Y2K (2024) * *

Directed by:  Kyle Mooney

Starring:  Rachel Zegler, Jaeden Martell, Julian Dennison, Fred Durst, Kyle Mooney

It's apt, and not by design, that I'm reviewing Y2K on the 25th anniversary of New Year's Eve 1999.  The fear, that is covered in this horror thriller, is that all of humanity would collapse because computers and machines weren't adequately adjusted to account for the change from 1999 to 2000.  Planes would fall from the sky, bank accounts would be erased, utilities would cease to function, etc.  I was working an overnight shift on New Year's Eve 1999 and it went without incident.  This movie fantasizes that the change to 2000 brings about machines taking over the Earth and a group of teens led by Rachel Zegler and Jaeden Martell attempt to stop them.

The movie was released earlier this month and I'm getting around to reviewing it.  It's a mostly forgettable film but it has a keen sense of time and place.  I liked seeing dial-up internet, CD's, VHS recorders, and you could still go to a Blockbuster store to rent out your favorite movies on New Year's Eve.  Our heroes attend a party where the machines start killing the guests, and the survivors flee to the woods to plot their next move as planes fall from the sky.  The center of the machines' operation is the local high school.  The only reason I can see why this is so is so the kids won't have to travel far to achieve their objective. 

Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit appears as himself and everyone who comes in contact with him refers to him as "Fred Durst", as if he were Charlie Brown.  It took me a minute to recall from which group Durst came.  Hey, I just referred to him as Durst, which is one more time in the entire Y2K movie.  

Cocktail (1988) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Roger Donaldson

Starring:  Tom Cruise, Bryan Brown, Elisabeth Shue, Lisa Manes, Gina Gershon, Ron Dean, Laurence Luckinbill, Kelly Lynch

Don't expect much depth from Cocktail, a slick, superficially entertaining movie chock full of hawking of materialism then interrupted by a typical love story.   The romantic angle is not a convincing display of redemption for our protagonist Brian Flanagan (Cruise).  His change of heart feels like a screenplay requirement, but still, Cocktail is worth a couple hours of your time.  

Brian is a former military man who travels to New York to join the world of marketing and make millions overnight.  He has no college degree, so he enrolls in business school while working as a bartender in a small bar run by Doug Coughlin (Brown), who dispenses cynical advice as much as drinks.  Doug teaches Brian the ropes of bartending and apparently how to perform a juggling act with glasses, tumblers, and alcohol.  The customers who pack the place watch in awe and cheer even though it takes several minutes to actually get their drinks.  

Brian and Doug soon graduate to the "big time" of bartending, a flashy disco in Manhattan.  This leads me to wonder:  Did Doug sell his place?  If so, didn't he make out pretty well financially?  Brian and Doug soon fight over a woman Brian falls for, and Brian lights out for Jamaica, where he runs a small bar and hooks up with tourist Jordan Mooney (Shue), who seems like a humble artist on vacation, but we later learn comes from a rich family.   On a dare from Doug, who visits on his honeymoon, Brian picks up another rich woman at the bar and the betrayed Jordan flees back to New York, with the remorseful Brian following and trying to win her back.  Jordan is also pregnant, and Brian has to convince her and her disapproving father (Luckinbill) that he's a changed man.  

If you don't know how this turns out, you've never seen a romantic drama before, but Cocktail isn't made to break any new ground.  There isn't much deep about the performances, but they work in their own way, especially Brown, who views the world with the sole focus of getting rich or appearing to be rich.  Cocktail isn't boring and although it never even attempts to become something great, it still clicks enough even if you're not fully buying the premise or the outcome. 

Babygirl (2024) * * *

Directed by:  Halina Reijn

Starring:  Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas, Sophie Wilde

I'll play amateur psychologist for CEO Romy Mathis (Kidman) and say that she is less interested in success than the danger of losing that success.  She's turned on by the possibility of having the rug pulled out from under her.  As Babygirl opens, she is having sex with her husband Jacob (Banderas).  It appears to be satisfying for both, but Romy then retreats down the hall and watches porn where a woman submits to a dominant man.  Romy is rich and powerful with a loving husband and family, but she soon finds she is attracted to intern Samuel (Dickinson), whose instincts tell him that Romy wants to be told what to do, and he tells her so in their first meeting.

Romy acts appalled by Samuel's candor, but soon she is meeting him in hotel rooms and engaging in role play and masochistic sex with the enigmatic Samuel.   As Romy delves deeper into the affair, Samuel begins dropping by her home and pushing the situation into Fatal Attraction territory.  Romy is of course fearful of exposure, not just because of the effects it'll have on her marriage, but the possibility of losing her job due to potential sexual harassment suits.  Samuel basically blackmails Romy into continuing their affair by threatening to ask for a transfer, which will surely cause questions to be asked.   The rub is:  Romy is also aroused and titillated by this possibility.

Nicole Kidman is a fearless actress who takes on challenging roles such as this.  She finds a way to touch on our sympathies even as she's being amoral and selfish, mostly because we are now involved enough to feel the same self-inflicted pressure she's under.  The setup and the first two acts are so tense and absorbing that the final act proves to be an unsatisfying payoff.   We surely didn't need a Fatal Attraction type of ending, and thank goodness we didn't get that, but Babygirl teems with compelling performances.  Dickinson and Kidman have palpable chemistry, and Banderas earns our sympathy as the cheated-on husband.  The movie just couldn't quite finish what it started because the tension is released suddenly by the rug being pulled out from under us. 

A Complete Unknown (2024) * * * 1/2

Directed by:  James Mangold

Starring:  Timothee Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Edward Norton, Boyd Holbrook, Scoot McNairy, Monica Barbaro

A Complete Unknown tells Bob Dylan's story from when he was a complete unknown traveling from Minnesota to New York and dropping in unannounced on Woody Guthrie's hospital room.   Bob Dylan (Chalamet) sings a song he wrote about Woody to Woody with Pete Seeger (Norton) sitting bedside.  Both are impressed, and Pete takes Bob into his home.  Soon, Dylan is performing in the folk clubs in Greenwich Village and a superstar is born.  

A Complete Unknown, directed by James Mangold, is not a standard biopic.  It focuses on the first four years of Dylan's career, culminating in the 1965 Newport Folk Festival where Dylan "went electric" to the shock and horror of the festival's arrangers and the fans.  This was only the tip of the iceberg of the unrest to come not just for Dylan but for American society.  We witness Dylan emerge creatively and find his voice as a singer and songwriter.   We also see him become a selfish, self-important prick to those who care for him.  The more he grew as an artist, the more insecure he became as a person.  Chalamet unabashedly captures this essence of Bob Dylan and fearlessly plunges forward.  He sings the songs and plays the instruments, and isn't merely a Dylan impersonator.  

Mangold, who also directed the great Walk the Line (2005) about Johnny Cash, also includes Cash (Holbrook) in A Complete Unknown as a Dylan admirer from afar who is fully supportive of Dylan's evolution from folk to electric rock.  Pete Seeger is not as gung-ho about the idea, and this causes a sad rift between he and Dylan.  The same goes with Joan Baez (Barbaro), whose fame is soon eclipsed by Dylan's as they begin an off-and-on, tempestuous personal and professional relationship.  Also present is Dylan's initial girlfriend Sylvie (Fanning), who confesses that she really knows nothing about her boyfriend.  

The movie isn't a Dylan concert, but there are plenty of performances of his famous early songs, and they serve to show a progression of Dylan's escalation in confidence, creativity, and popularity.  We see his character forming the more he performs.  Chalamet is an excellent singer, and so much so, we understand more from Dylan's music than even when he speaks, which is precisely how I imagine Dylan would like it. The movie sees much and sees through, and it's thoroughly engrossing. 

A Christmas Carol aka Scrooge (1951) * * * *

Directed by: Brian Desmond Hurst

Starring:  Alastair Sim, Kathleen Harrison, Mervyn Johns, Michael Hordern, George Cole, Patrick Macnee, Jack Warner

A Christmas Carol has been adapted in all shapes, sizes, and forms over the years.  The 1951 version adds some extra insights and backstories which fill in the gaps on Scrooge's past, such as his introduction to Jacob Marley, their partnership which bought out the counting house which Scrooge ran, the night of Marley's passing, and even an explanation by Marley as to why he roams the earth as a ghost in purgatory.  These add depth and weight to a timeless classic.  

Scrooge as played by Alastair Sim is an angry miser indeed, but also full of regrets and sadness.   The moments of Christmases Past bring him to tears of shame.  How could he let his fiancee go?  We even see his sister dying in childbirth and why he resents his nephew Fred, who habitually invites his uncle to Christmas dinner and is forever rejected.  But Fred remains optimistic that his uncle will have a change of heart, much to the chagrin of his wife.  

Bob Cratchit, Scrooge's long-suffering clerk, also holds out some sort of hope that his boss will stop being a jerk, while his wife openly criticizes him at Christmas dinner.  Scrooge even has a maid he inherited after Marley's death, and in a vision from the Ghost of Christmas present, she steals his silverware and linens after he dies.  I don't recall her in any other version of A Christmas Carol I've seen.  Nonetheless, this version not only moves swiftly, but it is the most emotionally satisfying of the adaptations.   When Scrooge's transformation occurs, we fully believe it, and it is joyful. 

Werewolves (2024) * *

Directed by:  Steven C. Miller

Starring:  Frank Grillo, Lou Diamond Phillips, Katrina Law, Ilfenesh Hadera

Werewolves, right down its credit titles, has the look and feel of an 80's B-movie I would've seen on late night cable around that time, and likely would've skipped over.   The plot is something from a movie Ed Wood would've conjured up.   Last year, a "super moon" turned millions into werewolves for one night and this year, it will happen again.   Dr. Aranda (Phillips) from the CDC is developing a serum to resist this transformation, and unfortunately it doesn't work, and now ripped scientist and former military man Dr. Wesley Marshall (Grillo) has to battle the werewolves with help from fellow scientist Dr. Amy Chen (Law).

Meanwhile, Wesley's sister-in-law and nephew barricade themselves into their home and what we have is The Purge crossed with your standard werewolf fare.  Frank Grillo is always a reliable action actor and Lou Diamond Phillips is a welcome presence, but most of Werewolves takes place in the dark where the werewolves themselves are hard to see.  How do you kill them?  We are long past the werewolves of yesteryear where you just shoot them with a silver bullet.   These evolved species take a lot more effort to dispatch. 

I saw Werewolves a few weeks ago and I'll be damned if I remember much about it.  It isn't a good film, but it isn't the worst either.  It lines up as one of those ultimately forgettable movies with a brief theatrical run that winds up a hit on streaming...maybe.  

Kraven the Hunter (2024) * * 1/2

Directed by:  J.C. Chandor

Starring:  Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Russell Crowe, Fred Hechinger, Ariana Debose, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott 

I confess I never heard of Kraven the Hunter before seeing the trailers for this movie.  He's a Marvel character, but on the B team.  As a movie, Kraven the Hunter is pretty good.  Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a sturdy, intense hero, but the movie sags too often for me to fully recommend it.  Kraven the Hunter leaves room open for a sequel, but based on the weak box office, I doubt there will be one.  

Kraven opens with our titular hero in a Siberian prison killing a fellow prisoner who is a mob boss.  Kraven escapes and then boards a spy plane to safety.  He was doing some mercenary work for a shadow organization, but after the opening scenes, this is never referred to again.  We learn in flashbacks that Kraven is Sergei Kravinoff, son of one of the most ruthless Russian mobsters on the planet.   His father is played by Russell Crowe, who at least adopts a better accent than he did in Thor: Love and Thunder, where he sounded like a Borscht-Belt comedian.   Kraven is attacked by a lion during a hunting trip and a local girl stumbles across the wounded Kraven and gives him a special potion which gives him animal-like powers. 

Kraven runs away from his father and feels guilty about leaving his younger brother Dimitri (Hechinger) behind.   Kraven learns not only how to hunt in the wild, but gains superpowers and animal instincts which serve him well in his new life.  However, Kraven is more of an animal protector than an animal hunter, and his ability to communicate telepathically with them reminds me of an athletic Dr. Dolittle.   Besides Kraven's father, another villain is rival mobster who can turn into a rhinoceros at the drop of a hat.  Alessandro Nivola is as reliable an actor as you can get, but Rhino is not an interesting villain.  The stronger and more dangerous villain is Foreigner (not the band) played by Christopher Abbott.   Foreigner is able to manipulate space and freeze time long enough to speedily move around, making him almost impossible to defeat.  Kraven goes one-on-one with Foreigner, and this payoff doesn't work.  Someone else dispatches Foreigner and that makes Kraven weaker.  The movie works better when Kraven has to battle his inner conflicts and his relationship to his father.  

Kraven the Hunter is among the middle of the road Marvel movies.  It has its moments, but as I recall, it has no scenes in which the sun shines.  It's drab under mostly overcast skies, and the pall is felt throughout the movie.  

A Real Pain (2024) * * *

Directed by:  Jesse Eisenberg

Starring:  Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Jennifer Grey

David Kaplan (Eisenberg) and his cousin Benji (Culkin) recently lost their grandmother and to honor her, they book a sightseeing tour of Poland which includes a tour of a concentration camp.  This doesn't sound like the setup for a thoughtful, emotional film, but A Real Pain is both of those.   When they meet up at the airport following many months of not seeing each other, we sense the differences in their personalities right away.

David is the more straight-laced family man with priorities.  Benji isn't exactly a free spirit, but arrives hours early to the airport and bounces around from place to place because he has nothing stopping him, including a job or responsibilities.   They fly to Warsaw, where Benji has a stash of weed he mailed to himself awaiting him at the hotel front desk.   They meet with the tour group and then proceed to visit the Warsaw ghetto where thousands of Jews were eradicated during World War II.  Benji attempts to be the guy pushing for David to let loose and have more fun, but this is a facade of a man at odds with himself and suffering.   

The film's title, A Real Pain, has a dual meaning.  It represents the overall pain caused by the Holocaust and Benji's private pain in which his beloved grandmother's death is merely the tip of the iceberg.  A Real Pain is basically a two-actor movie, with Eisenberg and Culkin playing very well off of each other.  Culkin's performance is deeper and more complex, because he is shouldering the most personal burden and is trying his mightiest to appear loose and carefree.  

Even at ninety minutes, A Real Pain has moments that drag in the middle, but the positive far outweighs the negative with Eisenberg, who wrote and directed A Real Pain with sensitivity, taking us on an offbeat tour of not just places, but souls.  

Gladiator II (2024) * *

Directed by:  Ridley Scott

Starring:  Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Connie Nielsen, Fred Hechinger, Joseph Quinn, Derek Jacobi

Ever since the first Gladiator won five Oscars including Best Picture in 2000, rumors of a sequel were floated and soon languished in movie purgatory.   The sequel, unnecessary as it is, has arrived in theaters.  I enjoyed Gladiator on its intended level, but I never felt the story needed a continuation.   Ridley Scott had a differing opinion, and now we have the uneven Gladiator II, with a tepid main character and supporting performances by Pedro Pascal and Denzel Washington which are far more lively and multi-dimensional.  Hanno (Mescal), who we learn is the son of the deceased Maximus from the first film and Lucilla (Nieslen), battles the Romans in the opening scene but after losing a key battle, is taken prisoner and sold into slavery.  He later becomes a beloved gladiator who wins the Roman Colosseum crowd over and threatens the stability of the reigning emperors (Quinn and Hechinger), while slave owner Macrinus (Washington) maneuvers to usurp power.

Does this sound at all familiar?  Gladiator II is merely the same story told again.  Imagine the odds that a father and son would both be military heroes and then made slaves and later fierce gladiators.  I liked how Lucilla's husband General Acacius (Pascal), the leader of the Roman armies, despises his emperors and plots with Lucilla to overthrow them.  He does not know that Hanno (whose real name is Lucius and was a child in the first film) is Lucilla's long-lost son, but when he does, his showdown with Hanno/Lucius takes on an interesting dynamic.  Pascal, unfortunately, isn't kept around long enough, but Washington picks up the slack and has an absolute ball as the treacherous Marcinus, who will use whatever means at his disposal to outflank the doofus emperors and gain control of the armies.   Lucius makes it his business to stop him.

The original film won a Best Visual Effects Oscar at a time when CGI was in its infancy.  Years later, the CGI in Gladiator II doesn't seem advanced.  It's downright cheesy in some scenes.   The battles the gladiators are involved in grow more and more ridiculous, with the battle inside a flooded Colosseum with sharks swimming around taking the cake.   I know, I know, it's only a movie, but let's say the Romans did figure out a way to turn the Colosseum into a swimming pool (they were pretty ingenious).   How did the sharks get there?  How were they transported?  Were glass aquariums invented then and were they filled with water and used to transport sharks over land to Rome?   How did they catch the sharks and lift the multi-ton sharks into the glass enclosures?  The mind boggles.  It makes little difference because the battles take on the sophistication of a video game.  

Mescal takes on essentially the Russell Crowe role without Crowe's charisma.  He tries to sound like Crowe, but occasionally musters a smile and a joke.  But he's not someone the audience can rally around.  It's telling we would rather watch Pedro Pascal and Denzel Washington than the star.  The movie leaves open a chance for a third film.  It'll be as needed as this one.  

Only Murders in the Building (2024-season four) * *

Starring:  Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selena Gomez, Meryl Streep, Melissa McCarthy, Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria, Zach Galifianakis, Jane Lynch, Amy Ryan, Richard Kind, Molly Shannon, Griffin Dunne

Only Murders in the Building is a series that has clearly lost its legs.  The three leads continue to work with impeccable chemistry and with a degree of begrudging warmth, but one has to wonder why they or anyone continues to reside at the Arconia.  This season marks the fourth murder in the building to be solved by the podcasters/amateur sleuths, and next season's will be the fifth.  One murder would be sufficient to scare off residents and future tenants, but not in this show.   

The season three finale had Charles' (Martin) friend and former stunt double Sazz (Lynch) shot and killed in Charles' apartment.  Following this terrible murder, the Only Murders in the Building podcast is being made into a Hollywood movie with a frazzled producer (Shannon) in charge of the production and Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria, and Zach Galifiankis playing Charles, Oliver, and Mabel in the movie.  The three actors, playing themselves, also lend a hand in attempting to solve Sazz's death, in a season with too many subplots and tangents to begin with.  

The mystery of Sazz becomes a slog, especially when a group of squatters who reside on the floor of the Arconia from where the shots were fired are introduced.  It seems like their story takes forever to introduce and then resolve.   Meryl Streep returns as Oliver's love interest who is filming a movie while Oliver weighs whether to propose to her.   Paul Rudd, who played the victim the previous season, returns as a stunt double with an Irish accent.   But, his appearance is merely a stunt and a whoa, look it's...moment.   The fifth season promises another investigation, but Charles, Oliver, and Mabel should find another place to live.  

Wicked (2024) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Jon M. Chu

Starring:  Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum, Ethan Slater, Jonathan Bailey

Wicked is based on the Tony-award winning musical depicting the backstory of the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz.  It is astounding that, at a bloated 2 hours, 40 minutes, Wicked is only part one of this tale.  If I sat any longer in my seat, I was going to request to have my mail forwarded there. 

Despite its absurd length, Wicked boasts superior production values and keen performances with depth and passion.  As far as the songs, I couldn't hum any even only hours after seeing them.  Some of these are actual songs, while others are characters singing the dialogue.   Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are great singers and it's a pity to waste their voices on such forgettable tripe.  Erivo plays the green Elphaba, with the expressive Grande playing Galinda (later Glinda).  Elphaba is the unwanted daughter of an Oz governor, while Galinda is the spoiled rich girl, with both attending Shiz University, the training ground for future witches.  

Galinda and Elphaba are roomed together, but don't like each other.  They sing about loathing each other (I do recall that even if I can't recall the song).  Soon, they become friends, with Elphaba showing actual sorcery gifts under the tutelage of the esteemed Madame Morrible, the dean of Shiz University. Soon, both Elphaba and Glinda meet the Wizard (Goldblum), who is revealed to be part showman/part fraud early in the game.   The issue I have with Wicked is how long is takes to tell this story.  There isn't enough to span nearly 180 minutes and we still have an entire sequel to go.  I may have to start paying rent on my seat watching the next installment, since I can't imagine the next movie clocking in at under two hours.  

Anora (2024) * * *

 

Directed by:  Sean Baker

Starring:  Mikey Madison, Yuriy Borisov, Vache Tovmasyan, Karren Karagulian, Mark Eidelstein

Anora (Madison) is a New York sex worker so desperate for love and money that she believes it when her romance with a young Russian man named Ivan (Eidelstein), the son of an ogliarch with mob ties, whisks her away to Vegas to be married.  Has he done this before?  We don't know.   He likes to party like any rich young man would, but maybe he sees something in Anora that others don't.  Anora genuinely falls for Ivan.  Ivan maybe fell for her, but his behavior changes when word gets to his parents that he married a stripper.  

His parents come to America to have the marriage annulled.  Ivan suddenly takes off and the parents' thugs and attorney take Anora out into the New York night to find Ivan.  But, just when we think Anora has become a night odyssey, the movie throws up a welcome loop in the form of Igor (Borisov), one of the mostly silent thugs who has clearly fallen for Anora.  He isn't verbose, speaks only when spoken to, but the way he looks at her, the way he covers her with a blanket while she's sleeping, and the way he protects her is moving.  He's obviously the man for Anora, but she fights it tooth and nail because he's merely a bodyguard.  The Igor character turns Anora around and the Borisov performance is sensitive and touching, worthy of an Oscar nomination.

Sean Baker directed 2017's The Florida Project, which delved into the desperate and impoverished residents of a motel just a few miles from Disney World.  Some engaged in sex work, and Baker saw them without judgment.  Willem Dafoe played the motel manager who behaved as a father figure to his tenants.  In Anora, the title character has a family, but she is reticent to deal with them.  Madison, who was memorably set on fire by a flamethrower in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019), is a woman knocked around by life who has love pulled out from under her.  Does she find her true love in Igor?  They have sex, but then Anora breaks down crying.  Is she capable of love?  We know Igor is, and his character turns Anora into something more special than the first half would indicate.