SYNOPSIS: In the “The Accountant 2,” a new Ben Affleck action comedy now playing in theatres, money laundering forensic accountant Christian Wolff (Affleck), his bruiser brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) and Treasury Agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) must use Christian’s special set of skills to stay alive as they track down a group of human traffickers. “Most brains seek a pattern that’s familiar,” Christian says. “My brain doesn’t work that way.”
CAST: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, J. K. Simmons, Daniella Pineda. Directed by Gavin O’Connor.
REVIEW: Appropriately released during tax season, this buddy film of two brothers, a neurodivergent accountant and a hitman, is equal parts light and playful and dangerous and dark. With a line dancing scene and a human trafficking ring run out of a pizza company, it’s complicated and messy, but thoroughly entertaining.
The key to finding the film’s entertainment value is patience. Following a standard action thriller set up involving a retired FBI financial crimes agent (J.K. Simmons), a mysterious killer (Daniella Pineda) and determined FBI agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), the movie finally gets to the heart of the matter, the dynamic between brothers Christian (Ben Affleck) and Braxton Wolff (Jon Bernthal).
The movie still goes a bit heavy on exposition, but Affleck and Bernthal are an appealing combo who dance on the thin line between danger and whimsy. Both are stone cold killers, but each brings a different flavor to the story.
Affleck plays Christian as part 007, part John Nash. A deadly mix of mathematician and tactician, stereotypically, he speaks in clipped sentences and is matter of fact in the extreme, but in his relationship with Braxton there’s a sense of history and nuance in a movie that doesn’t favor nuance.
Bernthal is volatile and vulnerable, physical and funny, but his real strength is as a foil for Affleck. His action movie bona fides give some extra oomph to the climatic shoot out, but it is the brotherly bond, and their love-hate relationship, that gives the movie a beating heart.
“The Accountant 2’s” unnecessarily complicated plot and serviceable action exist essentially to put Christian and Braxton on screen together, which is fine when the result is as entertaining as this movie.
SYNOPSIS: In the new Yuletide action flick “Red One,” when Santa Claus (code name: Red One) is kidnapped twenty-four hours before Christmas, the North Pole’s Head of Security, an ELF “(Extremely Large and Formidable”) named Callum Drift, played by Dwayne Johnson, teams with Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), hacker and the world’s best tracker, in a dangerous mission to save Christmas. “There are worse ways to go out than saving Santa Claus,” says Jack.
CAST: Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu, Kiernan Shipka, Bonnie Hunt, Nick Kroll, Kristofer Hivju, Wesley Kimmel, and J. K. Simmons. Directed by Jake Kasdan.
REVIEW: As Santa’s bodyguard Callum Drift, Dwayne Johnson complains that for the first time ever more people are on the naughty list than the nice list. It’s ironic, then, that as the star of “Red One,” the new high-tech, low-reward holiday movie directed by Jake Kasdan, Johnson’s name belongs at the top of that ignominious list.
A Christmas movie with product placement for the whole family, from Hot Wheels to Bulleit Bourbon, it’s a formulaic action film, with generic CGI battles and Johnson in automaton mode.
Johnson is in his wheelhouse. This is a big family action flick, reminiscent of “Disney’s Jungle Cruise” and “Jumanji: The Next Level.” Difference is, both those movies gave Johnson the chance to exercise his comedy chops as well as his muscle-bound physique. “Red One” sees him as a dour, oversized ELF with resting Grinch face who, when he isn’t barking orders is glaring at the film’s baddies. Despite one slightly amusing size-shifting fight scene, it’s a particularly uninspired performance that should get noticed come Razzie Awards time.
Chris Evan fares slightly better. He shrugs off the Captain America persona to play a Jack, a deadbeat dad, drunk and degenerate gambler. “I’m not a scrupulous person,” he sneers. “Ask anybody.”
Of course, they will learn from one another. Jack will discover how to be good from Callum, while proving to Callum that there is good in everyone, even a “Level Four Naughty Lister.” The movie’s messages of nice triumphing over naughty are the usual holiday fare, hammered home with the subtility of fifty-foot Christmas tree.
Add to that a forgettable villain with very little screen time and even less presence when we do see her and you’re left with a film about the magic of Christmas, with very little magic.
“Red One” is a big, $300 million movie, but, as the season has taught us, not all good things come in big packages.
SYNOPSIS: A throwback to the twisty-turny courtroom dramas of the 1980s and 90s, “Juror #2,” now playing in theatres, sees Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) called for jury duty. Like many people, he has a laundry list of reasons why he shouldn’t have to do his civic duty. Nonetheless, he’s chosen to serve at a high-profile murder trial, one that will test his pledge of being fair and impartial in the jury box.
CAST: Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, J. K. Simmons, Chris Messina, Zoey Deutch, Kiefer Sutherland. Directed by Clint Eastwood.
REVIEW: Clint Eastwood’s 40th directorial effort is a potboiler, but with the high-minded purpose of examining issues of justice and the price of doing the right thing.
No spoilers here, what follows is the story of the film, but if you want to go in with a blank slate, skip the next paragraph.
Once seated on the jury, Kemp, a man who has pulled his life together since quitting drinking four years previous, realizes that he, and not the accused, is responsible for the death at the center of the prosecution’s case.
That provides the moral dilemma at the heart of “Juror #2.” Kemp’s feelings of self-preservation versus his responsibility to truth and justice hangs over the entire film like a shroud.
Hoult shows us Kemp’s dilemma rather than tell us about it. It’s an introspective performance, one that relies on his anxious exterior and the tortured look behind his eyes. Hoult isn’t flashy, but in his restraint, he paints an effective portrait of a soon-to-be father who is torn up inside.
For the second time in as many months J.K. Simmons, after his bravura work in “Saturday Night,” swoops in and steals every scene he’s in, and then gets out of the way to let Eastwood and Hoult finish the job.
For the most part Eastwood keeps the storytelling taut, allowing Kemp’s quandary to take center stage. It’s not exactly suspenseful, but Eastwood, who turned 94 last May, unfurls the story of conflicted morals in a solidly entertaining, if not exactly innovative, way. The story beats feel reminiscent of the big courtroom dramas of years ago, but Eastwood carefully, and cleverly works his way through moral conundrums to ends up at a restrained, but devastating finale.
“Juror #2” is a little old fashioned, but in all the right ways. Age has not diminished Eastwood’s ability to tell a story, keep the audience engaged and give them something to think about once the end credits have rolled.
SYNOPSIS: In “Saturday Night,” a new show business biography from director Jason Reitman, and now playing in theatres, tensions run high as producer Lorne Michaels and his not ready for prime-time gang of young comedians count down the minutes until the first broadcast of “Saturday Night Live” on Oct. 11, 1975.
CAST: Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt, Dylan O’Brien, Emily Fairn, Matt Wood, Lamorne Morris, Kim Matula, Finn Wolfhard, Nicholas Braun, Cooper Hoffman, Andrew Barth Feldman, Kaia Gerber, Tommy Dewey, Willem Dafoe, Matthew Rhys, and J. K. Simmons. Directed by Jason Reitman.
REVIEW: “Saturday Night” captures the anxiety, the humor and the sheer nerve it took to get the first episode of “SNL” off the ground. Chaos reigns for much of the movie’s run time as producer Lorne Michaels attempts to wrangle an unruly cast, a drug addled host (a terrific Matthew Rhys as George Carlin), indecision and a network executive (Willem Dafoe) who may, or may not, order a Johnny Carson rerun to air instead of Michaels’s disorganized counterculture circus.
Reitman captures the behind-the-scenes action with a restless camera that never seems to stop moving, rat-a-tat-tat Arron Sorkin style fast talking dialogue and meticulous recreations of the iconic “SNL” set and sketches.
Reitman’s biggest storytelling accomplishment, however, may be that he imbues the film with a sense that everything may come crashing down at any second. We know it won’t, of course—“SNL” celebrates 50 seasons this year—but the threat of imminent collapse hangs over frame.
Michaels’s high wire act is the film’s engine, but it’s the insights into the cast that provide the key to deciphering what made the original 1975 cast so compelling.
Cory Michael Smith captures “SNL’s” first superstar Chevy Chase’s comic ability, fueled by talent, ego and bluster. Dylan O’Brien’s take on Dan Aykroyd is eerily accurate vocally and physically, and Matt Wood puts John Belushi’s troubled genius routine front and centre. Lamorne Morris plays Garrett Morris, the lone Black performer in the original cast, as a searcher, looking for purpose in a show that appears to be rudderless.
The women in the boy’s club, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, and Kim Matula as Jane Curtin, are given less to do, but each has a moment amid the chaos. Hunt gets Radner’s buoyant, sunshiny personality, Fairn is all eagerness as Newman and Curtain’s one-on-one backstage chat with Morris is a funny, yet poignant, conversation about her place in this cast. Cumulatively, they are at their best in a recreation of a sketch where the women, as construction workers, ogle and objectify Aykroyd.
The large ensemble cast is rounded out by a scene-stealing J.K. Simmons as Hollywood legend Milton Berle and “Succession’s” Nicholas Braun in the dual roles of Andy Kaufman and Muppet master Jim Henson.
The film’s soul comes courtesy of the pairing of Gabriel LaBelle and Rachel Sennott as Michaels and his wife and “SNL” writer, Rosie Shuster. “We may be married,” she says, “but I’m not your wife,” and it is their bond, in whatever form it takes, that grounds Michaels as everything appears to spin out of control.
“Saturday Night” is a love letter to show business. It’s high energy nostalgic fun, told in almost real time, that captures the tenacity of the creative mind and the beginnings of a cultural institution.
A kid’s movie about Hollywood as a boulevard of broken dreams doesn’t exactly scream Disney, but “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers,” a new live action, cartoon hybrid starring John Mulaney and Andy Samberg in the title roles, and now streaming on Dinsey+, is exactly that.
Except it’s WAY funnier than I just made it sound.
Set in Los Angeles, this is the tale of anthropomorphic chipmunks Chip (Mulaney) and Dale (Samberg). Once tight pals and big television stars, relative to their tiny size, they are now has-beens, relegated to the delete bin of popular culture. “We were living the dream,” says Dale. “Dancing the Roger Rabbit, with Roger Rabbit.”
Dale sticks it out in show biz and with some CGI surgery—i.e. plastic surgery in toon world—is now a photorealistic computer-animation version of himself chasing glory on the oldies convention circuit, while Chip gave up his Hollywood dream and makes ends meet by selling insurance.
Worst of all, they’re estranged and haven’t spoken in years. It takes a wild story from their old “Rescue Rangers” co-star Monterey Jack (Eric Bana) about missing animated characters, possibly kidnapped by Sweet Pete (Will Arnett), a middle-aged, paunchy version of Peter Pan, to bring them back together.
When Monterey disappears, Chip ‘n Dale use the sleuthing lessons they learned on “Rescue Rangers” and are drawn into the seedy underworld of Uncanny Valley where the baddies come in all styles—hand drawn, computer generated, claymation, puppets—Muppet fights are a daily occurrence and bootleggers threatens the toons’ lives and careers.
“Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” is a multiverse of toontastic fun. In a wild mix n’ match, characters from movies like “The Little Mermaid” and “My Little Pony” to “South Park” and “The Jungle Book” clash and collide. There’s even Ugly Sonic, the original Sonic the Hedgehog design with human teeth.
The array of characters aside, there are loads of in-jokes for animaniacs to enjoy. A computer-generated Viking (Seth Rogen) is described as having, “those Polar Express eyes,” and director Akiva Schaffer crams the screen with various styles of animation that irreverently pays tribute to, and pokes fun at, these beloved characters who have fallen on hard times.
A riff on “The Happytime Murders,” which brought the Muppets into a crime-ridden, R-rated world, and the Toontown antics of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”, “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” is ripe with sight gags and deep laughs that will likely be appreciated more by parents than kids. Once again, my semi-annual reminder that simply because a movie is on Disney+, doesn’t mean it is for the entire family. There are good messages for kids about the importance of friendship but they are tempered by some adult humour and mild language.
“Being the Ricardos,” the new Aaron Sorkin directed look at the most famous television couple of the 1950s, in theaters this weekend and on Prime Video December 21, is a character study that examines one very bad week on the sitcom set of “I Love Lucy.”
In 1953 “I Love Lucy” was watched by 60 million people a week. The show was so popular that department stores had to change their hours. The big box stores used to stay open late on Mondays but switched to Thursdays because no one shopped on Monday nights while Lucy, Desi, Fred and Ethel were on.
Real life couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, played in the film by Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem, are television’s biggest stars as they prepare to shoot episode four of their second season. Tension hangs heavy over the set, the result of two news stories about the couple.
First is Confidential Magazine, a sleazy tabloid that specializes in scandal and exposé journalism, who accuses Desi of having an affair in a lurid article titled “Desi’s Wild Night Out.” More damningly, another report suggests Lucy is a communist, under investigation by the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee.
The accusation against Desi causes trouble at home but even a whiff of communism around Lucy could lead to a stink that could ruin both their careers. The Hollywood blacklist looms.
“You and me have been through worse than this,” Desi says reassuringly.
“Have we?” she asks.
“No.”
Set up like a pseudo-documentary, modern day talking heads keep the story moving forward while flashbacks flesh out the action. We learn about how the couple met, their volatile relationship—”They were either tearing each other’s clothes off,” says writer Madelyn Pugh (Linda Lavin), “or tearing one another’s heads off.”—and how the show and Lucy’s perfectionism are more than just a professional concern. “I Love Lucy” was the glue that held her marriage together, especially during troubled times.
It can be tricky portraying familiar figures on screen. Through endless re-runs Lucille Ball’s face and comedy are iconic, but Kidman and Bardem, wisely chose not to do imitations of the stars. They have the mannerisms and a passing resemblance to Lucy and Desi but this is about character not caricature. For the most part this is a backstage drama, and wisely stays away from restaging scenes from “I Love Lucy” that are burned into people’s imaginations. What we get instead are interpretations of these characters that corral their collective charisma, hot tempers and talent.
What emerges is a scattershot portrait of fame, creative control and the power of the press. Sorkin juggles a lot of moving parts, but by the time the end credits roll it’s difficult to know exactly what point he is trying to make. Ball is given the credit she deserves as a trailblazer and Arnaz’s business acumen is celebrated, but the other, colliding plot points feel cobbled together. Any one of them—the communism scare, Desi’s alleged infidelity, Lucy’s pregnancy or the cast in-fighting—could have sufficed as a compelling backdrop to the Lucy and Desi story. Instead, the movie feels overstuffed.
“Being the Ricardos” does justice to the legacy of its subjects, and features pages of Sorkin’s trademarked snappy dialogue, but splinters off in too many directions to be truly effective.
“The Tomorrow War,” the new Chris Pratt sci fi action film now streaming on Amazon Prime, is a unicorn. It’s a big-budget blockbuster not inspired by a comic book or video game. The story resonates with echoes of “The Terminator,” “Alien” and any number of father-daughter dramas, but while it may feel familiar, it’s a rarity, an original movie that doesn’t set itself up for a sequel.
Set in December 2022, Chris Pratt is Dan, biology teacher, Iraq War vet, husband to Emmy (Betty Gilpin) and father to young daughter Muri (Ryan Kiera Armstrong). One night, they’re gathered around the television watching a game when the match is interrupted by visitors from the 2052 with a “cry for help across time.”
“We are from thirty years from the future,” says the spokesperson. “We are at war and our enemy is not human. We are losing. In eleven months, all will be lost unless you help us. You are our last hope.”
The planet goes into a panic. A worldwide draft is instituted and soon Dan is enlisted to jump thirty years forward to fight an alien species, named White Spikes, he knows nothing about. The tour of duty is only seven days, but few survive. “You are not fighting for your country,” he’s told. “You’re fighting for the world.”
Dropped into the future in the middle of an alien hotspot, Dan’s military training kicks in. With the help of Col. Forester (Yvonne Strahovski), he survives but when they put their heads together, they realize the key to beating the aliens isn’t warfare, it’s science! The real solution is a poison serum that neuters the beasts. But, the question with time twisted logic is, can they make enough of it in time to stop the war before it even happens? “We are food,” Forester says, “and they are hungry.”
I have written around a MAJOR spoiler. Time travel stories have the benefit of playing around with their character’s timelines but you’ll hear nothing about that here. Suffice to say, Dan makes a life-changing discovery while stationed in the future and it affects everything he does from that moment onward, and I suppose, in the time that has already happened. (Time travel movies can get complicated.)
Moving on to the broad strokes.
There is a lot going on in “The Tomorrow War.” It has Marvel-style large action scenes mixed with horror—the White Spikes, and their weird gooey puke yellow blood, are plentiful and relentless—family drama—”I’m no hero,” Dan says, “I just want to save my daughter.”— and even a child genius who provides a key piece of information in the war against the aliens. Director Chris McKay and screenwriter Zach Dean jam pack every scene with something, whether it’s Pratt’s zippy one-liners or a city crumbling during an airstrike or doing battle in a cave with an angry White Spike.
It feels like all peaks with very few valleys.
To lure us in and make us care about the characters, there have to be moments where things aren’t blowing up. McKay provides some of those but Dean doesn’t give us much in the way of character arcs in those quieter moments. Things happen to the characters, constantly, but rarely is anything of consequence revealed about them. “Glow’s” Betty Gilpin, for instance, is present, and has a name, Emmy, but is given very little to do except be Dan’s wife. More character work may have given us a reason to care when bad things happen.
Having said that, there are some fun moments of over-the-top alien action. A showdown between Dan, his father (J.K. Simmons) and a seemingly indestructible White Spike is a wild ride but generic characters and the predictability of the story blunts much of the film’s excitement.
“Palm Springs,” the existential new Andy Samberg comedy now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, is a riff on “Groundhog Day.” But if the premise is familiar, the treatment isn’t.
When we first met Nyles (Samberg), he’s a nihilist. “This is one of those infinite time-loop situations you might have heard about,” says Nyles. “It could be purgatory, a glitch in the system, whatever. The important thing is, the only way to live in it, is to embrace that nothing matters.” His girlfriend Misty (Meredith Hagner) is a bridesmaid at the Palm Springs wedding of her childhood friend Tala’s (Camilia Mendes) and her beau Abe (Tyler Hoechlin).
It’s a stuffy affair, livened up only by Sarah (Cristin Milioti), the unlucky-in-love sister-of-the-bride. When Misty runs off with oner of the groomsmen, Nyles sets his eyes on Sarah. They decamp to a private spot in the desert and just as they’re getting down to business, Nyles is impaled by an arrow shot by Roy (J. K. Simmons). Running to escape a second shot, Nyles ducks into a nearby cave but urges Sarah not to follow. Of course, she does and… cut to the next scene, she’s back in her hotel room getting ready for the wedding, caught in the same time loop as Nyles.
Confused, she confronts Nyles. As he explains the screwball situation, she immediately starts looking for a way out. It’s impossible, he tells her, describing how he once tried to escape, and made it to Equatorial Guinea but “still woke up back here.” He lives in the moment, spicing things up a bit from time to time, by hiding a bomb inside the wedding cake to amuse Sarah, knowing that that every day will reset.
As romance blossoms between they wonder, “How can their relationship possibly move forward if time is at a standstill?”
“Palm Springs” is a rom com, but it isn’t so much about finding love as it is finding purpose. “I thought I knew how to live,” Nyles says, “but I didn’t and I don’t.” Nyles and Sarah react to their situations very differently. He uses the endless repeat of his life as an excuse to do whatever strikes his fancy. “I have felt everything I’ll ever feel,” he says, “so I’ll never feel anything again.” He’s not malicious, he simply realizes that there are no consequences to his actions. She wants out, or, at the very least, to get something out of her life after years of being the black sheep of the family. Ultimately, the time loop makes both understand that a life lived without purpose is no life at all.
A great deal of the movie’s success comes from the casting. Samberg and Milioti have tremendous chemistry and bring out the best in one another. She blunts his jerky tendencies; he accentuates her vulnerability and steeliness. Without this sparkling combination the movie wouldn’t work nearly as well.
The time loop rom com is a slim genre, but “Palm Springs” is a worthy addition.
“The Front Runner” is a story of scandal that destroyed a man’s public life in 1988 that seems almost genteel given the tone of today’s politics. Four years after Gary Hart (Hugh Jackman) lost the Democratic leadership convention to Walter Mondale he entered the presidential race with a giant lead. He was the front-runner. Three weeks later it was over.
By 1988 Gary Hart had served in the United States Senate for thirteen years. A intellectual, he sought to reignite the Democratic party, a group experiencing a slump in popularity and in ideology. His was a campaign of ideas with one of his managers marvelling at the candidate’s gift of untangling the bull**** of politics.” Unlike his opponents, however, he didn’t like to smile for photos like “some sort of game show host.” “If I pose for photos what’s next,” he wonders, “a swimsuit competition?” Discussing his personal life, says one of his aides, is not in his comfort zone and yet it was his personal life that torpedoed his chance at the White House.
His undoing came in the form of Donna Rice (Sara Paxton), a woman who wanted to work on the campaign and ended up in an extra marital affair with Hart, who was then married to Lee (Vera Farmiga). “I wanted to work for Senator Hart,” she says. “I liked his positions.” The press picked up on the story, partially in response to Hart’s dare, “Follow me around. Put a tail on me. You’ll be very bored,” and partially because it dented his family values image.
Despite the media circus that followed Hart refuses to be contrite. “The public won’t care,” he says and “the press will not earn the dignity of my response.” By the time Johnny Carson cracked jokes about it on the Tonight Show the campaign was over.
“The Front Runner” is a straightforward retelling of the twenty-one days leading up to Hart’s withdrawal from the presidential race. What it does best is create the environment surrounding Hart. From the fast-and-furious pace of a campaign in full gallop and the dark humour of a newsroom to the inner-workings of a smear campaign and the anxiety-inducing clickety-click of the still cameras at Hart’s final press conference, the film’s most interesting element is it’s atmosphere. There are some fun performances, particularly from J. K. Simmons as Hart’s blunt talking campaign manager Bill Dixon, but the problem lies with Hart himself. He’s a bit of a cypher, highbrow yet bland; the film never gives us a reason to care about him or the mess he gets himself into.
In its final moments, however, “The Front Runner” finally indulges in some subtext, courtesy of direct quotes from Hart’s withdrawal speech.
“Politics in this country,” he says, “take it from me – is on the verge of becoming another form of athletic competition or sporting match. We all better do something to make this system work or we’re all going to be soon rephrasing Jefferson to say: I tremble for my country when I think we may, in fact, get the kind of leaders we deserve.”
The words are thirty years old and yet sound as though they were written yesterday. Perhaps if director Jason Reitman had followed Hart’s lead and focussed more on the ideas and less on the scandal “The Front Runner” might have had more impact.
