Grade: C plus

Rocketman: Breaking Hearts, But Not Molds

Jeremy BeckReviews
Taron Egerton in "Rocketman"

They say a great pop song can lift you up, but at one point in Rocketman, the audience actually levitates, their shared delight elevating them into midair. We’re at The Troubadour in 1970s Los Angeles, and the flamboyant piano player is treating the crowd to an exuberant rendition of “Crocodile Rock”. As he bangs the keys and belts out the tune—about him and Susie, holding hands and skimming stones—you too might find yourself propelled upward, borne on the dynamism of the music and the enthusiasm of the performance.

When are you gonna come down? Soon enough. Every so often, Rocketman—Dexter Fletcher’s occasionally extraordinary but largely straightforward new film about Elton John—taps into that spirit of joyous communion, the rapturous feeling of losing yourself in art. But gravity regularly gets the best of it, and when it falls back to Earth, it reveals itself as yet another product plucked from the biopic assembly line. John was a provocative and often dazzling performer, but underlying his on-stage extravagance was music with real originality and heart. Rocketman, by contrast, tends to feel like a magic trick; its presentation, however skillful and virtuosic, seems designed to disguise its inherent flimsiness and familiarity. Read More

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Shazam!: Lightning Crashes, a New Hero Rises

Jeremy BeckReviews
Zachary Levi in "Shazam!"

It’s been 14 years since Christopher Nolan made Batman Begins and changed superhero movies forever, ushering in an era of brooding protagonists, muted palettes, and weighty themes. Some of these solemn productions have been quite good, but in the wake of a glut of similarly aimed films that copied the darkness of the Nolan template but failed to capture its richness of character (to say nothing of the Briton’s spectacular execution), many comic-book fans have clamored for a return to lighter, more refreshing fare. Zooming into this void like a caped comet comes Shazam!, which may technically reside in the notoriously grim DC Extended Universe, but which really positions itself as just this sort of antidote, a bright and cheery corrective to the glum macho posturing of movies like Batman v Superman.

And if that’s all you care about, then this silly movie will surely satisfy you. Directed by David F. Sandberg from a screenplay by Henry Gayden, Shazam! is almost defiantly childish, and its goofball vibe can be disarming as well as irritating. But if you care about more than the film’s tonal blueprint—if, for example, you concern yourself with matters of writing, pacing, and action—then you are less likely to be amused. Shazam!’s commitment to lightness is laudable, but it seems to have confused being amiable with being, you know, good. Read More

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Holiday Gift Bag: Mary Poppins Returns

Jeremy BeckReviews
Emily Blunt in "Mary Poppins Returns"

The book on Mary Poppins is that she’s practically perfect in every way. Like most movies, Mary Poppins Returns, which returns to the home of the Banks family on Cherry Tree Lane after a 54-year absence, is not perfect; it isn’t even very good. But it is hard to quibble with the rightness of Emily Blunt’s performance as the titular nanny, all withering glares and superior disdain. As a singer, Blunt is no Julie Andrews (who is?), but her perfectly calibrated acidity helps anchor a film that is otherwise so flimsy, it’s prone to drift off into nothingness, sliding up a banister until it disappears into the ether.

Not that Mary Poppins Returns is quiet. Directed by Rob Marshall, who seems to have become the emissary of the new-age Hollywood musical almost by default, it boasts a number of suitably impressive and boisterous numbers, which have been staged with evident care and skill. Yet there is a dispiriting adequacy to Marshall’s choreography, a lack of genuine wonder and flair. The music here is perfectly fine, but it seems unlikely that any of the songs will grow to acquire the classic status of “A Spoonful of Sugar”, or even join the ranks of more recent Disney hits such as “Let It Go” and “You’re Welcome”. Read More

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Holiday Gift Bag: Bumblebee

Jeremy BeckReviews
Hailee Steinfeld in "Bumblebee"

As a girl-and-her-robot story, Bumblebee is genuinely playful and affecting. Sure, Hailee Steinfeld’s Charlie is a walking cliché, tormented both by memories of her dead dad and by the richer, blonder girls who mock her awkwardness and her relative poverty. But Steinfeld brings real depth to the one-dimensional role, especially once she starts sharing her garage—where she toils to repair her father’s old Corvette, thereby establishing her tomboy bona fides—with the titular transformer. With a canary-yellow paint job and glowing blue eyes, Bumblebee proves to be an agile comic partner, whether he’s grooving to the sounds of The Smiths or inadvertently rampaging through Charlie’s home like the dog from Turner & Hooch. Director Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings) has a good handle on social misfits, and he wields some impressive special effects—in addition to those iridescent baby-blues, Bumblebee has metallic flaps that double as puppy-like ears—to make the robot impressively expressive; the computer code becomes a character, one who conveys anxiety, devotion, and fear. His cold steel will warm your heart. Read More

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The Predator: They Don’t Come in Peace. Neither Do the Aliens.

Jeremy BeckReviews
Olivia Munn and Boyd Holbrook in "The Predator"

The eponymous monster of The Predator is very good at one thing, and it’s killing people. Shane Black, the director and co-writer of The Predator, is also very good at one thing, and it’s writing smart, quippy dialogue. But where the Predator is single-minded in its focus—it kills with precision and without mercy—Black is less committed to channeling his energies into his strengths. He’s great with words, but he also loves mayhem, and after appearing as an actor in the original Predator in 1987, he’s clearly overjoyed at the opportunity to take ownership of this franchise as it continues to slice limbs and spill blood. It’s hard to blame him for following his heart, but his ambition can’t match his execution, because as gifted as Black is with masculine banter, he is not an especially skilled director of action.

This is a problem, because The Predator, for all its verbal wit, is an action movie. It is constructed as a series of explosive set pieces, with periodic interruptions for bouts of exposition and exchanges of vulgar, good-natured ribbing. It’s a reliable formula that Black helped create—he penned a number of big-budget screenplays in the ’80s and ’90s, including Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight—though where his earlier scripts tended to be complex to the point of indecipherability, this one (co-written by his old collaborator Fred Dekker) is blunt and purposeful. There’s a murderous alien on the loose in suburbia. A cadre of shady bureaucrats want to capture it, a band of hardy soldiers want to kill it, and a few hapless innocents—embodied by an exasperated biologist (Olivia Munn) and a 10-year-old autistic boy (Jacob Tremblay)—find themselves caught in the crossfire. Read More

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