Category: Movie Reviews

Almost as soon as they met as children, Audrey and Lolo became inseparable. They were among the few Asian Americans in a painfully homogenous white town in the Pacific Northwest. When their first playground bully hurled a racist insult at them, Lolo landed a punch right in his face as Audrey looked on in awe. Since that fateful day, the pair stuck by each other through the rest of school, the start of their careers, and the beginnings of many bad choices. Now as an ambitious associate at a law firm, Audrey (Ashley Park) has the chance for a life-changing promotion when her boss sends her to China to close a major business deal, and Lolo (Sherry Cola), Audrey’s much more chaotic counterpart, comes along on the adventure as a translator back to their homeland. With the help of two more friends, Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) and Kat (Stephanie Hsu), the group make it an unforgettable trip that gets dirty and deep on what identity means and how to be true to oneself. 

Making her feature debut, Adele Lim takes bold risks in her raunchy road trip comedy “Joy Ride.” The movie walks a fine line between exploring heartfelt questions about belonging and outrageous jokes played for shock value. It’s as if Lim and fellow co-writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao saw the antics in Malcolm D. Lee’s “Girls Trip” as a challenge to top. It’s safe to say, the crew in “Joy Ride” do top the outrageous factor, but whether or not it’s as effective will depend on the viewer’s stomach for bawdy humor. Still, as uneven as the tone may feel shifting from Audrey’s search for her long lost mother who gave her up for adoption and the group hooking up with members of a traveling basketball team, there is no shortage of jokes and other comical situations to keep the awkward laughs and full-body cringes rolling along. To enhance the movie’s whirlwind melee, Paul Yee’s cinematography transports audiences from the banality of Audrey and Lolo’s hometown to the luridly colorful animated sequences of the group’s K-Pop fantasy number and the many stops along the way, from misty country roads and expansive rivers to busy cafes and dimly lit clubs. The richness of each scene steadies the sense of whiplash from the story’s breakneck pace. 

Beyond crude humor, “Joy Ride” also pokes fun at Audrey’s identity crisis, using it as a springboard for pointed self-criticism and sharp cultural commentary. One of the movie’s sharpest sequences occurs when Audrey is fooled by a white American who’s a drug dealer desperate to hide her goods. She initially trusts her fellow American at the expense of sitting with other Chinese passengers and puts the group in an even more precarious situation because as Lolo puts it, Audrey is prejudiced against people who look like her. There are many little introspective moments throughout the movie, like when they land at the Shanghai airport, Audrey notes what a different feeling it is for her to no longer be in the minority. There’s even more observational jokes about missing out on a country’s traditional cuisine or speaking the language when you grew up outside the culture. These one-liners and observations throughout “Joy Ride” give a more nuanced sense humor to the quips about random sex acts and ill-advised tattoos. 

As with many an ensemble movie, the strength is in its cast, and “Joy Ride” is no exception. Led by the central drama between Ashley Park and Sherry Cola’s characters, their relationship shifts and evolves over the course of the journey, forcing them to reckon with their own moments of self-discovery. Park plays the pitch perfect straight character, the high achiever destined for greatness – with all the flaws that can come with that personality. With a deceptively calm demeanor, Cola’s character often instigates many of the movie’s problems but not in a malicious way, almost as if eternally optimistic that she will get the results she wants. Sabrina Wu’s Deadeye and Stephanie Hsu’s Kat bring even more volatility to the mix, as Deadeye’s unpredictability and deadpan expression make it tough for others to connect with her and Kat’s sordid past comes to haunt her more than once even as she’s trying to change her lifestyle for a Christian fiancé. 

While not everything in “Joy Ride” comes together smoothly, Lim’s movie is plenty of messy fun, mostly lighthearted but occasionally profound in what it says about identity and friendships. The stars of the show embrace the outrageous high jinks, enjoying the free pass to behave badly and push the envelope of raunch comedy. For all its twists and tangents, “Joy Ride” remains unapologetically true to itself and the central friendship that starts us all on our merry misadventure. 

Throughout most of the Italian film, “Amanda,” the title character wears an outfit perhaps best described as Moody Teen: “Who me? I just threw on this old thing, but did you notice how punk it is?” There’s a shapeless jacket, clunky boots, and a vest that looks like it was crocheted by someone’s grandmother. And throughout most of the movie, she sports a sullen expression giving notes of truculence, superiority, and occasionally helplessness, as in, “I may be far above these lesser people I am doomed to be with, but I still wish one of them liked me.” We eventually see Amanda lounging by the pool in a bathing suit, a sharp contrast that calls back to the film’s flashback opening.

First-time feature writer/director Carolina Cavalli has a strong eye for composition and an appealing confidence in her vision. She said she picked Benedetta Porcaroli to play Amanda because of her melancholic attitude and strength of spirit. Both are evident in the character, whose outsider status may be suggested by her name, very popular in the US but almost unheard of in Italy. In a very brief flashback that opens the film, we see that even as a child, her behavior could be shocking, though we do not find out until much later exactly what she did that caused the maid to shriek her name and drop the tray she was carrying. When we see her again, she is in her twenties and has returned home to her wealthy family’s comfortable home after studying in Paris. She is unwilling to join her sister in the family business, a chain of pharmacies. But she is not willing to do anything else, either. She is certain that she knows what she does not like and even more certain that she is above the people and activities around her. She shows some interest in her sister’s young daughter and a neighbor’s horse, but the closest thing she has to a companion is Judy, that same maid who dropped the tray, a middle-aged woman she begs to go to a rave with her. Amanda’s mother, Sofia (Monica Nappo), will no longer allow Judy to go out with Amanda and offers an alternative.  

Sofia and her friend have no idea what to do with their failure-to-launch daughters and hope that getting them together will somehow help them move forward. When they were children, Amanda was friends with Rebecca, the other character with an Anglo-American name. The slight problem now: Rebecca (Galatéa Bellugi) refuses to leave her room.

Like a less-cluttered Wes Anderson film, “Amanda” has quirky, precocious young characters who deliver aphoristic pronouncements in monotone, deadpan voices amid beautifully composed settings. Although she is in her mid-twenties, Amanda seems like a teenager, reflexively defensive. She feels more in control when expressing dark sentiments, insulting people, or transgressing the boundaries of acceptable behavior, as in clipping her toenails into her mother’s bathwater. Amanda desperately wants a friend and boyfriend but has no idea how to show interest in anyone other than insulting them. She cares about and even identifies with the neighbor’s neglected horse, but all she says to him is, “You’re too skinny.  You look like a table.” She gazes with longing at an attractive young man but has no idea how to let him know she is interested. And then she is hurt and angry when he dates someone else.  But she is self-aware enough to understand that she “never does anything because she is too busy doing nothing.”

Amanda’s bluntness is an asset with Rebecca. Like Mary with her spoiled cousin Colin in The Secret Garden, Amanda’s abrasive directness brings out an honesty between herself and Rebecca, leading to some progress for both. Porcaroli’s face, as Amanda’s perpetual frown begins to relax, is a small gem. In the American version of this movie, it might result in more palpable progress, probably with some hugging. But this is not that movie. Cavalli respects the world’s complications, and “Amanda” the film is as uncompromising as Amanda the character.

Now playing in theaters. 

If you muted the soundtrack of the lopsided sci-fi parable “Biosphere,” about the presumed last two men on Earth, the movie might look better than it sounds. Not because “Biosphere” features spectacular special effects or because it’s visually impressive. Rather, this ponderous two-hander looks better when its co-leads, Sterling K. Brown and co-writer Mark Duplass, try to convey a manic, claustrophobic mood mainly through body language instead of grating, sitcom-style dialogue. Director/producer/co-writer Mel Eslyn also occasionally succeeds in reframing her two characters as parts of their cramped habitat. But there’s more schtick than speculation baked into the dialogue, which makes it too easy to dismiss this unfortunately stagey misfire.

“Biosphere” has a curious premise that’s briskly unpacked within the movie’s first half hour. [SOME ESSENTIAL SPOILERS FOLLOW] In that time, insecure Billy (Duplass) and overweening Ray (Brown) discover that they’re not only trapped in a biodome that is running out of food but also that one of the fish that they’re raising for their own dietary needs has suddenly and unexpectedly become a hermaphrodite. This evolutionary leap coincides with an even bigger plot contrivance: Billy’s also spontaneously undergoing intersex changes, which freaks him out and intrigues Ray, formerly a biologist. Somehow, these key plot developments aren’t the most unbelievable parts of “Biosphere.”

We soon learn that Billy used to be President of the United States, if only for 14 months. He doesn’t, or at least didn’t, share Ray’s progressive values, and while Billy’s never out-and-out compared to a Bush or a Trump, there are clear signs that his policies have had a similarly polarizing effect. The fact that even Billy cops to making rash decisions as POTUS says more about the filmmakers and their ideal audience than these characters, whose relationship is built around an unbelievable sort of present-tense camaraderie.

Yes, Ray, a registered Democrat, has regrets, including his tenure as the ex-President’s adviser, but he and Ray live in the now. They talk about their feelings, which are neatly labeled and broken down in ways that suggest that it’s not the situation at hand that’s funny, but the characters, who are both more suggestive as symbols than as psychologically or emotionally complex people.

Through a surplus of hand-holding dialogue, “Biosphere” presents a weirdly hollow sort of Utopian optimism, where the bonhomie between a Black and a white man says everything and nothing about the movie’s understanding of the “patriarchy,” as Duplass refers to his edgy protagonists in the movie’s press notes. Here, Billy and Ray follow what seems like an inevitable progression toward an unusual premise: Would you be able to able put aside your differences and repeatedly change your relationship with somebody you’ve known for years, first because of utilitarian necessity and then maybe some latent personal feelings?

The latter part of that character dynamic goes largely unexplored in “Biosphere” since so much dialogue indicates qualities in both Billy and Ray that their creators never seem interested in developing. Most anecdotes and tit-for-tat bickering only serve to establish the characters’ theories about their shifting relationship or their philosophical differences. You probably don’t know any real people who talk like Billy and Ray do, despite some load-bearing references to “Super Mario Bros.” Even two key scenes where Ray unpacks his heart’s contents, first with a fish and then to Billy, seem more like story outline placeholders than soul-baring monologues.

Granted, a good part of the appeal of “Biosphere” stems from its nature as a fantasy of what could be rather than what already is. Which might be why so much of Billy and Ray’s squirmy banter concerns their insecurities, though Billy’s feelings get unpacked at greater length, partly because he’s the chattier of the two men. Ray’s a doer while Billy’s a worrier; Ray has faith, while Billy tends to sulk and catastrophize. More importantly, the two men deliberately focus on their present dilemma—what to do about Billy and his body—which only partly opens a can of worms. Rather than dig into what’s specifically changing about their relationship, Duplass and Eslyn focus on armchair psychology and black-box speeches to explain away what’s really going on with these two men. Never mind why the world ended. What matters is Billy and Ray’s magical thinking, as well as their coy will-they/won’t-they tension.

The movie’s comedic climax is both the worst and the best scene: [ANOTHER ESSENTIAL SPOILER] Ray and Billy attempt to get to know each other a little more intimately but only wind up weirding each other out even more. This routine is mostly funny, thanks to Brown and Duplass’ frenzied slapstick chemistry. Unfortunately, this scene also drags on for so long, with too little comedic inflection or development, that it eventually feels like the best and only joke the filmmakers could think to tell. Maybe it plays differently if you cover your ears?

Now playing in theaters. 

Early on in this dreary would-be psychological thriller, the literary mandarin J.M. Sinclair, played by Richard Grant, shares with an interviewer his observations on the writing life. “Now, average writers attempt originality. They fail. Universally. Good writers have the sense to borrow from their betters. But great … great writers … steal.” He then breaks into a cocky grin and laughs wheezily, like Mutley on “Wacky Races.” I’m sure not on purpose; I trust Mr. Grant has been fortunate enough to have never been exposed to that cartoon.

The adage that Sinclair paraphrases may have, um, originated with T.S. Eliot or with Igor Stravinsky, who applied it, of course, to composers. And it’s a not entirely untrue and not entirely un-useful aperçu. Still, if you’ve been writing for a long time, even in the relatively unheralded trenches of criticism, you’re likely sick of hearing it. God knows I am. In any event, Sinclair’s observation, aside from adding dimension to his character (not a particularly interesting dimension, given how tired is his pet observations), also serves as, speaking of phrases we all ought to be thoroughly tired of, a kind of Chekhov’s Act-One-Gun for the plot.

“The Lesson,” directed by Alice Troughton from a script by Alex MacKeith, aspires to be high-toned but only gets to the peak of a cliché slag heap. The ostensible protagonist is Daryl McCormack’s Liam, first seen being interviewed himself, speaking of his first novel, about a ruined patriarch trying to reassert power over his fraying realm. In a flashback, the unpublished Liam is summoned by “The Agency” (not the C.I.A.) to audition for a tutoring gig. Bertie, the son of literary lion Sinclair and his French wife Hélène (Julie Delpy), needs a leg up to get into Oxford. Young and pale and poor of attitude, Bertie (Stephen McMillan) resists Liam’s friendly suggestions about learning critical thinking and insults the guy at family dinners. Nevertheless, Liam gets the gig, moves into the family’s palatial manor (this is a world in which literary mandarin status still pays big), and starts putting Post-It notes on his mirror; observations on the family that he hopes will feed a literary work of his own.

The Sinclairs are one of Tolstoy’s unhappy families; an older son, Felix, committed suicide by drowning himself in the manor lake a few years back. In another excerpt from a public interview, J.M. gets into a snit when asked about his son’s death. Among other things, the tragedy seems to have blocked J.M.

Hélène takes to Liam to the extent that she wants to hire him directly, cutting out “The Agency.” In this movie, no one has ever seen any other movies, so Liam thinks this is an excellent idea. And he also very gladly signs an NDA. We also learn that the window of Liam’s room—which had once belonged to Felix (and the house does appear to have a lot of rooms, so why Liam’s been boarded in such a grief-weighted space doesn’t make much sense but go on)—looks directly into Hélène and J.M.’s bedroom, and one night Liam watches while J.M. performs cunnilingus on his wife. “Don’t do that, dude,” I said to the screen as this happened. “This is a border from which you cannot step back.” Oops, then Hélène sees him watching and smiles. “You’re in it now, pal,” I said to the screen. But honestly, I wasn’t that concerned.

Because, come on: this is one of those movies that goes on for an hour and forty minutes because someone doesn’t have the common sense to get the hell out of Dodge twenty minutes in. When J.M. asks to read Liam’s novel-in-progress and offers his own work for Liam’s delectation, the subsequent comparing notes session goes poorly, and Liam contrives to get some of his pride back, helped by an explosive (or so the movie hopes) discovery.

When all the dominoes fall, it’s so neat, so pat; there’s no credibility, and with that gone, any opportunity for emotional resonance goes pffffft as well. Some might expect this picture to be redeemed by juicy performances, but that’s not the case; while none of the performers phone it in, the script gives them only the most commonplace ideas and states to convey. “The Lesson” is a wash. 

Now playing in theaters. 

“Welcome to the internet
Put your cares aside
Here’s a tip for straining pasta
Here’s a nine-year-old who died.”
— Bo Burnham, “Welcome to the Internet”

“The algorithm is a beast that really can’t be tamed once it’s been unleashed and it’s already been unleashed.” In Alex Winter’s new documentary “The YouTube Effect,” these words—probably not a surprise to anyone at this point—are said by Anthony Padilla, founder of the YouTube channel Smosh, a very successful early adapter of the platform. Padilla is one of the interview subjects in “The YouTube Effect,” and he explains how the algorithm works and why it’s a huge problem. He’s a powerful interview subject because he speaks from the inside. He also speaks against his own interests. He’s benefited from YouTube. He was made by YouTube (Smosh launched on YouTube in the prehistoric year 2005). “The YouTube Effect” is a chronicle of extremely recent history and doesn’t cover much new ground. If you follow YouTube, big tech, or any controversies surrounding social media, you will be familiar with everything here.

Recent history moves so fast that the now-ancient (i.e., the 1990s) term “24-hour news cycle” takes on an entirely new meaning. The “news” itself is off-road. We are in the whirlwind right now, and it’s hard sometimes to get perspective on what the hell is actually going on. Maybe that’s the point: if you don’t give people time to think, they won’t cause problems for you as you lug your money to the bank. To quote Bo Burnham’s song again: “It was always the plan / To put the world in your hand.” The 21st-century version of bread and circuses.

Winter interviews people from tech, writers who cover tech, as well as the original co-founder Steve Chen. (YouTube’s humble beginnings echo all the other startup legends, college dropouts with an idea, setting up in their parents’ garage.) Originally designed as a video version of the website “Hot or Not?” (what is it with social media behemoths starting with sleazy little concepts?) YouTube quickly took off into the stratosphere, so much so that even a couple of years later, it was hard to imagine the world without it.

It’s only 15 years of time, but so much has happened. Winter picks out some of the major YouTube moments: The Arab Spring, the 2020 protests, the New Zealand mosque shooting (live-streamed), Elliot Rodger, and the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. But YouTube is too vast an eco-system to be summed up by its most high-profile and politically-charged controversies. Winter provides brief flashes of other famous (and sometimes controversial) YouTube figures/events: Shane Dawson, Tana Mongeau, James Charles … and who can forget Logan Paul’s “Japanese Suicide Forest” debacle? These eruptions in the YouTube community are still being discussed by creators on the channel. Winter doesn’t really go into these tempests-in-a-teapot, and this is probably a good thing because once you search “James Charles Apology,” you will lose hours of your life in a rabbit hole that goes to the center of the earth. I speak from personal experience.

Winter is after the Big Picture: how YouTube’s “recommended” algorithm changed the game, our world, and us. Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube, is interviewed extensively, and her corporate-speak about the positive “connections” formed between “diverse” groups of people rings false, as does her reassurances of how hard YouTube works to make the community safe. There should be a debate between free speech advocates and those who think protecting people from death threats/doxing/SWAT-ting, etc., is good. There’s no reason compromises can’t be made. There have been times in the past—the anti-trust laws of the early 20th century, automobile safety, etc.—when regulations were imposed, and it was all for the greater good. This debate needs to happen but not in the current zero-sum atmosphere. Winter includes people who speak to it: a litigator who goes after social media sites for the “harm” they cause (and sometimes catastrophic harm), and Brianna Wu, a tech writer and video game developer who felt the wrath of gamers when she spoke out in support of Zoë Quinn curing so-called GamerGate. These interviews help clarify what is, at times, rather unfocused.

One very interesting interview subject is Caleb Cain, whose humble little YouTube channel blew up when he posted a video called “My Descent into the Alt-Right Pipeline.” Suddenly he was on all the news shows, talking about the dangers of YouTube and how the “recommended” algorithm led him by the hand from self-help channels to White Nationalism. Cain speaks eloquently about how quickly and effectively this process worked. He understands how brainwashing works because 1.) It actually happened to him, and 2.) He was able to snap himself out of it.

There’s a too-brief diversion into the disturbing world of YouTube Kids. In 2017, James Bridle wrote a piece on Medium called “Something is wrong on the Internet” after a deep dive into YouTube Kids, and it should have been a wake-up call. More could have been made of this truly sinister aspect of the platform—and human nature—in “The YouTube Effect.”

I rely on YouTube for research and entertainment purposes. I love the old talk show clips, the music not available on iTunes/Spotify (like Bing Crosby’s 1930s recordings!), and television movies from the ’80s starring Gena Rowlands, not available anywhere else. I love “React To” channels (made up mostly of Gen Z kids watching classic films for the first time. I highly recommend this wholesome rabbit hole.) But everyone knows how the algorithm works. You watch one video on a controversial subject out of curiosity, and it could be from a valid source, but suddenly, within minutes, your “recommended” nav bar is now filled with similar “content,” and you’re one click away from a video claiming the earth is flat.

Winter’s documentary goes far but maybe not far enough. In her interview, YouTuber Natalie Wynn (aka ContraPoints) observes that YouTube is not “a public forum,” but THE public forum and it’s owned and operated by two of the biggest corporations in the world. This should make everyone—no matter their political views—at least take a moment to pause and consider the implications.

Now playing in theaters. 

Sam Pollard’s name should be included on any list of the best modern documentary filmmakers. Pollard started his impressive career as an editor, notably working with Spike Lee on a series of films, including “Mo’ Better Blues,” “4 Little Girls,” and “Bamboozled.” As a documentary director, he’s had a remarkable run lately that includes “Mr. Soul!,” “MLK/FBI,” “Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power,” and this week’s “The League,” playing in limited theatrical release before dropping digitally next week. This detailed telling of the story of the Negro League Baseball is informative and entertaining in equal measure, the kind of thing that will play well in equal measure to massive fans of the sport and those who know nothing about it. Growing up a huge MLB fan, I’ve read a lot of books on the history of the game and watched all 19 hours of Ken Burns’ “Baseball,” and I still found so much interesting material in “The League” that my main criticism is that I wanted it to be longer. There’s too much story to tell in a feature runtime and so there are parts of “The League” that feel like they’re just skimming the surface. But what a fantastic surface it is.

Pollard relies heavily on archival footage and photos, smartly allowing a relatively small cadre of experts to tell the story of Negro League Baseball, which means it doesn’t get too dry. From the beginning of the film, Pollard employs a tone that could be called joyous. It’s a smart decision that frames “The League” as a story of triumph—neighborhoods getting together to watch the best athletes in their region in a way that felt almost like a party. Pollard and his experts portray the early days of Black baseball as a place of pride. People would often come to games in their Sunday best, and there was a sense that this came from the community and belonged to the community.

In the communities in which Negro League Baseball flourished—basically on an East-West line from New York to Chicago—the sport started to develop its own stars. There’s always been a sense that the Baseball Hall of Fame is a bit illegitimate given how many of its legendary stars weren’t really playing against the best in the sport. As “The League” unpacks some of the legends of the game, one gets the feeling that most of them could support an entire documentary of their own. 

Take Rube Foster, the owner, manager, and star player for the Chicago American Giants. Over his career early in the century he threw seven no-hitters and is credited with inventing the screwball—a manager snuck him into an MLB clubhouse to teach it to his star pitcher. Or Josh Gibson, who hit a home run almost every 14 ABs over his career—a number that would have made him a household name at the peak of baseball’s popularity. I would absolutely watch entire films about either of them. Or Effa Manley, the co-owner of the Newark Eagles, who fought against a white, male baseball establishment, and often won.

“The League” is at its best when it’s focusing on lesser-known stories even if it has to eventually get Willy Mays, Hank Aaron, and Jackie Robinson in the mix. Of course, I’m not begrudging legends getting more attention, but I found the film at its most interesting when it was unearthing stories instead of just repeating oft-told ones. To that end, Pollard gets to a fascinating place in the final chapter when he unpacks how integration essentially meant the demise of Negro League Baseball, not only because the league’s stars left for the major leagues, but because the white owners didn’t pay their previous owners anything to steal them. So while there was an undeniable good in the integration of the sport, there was still greed under the surface dismantling something vital to the Black community. Again, this is less than 10 minutes of the film and I wanted a bit more of it.

It’s not that any of “The League” is shallow. Pollard doesn’t operate that way. And there’s something valuable about a feature documentary that makes you want to read more about its subject. I think Pollard would be fine with that criticism and agree that this is a starting point to learn about people who should have been household names when they were playing. It’s not too late.

In theaters for a week starting today and on VOD next week.

Last summer, Tom Cruise was given credit for saving the theatrical experience with the widely beloved “Top Gun: Maverick.” One of our last true movie stars returns over a year later as the blockbuster experience seems to be fading with high-budget Hollywood endeavors like “The Flash” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” falling short of expectations. Can he be Hollywood’s savior again? I hope so because “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is a ridiculously good time. Once again, director Christopher McQuarrie, Cruise, and their team have crafted a deceptively simple thriller, a film that bounces good, bad, and in-between characters off each other for 163 minutes (an admittedly audacious runtime for a film with “Part One” in the title that somehow doesn’t feel long). Some of the overcooked dialogue about the importance of this particular mission gets repetitive, but then McQuarrie and his team will reveal some stunningly conceived action sequence that makes all the spy-speak tolerable. Hollywood is currently questioning the very state of their industry. Leave it to Ethan Hunt to accept the mission.

While this series essentially rebooted in its fourth chapter, changing tone and style significantly, this seventh film very cleverly ties back to the 1996 Brian De Palma original more than any other, almost as if it’s uniting the two halves of the franchise. It’s not an origin story, but it does have the tenor of something like the excellent “Casino Royale” in how it unpacks the very purpose of a beloved character. “Dead Reckoning Part One” is about Ethan Hunt reconciling how he got to this point in his life, and McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen narratively recall De Palma’s film repeatedly. And with its sweaty, canted close-ups, Fraser Taggart’s cinematography wants you to remember the first movie—how Ethan Hunt became an agent and the price he’s been paying from the beginning.

It’s not just visual nods. “Dead Reckoning” returns former IMF director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) to Ethan’s life with a new mission. Kittridge informs Hunt that there’s essentially a rogue A.I. in the world that superpowers are battling to control. The A.I. can be manipulated with a key split into two halves. One of those halves is about to be sold on the black market, and so Ethan and his team—including returning characters Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg)—have to not just intercept the key but discern its purpose. The key only matters if IMF can figure out where and how to use it.

After a desert shoot-out that ushers Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) back into the series, the first major set piece in “Dead Reckoning Part One” takes place in the Dubai airport, where Hunt discovers that there are other players in this espionage chess game, including a familiar face in Gabriel (Esai Morales), a morally corrupt mercenary who is one of the reasons that Hunt is an agent in the first place. Gabriel is a chaos agent, someone who not only wants to watch the world burn but hopes the fire inflicts as much pain as possible. In many ways, Gabriel is the inverse of Ethan, whose weakness has been his empathy and personal connections—Gabriel has none of those, and he’s basically working for the A.I., trying to get the key so no one can control it.

At the airport, Ethan also crosses paths with a pickpocket named Grace (Hayley Atwell), who gets stuck in the middle of all of this world-changing insanity, along with a few agents trying to hunt down the rogue Ethan and are played by a wonderfully exasperated Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis. A silent assassin, memorably sketched by Pom Klementieff, is also essential to a few action scenes. And Vanessa Kirby returns as the arms dealer White Widow, and, well, if the ensemble has a weakness, it’s Kirby’s kind of lost performance. She has never quite been able to convey “power player” in these films as she should.

But that doesn’t matter because people aren’t here for the White Widow’s backstory. They want to see Tom Cruise run. The image most people associate with “Mission: Impossible” is probably Mr. Cruise stretching those legs and swinging those arms. He does that more than once here, but it seems like the momentum of that image was the artistic force behind this entire film. “Dead Reckoning Part One” prioritizes movement—trains, cars, Ethan’s legs. It’s an action film that’s about speed and urgency, something that has been so lost in the era of CGI’s diminished stakes. Runaway trains will always have more inherent visceral power than waves of animated bad guys, and McQuarrie knows how to use it sparingly to make an action film that both feels modern and old-fashioned at the same time. These films don’t over-rely on CGI, ensuring we know that it’s really Mr. Cruise jumping off that motorcycle. When punches connect, bodies fly, and cars crash into each other—we feel it instead of just passively observing it. The action here is so wonderfully choreographed that only “John Wick: Chapter 4” compares for the best in the genre this year.

There’s also something fascinating thematically here about a movie star battling A.I. and questioning the purpose of his job. Blockbusters have been cautionary tech tales for generations but think about the meta aspect of a spy movie in which the world could collapse if the espionage game is overtaken by a sentient computer that stars an actor who has been at the center of controversy regarding his own deepfakes. There’s also a definite edge to the plotting here that plays into the actor’s age in that Ethan is forced to answer questions about what matters to him regarding his very unusual work/life balance, a reflection of what a performer like Cruise must face as he reaches the end of an action movie rope that’s been much longer than anyone could have even optimistically expected. Cruise may or may not intend that reading—although I suspect he does—but it adds another layer to the action.

Of course, the most important thing is this: “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is just incredibly fun. It feels half its length and contains enough memorable action sequences for some entire franchises. Will Cruise save the blockbuster experience again? Maybe. And he might do it again next summer too.

In theaters on July 12^th.

Whether you still know every word to “Wham Rap!” four decades later or only remember the British pop duo as “George Michael and that other guy,” you’ll find everything you want in the Netflix documentary “Wham!”

Full disclosure up front: I am very much in the former category, having listened to and loved Wham!’s music and Michael’s stratospheric solo career during a formative time in my adolescence. I even saw them in concert during the “Whamamerica!” tour on my 13^th birthday—in a white, stretch limousine, no less. I can still smell the toxic fumes from the hair spray in my teased-up bangs.

But the film from documentarian Chris Smith (“Fyre,” “Operation Varsity Blues”) is a total blast, regardless of your level of fandom. On the most superficial level, it’s just a joy to relive this time of pop culture excess and sing along with these insanely catchy tunes. It’s hard to believe the duo was only around from 1982-86, with the two coming to stunning global prominence at age 20 with such perky hits as “Young Guns” and “Club Tropicana.” The shorts were short, the hair was high, and the energy was knowingly, playfully hedonistic. Michael and Andrew Ridgeley were beautiful, and their music was effervescent; even the early songs with a social conscience were made for the dance floor.

Beneath their tanned, heartthrob exteriors, though, the two had a deep, brotherly connection from childhood and an evolving power dynamic that’s unexpected. Ridgeley’s mum maintained meticulous scrapbooks documenting Wham!’s meteoric rise, which provide much of the substance here, along with never-before-seen footage and unheard audio from the personal archives of both men. Michael died on Day 2016 at age 53; Ridgeley mostly has lived a quiet life outside the spotlight for the last several years (although he did have a cameo in the 2019 romantic comedy “Last Christmas”). Hearing them speak fondly of their youth, their early days as struggling artists and the thrills and perils of dizzying success provides a feeling of immediacy, as if we’re eavesdropping on a conversation between two old pals who haven’t caught up with each other in a while. If there is any deficiency here, it’s that the movie just stops when Wham! ends; a title card briefly reminds us of Michael’s subsequent superstardom, but Smith offers nothing of the sort about Ridgeley’s post-Wham! career.

The friendship endured, and that’s much of what makes “Wham!” stand out from other music documentaries: the warmth, the fondness, and the absence of the kinds of creative struggles and egotism that so often turn these tales into cliches. George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley met at school when they were 11 and 12 years old, respectively. Michael (who then went by his given name, Georgios Panayiotou), was the new kid in class who just happened to be assigned a seat next to Ridgeley. A shared love of music quickly became their bond; Ridgeley refers to Michael by the nickname he gave him, Yog, throughout the film, which adds an element of sweetness. What’s interesting is that Ridgeley was the dominant one in the beginning—he was more confident and stylish, he had the vision for what Wham! ultimately would become. Michael, while obviously talented at a young age, was a little chubby and awkward. And despite the ass-shaking bravado he exuded in the group’s videos and concert performances, he had a hard time thinking of himself as a sex symbol.

A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that he was a closeted gay man singing songs about women he longed for, women who’d wronged him, women who were using him for his credit cards to go on shopping sprees. The recent Max documentary “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed” similarly explores this topic: the need these famous men felt to maintain the façade of heterosexuality at a time when coming out would have destroyed their careers. One of the more touching moments in “Wham!” is when Michael comes out to his best pal in Ibiza in the early ‘80s, and Ridgeley is nothing but loving and supportive. And as we see here, as Michael reveals his abilities as a vivid, prolific songwriter, he weaves traces of his true self into his songs. “Nothing Looks the Same in the Light,” off their 1983 debut album Fantastic, is about his first gay encounter.

Here’s where we see the balance of power shift in fascinating ways. The recording of their sultry torch song “Careless Whisper” teaches Michael that he needs to produce the group’s music if he wants it done the right way. His need for control and his driving obsession with chart success inspire him to write and produce Wham!’s second album, Make It Big, which they happened to record at the studio at Miraval, the French winery Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are currently fighting over in their divorce dispute. (The origin of the song from that album that’s arguably their best-known hit, “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go,” provides an amusing anecdote.) 

“Wham!” depicts Ridgeley as being totally fine with taking a step back and letting his best friend’s talents shine through. But he remains a confident, crucial contributor to the duo’s image, especially as Michael begins having an existential crisis: “Oh my God, I’m a massive star, and I’m gay,” Michael says in voiceover. The fact that they can rely on each other is essential as they become hugely popular worldwide, performing as the first Western act ever in China before taking on the United Stated in a 1985 tour. Around this time, Michael dazzles with his soulful vocals in a performance of “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” alongside his idol, Elton John, at Live Aid. His ascendence is undeniable, but as Ridgeley wisely puts it, “Wham! was never going to be middle-aged.”

That’s what provides much of the movie’s emotion: the fact that it is this wistful time capsule, a fleeting moment of infectious happiness. Drinks are free. Fun and sunshine. Who doesn’t want to be a part of that?

On Netflix now.

“Every Body” is a moving, fascinating look at a too-often-ignored subset of the world’s population, filled with empathy and understanding but also a cool, analytical anger about what history has put them through. The subject is intersex people, the slightly-more-than one percent of individuals who were born with a condition that complicated the state’s ability to identify them with one of the only two options listed on hospital paperwork: female or male. 

As the movie explains, there are many variants of intersex people, born with atypical chromosomes or sex characteristics and not clearly male or female. There are those whose genitals were malformed or damaged by genetics or other external factors (including doctor’s mistakes, a scenario touched on in “Every Body”); those who might have ambiguous genitals or undescended testicles that are initially mistaken for ovaries; and those who might appear male on the outside but have female reproductive parts, or the reverse. Such individuals are usually assigned a gender at birth that doesn’t really reflect who they are in terms of body parts, and burdens them with the obligation to perform the assigned role for the rest of their lives no matter what they might personally want. However the individual ultimately chooses to identify can still be overruled by the state and by society as a whole (a dynamic that’s playing out every day for trans people). 

Medical professionals would usually advise parents of intersex children that they were better off raising their offspring as a “boy” or a “girl” to make things easier on the child and their family. Whose ease was really being prioritized, though? Not that of the children, who would then have to spend most of their youth, perhaps their whole lives, acting a part they didn’t wish to play for fear of being ostracized or persecuted. Not that of the parents, who had to constantly reinforce a kind of “cover story” handed to them by others and might decide to stop discussing it altogether, except in doctors’ offices, leaving the kids to grapple with the psychological fallout without allies. The doctors’ advice on gender assignment was usually paired with a recommendation of “corrective” surgery (often foisted on the too-stunned-to-think-clearly parents during recovery from childbirth) to remove any parts that didn’t serve the binary.

Three intersex activists anchor the movie while also serving as commentators, guides, and in some scenes, a kind of focus group, looking at archival material and older news stories and reacting. Alicia Roth Weigel is a lobbyist who often participates in high-profile protests and hearings on intersex issues and other issues affecting the wider LBGTQIA community; she also wrote a book of essays on the topic titled “Inverse Cowgirl.” River Gallo is a non-binary and queer actor and filmmaker who is the first openly intersex person to play an intersex character (in the 2019 short film “Ponyboi”). Sean Saifa is, per his description, an intersex man of color; he made headlines by going on the ABC News show “Nightline” and confronting the doctor who performed an unnecessary gonadectomy on him when he was thirteen. 

This latter story is, unfortunately, typical. Unnecessary surgery on intersex infants was once common. (The first hospital to publicly apologize for it did so in 2019, four years before the release of this movie.) Gallo was born without testicles and urged to have artificial ones implanted and undergo hormone therapy to appear more stereotypically masculine. Gallo functionally “passed” as a cisgender straight man at his suburban New Jersey high school with everyone except those closest to him, and didn’t begin to thrive until after embracing a more feminine look, speaking openly about being intersex, and pledging to try to play roles that reflected that identification. Weigel, a slim blonde white woman, says that as an activist in her home state, Texas, she was hit on by straight male lobbyists and politicians who had no idea she was also carrying an internalized set of nonfunctioning testes. After several years on dating sites, Weigel got tired of the anxiety of wondering how a partner might react when she finally described her physical reality and started putting “intersex” at the top of her page. That winnowed the applicant pool and made the experience less fraught.

Director Julie Cohen (“RBG”) and her editor Kelly Kendrick interweave the three main stories and troves of accompanying historical and medical facts with admirable economy and imagination. Stylistically this is one of the cleanest American documentaries of the year. A lot of information is packed into the movie’s brief running time, but “Every Body” never feels cluttered. Nor do the array of visual and graphic devices deployed by the filmmakers feel like they’ve been added to create artificial excitement or fool viewers into thinking this is entertainment that can be passively “enjoyed” rather than actively processed. 

The decision to tie everything into the experiences of Gallo, Seidel, and Weigel grounds the movie in simple and universal emotions, but the subjects’  expertise as communicators and mastery of facts ensures that nobody can accuse the film of basing arguments on “feelings.” These traumatized people have used their pain as fuel to make sure no one else has to endure what they did. 

Things get very dark and disturbing in the middle of the film, which focuses on how intersex people were perceived and treated by the medical establishment until recently. “Every Body” becomes a lesson in how editing can be a critical and analytical tool by cutting between archival footage of medical professionals stating false and psychologically damaging “facts” about intersex people and their bodies; the main subjects reacting as they watch the material; and childhood videos and still photos of the subjects, which remind us that they were burdened with certain instructions and expectations many years before puberty or sexual relationships would have started to take up mental real estate. Weigel speaks of how a doctor gave her a dildo to when she was barely pubescent and instructed her to use it to enlarge her vagina to get ready for the day she’d have sex with a man. A lot of the stories of intersex childhood are like this: you’re not the thing society wants you to be, so you have to be something else, and your wishes aren’t even acknowledged, much less prioritized.

The film is also a great example of how social criticism and irony can be conveyed just by pairing one piece of footage with another, or selecting a piece of music that complicates or comments upon what the film is showing you without being literal-minded or redundant. Too many documentaries are content with the low-hanging-fruit approach to editing and needle-drop song usage: for instance, a subject talks about an important event that occurred on a rainy day, and a director cuts to stock footage of rain scenes and plays “Have You Ever Seen the Rain.” “Every Body” is smarter. It gets a lot of conceptual mileage, for instance, by gender-swapping songs that are typically associated with a male or female “narrator” (such as “Born to Run”), subtly reinforcing the universality of basic human experiences.

The opening credits sequence of “Every Body” is so perfectly realized in this regard that it feels like a movie unto itself. A joyous, jangly cover of “Be My Baby” plays over snippets of videos of gender reveal parties where clouds of blue or pink smoke are released in spectacular and sometimes violent ways (one parent releases the smoke by shooting a compound bow at a target; another fires a tripod-mounted sniper rifle). The point of this sequence is not to make fun of the parents. It’s to establish how much of a typical parent’s identity is invested in which of those boxes a doctor checks on a birth form. And it prepares viewers for the rest of the movie, which shows how the children spend their lives either contorting to fit into that box or fighting to escape. 

This review was filed from the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. “Every Body” will be in theaters on June 30th. 

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is somehow both never boring and never really entertaining. It walks a line of modest interest in what’s going to happen next thanks to equal parts innovative story beats and the foundation of nostalgia that everyone brings to the theater. It’s an alternating series of frustrating choices, promising beats, and general goodwill for a legendary actor donning one of the most famous hats in movie history yet again. It should be better. It could have been worse. Both can be true. In an era of extreme online critical opinion, “Dial of Destiny” feels like a hard movie to truly hate, which is nice. It’s also an Indiana Jones movie that feels difficult to truly love, which makes this massive fan of the original trilogy a little sad.

The unsettling mix of good and bad starts in the first sequence, a flashback to the final days of World War II that features Indy (Harrison Ford) and a colleague named Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) trying to reclaim some of the historical artifacts being stolen by the fleeing Nazis. Jones looks normal, of course, but Ford here is an uncanny valley occupant, a figure of de-aged CGI that never looks quite human. He doesn’t move or even sound quite right. It’s the first but not the last time in “Dial of Destiny” in which it feels like you can’t really get your hands on what you’re watching. It sets up a tone of over-used effects that is the film’s greatest flaw. We’re watching Indiana Jones at the end of World War II, but it doesn’t feel like we are. The effects are distracting instead of enhancing. Again, this won’t be the last time.

It’s a shame too because the structure of the prologue is solid. Indy escapes capture from a Nazi played by Thomas Kretschman, but the important introduction here is that of a Nazi astrophysicist named Jurgen Voller (a de-aged Mads Mikkelson), who discovers that, while looking for something called the Lance of Longinus, the Nazis have stumbled upon half of the Antikythera, or Archimedes’ Dial. Based on a real Ancient Greek item that could reportedly predict astronomical positions for decades, the dial is given the magical Indy franchise treatment in ways that I won’t spoil other than to say it’s not as explicitly religious as items like the Ark of the Covenant of The Holy Grail other than, as Voller says, it almost makes its owner God.

After a cleverly staged sequence involving anti-aircraft fire and dozens of dead Nazis, “The Dial of Destiny” jumps to 1969. An elderly Indiana Jones is retiring from Hunter College, unsure of what comes next in part because he’s separated from Marion after the death of their son Mutt in the Vietnam War. The best thing about “Dial of Destiny” starts here in the emotional undercurrents in Harrison Ford’s performance. He could have lazily walked through playing Indy again, but he very clearly asked where this man would be emotionally at this point in his life. Ford’s dramatic choices, especially in the back half of the film, can be remarkable, reminding one how good he can be with the right material, and it made me truly hope that he gets a brilliant drama again in his career, of the kind he made more often in the ‘80s.

But back to the action/adventure stuff. Before he can put his retirement gift away, Indy is whisked off on an adventure with Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), the daughter of Basil and goddaughter of Indy. It turns out that Basil became obsessed with the dial after their encounter with it a quarter-century ago, and Indy told him he would destroy the half of the dial they found. Of course, Indiana Jones doesn’t destroy historical artifacts. As they’re getting the dial from the storeroom, they’re attacked by Voller and his goons, leading to a horse chase through the subway during a parade. It’s a cluttered, awkward action sequence that’s only power comes from seeing Harrison Ford on a horse again—a hero riding through a parade being thrown for someone else.

Before you know it, everyone is in Tangier, where Helena wants to sell her half of the dial, and the film injects its final major character into the action in a sidekick named Teddy (Ethann Isidore). From here, “Dial of Destiny” becomes a traditional Indy chase movie with Jones and his team trying to stay a step ahead of the bad guys while also basically leading them to what they’re trying to uncover.

James Mangold has delivered on “old-man hero action” before with the excellent “Logan,” but he gets lost on the journey here, unable to stage action sequences in a way that’s anywhere near as engaging as the way Steven Spielberg does the same. Yes, we’re in a different era. CGI is more prevalent. But that doesn’t excuse clunky, awkward, incoherent action choreography. Look at films like “John Wick: Chapter 4” or a little sequel that’s coming out in a few weeks that I’m not really supposed to talk about—even with the CGI enhancements, you know where the characters are at almost all times, what they’re trying to accomplish, and what stands in their way. That basic action structure falls apart often in “Dial of Destiny.” There’s a car chase scene through Tangier that’s incredibly frustrating, a blur of activity that has no weight to it, and no real stakes. It should work on paper, but you can’t get your hands on it. A later scene in a shipwreck that should be claustrophobic is similarly clunky in terms of basic composition. I know not everyone can be Spielberg, but the simple framing of action sequences in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and even “The Last Crusade” is gone here, replaced by sequences that cost so much that they somehow elevated the budget to $300 million. I wished early and often to see the $100 million version of this movie.

“The Dial of Destiny” works much better when it’s less worried about spending that massive budget. When Indy and Helena get to actual treasure-hunting, and John Williams’ all-timer score kicks in again, the movie starts to click. And, without spoiling, it ends with a series of events and ideas that I wish had been foregrounded more in the 130 minutes that preceded it. Ultimately, “The Dial of Destiny” is about a man who wants to control history being thwarted by a man who wants to appreciate it but has arguably allowed himself to get stuck in it, either through regret or inaction. There’s a powerful emotional center here, but it comes too late to really have the impact it could have with a stronger script. One senses that this one was sanded down so many times by producers and rewrites that it lost some of the rough edges it needed to work.

Spielberg reportedly gave Mangold some advice when he passed the whip to the director, telling him “It’s a movie that’s a trailer from beginning to end – always be moving.” Sure. Trailers are rarely boring. But they’re never as entertaining as a great movie.

In theaters now.