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.