My Old Ass (2024) * *

 

Directed by:  Megan Park

Starring: Maisy Stella, Aubrey Plaza, Maddie Ziegler, Percy Hynes White, Kerrice Brooks, Carter Trozollo, Seth Isaac Johnson, Maria Dizzia

Eighteen-year-old Elliot (Stella) is spending her last days at home before going off to college.  She finally lands the girl she always wanted to sleep with, and life seems pretty good.  One night, while high on mushrooms with her friends, her 39-year-old self (Plaza) appears next to her and tells her to avoid a guy named Chad.  Elliot thinks she's hallucinating, of course, but her older self is real.  Through some miracle, Elliot is also able to communicate via text and calls after her older version disappears.  

The next day while swimming in a lake, she meets the gangly Chad (White), a very sweet guy whom she takes a liking to despite the warnings.  He's seems perfect, and he'll even be going to the same school, so why should she stay away from him?  Does he have a dark, abusive side?  Is a drug addict or a criminal? Is he not who he says he is?  Elliot tries to contact her 39-year-old self to no avail.  She's going to have to figure this one out on her own.  

Elliot is not only confused by her feelings for Chad, but by her feelings for a man in general.  She always thought she was gay, until she met Chad.  But, what lies ahead?  My Old Ass is a time-bending drama which doesn't have the fun with the time travel elements like Back to the Future does.  The 39-year-old version of Elliot isn't on screen much.  When she does return, she reveals why she should've never met Chad, and it does pack some power, but if you're looking for a movie where Elliot tries to mess with the timeline to evoke a different outcome, you've come to the wrong movie.

There isn't anything wrong with a time-bending or time travel movie avoiding the pitfalls and cliches of the genre, but My Old Ass doesn't exploit the plot for all it's worth.  It's just kind of...there, and the movie follows itself to its destination solemnly.  You question why the older self showed up in the first place, since it doesn't change the trajectory much.  

Am I Racist? (2024) * * *

 

Directed by: Justin Folk

Starring:  Matt Walsh (as himself)

Conservative podcaster Matt Walsh goes undercover Borat-style in Am I Racist?, posing as a liberal who wants to learn about DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), but in reality wants to prove his belief that DEI is in fact an industry propped up by the need for mostly perceived or false racism.  Walsh doesn't exactly become a master of disguise.  He wears a wig with a man bun and wears different glasses, but otherwise he's Matt Walsh.  This disguise didn't fool a group therapy session in which the members call the police when they find out he's not a regular guy looking to rid himself of racist tendencies.   

Walsh has ranted on this podcast that no major media outlet or newspaper has reviewed the film, and to date he is correct.  Why is this the case?  Do these outlets fear actually enjoying or liking the movie and thus might be considered racist for doing so?  I didn't find Am I Racist? to be racist at all.  Walsh uses comedy to expose how the "mainstream media" overblows racism to perpetuate it and DEI authors and speakers charge exorbitant fees to try and "fix" the inherent racism found in "all white people".  Don't take just my word for it.  The movie itself shows us support groups, dinners, lectures, and other exercises in which whites pay and submit themselves to criticism by DEI experts.  Like Borat, Walsh gives his subjects enough space to make fools of themselves.  They expose their own hypocrisies all by themselves. 

Walsh himself takes an online course and earns a DEI expert card, which he proudly displays to all of his interview subjects.  He is not serious about becoming a DEI expert or a serious lecturer.  He later creates a class on Craig's List and charges several hundred dollars for whites to attend his session, which consists of the some of the most ludicrous exercises you can imagine.  This involves class members yelling at his wheelchair-bound "Uncle Frank" who allegedly told a racist joke twenty years ago, and providing whips so they can self-flagellate.  What is more amazing is that these "students" were willing to do this, those who stuck around anyway.  The point of Am I Racist? is that there is now a culture in which people are so full of guilt that they would even consider doing such a thing.  

Walsh, and numerous conservative outlets, are at war with the mainstream media over their alleged slant in reporting the news.  Many would simply ignore this as unsubstantiated, but when reputable outlets refused to review Am I Racist?, you can't help but wonder if what conservatives are saying about the media aren't at least somewhat true.  I find my own political leanings to be liberal, but I also acknowledge that arguments from conservatives aren't all automatically racist, hate-mongering, and cruel.  Just because an argument comes from "the other side" doesn't mean it's wrong or that someone like Walsh is not correct.  

I found Am I Racist? funny and illuminating.  Like Borat, you do wonder if any of it is staged, but for the most part, it requires an open mind.  When Walsh tries to recreate Jussie Smollett's ultimately false accounting of being assaulted by two MAGA-hat wearers in the middle of the night in Chicago, I laughed because there isn't any way it could've gone down the way Smollett alleged.  It would have involved actions which defied the laws of physics and sanity.  Does watching Am I Racist? and agreeing with some of Walsh's assertions make you a racist?  I say no, because disagreement with the DEI experts in this film isn't grounds for being labeled a racist.  It isn't hate, it's disagreeing and the last time I looked, that was something we all have a right to do.  I do wish the mainstream media Walsh criticizes understood this and had the courage to review the film.  

A Time to Kill (1996) * * *

 

Directed by:  Joel Schumacher

Starring:  Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock, Kevin Spacey, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Cooper, Ashley Judd, Donald Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland, Brenda Fricker, Patrick McGoohan, Oliver Platt

A Time to Kill is one of John Grisham's first novels and studies the complexities of a Mississippi black man (Jackson), who kills his daughter's rapists and is now on trial for murder.  What would you have done in a similar situation?  The movie understands that such an act is justified, but there are still laws against murder.  Carl Lee Hailey (Jackson) hires local lawyer Jake Brigance (McConaughey) to represent him, partially because he is a family friend and also because Jake sympathizes with Carl.  Jake proposes a temporary insanity defense, which isn't preposterous and could be the difference between life and death.  

Jake's opponent is the experienced DA Rufus Buckley (Spacey), who thinks he has an open-and-shut case.  Jake is aided by liberal law student Ellen Roark (Bullock), who may be able to find a psychologist that will testify as to Carl's temporary insanity.  However, the case brings about unwanted scrutiny from protestors, the NAACP (who wants Carl to have a black lawyer), and the KKK, one of whom is the brother of one of the rapists Carl Lee killed.  There are attempts on Jake's life and more issues which are snugly fit into a 2 1/2 hour movie.  

A Time to Kill is propped up by impressive performances from the all-star cast.  The courtroom scenes provide the needed suspense and drama, with plenty of attention paid to racially-charged subplots.  McConaughey is confident and at-home in his breakthrough role.  He would go on to play attorneys so often that he could probably pass a bar exam.  However, I still scratch my head at his closing argument speech in which he appealed to the jury's inherent racism by saying "now imagine she's white".  Carl is then found "not guilty", but how so?  I'm no attorney, like Grisham, so he could enlighten us.  Until that point, though, A Time to Kill worked as a proficient courtroom drama which provokes the question, "What would you do?" if you were Carl Lee Hailey.  

Never Let Go (2024) * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Alexandre Aja

Starring:  Halle Berry, Percy Daggs IV, Anthony Jenkins

Never Let Go is a post-apocalyptic tale of a woman who lives in the forest with her two sons and is forever trying to keep them safe from "the evil".  They live in a log cabin with no electricity or running water and the three tether themselves with rope to the cabin so they can't stray far.  However, one of the boys starts to doubt whether the evil monsters which tormented their mother even exist.  

Halle Berry plays the mother as a haunted, tortured woman who is either mentally unstable or terrified because she's telling the truth.  The performances are effective even if the movie eventually crumbles under the heavy-handed plot.  The ending reveals the reality of their unfortunate situation, or part of it anyway.  Like many movies in which the protagonist is seemingly insane, it is unlikely that the surprise ending will confirm that notion.  Until that point, Never Let Go plods along like it is fighting against the fog which envelops the forest. 

Never Let Go is not exciting, but sleepy.  Director Aja tries his best to invoke a chilly atmosphere, but the movie never lifts off.   It's not poorly made, but the story doesn't match the production values. 

Speak No Evil (2024) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  James Watkins

Starring:  James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Aisling Franciosi, Scoot McNairy, Dan Hough, Alix West Lefler

Speak No Evil remains grounded and suspenseful when a lesser film would go off the rails.  The villains aren't invincible demons who rise time and again from certain death to keep coming after the heroes.  We know that something is definitely up with Patrick (McAvoy), who claims to be a retired doctor, and his family, which includes a son who was born with a tongue too small and thus cannot speak.  This will all be revealed to be bull, but Speak No Evil operates at its best in the buildup, where Patrick and his wife Ciara (Franciosi) take full advantage of their newfound friends' desire to be polite even in the face of unacceptable behavior.

Patrick and Ciara (along with son Ant (Hough)) meet the Daltons during a vacation in Italy.  Ben (McNairy) and Louise (Davis) are struggling in their marriage because of Louise's emotional infidelity with another man.  They live in London, mostly following a recent movie trend of Americans living abroad because the countries in which they're being filmed give tax breaks.   Patrick sends an invitation to the Daltons, who have a teenage daughter named Agnes (Lefler), to spend a weekend at their rustic country home.  The house is underwhelming and dirty, complete with stained bed linens.  As the weekend goes on, Patrick and Ciara participate in increasingly bizarre behavior which unnerves the Daltons, but they timidly keep their mouths shut.  

Patrick is an uber-masculine guy who engages in the sort of activities one would expect from him.  He hunts, he fishes, he smacks Ant around when he is unable to keep rhythm while dancing, and does scream therapy.  The McAvoy performance is the key to the movie.  If he is anything less than convincingly despicable, then Speak No Evil will fail.  McAvoy clearly relishes his villainhood, and we then root for him to be crushed when the time comes.  The arc of Speak No Evil is predictable, but that's why we went to see it.  We know what we'll get.  McNairy and Davis provide the opposite characterizations of nice people who stay polite to avoid confrontation, which is what Patrick is counting on to allow his scheme to work.  Ant's story plays a huge part in unveiling Patrick's real self in a creative and eerie way. 

I think of Neighbors (1981), John Belushi's final theatrical film in which he plays a polite stick in the mud who barely finds the strength to protest the behavior of his obnoxious new neighbors.  That was a comedy.  Speak No Evil is the dramatic side of that coin, and covers many of the same dark areas while keeping it thrilling for the audience. 

The Front Room (2024) *

 

Directed by:  Sam Eggers and Max Eggers

Starring:  Brandy Norwood, Kathryn Hunter, Andrew Burnap

The Front Room is a "from hell" movie, where the mother-in-law from hell moves into an otherwise happy home and turns it upside down.  The Front Room, however, is not a comedy, but a dull, serious attempt at horror, or is it suspense?  Who knows, but it doesn't operate on its intended level or any level.  It runs until the end credits and you would be fortunate to recall anything about it by the time you walk to the parking lot.  

Brandy Norwood stars as Belinda, a professor in the late stages of pregnancy.  She and her husband Norman (Burnap) eagerly await the baby and turn the front bottom-floor room into the baby's room.  These happy plans are upended by the death of Norman's father, who was married for many years to a manipulative shrill named Solange (Hunter) who disapproves of Norman's marriage and even more so that they're having a baby.  Solange, thanks to Norman's father requests in his will, moves into Norman's house and takes up residency in the baby's room of the house.

In a likely homage to Rosemary's Baby, Solange has strange visitors over to act creepily towards the baby and the family.  She also induces incontinence in order to focus the attention on herself.  What is Solange's endgame in all of this?  She doesn't seem to possess supernatural powers.  She's just mean, spiteful, and vicious.  Hunter gives a nervy performance of a character with very few redeeming qualities, but Solange and this movie should've been shown the front door a long time ago. 

1992 (2024) * *

 

Directed by:  Ariel Vromen

Starring:  Tyrese Gibson, Ray Liotta, Scott Eastwood, Dylan Arnold, Michael Beasley, Christopher Ammanuel

1992 captures the atmosphere of the Los Angeles Rodney King riots but then it dissolves into a formulaic crime drama where the hero dispatches the villains like Rambo.  Mercer (Gibson) is a recently released felon trying to go the straight and narrow while raising his son Antoine (Ammanuel) and working at a catalytic converter plant targeted by thieves led by Bigby (Liotta).  Once the riots ensue, Bigby and company decide to break in and steal a safe's worth of platinum because the plant owners send everyone home for the day.

Mercer, after finding his son among the rioters, plans to hide out at the plant until the event calms down, but soon has to protect Antoine against the thieves.  Bigby is a cold-hearted SOB, but his son Riggin (Eastwood), who resents his father, has a soft spot in his heart for the African-American community.  His dialogue stating his support sounds more like a modern-day take than one that might be uttered in 1992.  This means Riggin can be Redeemed, even though he's trying to steal a shitload of platinum. 

Tyrese Gibson brings intensity as the moral center of 1992, but soon he transforms into an unstoppable action hero thwarting Bigby and his goons.  We know he can handle a gun as an ex-gang member, but realism flies out the window as 1992 goes into action movie mode.  The riots soon feel like a distant memory by the movie's conclusion.  1992 marks the final film appearance of the late Ray Liotta, who plays slimy villains with the best of them.  He will be missed.  The movie itself, not so much.   

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Tim Burton

Starring:  Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara, Monica Belluci, Willem Dafoe, Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Arthur Conti

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has too many characters, too many subplots, and is an overstuffed, bloated movie even at 100 minutes.   It's the sequel no one asked for, but here it is anyway in all its glory.  

I saw the original film only once when it was released in 1988.  I wasn't much thrilled by it and I haven't seen it since.  Fortunately, the sequel doesn't require a revisit to the original.  Michael Keaton returns to the title role as a devious ghost exorcist who is both friend and foe to Lydia Deetz (Ryder), who now hosts a television show about ghosts.  She receives word from her artist stepmother (O' Hara) that her father was killed by a shark following a plane crash.  The father wanders around the underworld with the top half of his body missing.  

Meanwhile, Lydia is being romanced and proposed to by her oily, sneaky producer/manager (Theroux), who clearly has a bigger agenda.  Lydia's daughter Astrid (Ortega) resents her mother, but comes home from college following her father's passing.  She and Lydia have a Past to contend with, but not so much that Astrid doesn't begin a potential romance with a good-looking young man who hangs out in a tree fort.  

Beetlejuice, meanwhile, has to avoid his ex-wife Delores (Bellucci), who somehow has returned from another afterlife, I suppose, and has designs on revenge.  Beetlejuice tells his story of how Delores came to be his ex-wife and how he wound up a ghost.   There are long stretches where we forget she's even in the movie.  Other unnecessary characters like Willem Dafoe's Wolf Jackson, an afterlife detective who was an actor when he was alive.  We wait for his arc to develop and it never does.  

Beetlejuice himself is a mystery.  He's a hero one moment and a villain the next.  We can't keep track of him.  It's telling that the character everyone loves the most is Bob, the guy with the shrunken head and bulging eyes who can't speak and meets a terrible end at the hands of Delores.  Bob doesn't deserve that ending.  What we're left with is a movie with people we don't care about carrying about subplots we have no interest in.  I'd love to know more about Bob, though.  Maybe he can get his own movie. 

Blink Twice (2024) * * *

 

Directed by:  Zoe Kravitz

Starring:  Channing Tatum, Naomi Ackie, Haley Joel Osment, Kyle MacLachlan, Simon Rex, Liz Caribel, Adria Arjona, Geena Davis, Levon Hawke, Christian Slater

While watching Blink Twice, I found it disturbing and off-kilter, but I was never bored or disinterested.  As suspense was building, I was wondering what the hell I was watching, but my mind was engaged.  It brought about a reaction, which means it was working for me on some level.  

Blink Twice stars Channing Tatum as Slater King, a tech billionaire on a media apology tour for undisclosed abuses of power, which are likely sexual in nature.  Despite his ickiness, waitress Frida (Ackie) likes him enough to want to meet him following a party she's working in which he attends.  The seemingly kind Slater takes a shine to Frida and invites her and her friend to his island paradise along with his male friends and their female companions.   The time at the island is one big party of swimming, dinners at night, drinking, and drugs.  But, something is...off.   Slater asks Frida often whether she's having a good time, others take Polaroids, and Slater's sister and manager (Davis), acts as if this is something she is far too familiar with. 

I'll tread lightly not to reveal plot twists, but director Zoe Kravitz creates an eerie atmosphere which plays like a nightmare where parts don't fit and drug-induced visions may conceal a darker truth.  Meanwhile, we ask whether Slater is truly reformed.  He seems attentive and repentant for past indiscretions, and is gentle with Frida, but again, he is just...off.   We are used to seeing Tatum play heroes, but in Blink Twice he masterfully gives off sinister vibes in keeping with the movie he's in.  Will Blink Twice cause debate?  Sure, but then that reflects that it isn't simply a #MeToo story or a take on the movement, but something deeper.