Review: YA romance 'Chemical Hearts' channels raw emotion about first love, grief and guilt

For a young-adult romance, “Chemical Hearts” packs a lot of raw, genuine emotion as it delves into young love, first love, and the pain that comes with it.

Henry Page (played by Austin Abrams) has reached the pinnacle for a teen writer: Editor of his high school newspaper in his senior year. His problem, he says in the movie’s narration, is that he’s a great writer but hasn’t lived enough in his life to have something interesting to write about.

A new transfer student, Grace Town (played by “Riverdale” star Lili Reinhart), changes that in a hurry. Henry’s journalism teacher selects Grace to co-edit the paper with Henry, though she demurs and offers to be assistant editor — though she refuses to write anything herself. The only other information Henry gleans from Grace at first is that she walks with a cane, she has a car that she lets Henry drive, and that she refuses to drive it herself.

Through a combination of befriending Grace and stalking her, Henry sees more of the picture. Grace’s leg was severely injured in a car crash nine months previous — a crash that killed Grace’s first boyfriend, Dom, her old school’s star quarterback. But there’s still a big chunk of the story that Grace is leaving out, even as she and Henry fall in love.

Writer-director Richard Tanne — following up his 2016 romance “Southside With You,” which depicted Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson’s first date — adapts Krystal Sutherland’s YA novel “Our Chemical Hearts” with a respect for the genre and its teen audience that’s often lacking. Tanne knows that love in the teen years is particularly intense, because the participants have not yet developed the perspective with which to measure it. That’s true here for Henry, who sees Grace as a mystery waiting to be solved, and for Grace, wrestling with her feelings for Henry and whether she’s betraying her deceased first love.

Besides Tanne’s sensitive handling of the material, the emotional punch of “Chemical Hearts” comes from its young leads. Abrams (“Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”) gives Henry a soulful puppy-dog demeanor with flashes of self-effacing wit, while Reinhart channels the grief and guilt of a young woman trying to move forward in her life without completely forgetting her past. Together, they throw off some considerable sparks, making “Chemical Hearts” a combustible mix.

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‘Chemical Hearts’

★★★1/2

Available starting Friday, August 21, streaming on Amazon Primel. Rated R for language, sexuality and teen drug use. Running time: 93 minutes.

Review: 'Words on Bathroom Walls' is an honest, heartfelt portrayal of a teen's battle with schizophrenia

Though it’s being sold as a young-adult romance — which it is, at times — the teen drama “Words on Bathroom Walls” is more effective as an honest, engaging portrayal of a young man’s struggle with mental illness and finding himself separate from his condition.

Adam (Charlie Plummer) is our hero, a teen who reacts to his parents’ divorce by developing a passion for cooking — and a drive to get into culinary school after high school. But after a freakout in chemistry class, and an accident that gives his best buddy a serious acid burn, Adam is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and everything around him changes.

On the inside, Adam is accompanied by three hallucinatory characters: Zen spirit Rebecca (AnnaSophia Robb), stoner lothario Joaquin (Devon Bostick), and a bat-wielding muscleman called The Bodyguard (Lobo Sebastian), whose appearance usually signals a major attack is coming.

On the outside, Adam’s mom (Molly Parker) and her current boyfriend, Paul (Walton Goggins), have found one last chance for Adam’s academic career: A strict Catholic school, whose principal, Sister Catherine (Beth Grant), informs Adam he has to score highly on his exams and not have any episodes.

Adam, having been subjected to a slew of drug treatments, doesn’t hold out much hope for a new drug he’s given in a clinical trial. But the drug seems to help squelch the voices and allow him to concentrate on his studies — and on Maya (Taylor Russell), a hard-charging classmate who’s bucking to be valedictorian. But when Adam starts feeling the drug’s side effects, including a loss of taste, things get complicated.

The script — written by Nick Naveda, adapted from Julia Walton’s novel — explores the nuts and bolts of mental illness, from the mechanics of treatment to dealing with the reactions of others. Predominantly, it’s about Adam struggling to beat back the dark forces his brain musters against him, while learning that he is more than the sum of his symptoms and treatments.

Director Thor Freudenthal’s past work — “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” the second “Percy Jackson” movie, and journeyman work on several episodes in the “Arrow”-verse — doesn’t give one confidence that he can pull off such tricky material. But Freudenthal acquits himself well, especially in creating visuals to make Adam’s inner torment relatable to the rest of us.

Freudenthal also has attracted a solid cast, with strong support from Parker and Goggins as Adam’s parents, Andy Garcia as a wise priest, and Russell (“Waves”) as a spunky love interest. But mostly it’s young Plummer, cutting through the teen angst to give a performance that’s authentic and touching, who makes “Words on Bathroom Walls” such a lucid, thoughtful movie.

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‘Words on Bathroom Walls’

★★★

Opening Friday, August 21, in many theaters nationwide. Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content involving mental illness, some sexual references, strong language and smoking. Running time: 111 minutes.

Review: Revenge thriller 'Unhinged' is loud, bloody and too ready to rationalize its main character's psychotic behavior

It will be unfair, of course, that “Unhinged” will be judged by a different standard than other movies — solely because, due to the COVID-19 pandemic wreaking havoc on the movie-release schedule, there are no other movies.

Something had to be the first one out of the gate, and “Unhinged” is it: A loud, angry revenge thriller that wants to be a symbol of our faded social contract — but instead constructs too many straw-man arguments to be as thought-provoking as it intends to be.

Russell Crowe is the star here, identified in the credits only as “Man” — he gives a name at one point, but it could be a lie — and presumably standing in for any guy on his worst day. We’re introduced to him sitting in his pickup truck, on a rainy 4 a.m., outside a house. After some preparation, we see him take a sledgehammer to the house’s door, and then to the man and woman who live there. He then torches the house and drives away.

The script, by Carl Ellsworth (“Disturbia,” “Red Eye”), provides some background details about who the couple was, and what connection they may have to Man. But that’s all making excuses, trying to rationalize the irrational. This Man is a psychopath, that’s pretty firmly established, and woe to anyone who makes him angry.

Which is where Rachel (Caren Pistorius), a hairdresser and about-to-be-divorced single mom racing to get her son Kyle (Gabriel Bateman) to school, enters the picture. At an intersection, a truck in front of Rachel’s Volvo doesn’t move at the green light. Rachel honks her horn and pulls around. The truck catches up to Rachel and Kyle, and our Man rolls down his window, demanding an apology from Rachel. When he doesn’t get one, the rage and the gamesmanship begin.

German-born director Derrick Borte can piece together a good car chase, and ratchets up the tension as the Man’s boiling temper and misplaced sense of white male entitlement spills over in increasingly lethal ways.

But Borte can’t make Crowe’s character into anything more than a collection of his tics and mannerisms — and Crowe, sporting a lumberjack beard and maybe 20 extra pounds, is tossing around mannerisms like confetti. Meanwhile, Ellsworth’s script gives us the details of Rachel’s life in crude chunks of exposition, as if the filmmakers’ next step would be to just have Rachel tell us, the audience, what her problems are.

As the first major Hollywood movie to open since everything shut down in March, “Unhinged” may appear tempting, if only to get out of the house and see a movie for a change. If your standards have atrophied to that degree in the bunker, accept some tough love and know that better movies are coming — and you don’t have to mask up for this mean-spirited mess.

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‘Unhinged’

★★

Opening Friday, August 21, in many theaters nationwide. Rated R for strong violent content, and language throughout. Runnning time: 90 minutes.

Review: Offbeat biography 'Tesla' chronicles the inventor's work and his obsessions

The two previous times filmmaker Michael Almereyda and actor Ethan Hawke teamed up, they tore up the rules of Shakespeare for arresting modern versions of “Hamlet” (2000) and “Cymbeline” (2014) — so why would we think a biographical drama about Nikolai Tesla wouldn’t be a trip?

The finished product, called simply “Tesla,” is an intriguing mix of character study and dissertation, as Hawke and Almereyda labor mightily to find the man behind the mad genius.

If people know much about Nikolai Tesla, it might be the Tesla coil — his invention that produced high-voltage alternating current — or how that device, and Tesla’s championing of the safety of alternating current ran afoul of his old employer, Thomas Edison, who believed direct current was the way of the future.

We’re shown this battle of wills, between the visionary thinker Tesla and the practical inventor and salesman Edison (Kyle MacLachlan), in the movie’s early going, along with Tesla’s partnership with appliance magnate George Westinghouse (Jim Gaffigan) to make AC a viable option to Edison’s DC. As the “current war” fades into history — Tesla won, sort of, though Edison would never admit it — Tesla talks industrial mogul J.P. Morgan (David Keshawarz) to bankroll his grandiose plans to create a radio transmitter that can send sound, and someday even images, around the globe, using the earth itself as a resonator to direct the waves.

Much of Tesla’s story is told by Morgan’s independent-minded daughter, Anne (played by Eve Hewson), whose admiration for Tesla’s work is matched by the indifference Tesla shows to her apparent crush. The only time a woman pierces the bubble of Tesla’s contemplation of his inventions is a close encounter with the actress Sarah Bernhardt (Rebecca Dayan) — with Anne speculating that his interest in Sarah is based largely on her unattainability.

Almereyda — much as he did on his film “Experimenter,” about psychologist Stanley Milgram — is fascinated with the workings of a genius’ mind, and labors mightily to find ways to visualize that brain at work. For the biographical details, Almereyda has Anne talk directly to the camera, sometimes popping open an anachronistic laptop computer to compare the number of Google hits Tesla and Edison’s names score (Edison wins, nearly 2-to-1). Almereyda doesn’t worry much about period details, obviously, and uses the neat visual trick of establishing settings through rear projection. (The irony of telling Tesla’s story using one of Edison’s best-known inventions isn’t lost on Hawke or anyone else onscreen.)

Hawke keeps Tesla reserved, aloof, letting the inventor’s quiet anguish — and his idealism trumping his practicality — emerge through subtle moments. The closest the movie gets to a declarative statement is near the end, when Hawke’s Tesla sings karaoke to Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” whose lyric “I can’t stand this indecision, married to a lack of vision” is as fitting an epitaph for Tesla as any.

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‘Tesla’

★★★

Opening Friday, August 21, at several Megaplex Theatres locations,, and as a video-on-demand rental on most streaming platforms. Rated PG-13 for some thematic material and nude images. Running time: 102 minutes.

Review: 'Desert One' tells of servicemen's courage, and a presidency's last gasp, during the Iran hostage crisis

The riveting documentary “Desert One” reminds us that history is a great teacher, if only we would listen to the lessons — which, in the case of the failed rescue mission of 52 American hostages in Iran in 1980, include lessons on the limits of military might and the importance of a president taking responsibility when things go wrong.

Before getting to the central event of the story, director Barbara Kopple takes us back to the 1970s, when the U.S.-supported regime of the Shah of Iran was starting to unravel. The Shah — put in power after a Western-backed coup of Iran’s elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953 — was facing a rebellion, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, and fled the country in early 1979. 

Then a group of students supporting Khomeini overran the U.S. Embassy, and took 52 staffers, including diplomats and military men, hostage. President Jimmy Carter and his administration tried to negotiate a release of the hostages, but would not give in to the Iranian’s chief demand: Custody of the Shah, who was in New York receiving cancer treatment.

While negotiations dragged on, the Pentagon was making plans. The military’s Delta Force had come up with a rescue plan, an elaborate plot to fly Special Ops servicemen into Iran on C-130 transports, and transfer them to helicopters for a daring raid on the embassy in Tehran. The rendezvous point was a dry lakebed, code named Desert One.

The range of people Kopple and her team interview here is impressive. They include: Three of the hostages, at least three of the Iranians who held them captive, several members of the strike force on the rescue mission, military and CIA advisers (including Robert Gates, later Secretary of Defense), and President Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale.

The movie also corrals a wealth of news footage, from both Iran and the United States, and even the long-classified conversations between Carter and his generals when the mission was going drastically wrong.

The portrait painted by this new and archival material is of the country hamstrung not only by a foreign nation’s action but by the U.S. government’s miscalculations at what a small country might do to get revenge for a grudge that American leaders forgot existed. “Desert One” also tells a story of heroism, of servicemen who risked their lives — and, for eight of them, gave their lives — because they believed their leaders knew what they were doing. It also shows Carter as a man of integrity, taking personal responsibility for his administration’s failure.

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‘Desert One’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, August 21, at the Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy), Megaplex Legacy Crossing (Centerville) and Megaplex at The Junction (Ogden); and in the SLFS@Home and Utah Film Center virtual cinemas. Not rated, but probably R for gruesome images of war. Running time: 107 minutes.

Review: Something comes from outer space in effectively chilling Russian horror thriller 'Sputnik'

In space, we’ve been told, no one can here you scream — but in the Russian space-faring horror thriller “Sputnik,” all the action is back on terra firma, so there’s plenty to scream about.

In Moscow in 1983, Tatiana Klimova (Oksana Akinshina) is a brilliant but abrasive doctor fighting for her professional life in front of a medical board — because she made a snap decision that saved a patient’s life but ruffled feathers with the family and other doctors. On a break during her disciplinary hearing, Tatiana is approached by Col. Semiradov (Fedor Bondarchuk), who has a case that he wants Tatiana’s consulting skills. It’s not just her expertise Semaradov wants, but her ability to think outside the box.

Semiradov flies Tatiana to a distant military base, where she meets an unusual patient: Konstantine Veshnyakov (Pyotr Fyodorov), a cosmonaut recently returned from a mission on the Soviet space station Mir. Veshnyakov’s capsule made a rough landing in Kazakhstan, which left his partner near death. Tatiana, overriding the base’s medical staff, diagnoses Veshnyakov with PTSD, which may explain his amnesia.

When Semiradov shows Tatiana the night surveillance footage of Veshnyakov’s cell, she learns the truth: The cosmonaut brought back an alien parasite — or, rather, a symbiote — that crawls out of the sleeping Veshnyakov’s mouth at night to feed.

Now Tatiana must decide whether to study the creature for science, or let Veshnyakov know the truth about what’s living inside him.

Director Egor Abramenko doesn’t shy away from his influences, everything from “Alien” to “The Thing,” as he constructs scary special-effects set pieces as Tatiana is drawn ever deeper into the mystery of this alien creature and the humans who want to exploit it. Abramenko and screenwriters Oleg Malovichko and Andrei Zolotarev modulate the tension well, building up the suspense and gore on parallel tracks toward a bloody satisfying ending.

What carries “Sputnik” is the central performance by Akinshina. It’s been nearly two decades since Akinshina, as a teen actress, wowed international audiences in Lucas Moodysson’s gut-wrenching sex-trafficking drama “Lilya-4-Ever.” Now as an adult, her talent is undiminished, and her mix of steely determination and medical compassion become the key to unlocking this compelling thriller.

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‘Sputnik’

★★★

Opening Friday, August 14, at the Megaplex Theatres, and available as a video-on-demand rental on most streaming platforms. Not rated, but probably R for violence and gore. Running time: 114 minutes; in Russian, with subtitles.

Review: 'Spree' is a candy-colored but disgustingly sour slasher movie that's also a weak satire of social media

It’s hard to think of a movie that has such cynical disdain for everything it touches — its message, its cast, its audience — than what director Eugene Kotlyarenko brings to “Spree,” a putrid slasher movie told from the viewpoint of its cheerily and boringly psychotic killer.

Joe Keery, who’s so charming as the reluctant babysitter Steve Harrington on “Stranger Things,” stars here as Kurt Kunkle, a Los Angeles rideshare driver and would-be internet influencer. If only he could get the views on his live-streamed evening on the road above the single digits. He’s decked out his car with cameras all over to capture the action, and aims to enlist Bobby (Joshua Ovalle), a teen web phenom that Kurt used to babysit, to drive up his “likes.”

As Kurt explains in his stream-of-conscious rambling to the camera, he plans to have the most epic ride-sharing day ever. He’s got his complimentary water bottles ready, his car decked out with colorful lights, and intends to break records for most rides on the Spree service in a single day.

What soon become apparent is that Kurt isn’t going to get all his passengers to their destinations. The water bottles are poisoned, and if that doesn’t work, he has other, bloodier ways to dispatch the people he picks up.

Kotlyarenko and his co-writer Gene McHugh stack the deck for Kurt. His first passenger (Linas Phillips) is a white supremacist. Once he’s gone, Kurt picks up a rude real-estate agent (Jessalyn Gilsig), and then a sexist blowhard (John DeLuca). The first “normal” person Kurt has in his car is Jessie Adams (former “Saturday Night Live” performer Sasheer Zamata), a stand-up comic and web celebrity — whom Kurt tries and fails to impress with his own internet ambitions.

The story devolves from there, with Kotlyarenko setting up one gruesome murder after another, laden with Kurt’s annoyingly chipper banter and the constant feed of web commenters either egging Kurt on or doubting the bloodshed is real. There’s a message in here somewhere, about the dehumanizing effects of web culture, where being “liked” is more important than being a decent human being — but Kotylarenko buries the moral in self-consciously flashy editing and a during-the-credits epilogue that unfairly turns the filmmaking process and the audience into accessories. 

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‘Spree’

★

Opening Friday, August 14, at the Megaplex Theatres, and available as a video-on-demand rental on most streaming platforms. Not rated, but probably R for extreme violence and gore, and language. Running time: 93 minutes.

Review: 'Represent' profiles three women running for office, spotlighting the people part of politics

The documentary “Represent” is a friendly reminder, one we need now more than ever, that politics is supposed to be about people — the ones running for office, and the ones who vote for them.

Filmmaker Hillary Bachelder — who directed, shot and edited this PBS-backed documentary — follows the fortunes of three women running for office in the Midwest in 2017 and 2018. They are:

 • Myya Jones, a 22-year-old Black activist who in 2017 started a long-shot campaign to be mayor of Detroit, with the goal of shifting city funds to poverty-stricken African American neighborhoods.

 • Julie Cho, a Korean immigrant in Evanston, Ill., running for her local Illinois state house seat, as a Republican in a solidly Democratic district, on a platform against gerrymandering.

 • Bryn Bird, a progressive policy wonk and produce farmer in rural Ohio, running against the conservative establishment to fill one of the three seats on the Granville Township Board of Trustees.

Bachelder doesn’t spend too much time on the candidates’ policy stances, Instead following the candidates as they try to connect with the people they hope will vote for them. There’s a lot of pounding the pavement, knocking on doors and shaking hands (in the pre-COVID days). There are also living-room fund-raisers, and state party conventions where they try to stand out in a crowd.

Bachelder’s approach is gentle and even-handed, avoiding the vitriol of internet trolls and national party squabbles. Much of the backlash these three women feel is of the quieter variety, whether it’s Bird coming to understand the old-boy network in her town or Jones trying to cut through the chatter of the state convention. Cho faces the loneliest road in some ways, rejected in crowds when she says she’s a Republican while also being abandoned by her state’s GOP apparatus. 

Like any good documentarian, Bachelder shows us the people behind the process, and lets us get to know and like them. By the end of “Represent,” these women may not have earned your vote, but they will have earned your respect.

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‘Represent’

★★★

Available Friday, August 14, in the Salt Lake Film Society’s “virtual cinema.” Not rated, but probably PG for mature themes. Running time: 93 minutes.