Nevertheless, the murderous glee factor of The Wrath of Becky never fizzles out. The movie is super tight, unraveling its mayhem in 83 minutes and change, where four of those minutes are logos and credits. Not a second is wasted on fluff. With origins out of the way and better villainy present, this is a rare sequel that counts as a noticeable improvement from its predecessor, complete with an open door for more chapters.
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What replaces those external conflicts is internal angst from two men who aim to be more sensitive than competitive. Nothing’s really going to happen to anyone, outside of a touchy breakup or two, if they fail. That’s borderline character betrayal and counts as another miss. While a modern 21st century maturity against frank toxic masculinity was infused to be appreciated, there is an unmistakable edginess that is missing, top to bottom in White Men Can’t Jump.
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In different hands and with weaker goals, A Tourist’s Guide to Love would be a hot-and-steamy romp of debauchery in a hot-and-steamy country. There’s certainly a place for that in the streaming scroll for the Netflix-and-Chill crowd. Alternatively, there’s a place for cuddly chastness too. A Tourist’s Guide to Love respects its characters, its audience, and its cultural depictions with more tact and nobility than the norm, giving us a refreshing and relaxing PG-rated romantic drama.
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Bless his heart, David Lowery has not forgotten the sensation and formative power found in the analog brands of fantasy. Constructed with earthy textures, Peter Pan & Wendy is a glorious realization and extension of make-believe play that welcomes an old-fashioned conscience. Lowery, in his second foray with Disney after his phenomenal Pete Dragon from 2015, brandishes his own creative streak with a divergent freedom and zero shame for doing so.
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To Catch a Killer unravels to become one of those manhunt movies where the pursuit is better than the prize at the end. Wild Tales director Damien Szifron provides several platforms for the central law enforcement characters to pontificate the importance of what they are doing to stop the present public menace. The actors squeeze every bit of seriousness they can, and you believe their motivations and intentions. Yet, when To Catch a Killer reaches its climax and it becomes the hidden villain’s turn to reveal their intentions, the suspense shamefully evaporates.
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Fast-forward from Steve Zahn’s hey-day. Add a quarter-century of mileage to his bread-and-butter manchild buddy type and do what too few filmmakers have done over the years: Give Steve Zahn a lead part. Take his usual brand of rootless screw-up and give it central focus and real anchors. Then, let Steve’s charm radiate fully. Gringa rewards this actor’s worth with a real chance.
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One True Loves has one of those paperback novel premises that can only seem to work as a screwball farce or a serious melodrama when brought to the big screen. Wouldn’t you know it, the movie is based on a book from New York Times best-selling author Taylor Jenkins Reid (Daisy Jones and the Six). The novelist was lucky enough to have the opportunity to adapt her own novel with her TV screenwriter husband Alex J. Reid.
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Director Ben Affleck received Michael Jordan’s blessing and allowed Air to be a whiff at breathing in that legend again, a draw that cannot be discounted. Likewise, folks are coming to see familiar and reliable movie stars like Affleck, Damon, Davis, and Bateman spar. Those curious and poised to watch composures rattled, zingers exchanged, balls busted, and dreams fulfilled get all that and then some in Air.
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All at once, this introductory mindset of dedication and gallows humor is both plucky and fatalistic. Exposing both curiosity and anxiety, Space Oddity inelegantly wrestles with those two prevailing traits. The realistic science fiction of its premise and the sunny gaze of the Rhode Island setting swirl up the whimsy. Lo and behold, we find out that quaintness has a limit when it comes to fulfilling the human condition.
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Early on in Tetris, Taron Egerton’s main character Henk Rogers shares an admission with his furious boss about why he put himself into greater financial debt to back an unknown video game from The Soviet Union he stumbled upon at a consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. Leaning over and speaking low with clear eyes relaying bewilderment, he talks about seeing those soon-to-be iconic blocks still falling in his dreams hours and days after playing the game. Memories fill Tetris viewers, and they immediately picture the exact same thing.
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As a feature film, Boston Strangler finds itself buried in the massive snowbank of true crime content available. Eager viewers have a buffet of binge-able rabbit holes, available in long and short forms, on dozens of channels and platforms at home. Held up against that docu-drama marketplace, a traditional two-hour fictionalized yarn playing in theaters feels nearly trite and tame by comparison, even if it dabbles with and challenges a theory or two about who really perpetrated these murders.
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Linoleum is a conversation-heavy film unafraid to talk honestly about trajectories and unfulfilled dreams. This multiple award winner from the indie festival circuit joins other small-scale science fiction diamonds-in-the-rough like Clara, I Kill Giants, Wonderstruck, The Time Capsule, and Safety Not Guaranteed that burrow heavy human emotion and the toll of one’s life into a premise floating in the realm of tangible fantasy. More heady and original efforts of this type are sorely needed on screens and streams.
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