Wolfs (2024) * *

 

Directed by:  Jon Watts

Starring:  George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Amy Ryan, Austin Abrams, Poorna Jagannathan, Zlatko Buric

Wolfs begins promisingly with George Clooney and Brad Pitt reuniting for the first time onscreen since the end of the Ocean's Eleven series.  This time they play rival cleaners who are both called to a hotel room to dispose of a seemingly overdosed young man.  Margaret (Ryan), a politico who doesn't want to be linked to a scandal such as a dead guy in her hotel room following a tryst, calls Clooney.  Another party calls Pitt, and the two bicker about how to get rid of the supposedly dead man.

Clooney's and Pitt's characters are not named, which I find annoying, but I suppose it adds to the mystery of the characters.  Clooney is billed as Margaret's Man, while Pitt is billed as Pam's Man, so let's go with that.  The overdosed man is called "Kid".  Coming up with character names must be nerve-wracking business.  About thirty minutes in, Kid is actually alive and Clooney and Pitt also come across bricks of heroin among the Kid's possessions.  Who is the heroin meant for?  Is Kid a drug dealer?  If so, who is he working for?  Kid drones on with a long story about how he was helping out a friend and we realize Wolfs is now a mundane action flick with shootouts, chases, and its stars playing it perpetually cool.  

It's fun to see Clooney and Pitt in action.  They could play cool and charming in their sleep, and there are fun allusions to their ages, but their charisma can only take Wolfs so far.  They're called upon to carry Wolfs and they do for a while, but then the movie drifts into the typical and the initial goodwill of seeing Clooney and Pitt together on the same screen evaporates.  

The Odyssey (2026) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Christopher Nolan

Starring:  Matt Damon, Tom Holland, John Leguizamo, Himesh Patel, Elliot Page, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Jon Bernthal, Lupita Nyong'o, Samantha Morton, Zendaya, Charlize Theron

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey naturally runs nearly three hours because the movie is of course about an odyssey, but it is staged as an epic adventure with horror elements and healthy moments of divine intervention on behalf of its hero Odysseus (Damon).  Damon convincingly assumes the role and is a sturdy, resourceful protagonist who is on a journey home following the Trojan War which is sidetracked by battles with mythical monsters, witches, and the wrath of the gods.  Odysseus is gone from his home island of Ithaca for twenty years.  In the meantime, Odysseus' palace is overrun by would-be suitors for Odysseus' wife Penelope (Hathaway), who remains steadfastly faithful to her absent husband.  The most persistent of the suitors is the scheming, devious Antinous (Patterson) who thinks he has the inside track to the throne.

Odysseus' son Telemachus (Holland) decides to leave Ithaca to search for his father and determine whether he is alive which will not only bring he and his mother peace, but will shape the future of the kingdom.  However, having a stepfather like Antinous is hardly a positive.  The previous Nolan films from Interstellar on to his Best Picture-winning Oppenheimer (2023) were artistic triumphs but lacked in the story department.  The Odyssey, based on the epic poem by Homer, is more plot-driven and chock full of Nolan's famed superior production values.  It looks gorgeous and while not as taut as Clash of the Titans, it covers the same ground successfully.  

Among the standout sequences involve a witch on a remote island who turns Odysseus' crew into swine and watching how Odysseus pieces together these bizarre events.  The Odyssey is gargantuan in scope and moves through many characters and worlds seamlessly without boring us.  There are times having such a distinguished cast would feel like a movie hedging its bets, but Nolan doesn't mind going for broke and being bold, even with movies like Tenet which was released during the pandemic but was hardly the movie to break the movie business out of its doldrums.  

Little Brother (2026) * * *

 

Directed by:  Matt Spicer

Starring:  John Cena, Eric Andre, Michelle Monaghan, Christopher Meloni, Sherry Cola

Little Brother is raunchy, yes, but not overly so and it has a heart.  I'm not familiar with Eric Andre, but from what I've gathered he specializes in raunch.  In Little Brother, he leans on that while also creating a sympathetic foil to John Cena's Rudd Landy, a famed realtor to the stars who envies his older brother Josh (Meloni) and wants to crank up his fame level to 11.  As he's plotting this, his "little brother" Marcus (Andre), after reading an email supposedly sent by Rudd, decides to escape from rehab to travel to New York to support Rudd.  

Well, things don't go that smoothly.  Years ago, Rudd enrolled in a Big Brothers program in an attempt to ingratiate himself to colleges.  One day, he abandons poor Marcus on the basketball part after promising they would always be brothers.  Marcus took the offhand statement to heart.  Rudd pretty much forgot about him until they reunite when Marcus is hospitalized.  Rudd is guilted into allowing Marcus to stay with him.  Marcus tries to be a help to Rudd, but those efforts usually go south.  Despite it all, Marcus remains true to his pledge to help Rudd, even as Rudd stars in a reality show and Marcus becomes a television star as Rudd's sidekick. 

It turns out Rudd never communicated with Marcus, but all correspondence was sent by Rudd's loyal assistant (Cola), who feels sorry for Marcus.  Cena, a gifted comic actor, is the straight man while Andre infuses Marcus with touching vulnerability even as his attempts to reunite with Rudd go haywire.  Little Brother could do without some of the gross-out slapstick, but it never loses its center, which is the idea that these two men needed each other more than they ever could've imagined.  The results, while of course predictable, are touching.  

The Dictator (2012) * * *

 

Directed by:  Larry Charles

Starring:  Sacha Baron Cohen, Anna Faris, Ben Kingsley, John C. Reilly, Jason Mantzoukas

General Admiral Aladeen (Cohen) is the dictator of a North African nation named Wadiya.  He rules with an iron fist, and orders executions on a whim for even minor infractions.  There's a funny payoff with this. Aladeen addresses the United Nations over human rights violations and through a series of failed assassination attempts and a coup attempt by Aladeen's right hand man Tahir (Kingsley), he has his beard shaved off and is wandering the streets of Manhattan while an installed body double poses as him.

Aladeen begins working for a health food store owner named Zoey (Faris), who is ideologically opposed in every day to Aladeen (without knowing he is indeed the despised dictator).  Do they fall in love?  Yes, of course.  Does Aladeen change?  Kind of, sort of.  By the end, he's at least open to the possibility of free elections in Wadiya, you know like the ones in Russia.  In between, Cohen and company go for lowbrow verbal gags that make you laugh and sometimes cringe, but there is a zeal to how Cohen delivers his humor.  Previous outings like Borat (2006) and Bruno (2009) gave us the same style in which not much was off-limits.  

The Dictator actually has something of a plot and isn't just a character wandering the United States and recording his interactions with people in semi-documentary fashion.  Cohen's The Dictator is funny, yes, and we find ourselves laughing despite ourselves.   Aladeen is the hero, and he's a dictator.  

The Invite (2026) * * *

 

Directed by:  Olivia Wilde

Starring:  Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penelope Cruz, Edward Norton

The Invite is a simple tale that I'm not surprised to learn started as a stage play and has been adapted to the movies on two other occasions.  The Invite has four characters and we spend ninety minutes with them at fragile stages of their lives, although none of them will admit it.  One constantly bickering couple is Joe (Rogen) and Angela (Wilde-who also directed).  Angela invited their upstairs neighbors Hawk (Norton) and Pina (Cruz) over to dinner without informing Joe, likely because he would've said no.  Angela burns the souffle, but otherwise puts on a dog-and-pony show in order to impress their neighbors.  Joe, however, isn't so quick to welcome them, because their late-night sex parties keep Joe up.  

Hawk is an affable retired firefighter who is open to sexual experimentation like his therapist wife Pina.  Their stories of orgies, swinging, and BDSM acts shock Joe and Angela, who rarely have sex as their years of marriage wear on.  Hawk and Pina attempt to entice Joe and Angela into becoming their next partners, but Joe has to say his piece about the all-night banging which keeps him up.  Not that he's not attracted to Pina, while Angela lets Hawk know she may be interested.  We wonder if there is more to Hawk and Pina, and not surprisingly, there is.  Both use sex to mask vulnerabilities and insecurities about growing older.  Both are generally kind people who despite their parties seem lonely.  

Joe and Angela are in a mid-marriage crisis, while neither wants to admit it.  Joe gave up his dream of rock stardom to take on a professorship at a local university that he clearly hates.  They have a daughter who is staying over at a friend's house, but Joe and Angela wrestle with the idea of staying together for her sake.  The Invite is populated by accomplished actors who relish the material.  Seth Rogen is known mostly for comedy, and his affable presence is always welcome, but he's more than capable of handling dramatic turns such as The Fabelmans and Steve Jobs.  The Invite maintains a tone straddling the line between what's comic and what's pathetic.  It ends predictably, and under the circumstances, rather touchingly. 

Nebraska (2013) * * *

 

Directed by:  Alexander Payne

Starring:  Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Bob Odenkirk, Stacy Keach

Alexander Payne's Nebraska is a quiet comedy about a retire, senile alchoholic named Woody (Dern), who believes he won a million-dollar sweepstakes prize and is willing to walk from his home in Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska to claim it.  His son David (Forte) sees him walking along the highway and decides to drive him to Lincoln, with stops along the way.  David knows this is a fool's errand, but goes along with his dad's journey and finds he knows more about him at the end of the trek than at the beginning.

Nebraska, filmed in black and white, follows Payne's previous films which display subtle humor and engrossing characters who aren't easy to nail down.  There are no villains, just very flawed human beings whose motives we can understand even if we don't agree with them.  Woody keeps to himself and words trickle from his lips like there aren't many more where that came from.  His economy of words means that when he says something, he means it.  A funny scene involves a stop at Mount Rushmore and Woody is subsequently unimpressed.  ("Lincoln doesn't even have an ear").

It's fitting that his wife Kate (Squibb) is a firecracker who says what's on her mind, even being ribald, saucy, and oversharing most of the time.  She and Woody are temperamental opposites.  However, with Woody, David, and Kate, we sense their decency and humanity.  A jerk from Woody's past (Keach) is really the only fly in the ointment in Nebraska, because he wants to take advantage after learning Woody may suddenly be rich.  Does Woody even believe it himself that he has won a million dollars?  Or is he just looking for purpose and some kind of legacy for his children?  Nebraska isn't cheerfully folksy nor is it satirizing its Midwestern characters.  Some parts move slowly, unlike Payne's Election which also takes place in Nebraska and moves along with energy and pessimism about the human condition, but after spending two hours with these people, we're glad we had a chance to meet them. 

Cheech & Chong's Last Movie (2024) * * *

 

Directed by:  David L. Bushell

The 2024 documentary Cheech & Chong's Last Movie is a documentary highlighting the comedy duo's start and their rise to movie stardom, while only scratching the surface of their breakup and eventual reunion.  The most frustrating aspect of Last Movie is how projects following Cheech Marin's solo Born in East LA and even Tommy Chong's federal prison stretch for selling bongs on the internet.  Yes, that really happened.  However, it was only covered with a post-credits news blurb.  What's here is worthwhile for any Cheech & Chong fan, but I would've loved to learn how they wound up in Martin Scorsese's After Hours and what led to their eventual reunion.  

We see they are clearly reunited and working together again.  They tell their stories as they are driving down the road together, commenting on the beginning of their stand-up career, their albums which produced top 40 hits and a Grammy, and then the movies beginning with Up in Smoke, which was a huge success and led to Cheech & Chong's Next Movie.  Their manager, legendary producer Lou Adler (who appears in the movie), directed Up in Smoke, but Tommy Chong took over the directorial reins starting with Next Movie, which strained the partnership over the course of several movies to the point that by the late 1980's, the team essentially disbanded.  We know the tensions that caused their demise, but how did they reunite?  

The stand-up and movie footage is classic Cheech & Chong, and it's fascinating to see the inspirations behind something as simple as "Dave", which was borne out of Chong breaking Cheech's balls on a hot day when Cheech knocked on the door to come in and Chong wouldn't let him.  The simplest situations lead to classic humor.  Their movies don't have plots, per se, but are stories of two guys who just want to hang out and smoke some weed while the universe conspires to prevent those two things from happening.  The duo went in a completely opposite direction with The Corsican Brothers, which oddly has more time devoted to it than After Hours...and that's a Martin Scorsese movie.