Review: 'The Smashing Machine' traps a strong performance by Dwayne Johnson in a surprisingly ordinary sports drama

Sometimes the people who handicap Oscar contenders care more about the narrative behind an actor’s potentially award-winning performance than what’s actually on the screen — which is why there’s maybe more hype than substance behind the talk about Dwayne Johnson’s performance in the sports drama “The Smashing Machine.”

Don’t get me wrong, Johnson gives a good performance as Mark Kerr, an early star in the fledgling sport of mixed martial arts. He shows a range of emotions, allows himself to be vulnerable, and even does something Johnson contractually does not allow in his action movies: He loses a fight.

The problem here isn’t Johnson, who goes the distance and submerges his charismatic persona behind facial prosthetics and a moody character. The problem is with writer-director Benny Safdie, who takes a conventional underdog sports story and tells it quite conventionally — which is a surprise for one half of the sibling filmmaking team who made gritty work like “Uncut Gems” and “Good Time.”

When Safdie introduces the audience to Kerr in 1997, he’s recently graduated from college wrestling and starting into mixed martial arts — which combines elements of boxing, karate and other kicking sports, and old-school wrestling, which is Kerr’s specialty. Kerr wins all of his early matches, and he describes (in voice-over) how winning is the best feeling ever. 

It’s a feeling that’s difficult to share with his girlfriend, Dawn (Emily Blunt). Dawn is supportive, trying to help Kerr at home by mixing his protein shakes, but she gets defensive when Kerr says she got the recipe wrong. 

Their relationship is depicted as a series of arguments, where Dawn yells at Kerr until he explodes into physical violence — never hurting her physically, but terrifying her when he destroys a door or some other inanimate object — and they then kiss and make up for a while. Even when Kerr enters rehab for an opioid addiction, that pattern doesn’t change much.

The relationship Safdie depicts with more nuance is between Kerr and fellow fighter Mark Coleman, played by former MMA champ Ryan Bader. Coleman alternates between training Kerr and competing against him, notably in a brutal MMA tournament in Japan, where the grand prize (as various sports announcers say repeatedly) is $200,000, then a respectable number for winning an MMA competition. Bader shows some talent in his first acting role, depicting Coleman as the level-headed family man whose life contrasts with Kerr’s personal and professional rollercoaster ride.

Johnson works up some genuine emotion as he portrays Kerr’s rapid professional rise and, more particularly, his stumbles in the ring and out of it. I wonder about the prosthetics to make Johnson look more like Kerr, because (as the obligatory photos of the real Kerr play over the closing credits) I think Kerr at that age looked more like Johnson than Johnson does here. Maybe Johnson decided that wearing them helped him get into character, without carrying the persona of The Rock into the ring. 

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‘The Smashing Machine’

★★★

Opens Friday, October 3, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language and some drug abuse. Running time: 123 minutes.

Review: 'Good Boy' is a lean, economical supernatural thriller, anchored by a compelling central performance — by Indy, a dog.

America’s new horror-movie hero is charismatic and impossibly good looking, and the camera loves him. His name is Indy, and he’s a dog — and the best thing about director Ben Leonberg’s smartly experimental supernatural thriller “Good Boy.”

In the opening scene, we find Indy waiting patiently at the food of a couch, as his human, Todd (Shane Jensen), is having a medical crisis in a remote rural cabin. The moment is only interrupted by Todd’s sister, Vera (Arielle Friedman), entering the cabin, finding Todd bleeding and unresponsive, and calling 911. 

Leonberg keeps the camera at all times on Indy, who shows concern for his person — but also relief that another human is taking care of Todd in ways even a dog cannot.

After that intro, Leonberg shows us a montage of simulated home-movie footage that quickly summarizes Todd and Indy’s relationship, from Indy’s puppyhood and frisky adulthood, and the support Indy gave Todd as the human suffered a major health issue. After an apparent remission, Todd decides to take Indy and get away from the city, to move into his late grandpa’s secluded cabin. 

Vera, over the phone, reminds Todd that Grandpa (seen in home video footage, played by the cult movie icon Larry Fessenden) went insane in that cabin — and claimed there was something evil lurking about. 

Even before Todd settles into the cabin, Indy is feeling unease about the place. Noises can be heard from upstairs, things go bump in the night, and there seems to be something, or someone, in the dark spaces just out of view. 

Leonberg and co-writer Alex Cannon use all the classic horror-movie tricks, and demonstrates that when they’re done well, they can still scare the crap out of a viewer. Even Indy is scared, and it speaks volumes about Leonberg’s filmmaking talent and Indy’s screen presence that the dog can convey those emotions with an economy of movement and, of course, no dialogue. (If you’re wondering, Indy is a Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever. 

One of Leonberg’s best tricks is that he keeps the camera at the level of Indy’s face, solidifying the focus on the dog and putting the humans — and whatever else is out there — on the periphery. The heightened tension from that simple camera move is electrifying.

The other smart play in “Good Boy” is its brevity, clocking in at a mere 73 minutes. Like any good dog, this movie does its business, cleans up and moves on.  

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‘Good Boy’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 3 in theaters; will be available for streaming starting Oct. 24 on Shudder and AMC+. Rated PG-13 for terror, bloody images and strong languages. Running time: 73 minutes.

Review: 'One Battle After Another' mixes genres for an electrifying story of revolutionaries on the run, a perfect movie for these divided times

The most remarkable thing about writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s new movie “One Battle After Another” — and there’s a lot that’s remarkable about this movie — is that it could be labeled at different moments a political satire, a stoner farce, an action thriller, a twisted romance and a father-daughter drama, and it’s most entertaining seeing how Anderson smartly weaves them together.

The father is Bob, a pot-smoking former revolutionary played with a wry exasperation by Leonardo DiCaprio. Bob lives with his 16-year-old daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), in a small town somewhere in the American Southwest. Willa wants to hang out with her school friends, and doesn’t understand why Bob lays down strict rules — like not allowing her to have a cellphone.

What we know is what we see in the prologue, which shows Bob 16 years earlier, as part of a radical revolutionary organization called the French 75. (The name comes from both a field gun and a gin-and-champagne cocktail served at Rick’s Cafe Americain in “Casablanca.”) Anderson kicks off the movie with Bob’s group breaching an immigrant detention center, with Bob’s lover, the charismatic Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), taking the lead.

During the raid, Perfidia gets the drop on the base’s commander, Capt. Stephen Lockjaw (Sean Penn) — and what Perfidia does next gets Lockjaw so horny that it changes the trajectory of all of their lives. In short order, Lockjaw takes down the French 75 — leaving several members dead, Perfidia missing, and Bob and their new baby finding a new home under a new identity.

In the present day, Bob soon learns that Lockjaw is on his trail — and he has to kick the rust off of his old radical tactics. If only his marijuana-addled brain could remember the password to access what’s left of the old French 75’s network. Thankfully, Bob has friends, including an old radical comrade, Deandra (Regina Hall), and Willa’s karate teacher, Sergio (Benicio Del Toro).

In the credits, Anderson notes that the movie is “inspired” by “Vineland,” a novel by Thomas Pynchon — who also wrote the source of Anderson’s 2014 stoner detective movie, “Inherent Vice.” This new movie is less convoluted than that one was, which allows Anderson to focus less on the plot — which moves with the speed, power and grace of a Fornula 1 racer — and center more on Bob’s determination to protect Willa and Lockjaw’s obsession with catching Bob and locating Perfidy.

Anderson takes some fascinating detours, including two subplots that take viewers into shadowy underground systems. On one hand, Sergio maintains a maze of hallways and hiding places, and a network of skateboarding shock troops, to give sanctuary to undocumented people crossing from Mexico. On the other hand, Lockjaw is recruited to join a secret group, called the Christmas Adventurers Club, dedicated to quietly maintaining the stranglehold of rich white men on power. 

With all this going on, Anderson never allows the movie to feel overstuffed or overlong, even in its nearly three-hour running time. And as he mixes his genres — including a few he’s never really done before, like action — he keeps tight focus on Bob, who’s like a more composed version of Jeff Bridges’ The Dude from “The Big Lebowski,” as he and Lockjaw keep moving on a collision course, with Willa in the middle.

“One Battle After Another” is a masterpiece from a filmmaker who’s made his share of them, from “Boogie Nights” to “Phantom Thread,” with “There Will Be Blood” and “The Master” in between. It’s also an intensely timely movie, showing the divide that’s splitting America in half — and reminding us that there are some battles that have to be fought, and won.

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‘One Battle After Another’

★★★★

Opens Friday, September 26, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for pervasive language, violence, sexual content, and drug use. Running time: 161 minutes.

Review: 'Dead of Winter' is a gradually ludicrous thriller, nearly ennobled by Emma Thompson's earthy and edgy performance

Justly acclaimed actor Emma Thompson labors mightily to raise the one-against-all thriller “Dead of Winter” to heights that its pedestrian writing and directing can only dream of reaching — but can’t quite hit.

Emma plays a widow — her name is Barb Sorensen, though that’s so immaterial we only learn it in the movie’s final moments — driving through the frozen woods of rural Minnesota. She’s driving a beat-up Ford pick-up truck, carrying an ice-fishing hut and a small tackle box whose importance grows as the movie proceeds. 

While seeking a particular lake, she comes up to a cabin and gets directions by a bearded man (Marc Menchaca). This would be inconsequential, if Barb hadn’t later heard a gunshot, and seen the man chasing a young woman (Laurel Marsden) in the woods. Barb circles back, and sees that the man is holding the young woman hostage. Barb soon realizes the man has a wife (Judy Greer), who’s the brains of the operation, and a good shot with a rifle — putting a bullet into Barb’s arm.

What follows in director Brian Kirk’s frozen thriller is a series of set pieces, set either around the couple’s cabin or out on the ice near Barb’s hut, in which Barb tries to stay ahead of the couple and fulfill her promise to rescue the young woman. Those moments are intercut with flashbacks of a young Barb (played by Gaia Wise, Thompson’s real-life daughter) and her boyfriend-turned-husband, Carl (played by Cúán Hosty-Blaney), over different stages of their courtship and marriage — and why the lake and that tackle box figure prominently in their lives.

The script, by Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb (who has a cameo as a hunter who comes across Barb), starts promisingly, dispensing its information in measured doses to increase the tension. Unfortunately, as we learn more of what Greer’s character is plotting, the story becomes more ludicrous.

Thompson, the great actress that she is, undoubtedly worked on an authentic rural Minnesota accent — a tough assignment for a movie that was actually filmed in Finland and Germany. But it’s hard to listen to Thompson as Barb and not be put in mind of Frances McDormand’s performance as the down-to-earth cop in “Fargo.”

Still, it’s refreshing to see a thriller like this entrusted to two strong women actors like Thompson and Greer, and the cat-and-mouse games between will keep viewers riveted — before the plot mechanics kick in.

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‘Dead of Winter’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 26, in theaters. Rated R for violence and language. Running time: 98 minutes. 

Review: 'A Big Bold Beautiful Journey' is a romance with fantasy, whimsy and a good pairing of Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell. Now if it figure out where it's going.

The plodding fantasy-romance “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” feels like it’s trying to channel the whimsy of Wes Anderson for the first half hour, then pivot to some darker emotional material — and neither move in this wobbly drama is successful.

Colin Farrell plays David, a big-city resident who finds himself in need of a car so he can drive to a wedding in the country. He finds a rental car company that’s peculiar for several reasons — starting with the clerk who’s overly amused with herself (and played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, sporting a poorly chosen German accent) and her mechanic coworker (Kevin Kline). The clerk is insistent that David order the GPS option on the car, so he does.

During the wedding, David’s eyes meet those of Sarah (Margot Robbie), and the bride (Lucy Thomas) introduces them. Their small talk turns suddenly serious, with both informing the other that they are single by choice, and that seeing another couple get married isn’t likely to change it. Something else David discovers he has in common with Sarah: They’re both driving nearly 30-year-old Saturns, apparently from the same offbeat rental company. 

On the drive back, David’s GPS (voiced by Jodie Turner-Smith) asks David if he would like to take “a big bold beautiful journey.” After a moment of disbelief, David agrees and follows the bot’s instructions to pull over at a nearby Burger King and order a cheeseburger. As he starts eating, he notices that Sarah is also there, also eating a cheeseburger. Once back in their cars, Sarah’s won’t start, and David’s GPS tells him to give her a ride.

What follows in this sluggishly episodic script (by Seth Reiss, who co-wrote “The Menu”) is a series of stops where David and Sarah find a door in a place where doors normally would not be. Of course, they go through these doors, and find something that links back to the past of one or the other. These stops begin humorous, like when David relives a high school production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” but gradually turn melancholy, like taking Sarah back to the death of her mother (Lily Rabe). 

The single-named director Kogonada (“Columbus,” “After Yang”) should be able to navigate this premise well, but somehow the balance of whimsy and melancholy never feels right. It’s the same problem suffered by this year’s “The Life of Chuck,” which also tried to say something profound about the human condition and couldn’t find the right tone.

The biggest shame in “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” is that we, as lovers of film romance, would love to see Farrell and Robbie in a movie where they gradually fall in love with each other. Here’s hoping they, and movie makers they meet, don’t give up on trying.

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‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’

★★

Opens Friday, September 19, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language. Running time: 108 minutes.

Review: 'Him' tries to turn horror into satire of football's violence and excess, but the story spins ludicrously out of control

Ambition and avarice collide in “Him,” a highly stylized and ultimately ridiculous horror movie that gives new meaning to the term “sacrificing a goat” (or, in this case, G.O.A.T.).

The protagonist here is Cameron Cade (played by Tyriq Withers), a phenomenal college quarterback who seems a likely top draft pick for the UFFL. (For reasons that become obvious very early, the actual NFL wouldn’t get within a mile of this movie.) Before the draft, though, he’s attacked and given a nasty skull fracture and a traumatic brain injury — jeopardizing his chances at the pros.

Cameron wants to show his determination, and he gets that chance when he receives a personal invite from his idol, legendary quarterback Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans). Isaiah has eight championship rings, and questions swirling around whether he will retire from his team, the San Antonio Saviors. Cameron has worshipped Isaiah since boyhood, and much of Cameron’s fractured relationship with his late father (played in flashbacks by Dom Benjamin) is centered on trying to emulate Isaiah.

Soon Cameron arrives at Isaiah’s compound in the desert, where Isaiah maintains a state-of-the-art practice facility, complete with a shady sports doctor (played by comic Jim Jefferies). Isaiah runs Cameron through some grueling training exercises, which tax the young QB physically and mentally — sometimes leaving him seeing hallucinations that may be a product of overwork, the residual effects of his brain injury, or something more demonic at work. 

Isaiah bans cellphones at his compound, to reduce distractions. But the place comes with its own distraction in Isaiah’s wife, Elsie (Julia Fox), a social media influencer and general-issue temptress.

Director Justin Tipping — who wrote the script with newcomers Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie — quick-cuts through several plot points, establishing the mentor-protege relationship between Isaiah and Cameron, as well as suggesting darker undercurrents. The suggestions aren’t particularly subtle, and it doesn’t take long to see the figurative devil’s bargain being offered between moments where Wayans’ Isaiah is yelling tough-coach insults at Withers’ young Cameron like a particularly brutal coaching session.

The problem with “Him” is that Tipping can’t maintain the thread as he bounces from jump-scare horror to testosterone-fueled commentary about someone has to do — and, more importantly, has to forfeit — to become the “Greatest of All Time.” This is particularly evident in the finale, which aims to be some kind of horror classic but just looks weirdly campy.

What nearly rescues “Him” is Wayans’ performance, a symphony of sports-driven rage masked by bro-code friendliness. Wayans seems to understand the tonal changes necessary here — outwardly charming and slightly humorous, but inwardly bubbling with murder and rage — better than Tipping does.

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‘Him’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 19, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violence, language throughout, sexual material, nudity and some drug use. Running time: 96 minutes.

Review: 'The Long Walk' is a brutally stripped-down 'Hunger Games,' with a squad of strong young actors in an authoritarian dystopia

Bleak, brutal and brilliant, director Francis Lawrence’s “The Long Walk” is the authoritarian allegory these times require — a tale of bread and circuses in an oppressive regime and the lengths some people will go, literally, to fight back.

Based on a story Stephen King wrote under his pen name, Richard Bachman, “The Long Walk” imagines a near-future American wasteland, 19 years after a war that ended with a fascist government running the country. At the head is The Major (Mark Hamill), a gruff old soldier who rules by fear and violence. 

As a distraction, he oversees an annual contest in which young men from each of the 50 states, chosen by lottery, compete to walk nonstop longer than the others, keeping a steady pace of 3 mph. If one young man should stop or slow down for 10 seconds, he is given a warning. Ten more seconds, a second warning. Ten more seconds, and “you get your ticket” — a bullet in the head. The last man standing wins riches and a wish to do anything he wants.

The scenario is like a more dystopian, less stage-managed version of “The Hunger Games,” except Lawrence (who’s directed all but the first movie in that franchise) is holding back very little of the story’s viciousness. When we see the elimination of the first competitor (“Jojo Rabbit’s” Roman Griffin Davis), we’re convinced this movie is going dark early and often.

The main action is among the three dozen or so young walkers, and screenwriter JT Mollnar does an admirable job giving many of them moments to stand out. A solid supporting cast of young actors — including Ben Wang (“Karate Kid: Legends”), Charlie Plummer (“Spontaneous”), Tut Nyuot and Garrett Wareing among them — make the walking scenes pulsate with barely concealed terror.

At the heart of “The Long Walk” are Cooper Hoffman (“Licorice Pizza”) as Ray, who has a particular reason to be the last walker alive, and David Jonsson (“Alien: Romulus”) as Peter, for whom positivity has become a survival skill. Their twinned performances play well opposite Hamill’s intensely nasty Major, and find the soul within the savagery of a tyrannical America that we can only hope we won’t see outside the movie theater.

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‘The Long Walk’

★★★★

Opens Friday, September 12, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, suicide, pervasive language, and sexual references. Running time: 108 minutes.

Review: 'Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale' gives fans a last chance to luxuriate in 1930s wealth and privilege, and gentle soap-opera theatrics

“Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale” is a charmingly instructive example of message discipline, since series creator and screenwriter Julian Fellowes repeats the same storyline with every character: This chapter of the lives of these characters is over, and the next one will happen off-camera.

This third and presumably final movie based on the popular British TV series focuses on transitions for the wealthy Crawley family and their staff of loyal servants. It’s 1930, and we’re told that the Crawley fortune — largely brought into the family by Lady Cora Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern), the American wife of Lord Grantham, aka Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville) — has largely survived the stock-market crash of 1929. However, when Cora’s brother, Henry (Paul Giamatti), visits the titular estate, he tells Cora that their late mother’s money is perilously close to vanishing, and with it the future of Downton Abbey.

Henry brings in tow Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola, from “The Brutalist”), a handsome and seemingly wealthy investor, who has offered a plan to reinvest what’s left of Mama’s money to recoup Henry’s past losses. Gus is quite charming, as seen when over many gin cocktails, he and Lord Grantham’s daughter, Lady Mary Talbot (Michelle Dockery), end up sleeping together. 

Mary, you see, is finally unencumbered by a husband, having recently received her divorce from Lord Henry Talbot, the racing driver and cad. (Played by Matthew Goode in the series and the first movie, Henry Talbot is nowhere to be seen this time.) And while being single should be liberating, just as Mary is starting to take control of Downton Abbey’s operations, it’s also fodder for scandal. Mary experiences this at a society party, when the hostess, Lady Petersfield (Joely Richardson), ushers Mary out before royalty arrives.

Back at the mansion, the servants are going through some big changes. The imperious head butler, Carson (Jim Carter), has retired, but can’t quite give up the job to his successor, the former footman Andy Parker (Michael Fox). The head cook, Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol), is more willing to hand over her post to her longtime assistant, Daisy Parker (Sophie McShera) — with the climax coming when Daisy and Andy, who are married, are put in charge of a big dinner party where the guests include the Crawley family’s old Hollywood friend, Guy Dexter (Dominic West), and a very famous acquaintance, continuing the show’s fascination with implanting real-life figures into the Crawleys’ orbit.

If you’re not familiar with the series or the previous two movies, some aspects of the characters may be lost on you — like why Mary’s tight bond with her sister, Lady Edith Hexham (Laura Carmichael), should be surprising; or why it’s weird to hear chauffeur-turned-relative Tom Branson (Allen Leech) talking like a capitalist. But for fans, reuniting with these folks is like a pleasant family reunion. 

Like a family reunion, though, one notices when a beloved relative isn’t there. The missing piece here is the family’s matriarch, Violet Crawley, who died in the last movie. She was played by Dame Maggie Smith, who herself died last year (and to whom the movie is dedicated) — and the absence of her acerbic humor is greatly missed, though her old friend, Lady Merton (Penelope Wilton), soldiers on admirably in trying to match it.

I found watching “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale” to be a lesson in fan service. Since I’m not a diehard fan, I looked for context clues to spot the signifiers of what makes particular characters and relationships so beloved. And because I’m not invested the way a fan would be, I could appreciate the way Fellowes and director Simon Curtis (“My Week With Marilyn”) set up the storyline to cash in on the fans’ nostalgia for these rich folks and their ceaselessly loyal staff. If you love the series, “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale” is a treat you’ll eat up with a spoon.

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‘Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale’

★★★

Opens Friday, September 12, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for suggestive material, smoking and some thematic elements. Running time: 123 minutes.