I accidentally hit that "like" tab while I was trying to adjust the spacing of the reviews below. Just sayin'.
“Frozen 2” Distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 103 Minutes, Rated PG:
Children and adults alike will be enchanted with “Frozen II,” the computer-animated feature from the imagineers at Walt Disney Studios, a continuation of the studio’s 2013 hit film “Frozen.”
Inspired like its predecessor by the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Show Queen,” in “Frozen II” a state of hostility exists between the land of Arendelle and the mythical northern region of Northuldra. Northuldra is the location of the Enchanted Forest, ruled by the spirits of the elements Earth, Fire, Water and Air.
Haunted by a tale related by her late father when she and her sister were children, the young Queen Elsa is at first puzzled when a mysterious voice begins calling to her. But when the elemental forces from the north awaken and begin to threaten the Kingdom of Arendelle, Queen Elsa decides she must travel to Northuldra as a means of placating the spirits and forging a peace. In the company of Princess Anna, their loyal friend Kristoff, and the magical snowman Olaf, Queen Elsa departs for the northern regions and the Enchanted Forest to save her kingdom, learn about her past and the source of her magical powers...and possibly discover her destiny.
More of a light opera or operetta than a comical animated adventure, “Frozen II” benefits strongly from a continuum of creative talent from the original 2013 picture, including directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, and composer Christophe Buck. But at the same time the film suffers occasionally from similarities to the earlier film. A lack of fresh ideas and new perspectives make the picture more a continuation of the earlier picture than a unique new story of its own.
Still, nobody produces this sort of picture better than the folks at Disney. Ultimately “Frozen II” turns out to be an entertaining and often emotionally moving journey, especially dazzling for younger viewers. The characters are genuinely likable, the songs are melodic and clever (“Show Yourself” is a real show-stopper), the animation is customarily superb, and there’s a sweetly inclusive subtext of peaceful unity among all people. Smaller viewers will find themselves in movie heaven, and parents will find themselves richly entertained, too. This is the rare picture for which you might find yourself jumping to your feet to applaud at the end.
With voice characterizations by the returning Idina Menzel as Elsa, Kristen Bell as Anna, Jonathan Groff as Kristoff, and Josh Gad as Olaf, as well as vocal characterizations from new participants Evan Rachel Wood, Alfred Molina, Martha Plimpton, Sterling K. Brown, and Jason Ritter, “Frozen II” is rated PG for sequences of action and peril, and some thematic elements.
“Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” Distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 118 Minutes, Rated PG:
Angelina Jolie channels the spirit of the late Bette Davis in “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil,” a mostly live-action picture from Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures which effectively continues the events depicted in the studio’s 2014 hit “Maleficent.” Not only do Jolie’s speech patterns in the picture’s title role duplicate actress’ Davis’ iconic sharp and ironic delivery--her frigid and humorless smile is also reminiscent of the actress during the scenes in which it’s deployed...which aren’t many.
Five years after the death of her father King Stefan, Queen Aurora rules over the Kingdom of the Moors, maintaining order among humans and the various faeries, trolls, groots, and tinkerbelles which dwell there. Aurora’s powerful godmother, our old friend Maleficent, remains the kingdom’s strongest protector...although she’s still feared as an evil witch by the people of nearby Ulsted, the kingdom of King John and Queen Ingrith and their son, the handsome--and very single--Prince Phillip,
When Maleficent learns that Queen Aurora has accepted a marriage proposal from Ulsted’s Prince Phillip, she disapproves at first. But persuaded by the independent-minded Aurora that the marriage is going to happen with or without her blessing, Maleficent goes along with the idea, even consenting to a meet-and-greet engagement dinner with Phillip’s parents at the Ulsted Castle.
During the happy couple’s engagement dinner, Maleficent is framed for an assassination attempt on King John, a plot actually devised and implemented by the beautiful but evil and scheming Queen Ingrith. Grievously wounded during her escape from the castle, Maleficent is rescued by a mysterious winged and horned creature, who transports her lifeless body to an underground land ruled by the peaceful Conall.
While Conall nurses the now-vengeful Maleficent back to health and urges a peaceful resolution to the disputes between the people of Ulsted and the creatures of the Moor, and Aurora continues with her wedding plans in the belief that Maleficent actually intended to murder King John, evil Queen Ingrith plots to lure all the creatures of the Moor to the castle for the wedding...where she’ll oversee their extermination, uniting the kingdoms of Ulsted and the Moor under her own dominion.
“Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” proceeds from the clever conceit that the actual events immortalized in Charles Perrault’s tale “The Sleeping Beauty”--the story which formed the basis of Disney’s 1959 animated classic “Sleeping Beauty”--have become lost in repeated retellings of the tale through the years: ”In retellings,” intones the narrator, "Maleficent becomes the villain once more.” In other words, Maleficent’s not really a Mistress of Evil at all--she’s just misunderstood.
With references to not only the movie’s 2014 predecessor and the studio’s own 1959 animated classic but also such staples of gothic horror and fantasy as “House of Wax,” “Pan’s Labyrinth,” and even--believe it or not--“Game of Thrones,” “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” becomes a fairly involving big budget alternative bedtime story, although the special effects during some scenes threaten to violate the visual image--a real surprise from a studio which usually acts as the vanguard in the art of optical illusion. Still, the picture is a worthy addition to the Disney canon of family entertainment.
Directed by Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Ronning from a screenplay from Linda Woolverton with an assist from the team of Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue, “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” during some sequences goes a little darker in spirit and image than you’d expect from Disney. For this reason, the picture likely requires a little parental guidance, especially for those with very small children. But the inclusion of such images only proves that if the people at Disney ever decide to go all out and embrace full gothic vampire-based horror, this is the creative team they’ll want to hire.
Jolie as Maleficent seems to disappear entirely from a big chunk of the middle section of the picture while Elle Fanning’s Queen Aurora tidies up loose ends at the castle in preparation for the upcoming nuptials, but returns stronger than ever for the picture’s rousing finale. While Jolie’s offscreen, the rest of the cast includes Sam Riley, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, and Lesley Manville returning to their characterizations from the first picture, while Harris Dickinson replaces Brenton Thwaites as Prince Phillip. That’s a heavily-disguised Chiwetel Ejiofor as the winged Conall, nursing the wounded Maleficent back to health.
“Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” is rated PG for intense sequences of fantasy action and violence, and some fleeting scary images.
“21 Bridges” Distributed by STXfilms, 100 Minutes, Rated R:
A year removed from his overwhelming critical and popular success is the title character in the Marvel-based “Black Panther” and peripheral appearances in “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame,” actor Chadwick Boseman returned to the screen contribute a quietly authoritative performance in the underwhelmingly familiar police procedural “21 Bridges.”
Directed by Brian Kirk from a script by Adam Mervis and Matthew Michael Carnahan, when a routine narcotics heist perpetrated by two small-time criminals turns into a drug bonanza and results in a getaway slaughter of several New York City police officers, the case is quickly assigned to NYPD homicide detective Andre Davis (Boseman). With his reputation for relentlessly hunting cop killers, Davis decides to gamble his career by closing off all access to Manhattan island overnight--including the twenty-one bridges leading into the city--until the killers are killed or apprehended. But there might be more to the case than meets the eye...
With graphic depictions of brutal violence, “21 Bridges” despite its good performances, gritty and vivid photography, and terse, authentic-sounding dialogue becomes little more than a garden variety cops-and-robbers drama, little distinguished in quality from a 1970s exploitation picture...or even a two-part episode of television’s “Kojak.” But during the picture’s final quarter, the speechifying gets out of hand until by the end the viewer’s not quite sure if the crime has been solved, or who the bad guys really are.
Also featuring performances by Sienna Miller as a narcotics detective partnered with Boseman and J.K. Simmons as their cynical, streetwise, no nonsense captain, “21 Bridges” is rated R for strong language and graphic violence throughout.
“Zombieland: Double Tap” Distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing and Columbia Pictures, 93 Minutes, Rated R:
A little more than ten years after the release of the enduringly popular horror comedy-adventure “Zombieland,” the film’s legions of loyal fans finally get its long-awaited sequel. And like its predecessor, “Zombieland: Double Tap” turns out to be an uproarious, joyously funny picture.
Reteaming much of the first film’s creative staff and virtually all of its cast, “Zombieland: Double Tap” was released by Sony Pictures through its Columbia Pictures label. And the good news is that the sequel is likely even funnier than the original...albeit like its predecessor one seemingly produced for a very specialized cult following--especially those with strong stomachs.
In “Zombieland: Double Tap” (for those who haven’t seen the first picture, the term “double tap” refers to a zombie-hunter’s rule of firing two bullets into a zombie’s head instead of one, as a means of confirming the kill), the four grossly-mismatched survivors of the zombie apocalypse have formed an admittedly reluctant and dysfunctional makeshift family unit--”a typical, normal-ass American family”--mostly for reasons of defense against the still-marauding hordes of rampaging zombies.
The
de facto head of the flawed family is the freewheeling, homicidal Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), who hates zombies with a bloodthirsty passion, longs to taste civilization’s last Hostess Twinkie, and lives by the personal credo “Nut up or shut up,” which means...well, never mind what it means.
Tallahassee’s reluctant partner is the nervous, obsessive Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), the author of the family’s ever-expanding Rules of Survival. A social outcast and pariah even before the apocalypse, Columbus’ Rules numbered in the mid-thirties by the end of the first picture, but have grown to seventy or so by the second. “Double Tap” is Rule #2, in case you were wondering, right behind “Cardio.”
The rest of the family is comprised of the wily and suspicious Wichita (Emma Stone), a hardened survivor who’s mostly endured the apocalypse by relying on her sharp wits, and who’s drifted into a troubled romantic relationship with the insecure Columbus. The family quartet is rounded out with Wichita’s rebellious younger sister Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). An adolescent in the first picture, Little Rock has matured in the second, at least enough to long for a romantic partner of her own...preferably one who has an infinite stash of weed.
In an America overrun by zombies, the four survivors have become experts in identifying and classifying the various categories of undead--Homers, Hawkings, Ninjas, and the dreaded new T-800s. But living in their new home in the deserted White House has left certain of the family members feeling...well, somehow unfulfilled. After Wichita and Little Rock desert the family and hit the trail one fateful night, Tallahassee and Columbus soon follow along a road which leads them through Graceland to a fabled haven for survivors--a utopia called “Babylon.”
The primary difference between 2009’s “Zombieland” and its sequel is that while the first was more of a horror adventure overlaid with sharply funny and satirical elements, the sequel is more of a comedy, punctuated occasionally with exaggerated satirical sequences--most involving graphic, over-the-top gross-out splatter effects. Like the first picture, the viewer knows what he’s in for by the end of the opening credits.
But that’s okay--fans of the horror genre have grown to expect such scenes, particularly in zombie pictures, ever since George Romero’s seminal “Night of the Living Dead” in 1968. Those viewers unaccustomed to such graphic and exceedingly messy effects are warned to bail out early. But those who stay, or who can ignore the splatter, are rewarded with one of the funniest pictures since...well, maybe even since the Marx Brothers’ last picture--and in much the same silly and nonsensical way.
Reteaming director Ruben Fleischer with writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick--”The Expendables” veteran Dave Callahan also joins the writing staff on “Double Tap”--the holdup for the sequel over the past decade seems to have been not so much a shortage of ideas for a followup as a virtual avalanche of possibilities: Director Fleischer admits to the writers having “tons of new ideas swimming in their heads,” and writer Wernick acknowledges “we would love to do several sequels.”
“Double Tap” seems as if the creative staff have discarded all but the very funniest ideas and situations. While the performers seem to have tempered their enthusiasm over the years, “Zombieland: Double Tap” is the rare sequel which exceeds the original on many levels. While the original picture carried the burden of introducing the primary characters and creating a world in which to place them, the sequel has the ability to build upon ideas, situations, and notions already established. For that reason, the laughs can begin that much sooner...and continue until the very end of the picture. This is one movie you’ll want to stick with through the closing credits.
Along the road, the “Zombieland” family of survivors encounters the beautiful but intellectually-challenged Madison (a delightful Zoey Deutch), who survived the apocalypse by hiding in an abandoned ice cream freezer at a Washington area shopping mall (forgetting to pull the plug), a peace-loving hippie stoner named Berkeley (Avan Jogia) who’s a possible romantic partner for the maturing Little Rock, and Nevada (Rosario Dawson), the owner of an Elvis-themed roadside hotel who might just be able to finally tame the freewheeling Tallahassee.
As an added bonus, the loner Tallahassee is reunited with his long-lost brother, the loner Albuquerque (Luke Wilson)...who travels with a nervous, rule-making partner of his own, appropriately named Flagstaff (Thomas Middleditch). The scene in which Eisenberg’s Columbus and Middleditch’s Flagstaff compare their respective lists of obscure rules is almost unbearably funny, inviting instant comparison with such classic comedy routines as Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First?” and the Marx Brothers’ “Why a Duck?”
“Zombieland: Double Tap” is rated R for bloody violence, language concerns throughout, marijuana use, and some sexual content.
“The Gentlemen” Distributed by STX Films, 113 Minutes, Rated R:
If you examine his motion picture resume, there seem to be at least three different versions of filmmaker Guy Ritchie.
One version is the director-for-hire, the successful filmmaker behind such box office successes as Disney’s blockbuster live-action reimaging of the animated classic “Aladdin” in 2019, the contemporary updating of “Sherlock Holmes” starring Robert Downey Jr. in 2009, and its 2011 sequel “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.”
Another version of Guy Ritchie is the radical revisionist filmmaking auteur behind such resounding box office failures as the 2002 remake of the Italian masterpiece “Swept Away,” the 2015 adaptation of the classic 1960s television series “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” and “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword,” the muddled and grimy 2017 retelling of the Camelot legend.
The third version of Guy Ritchie, the one his legions of loyal and devoted fans cherish, is the writer and director of smart, stylish, and fast-moving British crime films. “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels” in 1998 and “Snatch” in 2000 established Ritchie’s reputation as the filmmaker behind the most swift, irreverent, and intelligent little comedy crime capers since the days of England’s Ealing comedies of the 1940s and 1950s--the legendary films starring Alec Guinness, with titles such as “Kind Hearts and Coronets” and “The Ladykillers.”
That’s precisely the version of Guy Ritchie his fans are hoping for with the release of “The Gentlemen,” the new action comedy from STX Films. Written and directed by Ritchie from a screen story formulated by Ritchie in collaboration with Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies, in “The Gentlemen,” social-climbing American-born, Oxford-educated millionaire marijuana baron Mickey Pearson seeks to expand his British interests by growing an especially potent strain of the illegal plant--an unlikely hybrid called Skunk-a-Mola White Widow Super Cheese--in underground greenhouses hidden on ancestral lands leased from cash-poor aristocrats.
Sensing eventual British legalization of recreational marijuana, Pearson simultaneously seeks to sell his expanding cannabis empire for $400 million to double-dealing American billionaire Matthew Berger, in order to retire peacefully to the English countryside with his beloved British-born wife Rosalind. But first the enterprising Pearson needs to defend his extensive business interests from hostile takeover attempts from an array of colorful international criminal organizations.
Unfortunately, it all sounds funnier than it is. With its combination of crime comedy and social satire, “The Gentlemen” might satisfy fans of Guy Ritchie’s earlier work, but will likely leave newcomers cold. The picture’s Cockney-flavored slang, often delivered at a breathless pace, will render much of the film’s plot incomprehensible to American ears. And in creating a host of unsavory characters with dishonorable intentions, placing them into often graphically violent situations, and filling the script with crude, expletive-laden dialogue, Ritchie crafts a world with plenty of attitude, but no heroes, no humanity, no warmth...and nobody to cheer for.
Often pretentious and sometimes obnoxious, the picture contains elements from Ritchie’s “Snatch” and “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels,” but none of their brilliance. The movie is about as dramatically viable as any of Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s Eleven” pictures, but at other times resembles nothing more than a combination of 1995’s “Get Shorty” and 1960’s “The Grass is Greener” (no pun intended), filtered through the sensibilities of Quentin Tarantino. With style to spare but little heart and no soul, “The Gentlemen” relies instead on the considerable amount of goodwill generated by its megawatt cast of Hollywood superstars.
“The Gentlemen” includes performances by Matthew McConaughey as the American marijuana baron Mickey Pearson, a bearded and genteel Charlie Hunnam as Pearson’s capable assistant Raymond, rising matinee idol Henry Golding as the unsympathetic Chinese criminal underboss Dry Eye, Michelle Dockery of “Downton Manor” fame as Pearson’s business executive wife Rosalind, Colin Farrell as an Irish gangleader with designs on Pearson’s empire, and Hugh Grant in an atypical role as a seedy and smarmy private investigator who fits the pieces of the plot together with a notion to sell the story to a Hollywood studio. Grant seems to be basing his fast-talking characterization on British comic Ricky Gervais.
Still, “The Gentlemen” received admiring reviews for the critics, including an approval rating of 72% from Rotten Tomatoes, against a weighted average of 51% from Metacritic. Rotten Tomatoes in its review reports, “It may not win writer-director Guy Ritchie many new converts, but for those already attuned to the filmmaker’s brash wavelength, ‘The Gentlemen’ stands tall.” Exit audiences polled by CinemaScore awarded the picture an average grade of B-plus.
Rated R for violence, language concerns, sexual references, and drug use throughout, “The Gentlemen” is also attracting a measure of unwanted criticism, with a number of reviewers noting strains of anti-Semitism, homophobia, racism, and sexism in Ritchie’s portrayal of ethnic- and gender-based stereotypes.
“The Turning” Distributed by Universal Pictures, 94 Minutes, Rated PG-13:
Early 20th Century author and literary realist Henry James is given a 21st Century makeover and pushed through the standard template of Blumhouse Pictures-like horror in “The Turning,” a co-production of Universal Pictures and Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks SKG and the eighth motion picture adaptation of James’ 1898 novella “The Turn of the Screw.”
Vaguely set somewhere in the eastern United States during the early 1990s, in “The Turning” disaffected young schoolteacher Kate Mandell is hired as a private live-in tutor and governess for lonely and precocious little orphan Flora Fairchild, who lives alone with devoted housekeeper Mrs. Grose at her family’s palatial ancestral estate, the kind of place where the sun never shines.
After a promising beginning with her new student, Kate finds she might be in over her head when Flora’s teenage brother Myles arrives home unexpectedly, expelled from an exclusive and pricey boarding school for allegedly attempting to strangle another student. And as the indulged, entitled, and spoiled Myles develops an inappropriate interest in the comely young schoolteacher, she eventually learns that the boy was unusually close to the estate’s late stableman Peter Quint, an abusive brute who was killed in a drunken riding accident...and whose ghostly spirit might still be haunting the estate.
Reminiscent of the grand old gothic horror pictures produced by the British Hammer Studios during the 1960s, “The Turning” is three-quarters of a good horror picture--an honest, relatively straightforward literary adaptation that never deviates from its course or pretends to be anything other than precisely what it is: A crackerjack little ghost story meant the scare the wits out of the audience.
Directed by Floria Sigismondi from a script adapted from James’ novella by twin screenwriters Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes, “The Turning” has almost immaculate horror credentials--filmmaker Sigismondi is a veteran of television’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “American Gods” and the Hayes brothers are the writers behind 2005’s “House of Wax” reboot, 2007’s “The Reaping,” and 2013’s “The Conjuring,” as well as its 2016 sequel.
Sigismondi and the Hayes brothers work as a team to add clever details and ingenious touches to James’ story and mix in enough quick cuts and jump scares to satisfy any fan of contemporary horror. There are some rough spots and red herrings, and the picture shows signs of having been trimmed to its lean 94-minute running time from a longer and possibly more comprehensive cut. But in spite of a weak fourth quarter and an infuriatingly ambiguous and unsatisfying finale, “The Turning” is still effective enough to stand alongside such standards of literary-based movie horror as 1945’s “The Body Snatcher and 1963’s “The Haunting.”
The cast includes Mackenzie Davis as Kate, Finn Wolfhard of “Stranger Things” and “It” fame as Myles, Barbara Marten as the creepiest housekeeper since Mrs. Danvers in Hitchcock’s “Rebecca,” and Brooklynn Prince as little Flora Fairchild. With her young/old countenance and knowing manner, the 10-year-old Prince resembles a pint-sized Lillian Gish. That’s Joely Richardson, the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and British filmmaker Tony Richardson and an accomplished performer in her own right, as Kate’s emotionally disturbed mother.
Filmed in Ireland at the landmark Killruddery House estate in County Wicklow and originally intended as a project for director Steven Spielberg, “The Turning” is rated PG-13 for disturbing implications involving ghosts, and a scene suggesting sexual assault.
Will get to the ending tonight.
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Have a great movie week!