Aladdin (Mena Massour, left), in his disguise as Prince Ali, gets advice from Genie (Will Smith), in a scene from Disney’s live-action remake of “Aladdin.” (Photo courtesy Walt Disney Pictures.)
If I could make one wish as a movie lover, it would be that Disney would take some creative risks when they dig into their animated back catalog to find live-action inspiration — instead of playing it safe, as the studio does with its tepid retelling of “Aladdin.”
Read the full review at sltrib.com.
Natasha Kingsley (Yara Shahidi, left) and Daniel Bae (Charles Melton) share tender embraces on the day they meet, in the romantic drama “The Sun Is Also a Star.” (Photo by Atsushi Nishijima, courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures.)
Astronomy meets chemistry in “The Sun Is Also a Star,” a young-adult romance whose creaky coincidences almost overshadow the charming leads at its heart.
The source material here is a novel by Nicola Yoon, whose girl-in-the-bubble romance “Everything, Everything” was turned into a movie two years ago. That’s a sign of the level of contrivance — high — we’re dealing with.
Natasha Kingsley (played by “Black-ish” and “Grown-ish” star Yara Shahidi) is a high-school student fascinated with astrophysics, who can quote Carl Sagan in the opening voiceover and thinks love is just biochemical processes. She doesn’t have time for romance, either, as her family is going to be deported back to Jamaica tomorrow, unless she can find a lawyer who can save the day. This may seem unlikely, but we’re talking about a girl whose jacket says “Deus ex Machina” across the back.
Those are also the words Daniel Bae (played by Charles Melton, Reggie on The CW’s “Riverdale”) writes in his notebook when he wakes up the same morning. Daniel has a big day ahead, capped by his alumni interview to get into Dartmouth to be a pre-med student, following the path his Korean-born parents set out for him. Daniel’s desire to be a poet rather than a doctor is a minor consideration.
It takes a chance encounter, in which Daniel saves Natasha’s life, that starts their story in motion. In spite of their other commitments, they end up spending a too-beautiful New York day together. And if you don’t think they fall in love before we’re done, you haven’t seen the trailer or watched a romance movie in your life.
That said, the script by Tracy Oliver (“Girls Trip”) takes some unexpected detours. Most interestingly, it confronts the race issue in an odd way, when Daniel takes Natasha to his family’s business, a black hair-care supply store in Harlem.
Director Ry Russo-Young (“Before I Fall”) is at her sharpest in the movie’s first half, when Natasha and Daniel are left to walk through a gorgeously photographed New York and talk. It’s like a teen version of “Before Sunrise,” until the filmmakers lose their nerve and succumb to the many coincidences in Yoon’s plot line.
To the extent “The Sun Is Also a Star” works, it’s due to the lived-in but passionate chemistry between its stars. Melton smolders in a way that will make 14-year-old girls worldwide swoon. And Shahidi is a star in the making, bringing warmth and fire to Natasha’s family issues and this unexpected romantic entanglement.
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‘The Sun Is Also a Star’
★★★
Opens Friday, May 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some suggestive content and language. Running time: 100 minutes.
World-weary assassin John Wick (Keanu Reeves) battles two tough fighters, in a scene from “John Wick, Chapter 3: Parabellum.” (Photo courtesy Lionsgate.)
In the “John Wick” movie series, hearing star Keanu Reeves say “guns — we’re going to need lots of guns” has been a reliable laugh line. But, as the latest installment, the wordily titled “John Wick, Chapter 3: Parabellum,” demonstrates, that phrase is also the movie’s reason for existence.
If you remember the ending to “John Wick, Chapter 2,” Reeves’ back-from-retirement assassin Wick had committed the unpardonable sin in this world of killers: He murdered a member of the High Table, the mysterious organization in charge of everything, in the confines of The Continental, the New York hotel where assassins leave their work at the entrance. The Continental’s manager, Winston (Ian McShane), told Wick then that he was “excommunicate” from the hotel, with a $14 million bounty on his head, and a one-hour head start.
Chapter 3 begins during that hour, as Wick locates a stash of goods he needs to make it out alive, finds a friendly doctor (Randall Duk Kim) to stitch up his wounds, and tries to figure out what he’ll do next. Some of Wick’s figuring is done on the run, as he’s being pursued by the Russian mob, the Yakuza, and every other group with the possible exception of the Camp Fire Girls. Even the National Basketball Association is after him — really, that’s Philadelphia 76ers center Boban Marjanovic, all 7’3’’ of him, fighting Wick in the New York City Public Library.
After the usual round of shooting and punching out random lackeys — a sequence with carriage horses is a nice touch — Wick seeks a way out of New York. The route brings him in contact with a Mad Libs of actors: Anjelica Huston, Halle Berry, Jerome Flynn (Bronn from “Game of Thrones”) and Said Taghmaoui (“Wonder Woman”). Meanwhile, the High Table has sent an Adjudicator (played by Asia Kate Dillon, the nonbinary co-star of Showtime’s “Billions”) to pass judgment on Winston and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) for helping Wick in the last movie.
Of course, fans of the Wick series don’t care so much about plot. They want the hyper-stylized action that Chad Stahelski, the former kick boxer and stunt coordinator who has helmed all three “Wick” movies, brings to the show. The action sequences are blood-splattered choreography, like the dance routines in a “Step Up” movie but with a higher body count.
There are some visually arresting fight scenes. There’s the running shootout Wick and Berry’s character have with hordes of assassins in Casablanca (yes, really), or there’s Wick’s glass-shattering karate duel with two ruthless killers (Cecep Arif Rahman and Yayan Ruhian, from “The Raid” franchise from Indonesia), or a final boss battle with Zero (Mark Dascasos, aka The Chairman from “Iron Chef America”), a killer who’s also a sushi chef.
One grades the quality of a “John Wick” movie by the flair and originality of its action sequences. The fights here don’t have the same out-of-the-box charm of the original — you only get to make a first impression once — they are brimming with eye-popping spectacle. For Keanu’s sake, I hope he’s resting up for Chapter 4.
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‘John Wick, Chapter 3: Parabellum’
★★★
Opens Friday, May 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for pervasive strong language, and some language. Running time: 130 minutes.
Emily Dickinson (Molly Shannon, left) is in bed with Susan Gilbert Dickinson (Susan Ziegler), the poet’s childhood friend, sister-in-law and (as this movie suggests) lover, in a scene from the comedy-drama “Wild Nights With Emily.” (Photo courtesy Greenwich Entertainment.)
We thought Cynthia Nixon gave us the perfect Emily Dickinson three years ago in “A Quiet Passion,” but Molly Shannon is just as fascinating as the Belle of Amherst in “Wild Nights With Emily,” a comedy-drama that takes a deliciously different take on the poet’s life and love.
Writer-director Madeleine Olnek gives a fresh look at the historical record, and follows the theory that Emily Dickinson wasn’t the reclusive old maid, as she was described after her death. Instead, Olnek portrays Emily (played as an adult by Shannon) as vibrantly alive and active, and engaged in a nearly lifelong love affair with Susan Gilbert (played by Susan Ziegler), her childhood friend and, later, the wife of Emily’s brother Austin (played by former MTV VJ Kevin Seal).
Why don’t we know this? Because Susan Gilbert Dickinson was erased from history, literally. Emily’s story is narrated here by Mabel Todd (“Pet Sematary’s” Amy Seimetz), who published Emily’s poems after her death, and claimed to be a close friend of Emily’s on book tours — even though Mabel admits the first time she saw Emily’s face was in her coffin. It’s Mabel who carefully selects Emily’s poems to promulgate the eccentric recluse narrative, which is more socially acceptable to Victorian audiences than the suggestion of a healthy lesbian romance.
Olnek pierces through the hypocrisy of those times with biting wit and a sly wink as Emily and Susan use those societal restrictions — and the cluelessness of their immediate family — to continue their furtive relationship.
And Olnek has the receipts. She got permission from Harvard University Press to use Emily’s poems, which become narration for some beautiful imagery about death, love and the infinite. Olnek finds the historical underpinnings that support ‘shipping Emily and Susan, particularly in a sublime montage of manuscripts over the closing credits.
With Shannon gifting Emily with her perfect comedic timing — like when Emily’s reclusiveness is explained by her avoiding going into the parlor when she hears other people’s lovemaking — Olnek finds humor in the poet’s dour Massachusetts life. She even demonstrates the old joke about how Dickinson’s poems — the example here is “Because I would not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me…” — can be sung to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”
Olnek’s use of humor is key, because it helps flesh out a fuller portrait of Emily Dickinson, and offers stark relief to the cruel, bigoted suppression of her sexual identity after her death.
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‘Wild Nights With Emily’
★★★1/2
Opened April 19 in select cities; opens Friday, May 17, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG-13 for sexual content. Running time: 84 minutes.
Anti-death penalty activist Liz Gilbert (Laura Dern, right) talks with Death Row inmate Cameron Todd Willingham (Jack O’Connell), who may not have committed the crime for which he’s going to be put to death, in the drama “Trial by Fire.” (Photo courtesy Roadside Attractions.)
Director Edward Zwick’s pointedly political “Trial by Fire” tells a true story of what looks to be the case every opponent of capital punishment has been warning we would get: A seemingly innocent man executed for a crime he didn’t commit.
And through every earnestly well-acted moment, telegraphed plot point and emotionally wrought line of dialogue, the movie becomes a dramatically inert message movie that will move neither the heart nor the needle in America’s debate over government sanctioned killing.
Screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher (an Oscar winner for adapting Sapphire’s novel “Push” into “Precious”) takes a David Grann article for The New Yorker and presents the story in plodding chronological order. It begins on on the morning of Dec. 23, 1991, in Corsicana, Texas, when Cameron Todd Willingham (played by Jack O’Connell) runs out of his burning house, where his three daughters, a 2-year-old and baby twins, are trapped inside. He tries to open a window, but is blown back by the flames.
Next, Zwick and Fletcher show the arson investigation, the interrogation of Willingham and his wife Stacy (Emily Meade), and Todd’s arrest on murder charges. The trial is shown as low-key farce, with dubious forensics, a questionable jailhouse snitch (Blake Lewis), a psychologist (Lindsay Ayliffe) who diagnoses Todd as a cult worshipper based on the heavy metal posters in his bedroom, and a public defender (Darren Pettie) who can’t work up the energy to raise a single objection. The guilty verdict and death sentence are pretty much a formality.
It’s nearly an hour before Zwick and Fletcher introduce the other main character to the story. She’s Liz Gilbert, a Houston playwright and divorced mother of two, played with vivacious intensity by Laura Dern. Gilbert is painted as a natural do-gooder, tending to her dying ex-husband (Wayne Pére) in the hospital or pulling over to help a stranger with engine trouble.
It’s that encounter that leads Gilbert to join the Texas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, and start corresponding with a Death Row inmate: Todd Willingham. After visiting Willingham in prison, and reading his file, Gilbert is convinced that he didn’t get a fair trial, and starts lobbying to delay his execution and get a new trial. This being Texas, where then-Gov. Rick Perry ran on a tough-on-crime platform, the odds are against Willingham.
Fletcher’s script lets the audience know well in advance which way things will go here, and Zwick allows O’Connell, Dern and Meade to go from zero-to-shouting in no time flat.
Dern always gives a good performance, though, and even in the role of movie savior she finds deep emotional spaces and unexpected empathy. She’s the one thing that makes the preaching-to-the-choir drama of “Trial by Fire” feel like like something alive and real.
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‘Trial by Fire’
★★
Opens Friday, May 17, at select theaters nationwide, including Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for language throughout, some violence, disturbing images, sexual material and brief nudity. Running time: 127 minutes.
Léo (Félix Maritaud), a Parisian male prostitute, goes to work in a scene from Camille Vidal-Naquet’s drama “Sauvage / Wild.” (Photo courtesy Strand Releasing.)
One always suspected that being a male prostitute in Paris would be soul-deadening work, and probably hazardous to one’s short-term and long-term health. But what French director-writer Camille Vidal-Naquet reveals in his well-constructed but grim debut, “Sauvage / Wild,” is how tedious the job is.
The movie follows one young street hustler, identified in the press notes as Léo, though if anyone calls him that in the film, I missed it. Léo (played by Félix Maritaud) is 22, lean and muscular, and spending much of his day along one street with other prostitutes waiting for clients to drive up.
It’s established early that Léo is different than other prostitutes because sex isn’t just a commodity to him, but something he actually enjoys. For example, he’s willing to kiss his clients, an act of sensual tenderness that other guys, like his quasi-mentor on the street, Ahd (Eric Bernard), don’t do.
There’s not much of a plot in “Sauvage / Wild,” but there are moments. Like when Léo and Ahd are working together on a client, and Léo sees a chance to flirt with Ahd while also servicing their john. Or when Ahd tries to push away another prostitute, Mihal (Nicolas Dibla), who undercuts the accepted price of services. Or when Ahd reunites with an old “sugar daddy” (Joël Villy), leaving Léo alone on the street, and teaming up with the shiftless Mihal.
In between, there’s a lot of down time, where Léo is sleeping in the park, or smoking crack, or waiting along the boulevard waiting for the next score. His health is steadily declining, and the audience waits to see whether he will pull out of his slow, dispiriting spiral.
Vidal-Naquet’s observational eye, his talent for zeroing in on telling details in Léo’s street life, is one of the highlights of “Sauvage / Wild,” as is Maritaud’s fearless and tender performance. They don’t necessarily make “Sauvage / Wild” more engaging, but they make a viewer excited for what the filmmaker and actor might do next.
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‘Sauvage / Wild’
★★1/2
Opened April 10 in select cities; opens Friday, May 17, at the Tower Theatre (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but definitely NC-17 for graphic simulated sex, nudity, language and some violence. Running time: 99 minutes; in French with subtitles.
Tim Goodman (Justice Smith, left) and Lucy Stevens (Kathryn Howard, right) team up with a sleuthing Pikachu (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) when things go awry, in the action-adventure “Pokémon Detective Pikachu.” (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.)
If you don’t have at least a passing familiarity with the Pokémon universe, watching the live-action/ animated hybrid “Pokémon Detective Pikachu” will be as confusing and as unsatisfying as watching “Avengers: Endgame” if you’ve never watched a Marvel movie or read a comic book.
For the hordes of Pokémon fans, who have watched the animé TV series or the movies, or played the video games or trading card game, the action-adventure movie is catnip. For those of us in the middle, who picked up Pokémon through contact with kids who consume it like air, it’s a passably fun if frenetic send-up of detective noir.
In Ryme City, humans and Pokémon have learned to live in harmony, without the Pokémon being trapped in Pokéballs to battle for their humans’ amusement. This urban paradise is credited to billionaire Howard Clifford (Bill Nighy), who went to live with Pokémon in the wild to cure his debilitating ailment. His media empire is run by his son, Roger (Chris Geere), who argues with his father about his altruism.
Outside of Ryme City, there’s a lab where the most powerful of Pokémon, the genetically raised superbeing Mewtwo, escapes and seems to cause a car accident involving a detective.
Back in Ryme City, that detective’s son, Tim Goodman (played by Justice Smith), visits and learns that his father is missing and presumed dead. In his father’s apartment, he finds only one clue: A Pikachu, the yellow lightning-throwing Pokémon, with a Sherlockian deerstalker cap. And, unlike most Pokémon, he can understand what Tim is saying, and Tim can understand what the Pikachu is saying — and the Pikachu sounds just like Ryan Reynolds, only with a lot fewer f-bombs than Deadpool.
Director Rob Letterman (“Goosebumps”), who’s one of the script’s four credited writers, makes this “Roger Rabbit”-like caper move fast and loose, as Tim and Pikachu try to unravel the mystery, accompanied by Lucy (Kathryn Newton), an eager cub reporter interning for the Cliffords’ TV news empire.
The fun of “Pokémon Detective Pikachu” comes in two forms. The kids and Pokémon fanatics will thrill to see how many of the 809 Pokémon characters are deployed for sight gags and plot twists. And the grown-ups will enjoy Reynolds’ hilarious line readings coming out of a cute yellow fuzzball.
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‘Pokémon Detective Pikachu’
★★★
Opens Friday, May 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for action/peril, some rude and suggestive humor, and thematic elements. Running time: 104 minutes.
Rival con artists Josephine (Anne Hathaway, left) and Penny (Rebel Wilson) face off in the comedy “The Hustle.” (Photo courtesy of MGM Pictures.)
Who knew that a movie as light and airy as Frank Oz’s 1988 con-artist comedy “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” would also be durable enough to make a sharply funny remake in “The Hustle”?
Before the “they ruined my childhood” brigade starts slavering for blood, it’s a good time to remind everyone that the 31-year gap between the first movie and the remake is longer than the 24-year gap between “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” and the movie it was remaking, 1964’s “Bedtime Story,” with David Niven and Marlon Brando in the roles Michael Caine and Steve Martin so nicely filled.
In New York, small-time con artist Penny (Rebel Wilson) runs a reliable scam involving shallow guys, a dating app, and an appeal for breast-enlargement surgery. It works enough that she’s thinking she needs to get out America, and the French Riviera looks like an appealing place to find rich men to swindle.
Too bad somebody already has that territory staked out. That’s Josephine (Anne Hathaway), who runs ambitious, high-class and high-dollar-value scams on the marks at the casino, with help from her butler Albert (Nicholas Woodeson) and the financially pliable police inspector, Desjardins (Ingrid Oliver).
Josephine tries to bully Penny out of town, then kill her with kindness. When neither approach works, they make a wager to compete for one mark, to take him for $500,000. The target they agree to is Thomas Westerberg (Alex Sharp), a socially awkward tech billionaire. The competing efforts to seduce Thomas and get his money are wickedly hilarious, nicely shepherded by Emmy-winning “Veep” director Chris Addison, making a smooth feature-film debut.
Of course, comedy is subjective, and whether you find “The Hustle” funny will depend on how much you enjoy Wilson’s brassiness, particularly when paired with Hathaway’s ice-princess poise. For me, it works, in part because Wilson is fearless in pursuit of a laugh, and because Hathaway clearly relishes every line screenwriter Jan Schaeffer (“Captain Marvel”) has given her. (The movie also gives screenplay credit to “Bedtime Story” writers Stanley Shapiro & Paul Henning, and to “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” adapter Dale Launer.)
Together, Hathaway and Wilson make a surprisingly good comic team. Hathaway helps rein in Wilson’s cruder impulses, and Wilson gives Hathaway a smart dose of spontaneity. Together, they make “The Hustle” a remake that does its original (or originals) proud.
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‘The Hustle’
★★★
Opens Friday, May 10, at theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for crude sexual content and language. Running time: 94 minutes.