Grade: B minus

It Ends with Us: Wild at Start

Jeremy BeckReviews
Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively in It Ends with Us

Multiple times in It Ends with Us, the camera focuses on a crinkly napkin on which Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) has scrawled the numbers one through five in sequence. Lily’s mother (Amy Morton) has tasked her with delivering her father’s eulogy and has advised her to “just say your five favorite things about him,” but because Lily remembers her departed dad less than dearly, the rest of the wrinkled cotton remains blank. Yet when she stands at the funeral podium, Lily still retrieves the napkin from her pocket and glances at it—despite knowing full well that it contains no substantive text—before silently exiting the church.

This is not, strictly speaking, plausible behavior. But it nevertheless serves a purpose, loudly announcing the extent to which Lilly’s daddy issues have paralyzed her. And writ large, It Ends with Us proceeds accordingly to a similar pattern, sacrificing textural realism in the name of dramatic force. As a piece of storytelling, it is often clumsy and unpersuasive. As a work of messaging, it is engaging and even provocative. Read More

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Twisters: Storm Follows Function

Jeremy BeckReviews
Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell in Twisters

No cows fly in Twisters, but there’s still plenty of bullshit. Directed by Lee Isaac Chung from a script by Mark L. Smith, this muscular movie skillfully  and predictably conjures devastating cyclones capable of demolishing entire towns, but the most powerful force on display is the manipulative currents of the screenplay. If you’re having trouble distinguishing between the heroes and the villains, just wait for the scene where an anxious storm chaser expresses concern for the people of a nearby hamlet, only for his companion to snarl in response, “I don’t care about the people!”

So no, Twisters, like its singular-titled 1996 predecessor (with which it shares a spiritual lineage but no narrative connection), is not a work of great subtlety. But it is nonetheless a competent blockbuster—generally diverting and sporadically delightful, with pleasant characters and robust spectacle. Even its emotional hackwork is often agreeable, thanks to the warmth and agility of its cast. Read More

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Fly Me to the Moon: Give Me a Fake

Jeremy BeckReviews
Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum in Fly Me to the Moon

Remember movie stars? Those fabulously attractive celebrities who compelled audiences to flock to theaters in droves by sheer virtue of their names appearing on the marquee? They’re back in Fly Me to the Moon, a fizzy, fitful romantic comedy stocked with bright colors, lithe bodies, and a smattering of funny lines. It’s set in the ’60s and could have been made then too, even if its throwback vibes are often as clumsy as they are charming.

In the spirit of plucky wholesomeness that the movie tries to evoke, let’s start with the good stuff: Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum. And also Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum’s clothes. The costume designer, Mary Zophres (a regular collaborator with both Damien Chazelle and the Coen Brothers), develops the film’s characters with greater efficiency and style than Rose Gilroy’s clunky screenplay. Tatum, with his bull neck and broad shoulders, is outfitted in an array of tight-fitting sweaters that convey the swelling frustration of a robust leader whose vision is thwarted by external forces. Johansson, in contrast, is the picture of crisply tailored elegance, gliding through the picture in pastel dresses that accentuate her authority as well as her curves. Read More

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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes: Monkey See, Monkey Coup

Jeremy BeckReviews
Owen Teague, Freya Allan, and Peter Macon in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Whose side are you on? That was the key question posed by the most recent Planet of the Apes trilogy, which didn’t just chronicle an evolutionary shift where monkeys grew smarter as people got dumber; it framed humans as creatures of crudity and barbarism, thereby realigning our rooting interests to the hyperintelligent chimpanzees who warred against our own species. By the end of War for the Planet of the Apes, this battle appeared to be resolved; primates were now autonomous, while a devastating virus had crippled humans into a mute tribe of limited intellect. But in our era of IP churn, no franchise can remain dormant for long, and so now we have Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which takes place “many generations” after the events of War and which unfolds in a broadly post-human landscape. This means the issue is no longer whether we’re cheering for the monkeys or the men, but whether the simians selected as heroes can prevail versus foes who are also—in a biological sense—fellows.

This raises a more troubling question: Is Kingdom really a Planet of the Apes movie at all? On one level, the query is absurd; the troops of computer-generated monkeys clambering across the screen definitively establish that we’re located in the same cinematic universe where Charlton Heston screamed in anguish all those years ago (and, more recently, where Andy Serkis led an uprising on the Golden Gate Bridge). But despite some developmental tension—humans do in fact exist in this world, and while they’re generally regarded as inferior beings, some are less inferior than others—Kingdom is largely a portrait of intraspecies conflict, one that soberly violates the edict from the prior trilogy, “Ape not kill ape.” As a result, its story of tribal warfare and imperial conquest could mirror any number of historical pictures about rival clans. The warriors here just happen to be furrier than usual. Read More

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Sasquatch Sunset, Ungentlemanly Warfare, and the Risk of Originality

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Eiza González in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare; a scene from Sasquatch Sunset

When it comes to intellectual property, cinema doesn’t operate in absolutes. There are great superhero movies and also terrible ones; there are great original movies and also terrible ones. Still, the franchise boom of the 2010s created an uneven playing field that lent a certain luster to smaller-scale films which weren’t rooted in comic books or young-adult literature. In fact, the continued survival of these types of pictures is what makes me confident that the medium isn’t on the verge of collapsing, despite the constant industry doomsaying about A.I. or tax write-offs or Netflix giving Zack Snyder a billion dollars to make seven different versions of an off-brand Star Wars rather than releasing any of its #content in theaters. The movies have been at death’s door ever since their birth over 100 years ago. They just never seem to die.

Currently, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe dwindling in dominance and audiences rewarding more ambitious storytelling like last year’s #Barbenheimer phenomenon, there seems to be an opportunity for studios to pivot away from the IP craze and toward more original movies. But again, the mere fact of a film’s putative originality doesn’t necessarily mean it’s, y’know… good. This past weekend featured two new releases that don’t feature masked heroes, magic wands, or talking animals. At last, real movies for adults! Except, well, suffice it to say that both have their flaws. Read More

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