exists just to provide a thriller-style scene in a movie that doesn't need one. 
This story needs time to breathe and to develop, to grow from an organic place. That's why a miniseries makes sense. But it can't get it when there are so many characters to involve and everyone seems to be in a rush. 
BOTTOM LINE Sandra Bullock is excellent, but "The Unforgivable" tries to cram in too much plot and suffers for it.

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'The Unforgivable' review: Sandra Bullock shines in a movie that should've been a miniseries

'The Unforgivable': Netflix movie should've been a miniseries

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Steven Spielberg’s "West Side Story" is the movie we didn’t know we needed. 
On paper, it seems unnecessary: Why remake the virtually unimprovable musical from 1961? A Romeo-and-Juliet romance set among New York street gangs, "West Side Story" is the perfect retro masterpiece, full of jazzy songs and finger-snapping dance moves that seem charmingly quaint yet still utterly cool. Natalie Wood’s casting as a Puerto Rican always rankled, but her Maria remains the embodiment of blushingly corny romance. Adapted from the 1957 Broadway play, the whole movie feels stuck in time — which is probably how its admirers would like it to stay. 
Yet here it is once more, unexpectedly revitalized and reinvigorated for a new generation of moviegoers. The young cast makes good on past mistakes: All Latinx roles go to Latinx actors, while the tomboyish Anybodys is played by a nonbinary performer, iris menas. Tony Kushner freshens up the screenplay; choreographer Justin Peck adds new muscle to Jerome Robbins’ original blueprints. The musical’s foundations, however — the memorable melodies of Leonard Bernstein and the crystalline lyrics of Stephen Sondheim — remain essentially sacrosanct. Tackling his first musical at 74 with the energy of a hungry young kid, Spielberg delivers a vibrant, edgy, full-throttle "West Side Story" that rivals the original. 
That’s clear from the opening sequence, as members of the white Jets gang grab cans of paint and turn a Puerto Rican flag mural into a splattered Jackson Pollock. It’s a startling visual with echoes of present-day racism, and our first clue that this story of nativist bigotry and immigrant identity still has something to tell us. Corey Stoll, as NYPD Lt. Schrank, puts his finger on it when he calls the Riffs "the last of the can’t-make-it Caucasians." 
This is a rougher ride than we got in 1961. Mike Faist, replacing Russ Tamblyn as Riff, makes for a hard-bitten gang leader, and even our romantic lead, Tony (an appealing Ansel Elgort), has a dark new back story that includes violence and a prison stint. On the Puerto Rican side, a sassy Ariana DeBose and a soulful David Alvarez play Anita and her macho boyfriend Bernardo, who is the leader of the Sharks and the brother of Maria (Rachel Zegler, in an impressive film debut). 
As in the original, Tony and Maria aren’t exactly well-drawn characters — but that’s where the filmmaking comes in. The gymnasium dance where the two meet is a whirlwind of skirts, trousers and adolescent hormones; the fire-escape serenade of "Tonight" becomes a maze of mesh and metal that keeps the lovers tantalizingly apart. Elsewhere, Spielberg magically reworks classic numbers like "Gee, Officer Krupke," which simmers with new anger, and the enduring "America," in which back-and-forth bickering spills out into hot summertime streets (most of them real ones in New York City). Much credit goes to the vivid cinematography of Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg’s longtime collaborator. 
Rita Moreno, the original film’s vivacious Anita, returns as a new character, Valentina, who owns Doc’s drugstore. In addition to bringing her signature sly delivery (and serving as an executive producer), Moreno is here to reassure us that nobody wants to demolish the old "West Side Story." But as this dazzling version proves, there’s always room for renewal.

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'West Side Story' review: Steven Spielberg's dazzling update equals the original classic

'West Side Story': 4 stars for Spielberg's dazzling update

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WHAT IT’S ABOUT The year is 1925 and the place is Montana — somewhere between the Old West and the modern era. The Burbank brothers, Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons), have used their college educations and family wealth to build a prosperous cattle-ranching business. George, well-groomed and good-hearted, manages the money; Phil, coarse and calloused, wrangles the animals and a crew of mangy cowhands. It’s an all-male world, which suits Phil just fine. 
This peaceable arrangement begins to unravel when George marries a widowed innkeeper, Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst), who arrives at the ranch with her slender and sensitive teenager, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee, "The Road"). It's hard to say which of them disgusts Phil more, but his resentment grows by the day. Phil makes it his business to break both their spirits — and possibly do worse than that. 
MY SAY Bullwhips, branding irons and silk handkerchiefs — "The Power of the Dog" is one deeply kinky and very dark Western. Based on a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage (not to be confused with Don Winslow’s 2005 book of the same name), "The Power of the Dog" ripples with thwarted sexuality and creepy symbolism. It’s fertile ground for writer-director Jane Campion, a longtime fan of dysfunction and primal rage ("Sweetie," "The Piano," the miniseries "Top of the Lake"), and a terrific showcase for Cumberbatch, who plays one of the most complex characters ever to hit a screen. 
Toxic masculinity is too simple a label for what’s roiling inside Phil. Schooled and essentially raised by a legendarily macho cowpoke named Bronco Henry — never seen, only reverently talked about — Phil has grown into a grotesquerie of manhood, which is to say a bully. He calls his brother "Fatso," mocks Peter in a lisping voice and preys on Rose’s insecurities. He shuns fancy clothing, refuses to bathe ("I stink and I like it," he says) and chugs whiskey as if it cured weakness. To say more about Phil would be to spoil one of this film’s great pleasures — the slow drip-drip-drip of revelations that bring the character into clearer focus. 
Cumberbatch plays the role like a human prism — we see him differently depending on which side he’s showing — but this cast is uniformly excellent. Dunst makes Rose believable even when the character develops an only semi-convincing drinking problem, while Plemons carefully balances George’s innate goodness and willful blindness. Equally impressive is Smit-McPhee as Peter, a willowy, doe-eyed intellectual who may have more in common with Phil than either would like to admit. 
The closest comparison to Campion’s unusual chiller-Western may be Don Siegel’s "The Beguiled," from 1971, which was also based on an overlooked novel (coincidentally published around the same time as Savage’s). That film, starring Clint Eastwood as a Civil War soldier who stumbles into a schoolhouse full of women and stirs up a caldron of desire, is almost a gender-reversal of this one. Both feel like cautionary tales about sexual frustration boiling over in dangerous ways. 
"The Power of the Dog" may not move quickly enough for some viewers, but it also keeps transforming into a different movie. Broken into chapters, it starts as a nicely observed period piece, darkens into a psychological drama, then becomes an exercise in dread. (Jonny Greenwood’s score, full of plucked or swelling strings, heightens the moods.) It’s a slow build to a powerful ending, one that satisfies and mystifies all at once. 
BOTTOM LINE Cumberbatch crackles with menace in a supremely creepy Western.

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'The Power of the Dog' review: Jane Campion's supremely creepy Western

'The Power of the Dog': Supremely creepy Western

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WHAT IT’S ABOUT The story of "Rent" creator and Adelphi University graduate Jonathan Larson comes to the screen as only it should: in a blending of fact and fiction, terrific music and self-effacing charm, wrapped together with a spirit of innovation and a great love for the theater. 
This "tick, tick ... Boom!" brings Larson’s semi-autobiographical musical, which he wrote and performed before "Rent," to the movies courtesy of Lin-Manuel Miranda, who makes his directorial debut. 
It’s about a young Larson facing the prospects of turning 30 in 1990, taking stock of a life filled to that point with professional frustrations and personal disappointment, but also a tight-knit support network of close friends, lovers and mentors, and a wealth of limitless potential. 
Andrew Garfield stars, giving a performance that’s a revelation not only for his singing and dancing skills, but the genuine exuberance brought to every moment. 
The movie offers a broader perspective on Larson’s achievements than past stage adaptations. It includes more songs from his abandoned sci-fi musical "Superbia," and incorporates references to the ways the struggling artist we see onscreen would change musical theater forever in a matter of years. 
MY SAY "tick, tick ... Boom!" brings Larson to vivid and joyful life, refusing to allow his tragic death at age 35 in 1996 to define him. 
There could not be a more ideal director for this story than Miranda, a theatrical innovator himself who is in many respects Larson’s successor. Instead of simply adapting the musical for the screen in an expected, straightforward form, the filmmaker presents a blend of monologues, fantasy scenes, comic numbers and heart-wrenching moments. 
Scenes of Garfield onstage, backed by good pal Roger (Joshua Henry) and a band, combine with snapshots of life in his apartment (located in the "no man’s land between SoHo and Greenwich Village"), at his day job at the onetime SoHo-staple Moondance Diner, and in Theater District workshop spaces. 
There’s a palpable sense of what it might have been like to be a down-on-your-luck artist, striving to make it and resisting the urge to sell out in early-1990s Manhattan. 
Miranda’s staging of "No More" exemplies the entire scope of this state of being in one number, cross-cutting scenes of Garfield’s Larson and his best friend Michael (Robin de Jesús), experiencing the misery of life in a six-floor downtown walkup with the creature comforts of a fancy new building uptown. 
But what makes this movie so affecting is epitomized in the performance of "Sunday," Larson’s tribute to Stephen Sondheim (who also makes an appearance here, played by Bradley Whitford). It’s set at the diner, and in a magical fusing of generations of theater past and present, Miranda packs it with icons: Chita Rivera, Bernadette Peters, Joel Grey, André De Shields, Philippa Soo, Brian Stokes Mitchell and plenty more join Garfield in an ode to the sights and sounds of this ordinary Sunday morning. 
You have to wonder what Larson, who so wanted to take his place among these greats, would have thought of this. 
Their message to him is clear: We miss you. We love you. We remember you. 
BOTTOM LINE This is a must for theater fans, especially, but really for anyone looking for a movie that makes you feel just genuinely happy.

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'tick ... tick ... Boom!' review: Andrew Garfield is pure joy as Jonathan Larson

'tick ... tick ... Boom!': Joyful musical

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Early in "King Richard," featuring Will Smith as the self-made tennis impresario Richard Williams, a couple of white sports executives offer to handle the careers of his daughters, the budding pros Venus and Serena Williams. Promises are made, money is dangled. One of the suits says something about how much Richard has accomplished despite his "resources" — though what he really means is race. 
Indeed, Richard did not have the resources, however you define them, to join the mostly WASP-y world of tennis. What he did have were the instincts of a natural-born coach, the stubbornness of a mule and a near-religious faith in his girls. As the Williams sisters grew up, during the 1990s and 2000s, Venus would become a No. 1 ranked player and four-time Olympic gold medalist, while Serena became known as the greatest female player in the sport. If anyone deserved to say "I told you so," it was Richard; in fact, he scrawled it on a sign and held it aloft when the sisters played each other at the 1999 Lipton Championships. 
"King Richard" is the cinematic adaptation of that sign. Executive produced by Venus and Serena, it’s a biopic that casts their father as the hero of their lives and enlists one of Hollywood’s biggest stars to play him. (The polished direction is by Reinaldo Marcus Green; the screenplay is by Zach Baylin.) Smith is terrific as Richard, imbuing him with an irresistible, sometimes maddening combination of Christian humility, Barnum-style showmanship and foxy intelligence. We never doubt Smith here, just as we never doubt that Richard’s now-famous 78-page plan for tennis stardom will work. 
His secret? Never settle. He trades one excellent coach for another, finally landing on the enthusiastic Floridian Rick Macci (an endearing Jon Bernthal). When Reebok offers Venus $3 million, she waits — and ultimately gets $12 million. But Richard also keeps his daughters grounded; tennis isn’t everything. He’s stunned to see wealthy white kids fuming over losses and cheating to win. He’s so worried about burnout that he cancels an important tournament and takes the family (there are five sisters in all) to Disney World. 
There’s a lesser-known figure in this film who deserves credit: The girls’ mother, Oracene, played by an excellent Aunjanue Ellis. In this telling, she’s the one who picks up the slack, coaches Serena during a difficult period and keeps Richard in check. (They’ve since divorced.) When Oracene asks about Richard’s other, unmentioned children — there are many — we see another side to this father figure. 
We don’t get to know Venus (Saniyya Sidney) or Serena (Demi Singleton) in any depth. Their personalities are basically interchangeable — two good-natured, confident girls with generous spirits. Given their many televised triumphs, the real Venus and Serena may not mind ceding the spotlight here. "King Richard" brims with gratitude for the man (and the woman) who made them.

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'King Richard' review: Will Smith is terrific as Venus and Serena Williams' father

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A blissful boyhood is disrupted by brutal politics in Kenneth Branagh’s "Belfast," a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale set in 1969. Even today, Belfast is synonymous with what the Irish called The Troubles, a bloody sectarian conflict with historical roots deeper than most outsiders could fathom. Given its title, then, you’d expect "Belfast" to be marked by burning cars, storefront looting and the violence of neighbor against neighbor. 
You’d be right — and yet Branagh’s movie is largely sweet, poignant and upbeat. Shot in glossy, photo-album black-and-white, the movie is more interested in the little pleasures of childhood than the dead-serious problems of adults. There’s something refreshing about that — but there’s something frustrating about it, too. 
A charming Jude Hill plays nine-year-old Buddy, a clear stand-in for writer-director Branagh; their faces even have the same square-ish shape. Buddy’s hardscrabble but close-knit family includes Ma (a winning Caitríona Balfe), Pa (Jamie Dornan) and an older brother, Will (Lewis McAskie). The parents are young and attractive, almost television-perfect, though there are cracks in the facade: Pa works in far-off London, leaving Ma to dodge the bill collectors. Buddy, meanwhile, occupies himself with school, movies ("High Noon" is a favorite) and a pretty "wee girl" in his class. 
Colorful neighborhood chatter soon turns to the boiling antipathy between Protestants, such as Buddy’s family, and Catholics. Ma tows a liberal line: "Same as us," she says, "they just kick with the left foot." Pa is less sanguine: He’s being pressured to pick a side by a local ruffian, Billy Clanton (Colin Morgan). Billy is a familiar figure — the angry loser who has finally found a cause — and he injects a chill of fear into this mostly cozy film. 
What tension there is comes from Pa, who faces a difficult choice: Stay in his quickly-spiraling hometown, or pull up roots and leave, perhaps for faraway Australia. Generally, though, Branagh’s film either shies away from conflict or treats it lightly. Billy’s beating of an uncooperative neighbor borders on slapstick, and a climactic showdown during a riot takes on a winkingly Western tone. 
With its present-day shots of a thriving Belfast (in color) and songs by Ireland’s poet-mystic laureate, Van Morrison, "Belfast" is a fond if slightly glancing salute to Branagh’s native land. The most moving moments come from Buddy’s live-in grandparents, played by Judi Dench and Belfast-born Ciarán Hinds, who shower the boy with love and rascally wisdom. If "Belfast" dominates the upcoming Oscars, as some pundits predict, it may be largely due to a message that many of us want to hear right now: That love can survive conflict, and that peace is always at hand.

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'Belfast' review: Kenneth Branagh's poignant coming-of-age story

'Belfast': Kenneth Branagh's sweet, poignant story

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WHAT IT'S ABOUT Actor Rebecca Hall makes her feature filmmaking debut with "Passing," an adaptation of the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen. 
The movie, playing in limited theatrical release and streaming on Netflix beginning Wednesday, stars Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga as childhood friends who reunite as adults when they run into each other at a cafe in New York City. 
Both women are mixed race: Thompson's Irene Redfield identifies as African-American, living in Harlem, married to a doctor (André Holland) and the mother of two young boys. Negga's Clare Bellew passes as white — she's married to a wealthy racist (Alexander Skarsgård). 
Shot in black and white and captured in the boxlike 4:3 aspect ratio, the movie depicts the fallout that emerges from this reunion, as Clare begins to spend more time around the Redfield family, and Irene finds that her own self-perceptions are tested. 
MY SAY This is extraordinarily difficult material for any movie adaptation. It's a heavily interior story and one that relies upon a wealth of sociocultural context in the ways it evokes important and murky questions about identity construction, class biases, repressed sexuality and more. 
That Hall chose to pursue it for her directorial debut — not to mention she wrote the screenplay — suggests a degree of confidence that could mark the arrival of a significant new cinematic voice. 
In Hall's hands, "Passing" keeps the focus on the actors tasked with distilling and communicating these complicated bonds. She does so through several smart filmmaking choices. 
By closing off the edges of the screen, capturing the movie's entire world within the constraints of the 4:3 box, she can precisely direct the audience's focus. Close-ups become more stark: Thompson and Negga respond well to this by giving almost silent movie-level performances, conveying even the most transformative moments through their reactions. 
The monochromatic color scheme imbues the picture with a degree of impressionistic timeliness that would have been lost through a more literal rendering. The sun pierces through the clouds; shadows suggest great, deep-seated ambiguities. 
The movie takes place mostly in Harlem during the 1920s, but it seems to more precisely unfold somewhere beneath our surface reality, within the world that is shaped by our sublimated, unexpressed desires. 
The filmmaker purposefully resists easy answers and accessible dramatic beats. There's nothing close to a conventional structure here, and the extent to which the movie works for a particular audience member has a lot to do with one's willingness to live in the very specific space Hall establishes. 
But in another sense "Passing" is rooted in a harsh and uncompromising reality. The movie offers a great deal of wisdom in the extent to which it depicts some of the most fundamental contradictions of life in a distinctly American context. 
There's a very specific framework in the stories of Irene and Clare, but a broader scope, too: The interplay between the comfort of the familiar and the allure of escape. Questions of how we construct our identities, and what societal norms allow for us. The all-too-human need to be sheltered from life's traumas versus the necessity of confronting and preparing for them. It's all recognizable in any context, at any time. 
The stars bring it all home by understanding how to say a lot, while also saying very little. There's a great deal of subtext in every scene they share, and a real sense of tension. They're both distinctly human in their needs and desires and avatars for these larger themes. It's a master class of acting. 
BOTTOM LINE "Passing" is an impressive adaptation of difficult material.

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'Passing': Tough subject, sensitive treatment

'Passing': Tough subject, sensitive treatment

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"Spencer," Pablo Larraín’s imagined version of several days in the life of Princess Diana of Wales, bills itself as "a fable from a true tragedy." It isn’t a biographical movie in the ordinary sense — the whole of a life, molded to fit a narrative arc. Instead, "Spencer" is a highly fictionalized, often hallucinatory trip through the psyche of the former Diana Spencer, played at a near-hysterical pitch by Kristen Stewart, as she crumbles under the emotionally repressive regime known as the Royal Family. 
The year isn’t stated, but judging by Diana’s feathered hair, a glimpse of acid-washed denim and an upbeat pop song from Mike and the Mechanics, we are in the 1980s. It’s Christmas, and Diana is heading to Sandringham House, a royal country getaway that's about as laid-back as you might suspect. Guests must sit on a scale upon entry — "a bit of fun," everyone insists, though not for a bulimic like Diana — and even the most casual gathering still comes with a dress code. 
Friendly faces are hard to find. Diana’s husband, Prince Charles (Jack Farthing), is ice cold yet simmering with resentment; Queen Elizabeth (Stella Gonet) stares daggers across her soup; Major Alistair Gregory, a fictional security chief played by the great Timothy Spall, lectures Diana on duty and sacrifice. Diana even loses her favorite maid, Maggie (a muddled character, also fictional, though Sally Hawkins does well in the role). Eventually, the lonely princess seeks help from the ghost of Anne Boleyn — a distant relative, eerily, played by Amy Manson. 
Much like Larrain’s "Jackie," which cast Natalie Portman as a grieving and disintegrating Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, "Spencer" feels a little like a marketing concept: A famous star playing an even more famous person. Nevertheless, Stewart isn’t just "doing" Princess Di. She’s still the smoldering yet stammering actress we remember from "Twilight," and she puts a distinctive stamp on Diana. She’s also truly touching as a mother trying to stay strong for her children, the young princes William (Jack Nielen) and Harry (Freddie Spry). 
"Spencer" features elegant dialogue from screenwriter Steven Knight ("Eastern Promises"), dreamy cinematography from Claire Mathon and a horror-tinged score from Jonny Greenwood (that’s him playing pipe organ). Still, mood and ambience are no substitute for a compelling story, and "Spencer" doesn't tell us one. Rather, it’s made up entirely of trailer moments — Diana in a dazzling dress, Diana wandering down an opulent hall, Diana ripping a pearl necklace from her throat. In the end, all the dramatics don’t add up to actual drama.

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'Spencer' review: Kristen Stewart puts her distinctive stamp on Princess Diana

'Spencer': Kristen Stewart is compelling as Princess Diana

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WHAT IT'S ABOUT The Western "The Harder They Fall" takes real figures of the 19th century and spins them into a fictionalized drama about a gang rivalry, a boomtown and a lifelong quest for revenge. 
Director Jeymes Samuel (who also performs as a singer-songwriter under the stage name The Bullitts) assembles one of the best casts imaginable for the picture, a rare entry into this genre in which all the characters are African-American. 
The ensemble is fronted by Jonathan Majors ("Lovecraft Country") as Nat Love, a cowboy and outlaw who gets his old gang back together to go after the murderer of his parents: Rufus Buck (Idris Elba), a rival gang leader, who has taken over a town called Redwood. 
Fellow cast members include Zazie Beetz ("Joker") as Stagecoach Mary, the great Delroy Lindo as Bass Reeves and RJ Cyler ("I'm Dying Up Here") as Jim Beckwourth. They're among the members of the Love Gang. 
The Buck side of the fence features Oscar winner Regina King as Trudy Smith and Lakeith Stanfield, fresh off his Academy Award nomination for "Judas and the Black Messiah," e playing Cherokee Bill. 
The movie, coproduced by Jay-Z and cowritten by Samuel and the veteran filmmaker Boaz Yakin ("Remember the Titans"), is in select theaters now ahead of a Nov. 3 premiere on Netflix. 
MY SAY This movie operates on its own plane of existence, bursting forth onto the screen with a degree of confidence that rarely materializes on this scale. 
It distills everything we have known about the Western genre into something that feels entirely new. 
Spaghetti Western touches such as syncopated editing, split screens and stark jump cuts between close-ups blend seamlessly with powerful character-and-dialogue-driven scenes. Symmetrical framing and sweeping landscape shots combine with a larger revisionist ethos that calls it all into question. 
There are shootouts rendered on the largest possible scale, edge-of-your-seat caliber heists and confrontations between the characters that are rife with tension. 
The legacies of Clint Eastwood, Sam Peckinpah, John Ford, Howard Hawks and other masters of the genre are all represented here but reconstituted in the service of a dynamic original vision. 
Samuel, making his feature filmmaking debut, expertly carries the amassing of these archetypes into a form that's all its own. 
A lot of that has to do with the extent to which he taps into his background by presenting it all within the framework of a musical universe. The characters sing on-screen not to serve a music video aesthetic, but to reveal deeper truths about who they are and the pasts they've shared. 
In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, the characters would serve as little more than chess pieces to be arranged in the service of this visual and aural world. 
But Samuel is too smart for that and these actors are too great: Elba, King, Majors, Lindo, Stanfield, and so many more, all experts at adding a layer of complexity to a scene's emotional landscape by doing nothing but looking a certain way. 
Their efforts are enhanced by the hip-hop- and reggae-infused soundtrack — which includes a new collaboration between Jay-Z and Kid Cudi, and songs featuring the likes of everyone from Koffee to Cee-Lo Green. It plays more of a role than simply augmenting the action on screen. 
The songs comment on the imagery by subverting it, further leveling the playing field between the conventionally good and bad characters to the point where it's clear they're all humans brought together in the service of one primary aim: Making a ridiculously entertaining movie. 
BOTTOM LINE This is a great Western and an astonishingly accomplished debut film for the director.

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'The Harder They Fall' review: A Western unlike any other

'The Harder They Fall': A Western unlike any other

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A nostalgic dream turns into a waking nightmare in "Last Night in Soho," the story of a budding fashion designer whose obsession with 1960s Swinging London leads her to a long-ago mystery. It’s the latest slice of cinematic razzle-dazzle from one of our greatest pop filmmakers, Edgar Wright ("Shaun of the Dead," "Baby Driver"). Visually, he’s firing on all cylinders here, though his film ultimately promises more than it delivers. 
Thomasin McKenzie plays Eloise, nicknamed Ellie, a girl from the country who gets accepted to a prestigious London fashion institute. "It’s not all you imagine, London," warns her granny, Peggy, played by Rita Tushingham, one of several British stars of the 1960s scattered throughout the film. But there’s no keeping Ellie home, especially with her dead mother haunting her in every mirror. 
Granny was right: Ellie's dorm-mate, Jocasta (Synnøve Karlsen), is a backstabbing scenester whose loud parties drive Ellie to take a room off-campus in the house of cranky but maternal Ms. Collins (an excellent Diana Rigg, "The Avengers"). After this fairly long setup, the movie finally kicks into gear: As neon lights flicker outside her attic room, Ellie dreams of a beautiful girl named Sandie. 
Who is she? Played by the beguiling Anya Taylor-Joy ("The Queen’s Gambit"), Sandie is Ellie's blonde doppelgänger, a budding pop star who arrives in ‘60s London prepared to become the next Cilla Black (though she auditions with Petula Clark’s "Downtown"). As Ellie watches, Sandie's boyfriend and manager, Jack (Matt Smith), takes her to all the best places — but the dream curdles and something horrible happens to this bright young talent. Could the dream of Sandie be connected to Ellie's late mother? Awake, Ellie begins to connect Jack with a creepy old night crawler (Terence Stamp) who keeps popping up around Soho. 
Wright’s film is exceedingly clever cinematically. Ellie and Sandie initially trade reflections in multiple mirrors (even Orson Welles might have marveled at these images), then trade physical places as Jack twirls each one back and forth across a dance floor in a single, seamless shot. Editor Paul Machliss, a frequent collaborator with Wright, matches light and color as Ellie's dreams blend with reality. 
All the more disappointing, then, that Wright’s screenplay (with Krysty Wilson-Cairns) fails to satisfy. The characters never quite come to life — Sandie feels like an ideal, not a person — and the various twists and turns become repetitive. This being a mystery, I’ll say little more except that the solution isn’t as captivating as the puzzle. 
"One Night in Soho" takes its title from an obscure 1968 track by a British five-piece band with the wondrous name of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick &amp; Tich. Stay through the end credits while it plays and you’ll get a sense of what Wright was going for — something swirling, romantic, spooky and grand.

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'Last Night in Soho' review: Visually dazzling, but ultimately disappointing

'Last Night in Soho': Visually dazzling, but ultimately disappointing

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A little boy in a depressed Oregon town keeps something locked in a closet in Scott Cooper’s grisly yet mournful horror film, "Antlers." Whatever that thing is, it feeds on roadkill and makes half-human noises. It also wants out — and the flimsy padlocks on that door are not going to stop it. 
"Antlers" arrives in the middle of what’s being called a folk-horror revival; "Wolf" and "Lamb" are two other such titles that appeared this year. Folk-horror is a loosely defined genre that embraces just about any horror film with themes of isolated societies, ancient legends or the animal kingdom — and "Antlers" has all three. It lacks the art-house stamp of Robert Eggers’ "The Witch" or Ari Aster’s "Midsommar," two films that kick-started this trend, but the movie distinguishes itself with a pervasive air of ruin, decay and sorrow. 
Jeremy T. Thomas plays the boy, Lucas Weaver, a tiny tyke with the face of a hardscrabble angel. One gloomy afternoon, his dad, Frank (Scott Haze), a meth lab worker, runs afoul of something lurking in an old mine. What happens next isn’t initially clear, but the creature behind the door either ate Frank or is Frank — or something in between. Even worse, another member of the Weaver family is trapped in there, too. 
The plight of poor little Lucas can be a little overwhelming as he dutifully drags home dead raccoons, plugs his ears against the howls that rattle the house and shows up to school covered in filth. It’s no wonder his teacher, Julia Meadows (Keri Russell), grows concerned. Against the advice of her brother, Paul (Jesse Plemons), who is also the town sheriff, Julia takes the boy under her wing. 
Produced by Guillermo del Toro and based on a short story by Nick Antosca (who co-wrote the screenplay), "Antlers" marks an unexpected turn for the director of 2009’s "Crazy Heart," which featured Jeff Bridges in a moving turn as a washed-up country singer. These characters, however, aren’t nearly as engaging. There are hints of alcoholism and abuse in Julia’s past, but they don’t evolve into anything. They also seem unconnected to Frank’s terrible fate, which hinges on an angry Native American spirit. (Former sheriff Warren Stokes, played by the First Nations actor Graham Greene, gets to deliver that old trope.) 
Like the alien in "Alien," the creature in "Antlers" remains mostly in shadow until the film’s end. It’s an impressively gruesome sight, but what will stick with you is the image of a traumatized, long-suffering child. There’s horror in that, to be sure, but it’s probably not most people’s idea of a Halloween-season treat.

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'Antlers' review: Uneven horror film that's darker than necessary

'Antlers': Uneven horror film

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"This is only the beginning," goes the last line of "Dune," which is not much of a spoiler — the posters feature the tagline "It Begins," and you’ll notice that the movie itself is subtitled "Part One." The question is: Are you ready for two, three, nine or even more parts of "Dune?" 
If so, you probably have an appreciation for the following: dense science-fiction stories whose planets, peoples and languages have been created with near-scholarly detail; the stately style of director Denis Villeneuve ("Arrival," "Blade Runner 2049"); and the dreamy-eyed young actor Timothée Chalamet ("Call Me By Your Name," "Lady Bird"), who plays an intergalactic hero of Joseph Campbell-caliber proportions. 
I appreciate those things, too, but I’m not eagerly awaiting a "Dune" franchise. This opening salvo is nothing if not visually spectacular, full of sweeping panoramas, dazzling costumes and CGI creations that range from the awe-inspiring (giant sandworms with terrifying maws) to the supercool (airplanes whose wings beat like dragonflies). At the same time, "Dune" — based on Frank Herbert’s dense 1965&nbsp;novel — feels short on human warmth. This is a movie of Oscar-quality craftsmanship, but it lacks the primal drama of a "Star Wars," the emotional interplay of a "Star Trek" or the engaging camaraderie of a Marvel installment. 
Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, whose family takes charge of Arrakis, a desert planet that produces Spice — a sacred hallucinogen to the indigenous Fremen people, but a priceless energy source to others. The year is 10191, but Spice clearly has its historical antecedents (steel, oil, actual spices) and the Atreides family are essentially intergalactic colonizers. Paul’s parents, played by a rugged Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto and a coolly calculating Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica, want great things for their son, though their agendas differ. 
Paul, haunted by dreams of an unknown Fremen beauty (a near-wordless Zendaya as Chani), seems destined not to conquer the natives but become their unlikely messiah. It’s a romantic storyline, clouded by a faint white-saviorism. The most visible Fremen, who wear Bedouin-style scarves over their high-tech water-saving bodysuits, are played by darker-skinned actors, including Javier Bardem as the taciturn chief Stilgar and Babs Olusanmokun as the warrior Jamis. 
Speaking of casting: Several faces come from the superhero world, including Jason Momoa ("Aquaman") as the gregarious soldier Duncan and Dave Bautista ("Guardians of the Galaxy") as a bellowing baddie named Rabban Harkonnen. Even Stellan Skarsgård, relishing his role as the gluttonous Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, spent time in the "Thor" films. It’s a little hard to get lost in this movie’s cinematic universe when these actors remind us of so many others. 
As a final note, Villeneuve’s impeccably crafted film made me a little nostalgic for David Lynch’s wildly botched "Dune," from 1984. Though campy, perverse and grotesque, Lynch’s take at least had the power to shock and surprise. That movie left an impression; this one will leave you impressed, which is not the same thing.

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'Dune' review: Visually spectacular, but short on human warmth

'Dune':  Visually spectacular, but short on human warmth

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If Generation X is defined by its tendency to view all of life as a cultural pastiche, then the X-iest filmmaker of all is Wes Anderson. Quentin Tarantino may have seen more movies, Richard Linklater may own more vintage vinyl, but Anderson is an insatiable dilettante-polymath who seems to have absorbed every piece of created material he has ever encountered, be it written, filmed, painted or composed. 
That’s been clear at least since 2001’s "The Royal Tenenbaums," his breakout blend of J.D. Salinger, Orson Welles and classic rock, but Anderson outdoes himself on his latest, officially titled "The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun." Inspired by Anderson’s favorite magazine, The New Yorker, the movie centers on a fictional postwar publication based in the cheekily named town of Ennui-sur-Blasé. Broken into three separate feature stories, plus a travel essay and an obituary, "The French Dispatch" frees Anderson from the limitations of a single narrative, allowing him to squeeze more of his vast cultural knowledge — and possibly his largest cast yet — into a two-hour running time. 
This he does with inexhaustible energy and creativity, marshaling every visual and storytelling trick he can manage. Tilda Swinton, as a frosty-haired art historian, gives us a lecture on Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio Del Toro), an incarcerated painter who inspires an entire movement from prison thanks to a roguish art dealer (Adrien Brody). Timothée Chalamet plays Zeffirelli, a student revolutionary who in the middle of a May 1968-style uprising falls for the much-older journalist Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand). Meanwhile, editor Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (loosely based on The New Yorker’s beloved co-founder Harold Ross, and played by Bill Murray), strikes paragraphs and complains about expense accounts. 
Amid all this amiable absurdity comes a surprise: A journalist-gadabout named Roebuck Wright, a clear stand-in for James Baldwin (with a bit of A.J. Liebling thrown in). Impeccably dressed, impossibly sophisticated and ruefully gay, Roebuck is played by Jeffrey Wright in a moving turn that lifts him head and shoulders above the rest of the cast. Though Roebuck’s tale is essentially an extended wisecrack about French cuisine, the character is too human and vulnerable for Anderson to treat lightly. Wright’s performance makes sure of it. 
There’s so much packed in here — stories within stories, color that gives way to black-and-white, an animated sequence — that such major stars as Owen Wilson, Elisabeth Moss and Saoirse Ronan are reduced to cameos. As with many an Anderson film, you may leave wondering what, exactly, the whole thing was all about. It might be enough to say that "The French Dispatch" is a love letter from one artist to the many others who inspired him.

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'The French Dispatch' review: Wes Anderson outdoes himself

'The French Dispatch': Wes Anderson outdoes himself

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A woman’s accusations of sexual assault are followed by a cover-up, a smear campaign and a trial by public opinion in "The Last Duel," but the backdrop isn’t Fox News, NBC, public radio or Hollywood itself — it’s 14th-Century France. 
They say the past is another country where they do things differently, but this story seems awfully familiar, and that’s the point. The woman, Marguerite de Carrouges (Jodie Comer), has only one course of justice available: Stand by while her husband, Jean (Matt Damon), fights a duel to the death with the accused, Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver). God will allow only the truthful man to win, of course. As for Marguerite, she can survive a figurative mudslinging, but if found to be "lying" she’ll be literally burned alive. 
Based on the true story of France’s last sanctioned duel — as detailed in Eric Jager’s nonfiction book from 2004 — "The Last Duel" marshals a dream-team cast and the Oscar-winning director Ridley Scott ("Gladiator") to put a big-screen Hollywood spin on a topical issue. If that sounds cynical or shallow, think again. For every grandly staged medieval war sequence — swords in skulls, maximum splatter — there’s a scene of taut dialogue or a moment of penetrating social insight. Credit goes as much to the reunited screenwriting team of Damon and Ben Affleck ("Good Will Hunting"), collaborating with acclaimed filmmaker Nicole Holofcener, as to Scott’s knack for putting on a massive-scale spectacle. 
Broken up "Rashomon"-style into three competing versions of the truth, "The Last Duel" begins with Damon’s Jean, a hotheaded soldier with a habit of ticking off his friends. One of those, Driver’s Jacques, a self-satisfied womanizer, has become palsy-walsy with a local ruler, Pierre d'Alençon, a louche layabout played by a nearly unrecognizable Ben Affleck with a sleazy bowl haircut. All three are terrific as men who tell themselves what their egos want to hear. Without giving too much away, Jacques’ story may be the most revealing, and the most instructive. 
Comer brings a steady dignity to Marguerite, who risks everything to level her accusation. What follows sometimes seems absurd: This was an era in which rape was a property crime; it also, scientifically, did not cause pregnancy. But there’s something Kubrickian about Scott’s view of human folly: What absurdities do we hold self-evident today? 
If "The Last Duel" has a weakness, it’s a tendency to lead us by the nose. As we enter Marguerite’s version of events, characters begin to speak about silence, complicity and victim-shaming in ways that sound too on-message. It’s as if the future were putting words in the mouths of the past. 
The duel itself is such a nail-biter that you might suspect the Hollywood fiction machine at work. Firsthand historical accounts, however, support the movie’s version of events. "The Last Duel" adds up to a near-perfect blend of topical drama and grand entertainment.

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'The Last Duel' review: Near-perfect blend of topical drama and grand entertainment

'The Last Duel':Ridley Scott's medieval masterpiece

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"Halloween Kills" stands as the twelfth movie in the franchise chronicling the murderous exploits of Michael Myers. 
So the onus for justifying yet another trip around the old block, even in the wake of the megapopular 2018 sequel and its global box office haul of more than $255 million, lies squarely on the shoulders of returning filmmaker David Gordon Green. 
There has to be a compelling reason to go back once again to the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois, to reunite once more with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, in her signature role) and company as they fight back against the relentless masked killer. 
The "Halloween Kills" experience can be frustrating: this is a bridge to the final chapter of Green's trilogy, "Halloween Ends," which is due next year. It comes with all the usual caveats of a middle installment. 
But the director, who also co-wrote the movie with Danny McBride and Scott Teems, finds the rationale he needs for it by playing up the idea of Michael Myers as a supernatural force infecting the hearts and minds of everyday Haddonfield citizens. In Green's hands, he's an evil contagion more than a flesh-and-blood monster. 
That notion is crystallized in the most powerful scene in the movie, one that transcends the familiar requirements of the "Halloween" formula, and doesn't involve Michael at all. 
As the supervillain once again stalks the town — this time on Halloween night 2018, exactly 40 years after the terror depicted in the John Carpenter-directed original — a large percentage of the local population has descended upon the hospital. 
Events have picked up directly after the previous movie: Laurie has been brought to the emergency room with a serious stab wound, sustained in her climactic battle with Michael. The mob at the hospital has been driven into a frenzy by Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), a character from the original movie brought back here as a crusader for vengeance along with other once-traumatized children. 
They're convinced Michael is coming to the hospital. When they mistake another man for him, the filmmaker crafts a harrowing depiction of mob justice, the crush of a stampede and the futility of trying to inject rational thinking into the situation. 
It's more unsettling than the predictable scares in the movie. And if it captures something broader and more substantial about the American national mood at this fraught moment in time, that's no accident.

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'Halloween Kills' review: More than just the usual scares

'Halloween Kills':  More than just the usual scares

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WHAT IT’S ABOUT If you’re a music fan, you know The Velvet Underground by name even if they’re not in your vinyl collection. Led by Freeport-raised Lou Reed, they were a band in rebellion against everything, including the rebellion of the 1960s – four black-clad nihilists glowering at the flower-power generation. Though some still call their music depressing, pretentious or even unlistenable, the Velvets set a template for a cool kind of anti-cool that has influenced generations of rockers. 
MY SAY There’s a question that dogs this unorthodox documentary from filmmaker Todd Haynes: Who is it for? Much like Haynes’ 1998 fictionalized history of glam, "Velvet Goldmine," this movie is not a straightforward biography. Mixing traditional interviews, staged scenarios, informational detours and evocative visual montages, it’s less about the facts of people’s lives than the power of their ideas. It’ll probably work best for well-informed music fans who happen to have a Velvets-shaped gap in their knowledge -- a niche audience, to be sure. 
Long Island plays a familiar role as the utopian suburb that somehow birthed an enfant terrible, in this case Reed. He certainly came by his anger honestly, having been put through electroconvulsive therapy to "cure" his homosexual urges as a young man. Haynes, who is gay, allows Reed’s sister, Merrill, to express empathy for their misguided parents; Reed himself died in 2013. He can be heard in an audio recording echoing many a baby boomer: "I was desperate to get out of that place." 
Seeing rock stardom as his escape, Reed formed the Velvet Underground with a group of other outliers: The Welsh composer John Cale (interviewed extensively here), guitarist Sterling Morrison (another Long Islander, from East Meadow) and bare-bones drummer Maureen "Moe" Tucker. Driven by Reed’s bleak lyrics and a sound that could be monotonous, ferocious or both at once, the band defied rock convention and good taste with tracks like "The Black Angel’s Death Song" and "Heroin." A partnership with Andy Warhol, who briefly brought in the actress-singer Nico -- an ethereal beauty with a fascinatingly blank stare – established the Velvets as a unique art-pop hybrid, if not a commercial success. 
Haynes connects several interesting dots. Somehow, Cale’s love of the Everly Brothers and Reed’s love of Bo Diddley produced their droning, menacing sound – which in turn became a major influence on the earnest, childlike pop tunes of Jonathan Richman (one of this movie’s most eloquent speakers). Haynes doesn’t bother to identify many of his dots: He assumes you have a working familiarity with cult actress Mary Woronov, film critic Amy Taubin, experimental artist Tony Conrad and so on. One glaring omission is Laurie Anderson, Reed’s third wife and soulmate until his death, though she entered his life well after the Velvets disintegrated. 
"The Velvet Underground" eventually drifts toward nostalgia, a sentiment the band probably would have despised, but that’s forgivable. It’s hard to imagine that we’ll see anything like them again. The music impresario Danny Fields, speaking of their live shows in still-awestruck tones, sums it up: "You need physics to describe that band at its height." 
BOTTOM LINE A love-letter to the darkest stars of the 1960s.

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'The Velvet Underground' review: A love letter to the darkest stars of the 1960s

'The Velvet Underground': Love letter to the 1960s' darkest stars

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Daniel Craig’s James Bond, we hardly knew you. 
Since his debut in "Casino Royale" 15 years ago, Craig has brought a steely charisma to the fictional MI6 agent but never really warmed to the part. Blame Bond’s handlers at Eon Productions, who decided to saddle this male fantasy figure — intentionally created as a blank slate by novelist Ian Fleming in 1953 — with a complicated back story, psychological baggage and a touch of darkness to suit contemporary tastes. The recent Bond films were all hits, but they never seemed to resonate deeply with audiences. Meanwhile, Craig publicly expressed an impatience to shed his Tom Ford suits and move on. 
In his fifth and final outing as Agent 007, "No Time to Die," Craig gets his wish. Ironically, it’s one of the best entries in his uneven run. Confidently directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga ("Jane Eyre"), this nearly three-hour thriller serves up the always-satisfying tropes of a Bond film — the European-sedan chase, the well-mannered villain, the high-tech fortress of evil — but finally adds a layer of believable emotion thanks to a thwarted romance between Bond and psychiatrist Madeleine Swann (a moving Léa Seydoux, reprising her role from 2015’s "Spectre"). The film also does right by Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright), Bond’s American brother-in-arms at the CIA who pulls him out of retirement for — you guessed it — one last job. 
Given that this movie’s 2019 release was delayed by COVID-19, there’s something a little eerie about its premise: A potential pandemic of airborne nanobots that choose their victims. The man behind this humanity-culling plan is known as Safin, though some cheeky screenwriter gave him the first name of Lyutsifer. Played with Zen-like tranquility by Rami Malek, Safin is a serviceable enough villain, but fans may well wonder: Why doesn’t Bond’s longtime nemesis, Blofeld, take center stage? Christoph Waltz returns in the role, but briefly. 
As for Craig’s replacement, the film might be testing out possibilities. Could it be Nomi (Lashana Lynch), a cocksure agent who took over Bond’s spot — and his number! — at MI6? It probably won’t be CIA agent Paloma (Ana de Armas, Craig’s co-star in "Knives Out"), though she looks stunning in a slim ribbon of a dress and proves marvelously good in a gunfight. There’s another possibility, also female, but to say more would spoil a very big surprise in the Bond universe. 
"No Time to Die" serves up plenty of solid action sequences, including a long take through a stairwell full of armed commandos. Oddly, however, barely a drop of blood is spilled in this film. At crucial moments — a machine gun riddling a body, a man crushed by a car — Fukunaga’s camera almost always looks away. It’s classy, in one sense, but also a little prim by Bond standards. 
In keeping with tradition, the closing credits assure us that "James Bond Will Return" — though in what incarnation is anyone’s guess. "No Time to Die" certainly makes a clean sweep of the Craig era. Like Lyutsifer, it wants to start fresh.

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'No Time to Die' review: Daniel Craig saves the best for last 

'No Time to Die': Daniel Craig saves the best for last 

James Bond comes out of retirement to stop an engineered pandemic from decimating humanity. Daniel Craig's last turn as Agent 007 is in theaters Oct. 8, 2021.


James Bond 007 movie trailer: 'No Time to Die'

Newsday

Trailer: New Bond movie 'No Time to Die'

Quick, name Tony Soprano’s favorite "Godfather" movie. It’s "Part II," according to the 1999 pilot episode of HBO’s "The Sopranos." We’re told Tony loves the scenes about the Old World — the story before the story. 
More than 20 years after that series launched a new Golden Age of Television and turned James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano into America’s favorite fictional mobster, writer-creator David Chase and his longtime director Alan Taylor have given the character a prequel of his own, "The Many Saints of Newark." Gandolfini died in 2013, but in a poignant (and much-publicized) twist, his son, a relatively unknown Michael Gandolfini, steps into the role of young Tony. 
Fans of the show should be aware: Though Michael Gandolfini is convincing as a bright, sensitive kid born into a family of criminals and killers, he’s not the focus of this film. "Many Saints" is really the story of a character fans never saw: Tony’s beloved "uncle" — technically a cousin — Dickie Moltisanti, the father of "The Sopranos'" Christopher (Michael Imperioli), who is shown in this film as a baby. (The Italian surname loosely translates to "many saints.") 
The movie also introduces a new character, Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr.), who wants to build a Black crime empire to rival the Sopranos and their wider DiMeo clan. Yet another character narrates — from the grave. All of this muddies the movie’s waters, but one thing is clear: Alessandro Nivola, known mostly for art-house roles ("Coco Before Chanel," "Disobedience"), delivers a breakthrough performance as the volatile, charismatic and often guilt-ridden Dickie. 
Dickie’s is a classic mobster’s tale with shades of Greek tragedy. When his father (an excellent Ray Liotta) returns from Italy with a sexy young bride, Giuseppina (Michela De Rossi, a captivating Italian making her American film debut), an Oedipal complex rears its head. At work, Dickie has other problems: The Black marches and riots of the late 1960s are giving his employee, Harold, some unwelcome ideas. 
"Many Saints" has much to recommend it, beginning with the team of Chase-Taylor, whose writing and directing blend seamlessly. Nearly every actor is perfectly cast, notably Corey Stoll as Uncle Junior; Vera Farmiga as Tony’s unbearable mother, Livia; and Jon Bernthal as Tony’s hardheaded dad, Johnny. One unexpected problem is the character of Harold: He’s such a commanding figure, and Odom plays him with such spirit and intelligence, that he divides our loyalties and nearly takes over the movie. That kind of complexity was a hallmark of the series, but it works less well in the tight format of a feature film. 
Rolling the closing credits over "Woke Up This Morning," the show’s bluesy theme song, may not be quite enough to give fans that full-circle feeling. (At least it wasn’t Journey’s "Don’t Stop Believin,’" which ended the series on a famously cryptic note in 2007.) As for Nivola’s electrifying Dickie Moltisanti, a prequel before this prequel may be in order.

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'Many Saints of Newark' review: Prequel is heaven for 'Sopranos' fans

'Many Saints of Newark':  Prequel is heaven for 'Sopranos' fans

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Tears and songs pour from the screen in "Dear Evan Hansen," an adaptation of 2016’s emo-goes-to-Broadway smash. Its story, about a misfit teenager who lies his way into the hearts of a grieving family, will speak to anyone who has struggled with depression, alienation or loneliness. A dubious bit of casting and less-than-riveting musical numbers, however, detract from the movie’s power. 
Ben Platt reprises his Tony Award-winning role as Evan Hansen, a socially awkward kid raised by a doting but harried single mom (an excellent Julianne Moore). As part of a therapy program, Evan writes confessional letters to himself — hence the film’s title — one of which falls into the hands of another, angrier outcast, Connor Murphy (Colton Ryan, brief but arresting). After Connor unexpectedly kills himself, his mother (Amy Adams) finds the letter and assumes that Evan was a dear friend. 
From here, "Dear Evan Hansen" feels like a gushier version of "Six Degrees of Separation" as Evan begins telling the Murphys what they want to hear about their son. Evan's lies ingratiate him into their wealthy household and, more important, help him win the affection of Connor’s sister, Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever). Evan also becomes amazingly popular at school and makes an unlikely friend in Alana, a pretty but troubled cheerleader played by Amandla Stenberg, who co-wrote and performs a new song, "The Anonymous Ones." 
Director Stephen Chbosky, of the dark coming-of-age drama "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," is on familiar ground with this material but he doesn’t seem interested in the kind of inventive visuals and choreography that make a musical a musical. As a result, the songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul ("La La Land") feel static; they slow down the story and even begin to feel unnecessary. "So Big, So Small," for example, a song of motherly reassurance, could have gotten its point across equally well as a short monologue. 
There’s also the problem of Platt, a 27-year-old actor playing a high schooler. His 24-year-old co-star Dever does it convincingly enough, but Platt — for reasons hard to put a finger on — does not. It isn’t just the five o’clock shadow visible beneath his makeup, it’s his overly childlike presentation: the little-boy posture, the mop of hair, the stripey T-shirts. It’s as if Platt aimed for adolescence, but overcorrected and hit prepubescence. 
Platt deserves credit, however, for giving this performance his all. By the end of the film, he looks positively wrung out with emotion, though "Dear Evan Hansen" may not leave viewers in a similar state.

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'Dear Evan Hansen' review: A far from letter perfect transfer from Broadway

'Dear Evan Hansen': Musical is not letter perfect

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Tammy Faye Bakker can’t remove her eyelashes in Michael Showalter’s biopic "The Eyes of Tammy Faye." Just like her lipliner, she informs a befuddled makeup artist, the lashes are permanent. "This is who I am," Tammy says. 
It’s an effective if on-the-nose opening for a movie that aims to resuscitate the reputation of Tammy Faye Bakker, a 1980s-era televangelist who with her husband, Jim Bakker, built a fortune with "The PTL Club," a perpetual fundraising show that preached a gospel of prosperity (irony not included). When their business disintegrated following a sex scandal and fraud charges that landed Jim in prison, it was Tammy Faye — with her inch-thick makeup and constantly weeping eyes — who became the tabloid face of religious hypocrisy. Forgotten amid the avalanche of headlines was Tammy’s public embrace of the gay community during the AIDS epidemic, then unheard-of among televangelists. She died in 2007. 
Based on a documentary from 2000, "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" is primarily a vehicle for Jessica Chastain, its star and producer. The story allows Chastain to cover all the acting bases: young Tammy as a Bible college student, peak-period Tammy in extravagant fur coats, late-period Tammy wearing increasingly disturbing makeup. Andrew Garfield, as Jim Bakker — he of the cornpone smile and Ken doll comb-over — keeps pace alongside her. 
Director Showalter, best known for comedies ("The Big Sick"), alternates between mocking the Bakkers — Christian sex is played for laughs here — and taking them seriously as people. Despite the occasional cartoonish note, Chastain’s Tammy cuts a sympathetic figure as a woman blindsided by life but determined to move forward, while Garfield plays Jim as a man driven by both God-sanctioned arrogance and deep insecurity. The supporting cast, a mixed bag, includes a chilly Cherry Jones as Tammy’s disapproving mother and an overly blustery Vincent D’Onofrio as the Rev. Jerry Falwell. 
"The Eyes of Tammy Faye" often feels superficial. It relies too heavily on calendar-page montages to tell its story; there are at least four, which is three too many. Factual financial details of the Bakker empire are hard to come by. Rumors of Jim’s homosexuality resurface here in a way that feels unfair. 
The movie makes a strong case for its Tammy Faye (and may earn Chastain an award or two), but some viewers may have qualms. Tammy Faye’s big-tent humanism was admirable — her televised interview with a gay pastor is one of the film’s highlights — but she also used the carrot of salvation and the stick of damnation to coax millions of dollars from gullible Christians. Those suckers never got an even break from the Bakkers; whether Tammy Faye deserves one herself is debatable.

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'The Eyes of Tammy Faye' review: Uneven biopic of 1980s televangelist

'Eyes of Tammy Faye': Uneven biopic of 1980s televangelist

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Has anyone ever tried to cancel Clint Eastwood? At 91, with more than 60 films and four Oscars, his track record of political incorrectness isn’t straightforward. True, women and people of color don’t always fare well in his films — see the no-means-yes rape in "High Plains Drifter" for one example — but sometimes they’re the stars, as in "Million Dollar Baby," "Bird" and "Flags of Our Fathers." When Eastwood played a blue-collar racist who grudgingly befriends his Asian neighbors in 2008’s "Gran Torino," he may or may not have been showing us his real self, but the double-edged role fit him like a glove. 
Which Eastwood do we get in "Cry Macho" — the retrogressive action hero or the sensitive filmmaker? The answer is a little of both, but in this particular case they don’t mesh well at all. 
In "Cry Macho," Eastwood directs himself as Mike Milo, a creaky former rodeo star. His old boss Howard Polk (Dwight Yoakam), a Texas ranch owner, has a new job for him: Go to Mexico, find Howard’s estranged teenage son and bring him back to help run the ranch. Sounds a little fishy, but Mike owes Howard and can’t say no. 
What follows is, at first, a noir. The boy’s mother, Leta (Fernanda Urrejola), is an oversexed crime boss who parades through her villa in a slinky dress trailed by bodyguards. Eastwood’s age preempts any fight scenes — who’s gonna slug a nonagenarian? — but it doesn’t stop Leta from throwing herself at Mike and yowling with rage when he demurs. 
The boy, Rafo (newcomer Eduardo Minett), is a street-hardened runaway who turns out to be almost overpoweringly earnest; he delivers every line with the moist-eyed emotion of a young Judy Garland. When Mike and Rafo (and Rafo’s pet rooster, Macho) hole up in a little town where the locals instantly fall in love with them, Eastwood’s film quickly becomes a mawkish, sunset-colored fantasy. 
Eastwood has his charms as the gruff, good-hearted Mike, but even viewers in a forgiving mood might grow exasperated with the benign racism of "Cry Macho." It’s one thing for Mike to impress the Mexicans with his horse-whispering, but quite another for the entire town to beg him to cure their animals with his touch. We never see Mike actually do anything; all we see is his Christ-like figure surrounded by the poor and needy. If Mike has some magical quality beyond his skin color, the film isn’t telling us. 
As "Cry Macho" moseys along, figuratively tugging hearts and patting Mexicans on the head, it seems best to just give Eastwood a pass on this one — he’s earned it. Let’s hope he sticks around long enough to make more.

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'Cry Macho' review: Clint Eastwood's latest doesn't make our critic's day

'Cry Macho': Eastwood's latest doesn't make our critic's day

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WHAT IT'S ABOUT In the action thriller "Kate," Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays a highly trained assassin based in Tokyo seeking revenge when she's poisoned and given only 24 hours to live. 
Joining Winstead's Kate on this journey through the yakuza underworld, and awakening her long-dormant conscience, is Ani (Miku Martineau), the teenage daughter of the target Kate eliminates at the beginning of the movie. 
Co-stars include Woody Harrelson, playing a version of himself as usual as Kate's mentor Varrick. Cedric Nicolas-Troyan ("The Huntsman: Winter's War") directs from a screenplay by Umair Aleem. 
MY SAY There are few archetypal characters more beloved by screenwriters than the wronged assassin. So many movies have the same basic premise as "Kate" that it has practically become a stock plot: A killer experiences pangs of morality while avenging a deep betrayal. 
Even with elements that separate "Kate" from the pack, including a compelling performance by Mary Elizabeth Winstead and a keen eye for the neo-noir wonders of nighttime Tokyo, there's no evading the generic foundation. 
Winstead is no stranger to action thrillers, with a resume that includes co-starring stints opposite the likes of Bruce Willis, Will Smith and Margot Robbie in "Birds of Prey." 
She knows what she's doing. 
Her Kate cuts an imposing figure: coolheaded as she annihilates the stock bad guys thrust in her path, while stricken with just the right amount of guilt and regret. Certain actors simply command the screen in movies like this: you've either got what it takes to pull this off, or you don't. 
As a bloodied and bruised Kate struts toward the camera in slow-motion, a cigarette dangling from her lips and gunfire erupting all around her, it's clear: Winstead has it, keeping the viewer invested even as the picture immerses itself in predictable rhythms. This is what a movie star does. 
"Kate" also has the great fortune of being set in one of the most cinematic of cities, a gleaming sprawl of skyscrapers shimmering in neon. There's a strong sense of place in the onscreen Tokyo of "Kate." This vision of the city as a glossy nighttime fever dream may be recognizable when it comes to other Hollywood productions set there, but it offers a rich visual template. 
But the stylish flair cannot sufficiently distract from the overarching hollowness. The plot is so conventional that anyone with the slightest bit of genre knowledge can guess exactly what happens — and exactly when. There's not a surprise to be found. 
At the same time, the stabs at framing the story within the context of larger themes about toxic Western influence fall utterly flat. 
None of this impacts the experience of being entertained by the movie on the most basic level while it happens. There's enough here for some escapist fun. But anyone in search of something worth remembering would do well to look elsewhere. 
BOTTOM LINE This is a conventional action thriller with some worthy touches but hardly enough to make it stand out.

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'Kate' review: Conventional action thriller with Mary Elizabeth Winstead

'Kate': Conventional action thriller

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WHAT IT'S ABOUT The Netflix drama "Worth" dramatizes the story of the creation of the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund in the aftermath of 9/11 and the efforts involved in signing up families to receive payments from it instead of suing the airline companies. 
Michael Keaton stars as Kenneth Feinberg, the VCF's special master, opposite a stellar cast including Stanley Tucci, Amy Ryan and Laura Benanti. 
Director Sara Colangelo and screenwriter Max Borenstein depict the challenge of deriving a formula for payments and convincing distraught family members to sign up for them, as well as the ways in which Feinberg's approach to crafting the fund is challenged by the extent and immediacy of the tragedy. 
MY SAY "Worth" establishes the framework of its philosophical inquiry in its opening scene, as Feinberg leads a Georgetown University class in a seminar that examines the fundamental question of how one determines the value of a person's life. 
When Feinberg is appointed as special master by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in the weeks after 9/11, the law has a basic answer for this: projections of how much money a victim might have earned over the course of a lifetime. 
Our innate sense of justice has another: There is not a convincing moral argument to be made for compensating the family of a victim with a lower level of income differently than the grieving relatives of a high earner. 
The filmmakers and their cast explore this dichotomy and the ways in which it played out in this particular context with a matter-of-fact style that grounds the movie in something more powerful than just intellectual exercise. 
Colangelo maps out the movie's emotional terrain with frequent close-ups, capturing loved ones as they meet with Feinberg's team to tell the wrenching stories of their loved ones left behind, and the ways in which these encounters shape the approach to bringing the fund to fruition. 
A lesser actor might have depicted Feinberg as an aloof actuary, but Keaton presents him as a man coming to terms with the notion that his closely held ideas of how to go about this work cannot apply in the expected fashion. 
While Feinberg is quiet and reserved, the actor offers a strong sense of his inner life. There are moments in which he does little more than sit still and stare that Keaton fills with a palpable sense of sadness and concern. 
The relentless focus on the personal, rather than the political, extends to the ways in which the quandary at the core of the picture plays out. Feinberg's meetings with the politicians and lawyers on one end of the spectrum are thoughtfully combined in montage sequences with the hearings involving the prospective fund recipients. 
Feinberg's encounters with fund critic Charles Wolf (Stanley Tucci) provide a catalyst for a re-examined approach to shaping the fund, and are scripted and acted to emphasize the extent to which honest discussion can change minds. 
BOTTOM LINE "Worth" is a powerful drama that engages with profound philosophical ideas while being rooted in recognizably human emotions.

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'Worth' review: Michael Keaton stars in powerful, profound 9/11-themed drama

'Worth': Powerful, profound 9/11-themed drama

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In the world of superheroes, fathers die early but loom large. Tony Stark’s genius, Superman’s moral gravitas, Aquaman’s ability to breathe on land — they owe it all to dad. You might say the same for the hero of "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings," but his father happens to be alive. Not only that, he is competing with his son for screen time — and for the most part, the old man wins. 
As an introduction to Disney-Marvel’s first superhero movie led by Asians — both on screen and behind the camera — "Shang-Chi" makes for a somewhat unsteady landmark. For starters, there’s that curious father-son dynamic. There’s a character named Katy (Awkwafina) who tries to function as both wacky sidekick and love interest — a difficult if not impossible task. And while the movie pays homage to Asian cinema by blending ancient Kung-Fu fantasy with a modern Marvel blockbuster, the overall effect is uneven. 
The film begins with Xu Wenwu, a warlord played by Hong Kong cinema icon Tony Leung. He’s a power-mad marauder — and thanks to his ten mystical rings (worn bracelet-style, up the forearms), he’s immortal. Flash-forward to the present day, and Wenwu — even while sponsoring organized crime and terrorism — finds himself tamed by Li, a kind of human forest-spirit played by Fala Chen. They fall in love. 
Got all that? We learn the story early on, but we don’t connect a San Francisco slacker named Shaun (Simu Liu) with Shang-Chi until he is attacked on a bus (by a guy whose right arm is a burning sword) and springs into dazzling action. With his identity — and the movie’s sense of verisimilitude — thoroughly blown, Shang-Chi tells Katy the truth: He’s a martial arts master who’s been hiding from his unkillable father. 
Guess what happens when you cast a soulful actor like Leung ("Hero," "Infernal Affairs") as the villain in a Marvel movie? You fall in love with him. "Shang-Chi" tries to cast Wenwu as a tyrant hellbent on hastening doomsday, but all we see is a tormented, romantic figure haunted by the ghost of the only woman he ever loved. It’s hard to fully root against Leung’s tragic Wenwu, especially when Liu’s wooden Shang-Chi gives us so little to root for. This somewhat stone-faced hero comes alive mostly thanks to CGI effects (lightning bolts, force fields, shock waves, the usual). Far more compelling are his hard-nosed sister, Xialing (Meng’er Zhang, in her film debut), and his wise aunt, Ying Nan (screen great Michelle Yeoh). 
Though reasonably entertaining and graced by occasional moments of delicacy from director Destin Daniel Cretton ("Short Term 12"), "Shang-Chi" feels both overly ambitious and slightly unclear on what future installments are supposed to look like. Still, now that all the father issues have been resolved, perhaps Shang-Chi will grow into his own.

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'Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings' review: Uneven groundbreaking adventure

'Shang-Chi...' review: Groundbreaking, but  uneven

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WHAT IT'S ABOUT After Amanda Cooper (Adria Arjona) dies of cancer when an experimental drug is shadily pulled off the market right before her treatment, her husband Ray (Jason Momoa) sets out for revenge in the Netflix action thriller "Sweet Girl." 
Teenage daughter Rachel (Isabela Merced) joins Ray as he sets his sights on the shady corporate-political interests that sabotaged his wife's survival chances. Also involved in the chase: FBI agents, a relentless assassin, and Amy Brenneman as a politician. 
It's an '80s- or early '90s-era genre picture transplanted to 2021 — the sort of movie that might have once starred Kurt Russell or Arnold Schwarzenegger. 
MY SAY "Sweet Girl" gets the classic action plot template right. 
It gets some elements of the aesthetics right, including one breakneck scene on the Pittsburgh Light Rail and a framing device involving a chase on the roof of that city's PNC Park. 
It even gets the star right, as Jason Momoa once again shows himself to be a charismatic screen talent who understands how to deliver one-dimensional dialogue with a degree of earnestness that never lapses into self-seriousness. 
But he can't save the movie, a dour slog through rote conspiratorial territory without a distinguishing factor to be found beyond the capable lead. 
It's amazing how often filmmakers these days try to inject some life into the action genre but forget that the best of these movies work as well as they do because they don't take themselves too seriously. 
The makers of "Sweet Girl" — director Brian Andrew Mendoza and screenwriters Philip Eisner and Gregg Hurwitz — do not project the self-awareness required to recognize that any movie in which a character says something like "You are my village, and I am the opposing force," is fundamentally ridiculous. 
It would be unreasonable to expect a retread of, say, Schwarzenegger's one-liners in the similarly plotted 1985 classic "Commando," but there's hardly a moment of levity in the entire movie. 
The filmmakers seem to believe "Sweet Girl" has something meaningful to say about family ties, and corporate manipulation of the drug market, but it just doesn't. 
The audience is therefore left with scenes that have little effect beyond recalling better movies. 
These include a diner confrontation between Momoa and the assassin chasing him (played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) that aspires to evoke the famous Robert De Niro-Al Pacino confrontation in "Heat" but plays like a first draft of that scene being performed in a dinner theater. 
Not content to simply make a straightforward action picture, collect that sweet Netflix money and call it a day, the filmmakers also tack on a third act twist that undermines everything that's happened before it and suggests a lack of confidence in the story being told. 
WIthout violating this review's sacred spoiler-free zone, suffice it to say that the twist offers a totally different direction for the story that might have worked had the filmmakers simply gone after it from the outset. 
It's one of the oldest cliches in the book, but it's also true: sometimes less really is more. 
BOTTOM LINE "Sweet Girl" would be a much better movie had it been content with simply being an entertaining, straightforward action flick.

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'Sweet Girl' review: Even charismatic Jason Momoa can't save this movie

'Sweet Girl': Charismatic Jason Momoa can't save this movie

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Actress Maggie Q is no stranger to the action genre, with credits that include "Mission: Impossible III" and television’s "Nikita." The same goes for Martin Campbell, a director who boosted the James Bond series first with Pierce Brosnan in "GoldenEye" and again with Daniel Craig in "Casino Royale." Their new movie, "The Protégé," casts Q in the kind of role usually reserved for men: A highly trained assassin out for revenge. 
It all goes passably well — at first — and then Michael Keaton saunters on screen and utterly steals the movie. 
Then again, there isn’t much movie here to steal. An uneven mix of cartoonish gunplay, alarming brutality and meet-cute romance, "The Protégé" either doesn’t know what it’s trying to accomplish or, more likely, can’t make up its mind. Keaton, who plays a wily counter-assassin, is simply being Keaton (that knowing smirk, those wolfish eyebrows) and this flailing seems drawn to his confidence and natural charm. 
The story plays on Q’s Vietnamese heritage by opening in Da Nang 30 years ago. An American commando type named Moody (Samuel L. Jackson, fun as always) discovers a little girl, Anna, hiding in a closet with a gun; it appears she single-handedly killed a whole gang of lowlifes. Impressed, Moody takes her under his wing. Now Anna runs a rare-book shop in London, though her real money comes from partnering with Moody to kill bad guys. Eh, it’s a living. 
But when the bad guys come for Moody, Anna is determined to track them down. A trail of clues — something about a vanished boy named Lucas Hayes — leads to a the usual series of lowlifes for hire, billionaire sleazeballs and so on. Q, with her slender build and fine features, isn’t always believable as she dispatches these guys two, three or even five at a time; she’s better in scenes where Anna has to play smart, keep cool and wait for her moment. 
The screenplay by Richard Wenk ("The Equalizer") doggedly goes nowhere, but two things help distract us: Several solid action sequences and Keaton. As the improbably named Michael Rembrandt, Keaton convinces us that this suave killer is falling for his target; what’s more, he convinces us that Anna, roughly half his age, would fall for him. Alas, this is also where the film really unravels: Are we in a bloody shocker like "A History of Violence" or a har-de-har comedy like "Mr. and Mrs. Smith?" 
"The Protégé" saves its worst narrative blunder for last: A closing flashback that shows us exactly what Anna experienced as a little girl. A nightmare of point-blank shootings, attempted rape and a decapitated head shoved into the camera lens, it’s a pointless horror show that arrives late and explains nothing. Keaton, come back!

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