Review: 'One Night Only' serves up a rancid rom-com premise that not even Monica Barbero's abundant charms can save

It’s strange for a movie with a premise as idiotically off-track as the one in the rom-com “One Night Only” to get made. Usually, someone at the studio or among the producers would strangle a bad idea like this one in the crib, rather than feed it and let it grow into a full-scale terrible movie.

The premise is laid out in the opening seconds — that sex between unmarried adults is illegal in the United States, and everyone has been fitted with a sensor on their wrists that alerts the cops if two consenting adults are making the beast with two backs outside the confines of marriage. There is an exception, for one night a year, 12 hours where anything goes if all parties are OK with it and wear condoms.

Think of it as “The Purge,” the franchise where all crime is legal for one night, but with consensual intercourse. And, like “The Purge,” the premise of “One Night Only” leads to a lot of questions — the biggest being “who the hell would agree to this?” and “why hasn’t the overthrow of the government started yet?” — that the movie doesn’t come close to answering.

There’s a movie-logic reason for such a premise, which is that romantic comedies need a reason to keep their central couple apart for as long as possible. In the old days, social norms, religious admonishments and the Hays Code — Hollywood’s prudish self-policing policies, which invented rules like having even married couple sleep in separate beds onscreen — took care of that. In more liberated times, it’s gotten tougher to keep the walls of Jericho (like in “It Happened One Night”) upright. 

The couple that director Will Gluck (“Easy A,” “Anyone But You”) and screenwriter Travis Braun are trying to keep from making whoopee are Allie (Monica Barbero), a singer who makes a living turning pop songs into pharmaceutical jingles, and Owen (Callum Turner), who owns a pizzeria.

Owen’s plan for the evening is to hook up with his longtime girlfriend, Malika (Maya Hawke), and propose marriage. Allie’s itinerary calls for her and her best pal, Jacinda (played by the singer King Princess) to go looking together for a couple of hot guys at a bar. Both plans are thwarted by the other party — Malika wants to sleep with a hot neighbor, while Jacinda finds a sexy prince (Okieriete Onaodowan) while Allie’s in line for the bathroom.

Allie’s lesbian roommate (Quintessa Swindell) tells Allie to go out there and find someone, and gives her a dress with fewer square inches of fabric than a hand towel to attract a likely partner for the night. Owen can’t go back to the apartment he shares with Malika, or hang out with his mom, Linda (Molly Ringwald), because she’s got plans with her boyfriend, Bob (LeVar Burton). 

Out on the streets, Allie and Owen keep running into each other — and they ignore the signs from the universe, and bad screenwriting, that they should be together.

There are some funny moments here and there. My favorite is when Allie tries to navigate a bar full of desperate guys (including “Succession’s” Cousin Greg, Nicholas Braun, and “SNL’s” Ben Marshall) looking for a woman who will indulge their kinks. Or there’s an extended joke where Owen goes from bodega to bodega to find one that still has condoms in stock.

But the repressive and stupid unfairness of the mandate that sets up the 12-hour scenario, and the forced way Gluck includes clocks in every scene to remind inattentive viewers of the countdown, can’t be overcome. That’s especially sad for Barbero, who’s an incredibly charismatic performer — as she proved playing Joan Baez in the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” and getting an Oscar nomination for it — who deserves a star vehicle that’s not as aggravating as “One Night Only.”

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‘One Night Only’

★1/2

Opens Friday, August 7, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for sexual material, language and brief nudity. Running time: 102 minutes.

Review: 'The Samurai and the Prisoner' is an elegantly staged and intense drama of power and hubris in 16th century Japan

A sharply tense thriller wrapped in the trappings of a period drama, writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “The Samurai and the Prisoner” is an elegantly mounted tale of a warrior who thinks he’s outsmarted his enemies — only to find the threat was under his own roof.

It’s 1587, and the samurai commander Murashige Araki (Masahiro Motoki) has betrayed his warlord, Nobunaga Oda, and has fortified his position in Arioki Castle. Surrounded by advisers and generals, Murashige is sure that Oda can be defeated, particularly if he enlists other samurai to change their allegiances. But Murashige’s methods — particularly his decision not to kill his prisoners, in the honorable tradition — confuse his supporters, who fear Murashige is showing dishonor and that no samurai will join his side.

When Oda sends an emissary, Kuroda Kanbei (Masaki Suda), to negotiate a truce, Murashige throws Kanbei in his dungeon. When another prisoner, another warlord’s son, Jinen, demands he be killed, as is customary, Murashige refuses, and makes sure there are no weapons in his cell that he could use to kill himself. When Jinen ends up dead anyway, Murashige has a mystery to solve — and only Kanbei, who is given the facts of the case, can solve it.

This pattern repeated himself, through the seasons, and Murashige can’t figure out why he’s plagued with unexplained deaths. He talks about it with his wife, Chiyoho (Yuriko Yoshitaka), but her advice is clouded with the knowledge that she belongs to the same religious order as Jinen, and believes in honor being upheld through bloodshed. Kanbei, locked up below the castle, seems to be the only one who understands Murashige’s problem — but, given his bloody incarceration, what motive does he have to help his jailer?

It’s a bit surprising to learn that Kurosawa is not related to the legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, in part because Murashige’s attempts at interrogating his underlings and parsing through stories that don’t agree with each other bears a striking resemblance to the older man’s classic memory drama “Rashomon.” Kiyoshi Kurosawa also stages some impressive samurai fight scenes, reminiscent of his namesake’s films, like “The Seven Samurai” and “Yojimbo.”

That’s enough comparisons, though. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s adaptation of Honobu Yonezawa’s novel stands up on its own. “The Samurai and the Prisoner” is sweeping yet intimate, and moves from whisper-soft to bold and brash as Murashige slowly discovers who he can trust in his castle — and the chilling answer is that he can’t even trust himself.

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‘The Samurai and the Prisoner’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 7, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for bloody violence. Running time: 148 minutes; in Japanese with subtitles.

Review: 'Cookie Queens' is a sunny, heartwarming documentary that follows four girls as they strive to sell Girl Scout cookies.

There’s probably a hard-hitting documentary to be made about the system in which thousands of pre-teen girls toil away several late-winter weekends selling a sugar-filled product for $6 a box, propping up an $800 million-a-year industry for which they get paid in trips and trinkets and not in cash.

“Cookie Queens” is not that documentary. Instead, it’s a light and breezy look at four girls, ranging in age from 5 to 12, who work hard to succeed at selling Girl Scout cookies. 

Director Alysa Nahmias follows four girls from across the country working to meet their cookie-selling goals. They are:

• Olive, 12, in Charlotte, N.C., who has her own website to promote herself and her cookie sales. She holds the state record for most cookies sold in a season, around 8,700, but this year she sets herself a lower goal of 4,000 boxes sold.

• Shannon Elizabeth, 8, in El Paso, Texas, has just become a Brownie, and wants to sell 2,750 boxes so she can earn a backpack — and enough money for her troop that she can attend Girl Scout camp in the summer.

• Ara, 5, in San Diego, is selling cookies for the first time, and has set a goal of just 55 boxes this season. Ara, with her parents’ help, also is managing her diabetes – and wonders why the Girl Scouts don’t make a sugar-free variety.

• Nikki, 9, in Chico, Calif., aims to follow in the footsteps of her teen sisters, Naya and Nala, who have been champion cookie sellers in past years.

Nahmias follows the four girls through the six-week cookie season in February and March, and the cyclical nature of the selling. The first weeks are full, as customers get excited to see the Samoas and Tagalongs and Thin Mints return. But a few weeks later, the novelty has worn off and the girls have to hustle to make their goals.

The movie also shows what the parents go through in supporting their girls. Olive’s mom and Nikki’s mom are both veterans of the cookie life, and support their girls and sometimes get, sorry to say it, a little pushy. Then there are Shannon Elizabeth’s parents, who worry about whether they can afford the upfront costs of cookie selling — in which they pledge to pay for cases of cookies in the hopes they can sell them all. 

“Cookie Queens” does not approach the Girl Scout cookie season with cynicism or with a dark view of how it’s a microcosm of American capitalism. It shows these girls as saleswomen and strivers, but first and foremost it shows them as little girls, finding fun, hope and opportunity through sugary treats.

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‘Cookie Queens’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 7, in theaters. Rated G. Running time: 91 minutes.

Review: 'Wild Inside' follows an owl's journey from captivity to big-city freedom, and how humans cheered for and affected the bird's survival

The thin line between humans and nature is the boundary depicted in director Penny Lane’s absorbing documentary “Wild Inside,” whose hero was the one New York City needed and maybe deserved in 2023.

The Big Apple became taken with the story of Flaco, an owl who escaped his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo and, for a year, lived free around the park and other parts of Manhattan. For bird experts, Flaco’s life outside the zoo was remarkable because he was an Eurasian eagle owl, a species not native to North America. His story resonated in part because he was another immigrant making a life for himself in New York City.

Lane details how the zoo initially tried to capture Flaco and put him back in his home. The zookeepers reasoned that Flaco had never lived in the wild and wouldn’t be able to hunt for himself, but he soon found he could feast on New York’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of rats and mice. The zoo relented, but other bird experts warned of other dangers of being a bird in New York, such as big buildings one could hit or rodents carrying rat poison.

A fair amount of Lane’s documentary is spent following a group of bird watchers, who go out at night with cameras to capture images of the nighttime avian scene. They’re an eccentric bunch, and quite charming. (Two of the birders Lane profiles met while birding and later got married.) Their observations and infrared footage act as a barometer for the health of both Flaco and New York’s non-human population.

Lane — whose past documentaries have chronicled American quackery through animation (“Nuts!”) and the cheeky First Amendment battles of the Satanic Temple (“Hail Satan?”) — finds in Flaco more than the easy fodder for the “and finally” slot on local TV news. She finds a cautionary tale of urban living, one that ponders how humans have created an ecosystem that’s not too healthy for us and downright harmful to every other species with which we share the planet.

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‘Wild Inside’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 7, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for bloody dismantling of small animals. Running time: 95 minutes.

Review: 'I Want Your Sex' presents Gregg Araki in his familiar stance as a neon-soaked provocateur, but targeting the art world and prudish Gen Z feels beneath him

The filmmaker Gregg Araki has been pushing buttons for decades, with movies like “The Doom Generation” and “Smiley Face,” so it’s no surprise that his latest, “I Want Your Sex,” tosses out provocations like they were flyers advertising an art gallery opening.

What’s surprising, and not in the best way, is that he directs those barbs at some of the lowest-hanging fruit of all: The contemporary art market and stuffiness about sex.

Araki begins with an obvious homage to “Sunset Blvd.,” but in reverse. Here, it’s the possibly unhinged woman, L.A. artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), floating face-down in the pool, and her boy toy, a gallery intern named Elliot (Cooper Hoffman), discovering her there. Elliot also narrates the story, in the form of an interrogation from two disbelieving detectives (Margaret Cho and Johnny Knoxville, who give ironically the most normal performances here).

The movie zooms back 9-1/2 weeks (a 40-year-old movie reference; look it up, kids), to show how Elliot ended up in Erika’s orbit. He’s unemployed, mooching off his bi-curious best friend Apple (Chase Sui Wonders) and being ignored by his post-doc girlfriend Minerva (Charli XCX), when he interviews to be an intern at Erika’s gallery.

Erika hires Elliot, but soon the young intern realizes there’s more to the job than writing press releases and chewing gum for her next art project. Nope, Erika is soon using Elliot for her personal sexual pleasures, which venture into leather, blindfolds, paddles and the kinkier parts of the Amazon inventory. He sticks with this because it turns him on, though Erika’s top assistant, Vikktor (Daveed Diggs), warns him, “You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last.”

Araki employs a candy-colored palette to suck Elliot and us into Erika’s art world — a world Erika breezily admits floats on enough B.S. and hucksterism to make P.T. Barnum envious. The director, again working with his “Now Apocalypse” co-screenwriter Karley Sciortino, also throws in some sharp commentary about Gen Z’s monastic aversion to sex, then confronts the audience about that attitude by including enough sexual content that the credits list two intimacy coordinators. (How this movie got an R rating is for scholars to figure out.)

Where “I Want Your Sex” becomes most entertaining is in how it squares the veteran Wilde, who’s at her most uninhibited here, with the comparatively green Hoffman. There’s 19 years between these performers, and they throw themselves into that age gap with enthusiasm. 

Araki tosses so much juice into his dismantling of the art market that he has difficulty bringing the story together in the finale, which of course brings us back to that pool scene and what follows. The resolution isn’t nearly so fun as the build-up that led up to it.

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‘I Want Your Sex’

★★★

Opens Friday, July 31, at several theaters. Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, and pervasive language. Running time: 90 minutes.

Review: 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' freshens up the Marvel formula, with Sadie Sink as [REDACTED] stealing the show

The title “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” gives a hint that Kevin Feige and his Marvel Studios minions understand that the Marvel Cinematic Universe needs a refresh — and Peter Parker, the kid who became one of Marvel Comics’ biggest heroes, is the web-slinger who can do it.

In the seven years since the biggest culmination of Marvel’s heroes, the mega-successful 2019 mash-up “Avengers: Endgame,” the MCU has had its ups and downs.

•  The group efforts that audiences didn’t connect with, like “Eternals” and the criminally undervalued “The Marvels.” 

• New characters plugged into old superhero roles, such as Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson in “Captain America: Brave New World” and Letitia Wright’s Shuri in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” (Both Mackie and Wright were better than the movies they were in.) 

• The attempts, some better than others, of expanding the multiverse, which had the unfortunate effect of lowering the stakes — because why should we care about a beloved character dying if they just pop up again from another plane of existence (especially when it’s played for laughs, as in “Deadpool & Wolverine”)? 

• The stretching of the MCU into TV series, some of which felt like homework between movies.

• And the intervention of real life into the effort to crown a new mega-villain in Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conquerer, which turned out to be one of several reasons not to watch “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” more than once.

What does the latest “Spider-Man” have to offer to counter all that bad karma? A surprising amount, as director Destin Daniel Cretton (who also helmed “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”) and writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers (who wrote the last three “Spider-Man” movies) smartly combine what we like about the character with material that lets us re-imagine some classic Marvel names in new ways.

The new movie reminds us that it’s been five years since the last time Tom Holland suited up as Peter and his red-and-blue superhero identity. Back then, in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” Peter had to save the universe by asking Dr. Strange to cast a spell to make everyone forget Peter — and everyone included his girlfriend, MJ (Zendaya), and his best pal, Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon). 

Since then, Peter has been fighting crime around New York, getting tips from Det. Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas), the one NYPD cop who has him on speed-dial, and dodging a rival crime-fighter, the vigilante Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), aka Punisher. Peter also helps out Bill Metzger (Trammel Tillman), who runs the Department of Damage Control, the agency tasked with cleaning up the messes left behind by building-breaking superheroes. 

Peter has lived a solitary life these five years, keeping track of MJ and Ned college and post-collegiate lives on social media. His only other activity that doesn’t involve fighting crime is regularly bringing flowers to the grave of his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei, seen in flashbacks). Oh, and he’s noticed that his body is changing, including gaining organic web shooters (which Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man had, but Andrew Garfield’s didn’t).

The plot kicks in when Spidey tries to stop an armored military vehicle making a beeline for Damage Control’s Manhattan headquarters — and discovering that whoever’s driving the tank is not what they appear to be. That’s about all I can tell you without divulging spoilers, something Marvel quite insistently asked critics not to do — and I wouldn’t want to anyway, because I hope moviegoers can enjoy the surprises the same way I did.

Without giving away anything significant, I’ll say that Cretton and his writers approach the array of Marvel characters cleverly. Some, like Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo, as seen in the trailers) and another character seen early on, are used as callbacks to past Marvel movies. One key character, though, has appeared in past movies played by other actors — and here, “Stranger Things” star Saide Sink, this movie’s third-billed performer, brings a powerful new take on the role.

Sink factors prominently in the movie’s two biggest action set pieces — one in the middle that feels like a predictable jumble of CGI effects and falling rubble, and a more successful finale that trusts the audience to react to the characters’ emotions more than the web shooters. (The finale also involves ninjas, which are definitely cool.) 

Holland and Zendaya (just seen along with Bernthal in “The Odyssey”) have some solid scenes together, providing a thoughtful update on Peter and MJ’s relationship. It’s Sink’s powerhouse performance, though, that audiences will be remembering most fondly when the credits roll. 

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‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, July 31, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for sequences of action/violence and some language. Running time: 145 minutes.

Review: 'The Odyssey' is an up-close-and-personal epic, as director Christopher Nolan makes a classic both timely and eternal

Since Christopher Nolan has established that he is perhaps the greatest movie storyteller of our era, it seems fitting that he would tackle what should be considered the most influential story of any era — and not at all a surprise that his movie, “The Odyssey,” is a moving and gripping telling of Homer’s epic poem.

Even if you have never read “The Odyssey” — and somehow I managed to be in that group — it’s impossible to have lived on Planet Earth for any amount of time and not be exposed to the story’s themes or ideas. If you have any idea what a siren is, or a Trojan horse or a cyclops, you know a bit of “The Odyssey.” Even The Police and Mumford & Sons have made references to it in their lyrics.

The story starts with the hero, Odysseus, played here by a brawny Matt Damon. When Nolan, who wrote the screenplay and directed the film, introduces him, he’s not sure who he is, having eaten too many lotus flowers and grown forgetful, content in a life with the beautiful Calypso (Charlize Theron). But we know what he doesn’t, that Odysseus left Ithaca to fight for King Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) against the Trojans, and 20 years later hasn’t returned.

We learn of Odysseus’ journeys as he slowly remembers them again. Sometimes he remembers the bloody siege of Troy, started when he and his men hide inside a giant wooden horse statue — and when the Trojans drag their trophy into the city’s gates, the waiting soldiers attack Troy from within. 

Mostly, he remembers his crew, trying to make it back home after the carnage. But Odysseus and his men encounter deadly dangers, including the giant cyclops Polyphemus (Bill Irwin), the alluring sirens, the trickster Circe (Samantha Morton), and the twin perils of the multi-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis. Oh, and they make a trip to the underworld, where Odysseus is confronted by the many men who have died fighting at his side.

Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, Odysseus’ queen, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), has stayed faithful, hidden behind screens for 20 years to avoid the suitors who want to gain the throne Odysseus has left vacant. The most conniving suitor is Antinous (Robert Pattinson), whose schemes include killing its heir, Odysseus and Penelope’s son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), who goes on an odyssey of his own to find out whether his father is still alive.

Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (who’s shot Nolan films going back to “Interstellar”) make the epic seem up close and personal, and whoever held the bulky IMAX cameras to get the stunning handheld look got a full workout in Greece, Italy, Morocco and other places. The bone-rattling sound mix combines with a propulsive score by Ludwig Göransson (an Oscar winner for “Oppenheimer” and “Sinners”) to heart-stopping effect. 

“The Odyssey” boasts a full boat of great supporting performances, including: John Leguizamo as Odysseus’ loyal servant, Eumaeus; Elliot Page as a young soldier; Lupita Nyong’o in the dual roles of Helen of Troy and her sister, Clytemnestra; Himesh Patel as Eurylochus, Odysseus’ second-in-command; and Zendaya as Athena, who visits Odysseus in his nightmares.

Hathaway hasn’t been this compelling in ages, giving Penelope a Machiavellian guile and a widow’s grief. Holland is slowly growing up into roles like this, and Pattinson is great as an oily villain. If there’s a scene-stealer here, it’s Morton, who only appears for a few minutes but makes them indelible.

Leading the way is Damon, who conveys the gravity of command, the guilt of sending men to die, and the confusion of someone wanting to forget his past but needing to remember it.

Through Damon’s Odysseus, Nolan makes “The Odyssey” more than a video supplement to an ancient literature class. Instead, with the character’s struggle to make sense of the chaos of war — and finding there is none — this version of the old story feels as fresh as the daily news.

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‘The Odyssey’

★★★★

Opens Friday, July 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for violence and some language. Running time: 172 minutes.

Review: 'The Invite' is a sharp and honest comedy centering on two couples on an intensely awkward first dinner party

In the sharply funny and brutally honest comedy “The Invite,” director Olivia Wilde starts with one question — how well do you know your neighbors? — and arrestingly falls into another question: How well do you know your spouse?

The movie starts with Wilde’s character, Angela, playing Mrs. Dalloway and buying what she needs for what she hopes is a successful dinner party. Her husband, Joe (Seth Rogen), a professional musician now working unhappily as a music teacher, is on his way home, forgetting that Angela has invited the new couple in their building.

Joe gets home and immediately he and Angela get into an argument about the new neighbors, with Joe questioning why they were invited in the first place. Angela feels a late urge to change her blouse, while begging Joe not to bring up the noise they’ve been hearing from upstairs. Joe, Angela notes, has already started in on the wine.

Then the neighbor arrive: Piña (Penelope Cruz), a sexologist, and Hawk (Edward Norton), a recently retired firefighter. Things get real weird, real fast, with Joe and Angela being both put off by and strangely attracted to this couple, who seem more in touch with their emotions and their sexuality — which leads the conversation in some strange areas.

Wilde (who directed “Booksmart” and “Don’t Worry, Darling”) has some great material to work with: It’s a remake of a Spanish comedy-drama, “Sentimental,” with an American rewrite by Will McCormick and Rashida Jones (who collaborated on the 2012 romantic comedy “Celeste and Jesse Forever”). The script moves fast, and Wilde encourages her co-stars to go fast with it — and the result is a four-person comedy of manners, like “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” played for uncomfortable laughs.

Wilde has her cast humming along so perfectly that it’s hard to say which actor is giving the best performance. Some moments it’s Rogen, letting Joe’s passive-aggressive loathing become not so passive. Other times it’s Wilde, whose Angela is flustered by the attention paid by these strangers. Norton gets a few shots in, playing Hawk as a smarmy hypersensitive male. And Cruz beguiles as Piña, who’s both instigator and observer in the mind games that proceed into the night.

“The Invite” is a smart ensemble piece where the tension and humor intertwine into something that’s as funny as it is unsettling. It’s a party you don’t want to miss.

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‘The Invite’

★★★★

Opens Friday, July 10, in theaters. Rated R for sexual material, language throughout, and drug use. Running time: 107 minutes.