'Ready or Not'

Of all the twists in the insanely gory and funny horror thriller “Ready or Not,” the best is in the premise: What if the “final girl” — the last survivor to face the killer’s rampage — was the only girl?

That’s the situation Grace (Samara Weaving) faces on her wedding night, after marrying Alex Le Domas (Mark O’Brien), heir to a family fortune acquired making board games. After the wedding, Alex tells Grace that there’s a family tradition anytime someone joins the La Domas clan, in which the newcomer has to play a game. Which game? That’s determined by drawing a card from an antique box, whose provenance is explained by the current patriarch, Tony (Henry Czerny).

Grace draws the “hide and seek” card. As Tony explains, Grace must hide somewhere in the La Domas mansion, and the others in the family must find her. What Grace doesn’t know, and what a frantic Alex tries to explain, is that the game is deadly — and that the family is grabbing shotguns, pistols, axes and crossbows in an effort to hunt Grace down before dawn. If Grace survives, Alex says with a morose expression, the whole family will perish, for reasons that aren’t explained for a long time.

That’s the set-up that rookie screenwriters Guy Busick and Ryan Murphy (no relation to the Ryan Murphy who created “American Horror Story”) let unfold in some occasionally clunky exposition dialogue. The fun part in the early going is introducing Grace to Alex’ messed-up relations, his no-nonsense mom, Becky (Andie MacDowell), his gravely sinister aunt Helena (Nicky Guadagni), his alcoholic older brother, Daniel (Adam Brody), and coked-up klutzy sister Emilie (Melanie Scrofano) among them.

Once the game is afoot, directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (who co-directed “Devil’s Due” and segments of the horror anthologies “Southbound” and “V/H/S”) deftly split the focus between Grace’s desperate efforts to survive the night and the family’s comically inept attempts to catch her. The directors deploy a wicked, and blood-splattered, sense of humor, like when they deploy a running gag about Emilie’s nervousness with weaponry contributing to an alarming death toll among the hired help. 

(“Ready or Not” is being released by Fox Searchlight, recently acquired by Disney, so I chalk up to vestigial corporate family bonds — and pig ignorance — the fact that Fox News didn’t launch a scare campaign this movie instead of that other movie about rich people killing poor people for sport, Universal’s “The Hunt.”)

But “Ready or Not” wouldn’t work if Weaving wasn’t so charming, and smart, as the tenacious heroine. Weaving, an Australian beauty who impressed with a small role in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” navigates smoothly from sweetly innocent through scared prey to avenging bad-ass, winning over the audience as she tries to win the game and take the title as “final girl” for the ages.

——

’Ready or Not’

★★★

Opens Wednesday, August 21, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for violence, bloody images, language throughout and some drug use. Running time: 95 minutes.

'Blinded by the Light'

Gurinder Chadha’s cross-cultural comedy “Blinded by the Light” presents a conundrum for a critic, the same one that Danny Boyle’s “Yesterday” did: How much of one’s reaction is inherent to the movie itself, and how much is borrowed goodwill for the artist whose songs permeate the film?

In “Yesterday,” the songs of The Beatles almost papered over a litany of storytelling sins. In this case, as Chadha tells the true story of a British Pakistani teen touched by the music of Bruce Springsteen, the music fits a whole lot better.

Javed Khan, played by newcomer Viviek Kalra, is a second-generation Pakistani teen living in Luton during the 1980s, during the reign of Margaret Thatcher. Luton is depicted as England’s industrial armpit, made even worse when the Vauxhall Motors plant lays off a thousand workers, including Javed’s hard-working dad, Malik (Khulvinder Ghir). Dad insists everyone in the family work for a living while he seeks a new job — and he shoots down Javed’s ideas of going to college and becoming a writer.

Javed tries to write lyrics for his best friend, Matt (Dean-Charles Chapman), who fronts a synth-pop band. Javed’s lyrics and poems are all depressing, politically inflected screeds against the powers that be, and against the growing skinhead movement that is threatening Javed’s Muslim family.

It takes a Sikh classmate, Roops (Aaron Phagura), to introduce Javed to the pride of Freehold, New Jersey — The Boss, Bruce Springsteen.

It only takes one listen, and Javed is hooked. Chadha, who told a similar cross-cultural tale 17 years ago in “Bend It Like Beckham,” illustrates Javed’s awakening by showing him up against a wall, as Springsteen’s lyrics are projected around him, during a literal windstorm. Springsteen’s words, telling of escaping a hard-luck existence in a fast car, are somehow perfectly capturing the feelings of this Pakistani kid in England.

Through Springsteen, Javed starts to find his voice — and even finds, in the militant feminist classmate Eliza (Nell Williams), a girlfriend who’s “ready to take that long walk, from the front porch to my front seat,” as Bruce sang in “Thunder Road.” But as Javed declares “I ain’t a boy, now I’m a man” (“Promised Land”), and is encouraged to write by his English Lit teacher (Hayley Attwell), the wedge between father and son is driven in deeper.

Chadha and her husband and longtime screenplay partner, Paul Mayeda Berges, write a script that is as unabashedly sincere as a Springsteen song. They believe in the influence Springsteen has on Javed’s — or anybody’s — dreams to break away from heartache and find their voice. This sincerity even takes the form of semi-impromptu musical numbers, one of them led by Matt’s lovably old-school dad (Rob Bryden).

“Blinded by the Light” could all fall to pieces, one note of doubt destroying the magic like a kid waiting for the Great Pumpkin, but the movie stays afloat in large part thanks to Kalra. The actor, in his movie debut, is as authentic and earnest a movie teen as ever populated a John Hughes movie, and he makes us feel the yearning he channels in every Springsteen song. 

——

‘Blinded by the Light’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 16, at theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for thematic material and language, including some ethnic slurs. Running time: 117 minutes.

'Good Boys'

The comedy “Good Boys” is a lot like the three sixth-graders at its center: Funny, sweet, charming and completely obsessed with sex. Unlike these kids, though, the movie is also smart about sexual awakening and knowing about friendship.

The Beanbag Boys — that’s what these three call themselves — are entering sixth grade, and they’re determined not to be seen as kids any more. “We’re not kids, we’re tweens,” says Max (“Room” star Jacob Tremblay), who scores an invite to a cool kid’s party, where kissing will be happening.

For Max, the prospect of kissing means he might get to connect with Brixlee (Millie Davis), on whom he has a crush. But Max has never kissed, and doesn’t want to be caught short.

Max’s friends have their own concerns. Tough-talking Thor (Brady Noon) wants to be seen as cool, even if that means not auditioning in their middle school’s production of “Rock of Ages” to avoid the teasing of school bully Atticus (Chance Hurstfield). And Lucas (Keith L. Williams) is dealing with his emotions after his parents (Lil Rel Howery and Retta) tell him they’re getting a divorce.

The boys’ pursuit of intel on kissing leads them to borrow the prized drone of Max’s dad (Will Forte), by which they cross paths with two savvy high school girls (Molly Gordon, from “Booksmart,” and Midori Francis). A mad scramble ensues, involving a bottle of illegal drugs, and Thor’s parents’ stash of sex toys — which the boys stuff into a backpack with no idea how they’re used.

The writing team of Gene Stupnitsky (making his directing debut) and Lee Eisenberg, as they did in “Bad Teacher,” lets their characters speak the foul-mouthed thoughts a more polite movie wouldn’t even consider. The gags — including a real ball gag — are hilarious, as the kids try to act like they understand the sexual content they encounter when they try to cross over into grown-up territory.

Still, the boys’ innocent charm, as they strive to stay friends even as puberty is pulling them into different directions, shines through even the dirtiest jokes, making “Good Boys” pure of heart even when the jokes are filthy.

——

‘Good Boys’

★★★

Opening Friday, August 16, at theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong crude sexual content, drug and alcohol material, and language throughout - all involving tweens. Running time: 89 minutes.

'Mike Wallace Is Here'

If there is a hell, for the investigative journalist Mike Wallace it must be having Fox News’s former bloviator Bill O’Reilly suggesting that he is his generation’s Mike Wallace — which is what happens in the first clip of the documentary “Mike Wallace Is Here,” which puts the late “60 Minutes” man under the microscope.

It was a wild career, one that started in radio and television as a jack of all trades: News reader, actor, game-show host and pitchman, hawking Old Dutch cleanser and Parliament cigarettes, among other things. He seemed to find his calling in 1957 with “The Mike Wallace Interview,” which was known for hard-hitting questions and a police-interrogation visual style — and a guest list that ranged from gangster Mickey Cohen to painter Salvador Dali.

The show was popular but risky, and ABC pulled the plug after the threat of a libel lawsuit. But it taught Wallace, and the industry, that news could be entertainment, if packaged the right way.

The right package turned out to be “60 Minutes,” launched by producer Don Hewitt in 1968. Wallace was one of the charter reporters on the show, the first “newsmagazine” on TV. The ratings were low at first, but Wallace hung in there and the show caught hold. Maybe it was the interviews of the major figures in the Watergate scandal, or the hidden-camera investigative stings that netted corrupt municipal officials or stores selling child porn, or the somewhat abrasive celebrity interviews with the likes of Barbra Streisand and Johnny Carson.

Director Avi Belkin covers a lot of Wallace’s life and career, including his work-before-family attitude, the 1982 libel suit filed by retired Gen. William Westmoreland, the corporate interference that delayed the story of tobacco whistleblower Jeffrey Weigand (the one chronicled in “The Insider”), and his running battle against depression.

Here’s where it gets interesting: Belkin introduces those topics by finding an archived interview (and CBS opened its vaults to the filmmakers) where one of Wallace’s interview subjects raises the issue. Then Belkin deploys a quote from the archived interviews with Wallace, and the result is like a Mike Wallace interview in reverse.

Belkin argues that Mike Wallace created the template that decades of lesser talents employed, turning news into a circus and a spectacle. It’s true they copied Wallace’s in-your-face attitude, but they didn’t come close to matching his integrity.

——

‘Mike Wallace Is Here’

★★★1/2

Opened July 26 in select theaters; opens Friday, August 16, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG-13 for thematic material, some violent images, language and smoking. Running time: 90 minutes.

——

This review ran previously on this website on January 31, when the movie screened at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

'Ode to Joy'

It would be too easy to call the strained romantic comedy “Ode to Joy” a joyless exercise — but it’s hard to think of an adjective that works better.

The seed for this story comes from a “This American Life” story about a guy who suffers from cataplexy, a form of narcolepsy in which the sufferer experiences muscle weakness and even blacks out when having any strong emotion — particularly happiness. Screenwriter Max Werner and director Jason Winer travel far afield of the original story, with a dismal collection of shrill, unpleasant characters in a scenario that plays the real problems of cataplexy for cheap laughs.

Charlie (Martin Freeman) is the one suffering cataplexy in this story, and he goes to great lengths to keep himself from getting overwhelmed by cuteness. He walks to his boring job at the Brooklyn library wearing headphones that play dirges. He averts his gaze at cute dogs or even cuter children. When his sister Liza (Shannon Woodward) is getting married, Charlie has his younger brother, Cooper (Jake Lacy), mention sad news events — like dolphin slaughter or the war in Syria — to keep him from becoming too elated.

Into this well-ordered, if somewhat depressing, life enters Francesca. I could tell you that Francesca is vivacious, overflowing with bubbly personality and a knockout to boot — or I could tell you she’s played by Morena Baccarin, from the “Deadpool” movies and “Firefly,” and that would be saying the same thing. 

How Charlie meets Francesca qualifies as one of the most aggressively dumb meet-cutes in movie history. Things pick up on their first date — a depressing one-man play, followed by a long walk in the rain talking about Francesca’s cancer-stricken aunt, Sylvia (Jane Curtin) — until she asks him to come up to her place, and Charlie promptly hits the concrete. The date ends in the emergency room, and Cooper must tell Francesca about his ailment.

Charlie tells Francesca they can’t date any more, but he does suggest she go out with Cooper. This turns out to be a good way for Charlie and Francesca to stay in each other’s orbit, since Charlie can’t get too happy knowing she’s going out with his brother. This plan is tested when Cooper, Francesca, Charlie and his mousy substitute girlfriend, Bethany (played by Melissa Rauch from “The Big Bang Theory”) go for a weekend double date at an upstate B&B.

It’s probably instructive — or at least cautionary — to look into the filmmakers’ IMDb listings. There, one will see that Winer hasn’t made a movie since that unfulfilling “Arthur” remake with Russell Brand in 2011, and Werner’s last movie script was the howlingly awful Halloweek kids’ movie “Fun Size.” Both have done a lot of TV work since, but it hasn’t prepared them for sustaining a story past formulaic plot devices or shaping authentic, lived-in characters.

Freeman and Baccarin have little chemistry, even when their characters are trying to generate some, and Lacy is too convincing at being a shallow jerk to make his role any fun. The only genuine laughs come from Rauch’s go-for-broke performance as the space-case Bethany, highlighted by a disturbingly note-perfect imitation of the late Dolores O’Riordan performing The Cranberries’ Irish death song “Zombie.” Rauch seems to be the only person in “Ode to Joy” who was given permission to make anyone laugh.

——

‘Ode to Joy’

★★

Opened August 9 in select cities and on demand; opens Friday, August 16, at the Megaplex Gateway (Salt Lake City), Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy), and Megaplex Thanksgiving Point (Lehi). Rated R for some language and sexual references. Running time: 97 minutes.

'The Angry Birds Movie 2' and 'Hair Love'

Where’s a good slingshot to knock me out and erase my memory of seeing “The Angry Birds Movie 2”?

The first movie in this franchise, you may recall, brought the mobile-phone game to the screen, turning the avian projectiles into characters — though that’s a generous word for two-dimensional stereotypes with names. 

The lead, the hot-tempered Red (voiced by Jason Sudeikis), was the only one of the inhabitants of Bird Island to think the green piggies visiting the island were up to no good. After the piggies kidnapped the birds’ eggs, Red led a team that included boomerang-shaped Chuck (voiced by Josh Gad) and volatile Bomb (voiced by Danny McBride) to slingshot to Piggy Island and save the day.

The sequel starts with Red as Bird Island’s resident hero, but a nervous one. Inside, he fears people will forget his past heroics and leave him as lonely as before. (Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself” plays in Red’s imaginings, the first of many obvious and supposedly humorous needle-drops.) That’s why Red is suspicious when the pig leader, Leonard (voiced by Bill Hader), approaches the birds with a request for a truce.

Leonard and his experts report that there is a previously unknown third island, Eagle Island, whose evil leader Zeta (voiced by Leslie Jones) is shooting balls of ice and plotting to shoot lava-filled ice balls at both islands. Red and Leonard agree to team up to stop Zeta, but each has trouble agreeing on who should command the team, which includes Chuck, Bomb and the not-so-heroic Mighty Eagle (voiced by Peter Dinklage).

Red also has issues with the team’s newest and smartest member, the engineering wizard Silver (voiced by Rachel Bloom), Chuck’s sister. Red and Silver instantly annoy each other — which even the youngest audience members can see is a precursor to friendship and maybe romance.

That synopsis takes longer to read than to play out, meaning first-time feature director Thurop Van Orman (creator of the beloved Cartoon Network series “The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack”) and his three screenwriters have to pad a lot. They fill the void with rude humor, improvised dialogue that’s not as funny as its creators think, and a supporting voice cast that includes Awkwafina, Tiffany Haddish, Maya Rudolph, Sterling K. Brown and Eugenio Derbez. 

And when that’s not enough — and it isn’t — there’s a B-plot involving three hatchlings trying to rescue three eggs they accidentally endangered. These sections provide the movie’s few laughs, with sight gags that test the laws of cartoon physics much like the Scrat scenes in the better “Ice Age” movies.

The saddest part of “The Angry Birds Movie 2” is that Sony Pictures Animation has paired this terrible feature with a really good short film. “Hair Love,” written by “BlacKkKlansman” executive producer Matthew A. Cherry (who co-directed with former Pixar animator Everett Downing Jr. and “The Proud Family” creator Bruce W. Smith) from Cherry’s children’s book, shows an African American girl trying to do her hair just right by following her favorite YouTube hairstyling vlogger (voiced by Issa Rae). The girl’s attempts are funny; her reasons are touching.

“Hair Love” — made for $200,000, raised on Kickstarter — packs more heart, warmth, smarts and skill into six minutes than “The Angry Birds Movie 2” manages in 16 times that length. Hollywood needs to encourage Cherry and his crew to make more movies, long or short.

———

‘The Angry Birds Movie 2’

★

Opens Tuesday, August 13, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for rude humor and action. Running time: 96 minutes.

——

‘Hair Love’

★★★★

Screens with “The Angry Birds Movie 2.” Rated G. Running time: 6 minutes.

'Dora and the Lost City of Gold'

If kids have to grow up, why shouldn’t the characters they watched when they were little? That question, and the need for Paramount and Nickelodeon to roll over a lucrative franchise — can you say “intellectual property”? — is why we have “Dora and the Lost City of Gold.”

Thankfully, the powers that be picked director James Bobin, who performed similar synergistic magic upgrading “The Muppets,” to bring Nickelodeon’s plucky bilingual adventurer Dora the Explorer into her teen years with the right mix of earnest naivete and knowing irony.

After a prologue in which six-year-old Dora (Madelyn Miranda) frolics in the jungle with her cousin Diego (Malachi Barton) before he moves to the big city, a 16-year-old Dora appears, in the perky form of Isabela Moner (“instant Family,” “Sicario: Day of the Soldato”). Dora still swings through the jungle in her pink T-shirt and orange shorts, marveling at the wonders of nature, only this time creating her own vlog. Most importantly, the movie establishes that some aspects of Dora’s adventures — like her friend Boots, a talking monkey — are purely in her fertile imagination.

Dora’s parents (Eva Longoria and Michael Peña) are archaeology professors, on the verge of making a major discovery: An ancient city, Parapata, that stores a pile of Incan gold. The real treasure, Dad reminds Dora, isn’t riches but the satisfaction of expanding human knowledge. “We’re explorers, Dora, not treasure hunters,” Dad says.

But they’re also worried parents, so for this expedition, they’ve decided not to take Dora along. Instead, she’ll go to the city — Los Angeles — to stay with a 17-year-old Diego (Jeff Wahlberg, nephew of Mark and Donnie) lives, trying to survive the living hell that is high school.

Dora’s outgoing attitude, vast home-schooled knowledge and backpack full of jungle survival gear make her stand out in high school. She quickly gains an enemy in Sammy (Madeleine Madden), the honor roll mean girl, and an admirer in nerdy Randy (Nicholas Coombe). On a field trip to the natural history museum, Dora, Diego, Sammy and Randy become unwilling partners on a scavenger hunt — and, when treasure hunters kidnap them, the foursome find themselves in the jungle, searching for Dora’s missing parents. Another explorer, Alejandro (Eugenio Derbez), also factors into the search.

Screenwriters Matthew Robinson (“The Invention of Lying”) and Nicholas Stoller (“The Muppets,” “Muppets Most Wanted”) make it clear early on that they know this is a movie — specifically, a “Dora” movie. The kids know that jungle mazes only happen in “Indiana Jones” movies, even when they’re forced to survive one. When Dora and Diego get a whiff of hallucinogenic spores, of course their acid trip references the original “Dora the Explorer.” And when Dora’s animal acquaintances speak, of course it’s with the voices of Danny Trejo and Benicio Del Toro.

Where the writers provide the winking irony, it’s Moner’s plucky Dora who provides the charming innocence. Moner’s Dora dives into every adventure, from the perils of the jungle to the social minefield of the American high school, and brightens the mood wherever she goes. Moner makes “Dora and the Lost City of Gold” a real treasure.

——

‘Dora and the Lost City of Gold’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 9, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for some action and impolite humor. Running time: 102 minutes.

'The Kitchen'

When the gangster drama “The Kitchen” kicks into high gear, it’s exhilarating — giving the audience the same forbidden danger its women are feeling as they learn to navigate the man’s world of the Irish mob.

Writer and first-time director Andrea Berloff can’t quite sustain that intense vibe all the way to the end, but it’s good while it lasts.

The setting for Berloff’s adaptation of Ollie Masters and Ming Doyle’s DC/Vertigo graphic novel is Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, in 1978. It starts when three Irish mobsters — Kevin (James Badge Dale), Jimmy (Brian d’Arcy James) and Rob (Jeremy Bobb) — get caught during a hold-up by a pair of FBI agents (Common and E.J. Bonilla) who have been staking them out. The guys get three years in prison, and their boss, Little Jackie (Myk Watford), tells their wives that they’ll be taken care for.

Jimmy’s wife, Kathy (Melissa McCarthy), knows the truth, that Jackie’s payments to the women — Kevin’s wife, Ruby (Tiffany Haddish), and Rob’s long-abused wife Claire (Elisabeth Moss) — aren’t enough to make ends meet. Kathy also knows that a lot of the Hell’s Kitchen businesses haven’t been getting Jackie’s protection, for which they pay handsomely. So Kathy enlists Ruby and Claire to start taking over Jackie’s collections, paying some of Jackie’s muscle to make it stick.

The mob matriarch, Helen (Margo Martindale) — who is also Ruby’s constantly disapproving mother-in-law — warns the three that they are in over their heads. But the women show a surprising aptitude for crime. Kathy charms the neighborhood businesses, Ruby is a shrewd negotiator — particularly with Brooklyn mob boss Alfonso Coretti (Bill Camp) — and Claire, after reuniting with an old crush, a contract killer named Gabriel (Domhnall Gleeson), blossoms as a stone-cold killer.

Berloff (who shared an Oscar nomination for her writing on “Straight Outta Compton”) and cinematographer Maryse Alberti (“Creed,” “Velvet Goldmine”) saturate the screen with the details of ‘70s New York, from the grimy, blood-stained streets to the main characters’ Farrah Fawcett flip hairstyles. Martin Scorsese’s characters would feel right at home, until they had to face the tough-as-nails women who, in their own words, “are through being beaten down.”

McCarthy and Haddish, both better known for their comedic skills, are rock solid doing drama. They manage to keep pace with Moss, one of the best actors working today, who makes Claire’s transformation from doormat to assassin downright chilling.

It’s such a difficult juggling act, keeping all the elements balanced, that it’s not too surprising that Berloff loses the handle in the final reel. The resolution feels like a cheat, a nod to Hollywood convention that the rest of “The Kitchen” avoids so well.

——

‘The Kitchen’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 9, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for violence, language throughout and some sexual content. Running time: 102 minutes.