Grade: B

Ready or Not: Here Come the Wealthy Satanists

Jeremy BeckReviews
Samara Weaving in "Ready or Not"

The rich really are different in Ready or Not, a bloody—and bloody-fun—satire of the American aristocracy. Every family has its quirky rituals, but the Le Domas clan—the coterie of smarmy blue bloods depicted here—is so accustomed to disposing of dead bodies, they instinctively toss a coin whenever they encounter a fresh corpse, a literal delegation of heads or tails. And if you think you’ve ever struggled to fit in with your moneyed in-laws, at least your great aunt has never charged at you while wielding a giant battle axe.

That’s just one of many daunting challenges faced by Grace (Samara Weaving), the heroine of this grisly, giddy tale. When the movie opens, she’s steeling herself for a different sort of nightmare: marrying into the Le Domas empire following a whirlwind romance with Alex (City on a Hill’s Mark O’Brien), one of the scions of the famous gaming dynasty. (“We prefer dominion,” he gently corrects her.) And if you strip away the brutal prologue, which finds a five-year-old Alex hiding in a closet while his relatives coolly murder a well-dressed man, the opening act of Ready or Not could perhaps be mistaken for a fish-out-of-water comedy, along with a send-up of the rich and brainless. Read More

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Good Boys: Sex and Drugs and Gender Roles

Jeremy BeckReviews
Brady Noon, Jacob Tremblay, and Keith L. Williams in "Good Boys"

There are multiple levels of storytelling at work in Good Boys, and multiple levels of posturing as well. Directed by Gene Stupnitsky from a script he wrote with Lee Eisenberg, the movie follows three hapless sixth-graders in their desperate attempts to prove their sexual and narcotic bona fides. Their false bravado—one routine boast revolves around taking multiple sips of beer—is reflective of Good Boys itself, which bills itself as a raunchy sex comedy but whose primary focus is aging and friendship. Sure, there are filthy jokes and excruciating embarrassments, but underlying all of the gross-out humor and bawdy mishaps is a foundation of concentrated, sugary sweetness. It’s a gentle lamb dressed up in a horny wolf’s clothing.

“Superbad for tweens” is a simplified but nonetheless accurate logline here, and not just because Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg serve as producers. Much like how that 2007 mainstay used two teens’ frantic efforts as the scaffolding for its poignant exploration of a longtime but quietly fraying relationship, Good Boys wields its “one crazy misadventure” premise to mine tension and pathos. The key difference is that, thanks to their pubescent status, the heroes of Good Boys aren’t just sexually inexperienced; they’re sexually clueless. Read More

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The Farewell: Honesty Is the West’s Policy

Jeremy BeckReviews
Awkwafina and others in Lulu Wang's "The Farewell"

The Farewell might have been a minor movie, if it didn’t plainly house such major talents. With its gentle tone and delicate sense of scale, it’s so intimate, it could have verged on flimsy. But writer-director Lulu Wang, making her second feature, invests the melancholy story with grace notes of lyricism that give it some stylistic heft. She’s also found the perfect star in Awkwafina, the rapper and comedienne who here makes a seamless transition to more somber material. It’s a heavy story told with a beautifully light touch.

The movie opens with a title card that reads “based on an actual lie”, establishing both its autobiographical bona fides—Awkwafina’s Billi is in many ways a stand-in for Wang—and its cheeky wit. But the falsehood at its center does more than just drive the slender plot; it becomes the foundation on which Wang builds the film’s intriguing explorations of culture, geography, and identity. And The Farewell, despite its narrow scope and quiet bearing, ends up operating on multiple levels. It’s a human melodrama that doubles as an empathetic treatise on humanity. Read More

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Spider-Man: Far from Home: Still Neighborly, Even Across the Pond

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tom Holland in "Spider-Man: Far from Home"

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has metastasized into an American institution, as sacred as apple pie or the Super Bowl or Beyoncé. Its supremacy is absolute. Still, following the seismic finale of Avengers: Endgame, it was fair to wonder if cinema’s most colossal franchise might have some difficulty regrouping, might fumble to develop a newfound sense of purpose. It takes all of 30 seconds for Spider-Man: Far from Home to obliterate that fear. Following a lightning-quick prologue set in Mexico, this jaunty new adventure opens with a cut-rate “In Memoriam” slideshow paying tribute to our fallen heroes. The crappy presentation of the images—the plastic look, the tacky music, the Getty Images watermark—proves to be intentional, as it’s quickly revealed that we’re watching a student newscast at Midtown High. And with that, in the span of just a few screenshots and some curmudgeonly narration from the immortally sour-faced Betty Brant (Angourie Rice), Far from Home dismisses any supposed continuity concerns—those who vanished in “The Blip” at the end of Avengers: Infinity War have barely aged since their return, those who remained are now five years older, please keep up—and also establishes its light, breezy tone.

This is no small feat, even if it’s one that the director, Jon Watts, also managed with Spider-Man: Homecoming, the prior Spidey installment whose first main scene brilliantly reimagined the famous airport fight from Captain America: Civil War as glimpsed through the chintzy, vertical iPhone camera of an anxious teenager. Liberated from the laborious world-building that encumbers so many comic-book crossovers, Watts and his writers (Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers) prove agile with both atmosphere and exposition. Sure, there are a few scenes where warriors congregate in dimly lit clandestine bases and worriedly chat about the latest catastrophic threat to the human race, but even allowing for these bits of superhero scheming, Far from Home’s primary concern is its characters. Read More

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Toy Story 4: Growing Old and Living Young, All Over Again

Jeremy BeckReviews
Woody, Bo Peep, and Duke Caboom in "Toy Story 4"

Toy Story 4 is a movie about fear, loneliness, pain, disillusionment, and loss. Your kids will love it.

You might too, if perhaps not quite as much as you adored its predecessors. It’s been 24 years since the computer wizards at Pixar released an 81-minute feature about playthings that leap to life when their owners leave the room, launching a mega brand and revolutionizing the concept of animation filmmaking in the process. Now the studio’s longest-running franchise (take that, Cars!), the Toy Story movies remain durable thanks to their nervy fusion of reliable adventure tropes and provocative philosophizing, the way they make you take stock of your life and yourself even as they place you back in touch with your inner child. In terms of raw entertainment, Toy Story 4 isn’t quite as boisterous as prior installments; the new director, Josh Cooley (one of the writers of the stupendous Inside Out), is certainly capable, but his set pieces lack the series’ trademark Rube Goldbergian complexity or eye-popping gusto. But the screenplay, by Andrew Stanton and Stephany Folsom, teems with ideas, challenges, and possibilities. The result is a movie that may not ascend beyond infinity, but at least gets most of the way there. Read More

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