'Playing With Fire'

There’s dumb, there’s really dumb, and then there’s a movie directed by Andy Fickman — like “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2” or the new “Playing With Fire,” which depends on the subtle comical stylings of John Cena.

Cena plays Supt. Jake Carson, the big guy in charge of a U.S. Department of Forestry (no such thing) smokejumper crew in central California. He is heroic when facing down a raging forest fire, leading his men (played by Keegan-Michael Key, John Leguizamo and Tyler Mane) in their lifesaving missions. He’s a shoo-in to replace the retiring fire commander (Dennis Haysbert), to bring honor to his late father, who ran the smokejumpers’ depot before him and died in the line of duty.

In areas of human contact, though, Jake’s skills are lacking. This is clear when he walked out on a date with Dr. Amy Hicks (Judy Greer), a charming scientist doing field research on toads in a nearby lake. And it’s even clearer when Jake rescues three siblings — teen Brynn (Brianna Hildebrand, from the “Deadpool” movies), 9-year-old Will (Christian Convery), and pre-schooler Zoey (Finley Rose Slater) — and has to house them at the depot.

Fickman and screenwriters Dan Ewen and Matt Lieberman go for the cheapest laughs, whether they involves changing Zoey’s diaper or letting Will go crazy with the soap suds. But the script seems to have left actual punchlines unwritten, and relies on its cast to ad-lib the funny. That’s marginally OK when it’s Leguizamo or Key (who’s quickly becoming the Garfunkel to Jordan Peele’s Simon), but when Cena tries to be funny, it sticks out more than his bulging biceps.

Here’s the thing, though: At the Saturday morning screening where I was suffering through this vast wasteland of labored gags, the audience around me was laughing fairly consistently. I had a moment like Principal Skinner on “The Simpsons” did, where I wondered if I was out of touch — but then, after the 14th lame “fire” song on the soundtrack, I decided that, no, it’s the audience that was wrong.

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‘Playing With Fire’

★

Opens Friday, November 8, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for rude humor, some suggestive material and mild peril. Running time: 96 minutes.

'Parasite'

When a movie arrives with as much hype as Bong Joon-Ho’s “Parasite” — after winning the Palme D’Or at Cannes, stirred up Academy Awards talk, and had impressive opening box office numbers — there’s always the worry that the movie can’t live up to it.

No such worry here. “Parasite” is entertaining and shocking, a thought-provoking examination of class differences that shifts effortlessly from comedy to social commentary to something approaching horror.

The Kim family lives in a semi-basement apartment that always smells vaguely of something unpleasant. They are on the low end of the economic spectrum, partly through bad luck and partly through their own lackluster ambitions. The four of them — Ki-taek (Kang-ho Song), the patriarch; his wife, Chung-Song (Hye-Jin Chang); and adult children Ki-woo (Woo-sik Choi) and Ki-jung (So-dam Park) — are usually unemployed, and when they do find jobs they do them as lazily as possible.

One night, Ki-woo’s university friend, Min (Seo-joon Park), mentions that he’s leaving Korea to study abroad, and he won’t be able to tutor Park Da-Hye (Jung Ziso), the teen daughter of a rich couple, Dong-ik (Sun-kyun Lee) and Yeon-kyo (Yeo-jeong Jo). Min suggests Ki-woo take the job while he’s gone. After an interview, augmented by university records faked expertly by his sister, Ki-Jung, Ki-woo has an interview — and a foot in the door of the Parks that could benefit all of the Kims.

First, he helps Ki-jung finagle a job as an “art therapist,” to help Da-Hye’s rambunctious little brother, Da-song (Jung Hyun-jun). Then Ki-jung helps get the Parks’ driver fired, and Dad takes that job. The toughest nut to crack is figuring out how to get rid of the housekeeper, Moon-gwang (Jeong-eun Lee), who has been in the house longer than the Parks have, and talks glowingly of the architect who created such a gorgeous home.

At one point, everything seems to be going the Kims’ way, and they’re finally getting everything they think they deserve. Then, something happens that sends the Kims reeling, putting their hard work — or their hard avoidance of work — into jeopardy.

Bong (“Snowpiercer,” “The Host”), who directed and wrote the screenplay with Han Jin Won (an assistant director on Bong’s “Okja”), sets up his story as a gradually intensifying comedy of manners between the blithely wealthy Parks and the conniving lower-class Kims. The differences are literally from the gutter to the stars, with a whole lot of resentment and condescension in between. The humor in the early part of the film slowly makes way for a nail-biting thriller, and Bong balances both moods in a delicious tension.

The particulars — Jo’s comic performance as the clueless Mrs. Park, cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo’s precise images of the ultra-modern Park house and the shabby Kim apartment, Bong’s sly commentary on the haves and have nots — are calibrated perfectly, all building to a conclusion that will make audiences choke on the laughter that so easily escaped them in the early going. “Parasite” is the sort of movie that shows much in the moment, and reveals more as it rattles around in the viewer’s brain.

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‘Parasite’

★★★★

Opened October 11 in select cities; opens Friday, Nov. 1, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for language, some violence and sexual content. Running time: 132 minutes; in Korean, with subtitles.

'Harriet'

It was only a matter of time before Tony winner Cynthia Erivo found the starring movie role she deserved: Harriet Tubman, the escaped slave who became helped lead many other slaves to freedom, in the riveting biographical drama “Harriet.”

Director Kasi Lemmons (“Talk to Me,” “Eve’s Bayou”) introduces us to Tubman as Minty, a slave on a Maryland plantation in 1849. Her husband, a free black man named John Tubman (Zachary Momoh), tries to assert his and Minty’s legal rights to the plantation owner, Edward Brodess (Michael Marunde), but he won’t let Minty go. When Edward dies, leaving the plantation to his wife, Eliza (country singer Jennifer Nettles), and their son, Gideon (Joe Alwyn), who has lusted after Minty since childhood.

Fearful of what Gideon might do with his father gone, Minty makes a harrowing escape north, finding helpful people along the way. She eventually walks across the Mason-Dixon line into Pennsylvania, and lands in Philadelphia at the offices of William Still (Leslie Odom Jr.), an abolitionist and author. Still interviews Minty about her ordeal, takes down the horrific details, and suggests she give herself a new name — her freedom name. She chooses Harriet.

Still introduces Harriet to Marie Buchanon (Janelle Monaé), a fiercely independent black woman who owns a boarding house. Harriet gets Still’s help to go back and rescue some of her family, garnering a reputation as a fearless emancipator. Still hooks Harriet up with the Underground Railroad, and soon becomes one of the group’s most successful “conductors.” It’s a tribute, or sorts, to Harriet’s skills and bravery that Gideon and his fellow slaveholders think the mysterious “Moses” must be a white male Northerner, not a petite black woman like her.

Lemmons, rewriting a script by Gregory Alan Howard (“Remember the Titans”), creates a refreshingly old-fashioned biopic. Lemmons doesn’t shy away from the horrors of America’s slave trade and the racist laws that propped it up, but she’s willing to shape the details of history a bit for dramatic effect.

Tubman is a complex character, driven by love of family as much as lofty ideals, and subject to spells and occasional visions of the future — the result, we’re told, of a brutal skull fracture when she was young. Erivo, acting in her third movie (she had supporting roles in “Bad Times at the El Royale” and “Widows,” channels those contradictory threads of Tubman’s life into a strong-willed yet sensitive woman who fights because that’s the only way to survive.

Because of Erivo’s performance, and strong support from Odom and Monaé, “Harriet” becomes a forceful portrait of an American hero. Maybe it will be enough to finally get Tubman on the damn 20-dollar bill.

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“Harriet”

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, Nov. 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for thematic content throughout, violent material and language including racial epithets. Running time: 125 minutes.

'Terminator: Dark Fate'

When you see James Cameron’s name on the poster for “Terminator: Dark Fate,” don’t get your hopes up — the franchise’s creator is only a co-writer and producer here, director Tim Miller (“Deadpool”) doesn’t quite have the stuff to replace him, and we’re still getting those dumb “Avatar” sequels.

The first thing we see is Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton), in footage from “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” warning disbelieving shrinks of the pending apocalypse. It’s an apocalypse she prevented, in a timeline that never comes to pass, though there’s an unexpected tragedy that drives Sarah underground.

In the here-and-now, we see two figures from the future arrive in Mexico City. One, we learn quickly, is Grace (Mackenzie Davis), an augmented human sent to protect a young woman, Danielle Ramos (Natalia Reyes). The other is what’s trying to kill Danielle: A Terminator, a new Rev-9 model (played by Gabriel Luna), who has the same liquid-metal capabilities as “Terminator 2’s” T-1000, and the same blandly unemotional expression as he slices through anything in his way.

Miller creates some solid action set pieces, with Davis’s Grace fighting fiercely against Luna’s Rev-9. The momentum shifts sharply when another player enters the game: Sarah Conner, and darn if it isn’t great to see Hamilton, weathered but still a bad-ass at 63, back after what seems forever. (In the process, Hamilton’s presence retcons away at least one sequel, if not everything since “T2.”)

If you’ve seen any publicity material, you also know that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the original Terminator, shows up along the line. Giving away that plot point is a spoiler, for sure — one that will cause eyes to roll from coast to coast.

And therein lies the problem with “Terminator: Dark Fate.” Sure, the action sequences are ridiculously entertaining, but they’re driving the story, rather than the other way around. The much-handled script — David S. Goyer & Justin Rhodes wrote the screenplay, with a rewrite by Billy Ray, and Goyer, Rhodes and Cameron are three of five sharing story credit — turns out to be a flimsy clothesline on which to hang the action.

But darn if everyone doesn’t look cool doing it. Hamilton and Schwarzenegger are fun to watch in their golden years, still fighting evil. Luna (who played Ghost Rider on a season of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”) displays catlike smoothness as the robot killing machine. Reyes, a Colombian actor who shined in “Birds of Passage,” blossoms in hero mode. But the stealth MVP is Davis (“Halt and Catch Fire”), whose lean frame and haunting eyes make her the most effective Terminator hunter since — well, since Hamilton.

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‘Terminator: Dark Fate’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, Nov. 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for violence throughout, language and brief nudity. Running time: 128 minutes.

'Motherless Brooklyn'

Edward Norton, the director and screenwriter, is the best thing about “Motherless Brooklyn,” a strange yet compelling noir drama. Now if only he could rein in his over-the-top star, Edward Norton.

Norton plays Lionel Essrog, who works as eyes and ears for a private eye, Frank Minna (Bruce Willis) in late-1950s New York, despite Lionel suffering from Tourette’s syndrome. It’s the Tourette’s, and the cascade of tics and blurted-out phrases, that makes Norton’s performance so annoying — and, for a guy who made his bones playing characters with perceived mental disabilities, in “Primal Fear” and “The Score,” it’s also easy to see why Norton wanted to do it.

Frank, Lionel explains in a too-thick narration, rescued Lionel and the other guys at the agency — Tony (Bobby Cannavale), Gilbert (Ethan Suplee) and Danny (Dallas Roberts) — from the orphanage and gave them a job and a purpose. That starts to crumble when, after a busted stakeout, Frank is shot by some thugs and dies. Lionel, who saw Frank as a mentor, decides he’s going to find out what Frank was up to, and see if that can lead Lionel to Frank’s killers.

The trail of clues leads Lionel into a battle over the soul of New York City, being fought on one side by civic activist Gabby Horowitz (Cherry Jones) and on the other by the imperious city planner Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin). These characters are only lightly fictionalized takes on the journalist and firebrand Jane Jacobs and the city builder Robert Moses, and their presence will surprise anyone who read the 1999 Jonathan Lethem novel on which Norton adapted his screenplay.

While digging, Lionel finds two other important figures in the story. One is Paul (Willem Dafoe), a brilliant but unstable engineer with many secrets. The other is Laura (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who rails against Randolph’s so-called “slum clearance” and joins Horowitz’s cause.

Norton steeps “Motherless Brooklyn” in the details of ‘50s New York, where guys in fedoras drive their  tailfin-heavy cars to Harlem clubs to hear bebop jazz. (Michael Kenneth Williams plays a jazzman who befriends Lionel, though the music coming out of his horn is from Wynton Marsalis.) Norton also paces the action well, as Lionel doggedly follows the bread crumbs to an ending that’s not as surprising as a viewer might wish it would be.

Getting past Norton’s tic-filled performance, “Motherless Brooklyn” boasts a strong ensemble, with Baldwin standing out by playing his best role: The power-hungry authoritarian. (It’s not far off from “30 Rock’s” Jack Donaghy or his Trump impersonation.) “Motherless Brooklyn” works better as a meditation on the dangers of limitless power than when Norton remember he’s supposed to be telling a detective yarn.

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‘Motherless Brooklyn’

★★★

Opens Friday, Nov. 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language throughout including some sexual references, brief drug use, and violence. Running time: 144 minutes.

'First Love'

The freakishly prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike throws his all into his latest blood-drenched gangster drama, “First Love,” whose title isn’t as ironic as you might think.

In the darker recesses of a city, Monica (Sakurako Konichi) is trapped. She’s forced to pay off her father’s debts by selling her body to the yakuza, and she’s kept as a slave by Yasu (Takahiro Miura), a drug dealer who keeps Monica high on his product.

Elsewhere in the city lives Leo (Masataka Kubota), a boxer whose promising career seems to be cut short when he goes down too easily during a bout. After looking at his MRI, a neurologist tells Leo that he has an inoperable brain tumor and not long to live.

When Leo crosses paths with Monica, it’s when she’s running in terror from Otomo (Nao Omori), a dirty cop who’s involved in a plot to kidnap Monica so Yasu can deliver drugs to an ambitious junior yakuza, Kase (Shota Sometani). Leo can’t help himself but to drop Otomo on the ground with one punch, and he and Monica are suddenly on the run, as a convoluted gangster plot plays out in their wake.

Mike keeps the action moving with barely room to breathe — and the action is so outlandish and comical that, at one point, it literally becomes a cartoon. When Miike does slow down, he creates space for a tender romance to bloom between Leo and Monica, two innocents amid the gunplay and swordplay going on around them. 

“First Love” is the sort of over-the-top action comedy where when someone mentions a contract killer named One-Armed Wang, you can bet the farm that a guy will eventually show up cocking his shotgun with his one good arm. It’s got plenty of gags, buckets of blood, and a surprising amount of soul.

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‘First Love’

★★★1/2

Opened September 27 in select cities; opens Friday, Nov. 1, at the Tower Theatre (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for strong violence, drug use, and some sexual references and language. Running time: 108 minutes; in Japanese with subtitles.

'Jojo Rabbit'

A round of applause, please, for filmmaker Taika Waititi, for the courage he employs in his biting Nazi satire “Jojo Rabbit.” Not for making a comedy about Adolf Hitler but for daring, in an age when a president calls modern neo-Nazis “very fine people,” to remind us of the evil Hitler embodied.

Little Johannes Betzler, played winningly by newcomer Roman Griffin Davis, is eager to show the world how devoted he is to Der Fuehrer. As a new member of the Hitler Youth, 10-year-old Johannes, nicknamed Jojo, jumps into the knife drills set forth by his summer camp’s commander, the freakishly irresponsible Capt. Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell). But Jojo loses his nerve when the teen campers order him to kill a rabbit, so the kids taunt him with a new name: Jojo Rabbit.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'The Lighthouse'

Isolation, loneliness and the pounding ocean do things to a person — and watching Robert Eggers’ harrowing head-trip, “The Lighthouse” might do a few things to the viewer as well.

It’s sometime in the late 1800s, on a far-off spit of land by the roiling ocean. Two men have arrived to start their work as “wickies,” keepers of the lighthouse. One, Thomas (Willem Dafoe), has been doing this work for years. The other, Ephraim (Robert Pattinson), is new to the lighthouse, after years of cutting timber north in Canada. Ephraim’s contract is for four weeks, and he tells Thomas he’s looking forward to steady work and some time alone.

But Ephraim, while working all the back-breaking jobs Thomas has assigned him, notices some odd things around the lighthouse. There’s the mermaid figurine buried in his mattress by its previous occupant. There’s Thomas’ insistence that he alone tend to the lamp at the top of the lighthouse. There’s the seagull that menaces Ephraim, and Thomas’ stern warning that it’s bad luck to kill a seagull.

One night, with a storm roaring in, Thomas and Ephraim get roaring drunk together, and Ephraim tells Thomas his darkest secret. It’s too much for Thomas, who asks repeatedly, “Why’d you spill your beans?”

Eggers made a stunning debut with his Puritan horror story “The Witch,” and he surpasses that debut with this twisty psychological tale. Writing with his brother Max, and inspired by period novelists such as Herman Melville and Sarah Orne Jewett, Eggers steeps the film in authentic period dialogue and design. Eggers goes further, with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke shooting in black-and-white 35 millimeter film, in an almost square frame, to add to the claustrophobic atmosphere that seems to be driving both men insane.

But which one is the lunatic? Eggers provides plenty of evidence both ways. Dafoe and Pattinson, in a perfect collaboration of powerhouse actors, give full-throated performances that keep the audience in suspense. Is Thomas the madman? Is Ephraim? Are they both? Or are the brutal conditions of working the lighthouse, and being trapped alone together by a harsh sea, enough to make anyone lose their grip on reality?

Eggers has a Kubrickian streak in him, happier posing questions then answering them. Moviegoers who like their movies tied up neatly may be driven mad by Eggers’ lack of simple resolution. Those of us who like their movies thought-provoking and impressionistic will also go around the bend, but they’ll enjoy the trip more.

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‘The Lighthouse’

★★★1/2

Opened Oct. 18 in select cities; opens Friday, Oct. 25, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for sexual content, nudity, violence, disturbing images, and some language. Running time: 109 minutes.