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Review by Adam Donato  Derek Cianfrance hasn’t directed a movie in almost a decade. He did see critical success since then with Sound of Metal. Roofman is marketed like it's his most accessible movie to date. Channing Tatum is leading a goofy crime thriller wherein he has a romance with Kirsten Dunst. Not quite as depressing as Blue Valentine. Tatum has had his ups and down lately, but all his interview questions are about his involvement in Avengers: Doomsday. Dunst works sparingly but her last two films, The Power of the Dog and Civil War, were both successful. Roofman opens on a crowded weekend, but can good word of mouth cut out a good piece of the box office pie? Roofman thrives on the charm of Channing Tatum. Now he’s not doing anything crazy new here. It’s pretty standard Channing Tatum here, but this movie plays to his strengths and he’s surrounded by other talented people. He’s still got the Magic Mike sex appeal and is able to joke around a bunch. The emotional crux of the film is his desire to be a good person, despite feeling desperate enough to break the law to solve his problems on a regular basis. This is one of Tatum’s better performances of his career.  Kirsten Dunst is regularly working with talented directors and hitting her spots well. She doesn’t get the fanfare, but she’s one of the best actresses working today. Her pairing with Tatum is a curious one, but they pull it off well. Their relationship is the heart of the film. This is Dunst at her most relatable in a long time. The rest of the supporting cast is good with Ben Mendelsohn shining in his musical moments as this church pastor.
This is a true story so the narrative is somewhat predictable. That being said, the inevitability of the situation makes it all the more tragic. His pathetic circumstance contrasts well with the plastic prison he now finds himself in. The idea of an immature man hiding out in place with a slogan about not wanting to grow up is compelling. Roofman is the best version of this type of movie. It won’t be getting any nominations, but it’s certainly worth catching in a theater. Tatum has it and excels here along with Dunst. Cianfrance has his best chance for a commercial hit with this one here. Will be a crowd pleaser if it’s lucky enough to garner a crowd. Roofman is in theaters on October 10. Rating: 4/5
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Review by Adam Donato  Word recently got out that Disney is focused on how to win back Gen Z men. With franchises like Marvel and Star Wars losing value and trust from fans, what other franchises do they have to turn to? The original TRON movie has a solid cult following and these days, TRON: Legacy has been reclaimed. This could be attributed to director Joseph Kosinski’s recent success with Top Gun: Maverick and F1. The man knows how to make a slick looking movie. Another attraction to the franchise is the music as Daft Punk did the soundtrack for TRON: Legacy. These seem to be the pillars of the franchise: cool special effects and a techno soundtrack. Not too long ago, Disney World added a TRON ride to Tomorrowland in Magic Kingdom. This always seemed like an odd choice as TRON: Legacy came out over a decade prior and didn’t seem to have a large cultural footprint. Maybe this new reboot, TRON: Ares, will reupload the franchise? The movie looks amazing. The scale is huge and seeing everything in IMAX was breathtaking. It’s not as cool seeing the TRON characters and vehicles in the real world, but most of the scenes take place at night so the contrast of the dark environments with the vibrant color still pop. Seeing TRON in the daylight could’ve gotten very cheesy very quickly, but this was avoided. Also, the retro version of TRON looks distinct and the attention to detail is interesting. The action set pieces themselves aren’t all that impressive, but they’re executed very well from a technical perspective. It’s a visually pleasing movie to look at as expected. The music is awesome. Nine Inch Nails did the soundtrack for the film and it’s almost sad how far above something like this they are. The actual songs themselves are great, but what’s even more impressive is the score. They manage to make mundane moments in this film feel intense and epic. It’s clear they were invested in the film as both Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are both executive producers for the film as well. The soundtrack is the crowning achievement of the film and honestly could be in the mix for an Oscar nomination. Seeing as the duo didn’t get nominated for Challengers, it’s hard to see the Academy lowering themselves to something like this.  Everything else in the film does not work. The story feels like a bad Terminator 2 sequel. The characters are bland and awkward. The humor in the film is forced, unfunny, and doesn’t fit with the overall tone of the franchise. The themes are spoon fed for children only. This is the definition of a turn your brain off film. As long as you can see the special effects and hear the music, that’s all you need. The special elements of the film make all the mid aspects feel bad, like a wasted opportunity. It’s crazy that so much money and talent can go into a film that ends up just feeling grey. Jared Leto is a rusty anchor dragging this film down. It’s clear that he was passionate about the film as he was also a producer for the film. On the outside looking in, it’s crazy that Leto continues to find major mainstream work. The man has a bad reputation within the industry and a toxic reputation to cinephiles. It’s at least interesting when he takes a major swing in a performance and then it doesn’t go well, like in Suicide Squad. That’s not what’s happening here. His performance is so boring, which is detrimental because his character is the crux of the film. The weight of the story relies on the audience finding Ares’ red pill journey compelling and it’s just flatly not.its hard to say the movie would be improved with a different actor in the role, but the movie certainly would’ve had more good will. The rest of the performances were less offensive. Greta Lee and Jodie Turner-Smith are the standouts if there are any. Lee is the only emotional pull that the audience has to hold onto and Turner-Smith is a much more imposing villain threat than anyone else in the film. Evan Peters is over the top evil, but without adding any fun to it. His relationship with his mother, played by Gillian Anderson, is supposed to humanize him, but this is ineffective. Jeff Bridges is asleep during his one scene. Nice paycheck. One should’ve seen this drop in quality coming from a mile away. Joachim Ronning is a middling director for hire in Disney’s back pocket. Nobody can deny how impressive the effects and soundtrack of the movie are, but everything else here is disposable. The more Disney blockbusters that underperform this year, the more pressure there will be on Avatar: Fire and Ash to knock it out of the park. Maybe it’s time to return TRON to the grid indefinitely. TRON: Ares is in theaters on October 10. Rating: 2/5 Review by Adam Donato  This would be Mary Bronstein’s first major release, but she did make a feature with Greta Gerwig and the Safdie brothers starring herself. Here she does play a supporting role, but is also the writer and director. Rose Byrne is mostly known for her comedic and horror roles, but is the star here. The connection to the Safdie brothers makes one think they’re trying to do with Byrne what they did with Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems. She’s given quite the juicy lead role as a mother that has the weight of the world and then some on her shoulders. A24 is a great studio for getting small movies like this some attention. Rose Byrne has never been better. Life just keeps throwing non stop punches at her left and right to a comical extent. The movie gets right up close and personal with her character right from the jump. She’s such a sympathetic character because of her circumstance, but she makes so many bad choices that put her into this grey area. Byrne does a great job of not only selling the sadness, but the absolute paranoia and hysteria as well. This is one of the best female lead performances of the year and hopefully it gets the attention come awards season.  Bronstein does a great job of depicting the downward spiral of this character. It would be a much more depressing experience had she had no flaws and continued to get beat down. That being said, her flaws do not condemn her character. In a lot of ways it feels like the female version of Uncut Gems. It’s a very stressful experience and has these ethereal moments that make it feel larger. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You fits right in with the A24 catalogue and is one of the better entries from them this year.
This is Conan O’Brien’s first dramatic acting role and he’s fantastic here. His character is a fellow therapist who reluctantly takes Byrne’s character as a patient. He’s such an unsupportive person in her life. Of course his performance is very funny at times because he’s naturally funny, but this is definitely Conan at his most subdued. A$AP Rocky also has a standout supporting role. Not as impressive as his work on A24’s Highest 2 Lowest earlier this season, but it’s clear that this artist can act. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is certainly looking at an upward battle at the box office. Rose Byrne has never been a box office name, but she delivers a performance deserving of one. This outing will put her in a higher regard with cinephiles. It’s really a credit to Bronstein getting such great performances from the entire cast. She will definitely be a name to look out for going forward. People need to go see this movie in a theater. If I had Legs I'd Kick You is in theaters on October 17. Rating: 4/5 Review by Daniel Lima  On paper, there’s nothing separating Prisoner of War from plenty of great examples of martial arts action starring Scott Adkins. Military man, check; martial arts expert, check; unflappable and unstoppable in the face of adversity, check. Directed by his former The Debt Collector co-star Louis Mandylor, one would expect that this would fertile ground for Adkins to lean into his particular capabilities as an action star, combining affability with agility to deliver the kinetic thrills that made him a modern-day legend. Sadly, it is Mandylor’s creative instincts that sink the film, rendering inert what should be exhilarating fun. Adkins plays an RAF pilot shot down over the Philippines who is captured and placed in a Japanese POW camp. He quickly displays his knowledge of Eastern martial arts, singling him out to the camp commander and earning his enmity. With the Allies closing in and the depraved Japanese forces growing more violent by the day, Adkins must team up with his fellow captives in order to escape from their clutches. Mandylor is no stranger to the Pacific front of the Second World War, his last two films having been set there as well. Reviewing 3 Days in Malay, I noted that his desire to make a fun action crowd-pleaser was at war with his sense of reverence for the sacrifices made by men in uniform. It seems that the latter instinct has won out, and so Prisoner of War ends up a dour, po-faced portrait of camp life that fails to earn the dramatic weight is so clamors for.  One could generously attribute the lack of characterization of both the Western prisoners and Japanese jailers as an attempt to show they not so different as patriots willing to sacrifice anything for their country. The end result, however, is none of these characters have a single distinct personality between them. One American can kind of speak Japanese, one guard is sympathetic to their plight, but these qualities are not elaborated on beyond servicing the procedural plot. It is genuinely incredible that for all the time spent with this limited ensemble, by the end there is nothing to distinguish one from the other. This in turn cripples any sense of danger or emotional stakes, as there is nothing to engender the audience to any one of these people. In fairness, that would already be undercut by the film’s structure. For some unfathomable reason, the opening scene is Scott Adkins storming into a Japanese dojo after the war, by himself, angrily asking to see the man who had tortured him back in the Philippines. On the one hand, no one who would watch this movie would ever doubt that Adkins would survive to the end; on the other hand, to confirm this from the jump, in addition to showing the survival of his compatriots will ultimately not affect the finale, adds absolutely nothing to the unfolding drama in the camp. It’s a baffling choice that only hurts the narrative. Once Adkins is captured, the film idles into a familiar routine: the Japanese commit some casual war crimes, Adkins shows off his martial prowess, he collaborates with the fellow prisoners in building an escape plan. Beyond the thin characters, a key issue is developing the escape plan is not thrilling in its own right. Adkins’ own invulnerability is assured, but the film also studiously avoids putting any of the other Westerners in any real danger, even though the Filipino prisoners are killed with impunity. Each new step towards freedom is taken with precious little effort or complexity, and so the movie idles forward with no sense of intensity or momentum.  The closest Prisoner of War comes to actual character is in the relationship between Scott Adkins’ downed pilot and Peter Shinkoda’s camp commander, though even this is mostly down to the two actors’ performances rather than how they are written. Scott is a bona fide star, and remains a compelling screen presence even when saddled with nothing to work with. Shinkoda brings gravitas to his role, but it can only go so far when the motivations of his character as so ill-defined. This Japanese officer is a brutal, deranged thug whose devotion to his nation’s imperialist project supersedes any conventional sense of morality, yet he cannot bring himself to actually kill the man who brings him nothing but trouble because he’s impressed with how well he knows Eastern culture? A better script might interrogate that contradiction, but here it exists merely due to convention.
This leads to the elephant in the room: this movie is deeply Orientalist. The Westerner who knows the mysterious Eastern ways better than the Asian savages is a trope that is only rarely played with sincerity these days, and for good reason. Yet here it is, as pure an example as any of the ninja films of the 1980s. The villain’s fascination with the Caucasian hero, the way he completely dominates everyone he’s up against, the fact only the white prisoners are given any dialogue and only the Asian prisoners are allowed to die, the beautiful Asian nurses brought in as a prize for the Westerners. If this were a schlocky action film like Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, this element might go down easier, but the complete lack of any humor or self-awareness makes the bile taste of white racial supremacy hard to ignore. That said, there are plenty of action movies with questionable politics and weak writing that skate by on the strength of their action. This does not manage that feat. Every fight take place on an open, barren space, leaving no room for incorporating the environment and offering little to differentiate them visually. Scott Adkins is an impressive physical performer even pushing fifty years old, and what he does here is especially impressive knowing he tore his hamstring shortly after production began, but the choreography similarly looks the same from fight to fight, maintaining the same rhythm and intensity with no deviation. Worse still is the camera, purposelessly circling around the fighters, capturing all the action clearly but doing nothing to accentuate any of the violence. It’s rare that an Adkins vehicle have such forgettable fights, but it’s just one failing among many. Prisoner of War seemed like a layup, the kind of project tailor made for both its star and the audience he has cultivated for himself. Actually watching it made me feel sadder than anything else, as the realization that it would not measure up to even Adkins’ middle-of-the-road work dawned on me. At least the fans have Diablo and Day of Reckoning from this year to enjoy instead. Prisoner of War is now in theaters and on digital. Rating: 2/5 Review by Camden Ferrell  Paul Thomas Anderson has nothing left to prove as a filmmaker. Over the course of his previous nine features, he has firmly established himself as one of the most talented voices the history of film has ever seen. What do you do when you find yourself with a resume that rivals some of the all-time great directors? You try to outdo yourself, not because you have to but because you can. One Battle After Another feels like PTA’s observation of modern society mixed with a rallying cry and a screwball sensibility that is an ode to car-chase style Hollywood spectacle. Featuring an energetically devoted turn from Leonardo DiCaprio and showcasing some of the most mind-blowingly crafted sequences of the year, this is a timely film that reminds us of why movies are made in the first place. We begin in the middle of a mission for the French 75, a revolutionary group who uses tangible action to aggressively fight for a more just society. In what feels like a fond reminiscence of the power of political violence in an increasingly unjust world, we are quickly shown how a dream is killed. 16 years later, an adversary of the French 75 resurfacing spells trouble for Bob and his teenage daughter Willa. Inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, this movie reimagines it in a modern context, one that feels hauntingly familiar to the volatile state of our union. It aims to capture the absurdity and fear that has become the new normal while also illustrating the ways in which tangible change can come to fruition. And beneath the social commentary that cuts like a knife, he still manages to tell a cohesive and moving story about love, family, and the reason we fight the good fight. From the start, it’s quick to see that this movie is one that views its lack of subtlety as a feature not a flaw. The beautiful things PTA has explored in nuance and silence throughout his career are thrown out the window. Instead, he treats us to the most extreme parts of his filmography. His writing is sharp, angry, hopeful, and often absurdly hilarious. He holds no punches in his attempt to view society whether it’s through an indictment or a more innocuous observation. This sets the stage for all the other things in his movie to come together so beautifully. The touching father-daughter dynamic only works because of his ability to so fearlessly establish the world in which we currently live. The screwball antics of the film’s characters only work for that exact same reason. It encapsulates everything a movie should be. It has explicit purpose, earned emotion, and unfettered ambition.  This movie is led by the always reliable DiCaprio who gives one of the most memorable performances in his career. He leans fearlessly into the extreme nature of his character, and he elevates the tension and offbeat comedy as a result. Chase Infiniti makes her feature film debut as Willa, and it’s an impressive debut in which she displays her ability to hold her own as an actress across such seasoned veterans. One of the biggest surprises is how entertaining Sean Penn is as Colonel Lockjaw, the film’s antagonist. It’s a ruthless role with some of the best moments of comedy in the movie. It’s an interesting blend of fear and hilarity that could really only work in a movie like this one.
One of the most impressive feats of this movie is how it delivers sequence after sequence that show such an unrivaled discipline in film. One night time sequence in particular might just be some of the best filmmaking I’ve seen this century. PTA reunites with cinematographer Michael Bauman who does such visually stunning things in darkness for that one particular sequence. He also brilliantly captures the citywide chaos in which this film thrives the most. This is propelled by a steady, hypnotic and frequently discordant score from frequent collaborator Johnny Greenwood. While I’m specifically highlighting one sequence, these artists are firing on all cylinders from start to finish to bring PTA’s vision to life. One Battle After Another is yet another masterpiece to PTA’s name. It is the best movie of the year so far, and it’s one that revels in its spectacle, action, and controlled mayhem. It’s a furious and weirdly comical call to action that will surely go down as an emblematic film of our current era. One Battle After Another is in theaters September 26. Rating: 5/5 |