Review: 'Senior Moment' is a painfully inept rom-com for the AARP crowd

They say you should never meet your heroes — but what they don’t warn you about is not to watch your heroes grow into their 80s and make pathetically unwatchable movies, as William Shatner does in the geriatric comedy “Senior Moment.”

Shatner, who was 86 when he filmed this (he turned 90 this week), plays Victor Martin, a retired NASA test pilot living in Palm Springs, where he dotes on his vintage Porsche convertible. Hanging out with his best friend, Sal Spinelli (Christopher Lloyd), Victor gets goaded into drag racing a guy, Pablo Torres (Carlos Miranda), in his low-rider. Victor gets caught, and thanks to a spiteful DA (Beth Littleford), Victor gets his driver’s license suspended and his Porsche impounded.

Surrendering to the ignominy of public transit, Victor has a fortuitous encounter with Caroline Summers (Jean Smart), a cafe owner and star baker. Victor gives up his usual pursuit of bikini-clad women a quarter his age (represented here by “30 Rock’s” Katrina Bowden) to court Caroline, though he becomes jealous when she also spends time with Diego Lozana (Esai Morales), a brooding painter.

It should be a treat to see these veteran actors putting each other through their paces — and Smart, as always, is delightful no matter what. But the script, by Kurt Brungardt and Christopher Momenee, is loaded with jokes that are older than anyone on screen. And director Giorgio Serafini handles them with all the subtlety of a train wreck.

Shatner frequently sacrifices his dignity in an attempt to get laughs, and it’s all the more sad that he does so in vain. “Senior Moment” is one movie that, if Shatner has any luck on his side, people will forget.

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‘Senior Moment’

★

Opens Friday, March 26, in theaters where open. Not rated, but probably PG-13 for sexual content and some language. Running time: 92 minutes.

Review: 'Zack Snyder's Justice League' has some improvements over the 2017 version, but also a lot of padding in its four hours

After watching “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” the four-hour behemoth re-edit of the 2017 theatrical cut, I came away with one overarching thought: This is the DVD “special edition” version of a movie we’re never going to see.

Every movie fan knows the backstory: Snyder, after directing “Man of Steel” and ‘Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” was into post-production on DC Comics’ “Justice League” back in 2017, when he suddenly stepped away from the film for family reasons. (His daughter, Autumn, died by suicide in March 2017, at age 20. This new film is dedicated to her.) Warner Bros. brought in Joss Whedon, who had directed two “Avengers” movies and knows superhero mash-ups better than most anyone, to bring “Justice League” in for a landing. 

Ever since, lovers of Snyder’s work wouldn’t shut up about it. These fans — constant reminders that the word “fan” is short for “fanatic” — argued that Warner Bros. was suppressing Snyder’s version of the movie, the so-called “Snyder cut,” and campaigned loudly to get the company to release that version. Finally, Warner Bros. gave Snyder the opportunity to re-edit his footage into this version, which debuted on the HBO Max streaming service this week.

What do viewers get after four hours? They get exactly what the title promises, Snyder’s take on “Justice League,” for good and ill.

First, a brief synopsis. Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), the billionaire who works nights as Batman, has teamed from Diana Prince (Gal Gadot), the Amazon princess who goes by Wonder Woman, that a threat is coming from beyond this dimension: A monster named Steppenwolf (voiced by Ciaran Hinds), who is bent on finding three magic boxes that, when brought together, will reshape the world — killing all humanity in the process.

Bruce and Diana look for others with super abilities to join the fight. They find three: Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa), the ocean-friendly hero known as Aquaman; Barry Allen (Ezra Miller), a nerdy teen with super speed, aka The Flash; and Victor Stone (Ray Parker), a college football phenom who’s now part machine, who’s called Cyborg. After a first encounter with Steppenwolf, which they barely survive, Bruce argues they must take desperate measures to add to their team, by resurrecting the recently deceased Superman (Henry Cavill).

This recap describes both the Whedon and Snyder versions. So the question becomes: Did Snyder tell the story better than Whedon?

The answer is yes, in part because he had four hours and two minutes — exactly twice the run-time of Whedon’s version — to lay everything out. One of the main problems with Whedon’s “Justice League” is that every moment seemed rushed, as if every scene existed to set up the next one, rather than having any time to breathe and be in the moment.

Snyder now has time to tell his version of the story, and he uses all of it. Where he deploys it best is framing the backstory for Cyborg, as Victor grapples with his new existence as a half-man, half-machine, and deals with his strained relationship with his father, Dr. Silas Stone (Joe Morton), the scientist who developed the technology that saved and cursed his son.

Other additions are cool, but extraneous. Snyder includes an extended action sequence where Barry’s The Flash saves the life of Iris West (Kiersey Clemons) — a future love interest who reportedly will appear in a stand-alone “The Flash” movie — that is fun to watch but doesn’t move the story. The expanded flashbacks of ancient Amazons, Atlanteans and humans joining forces to defeat Steppenwolf — who’s more spiky now, thanks to reworked CGI — are big, blood-spurting battles that serve mostly to remind everyone, in case they’ve forgotten, that Snyder also directed “300.” (Those battle scenes also are bloody enough to give Snyder’s “Justice League” an R rating.)

Then there are scenes that feel like padding. There is one scene that consists of Alfred (Jeremy Irons), Bruce Wayne’s stalwart butler, telling Diana the proper way to make tea. And there is a head-scratching epilogue, involving a post-apocalyptic alternative universe that introduces Jared Leto’s Joker to the mix. And there are at least two DC characters introduced here — one good, one bad —  primed for a sequel that nobody at Warner Bros. has said will ever happen.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Snyder fans start demanding their sequel, too. After all, they’re on a roll. These fans complained, tweeted out conspiracy hashtags and generally poisoned the DC fandom to get their precious “Snyder cut,” and now they have it. Their insufferable whining was rewarded, so why wouldn’t they go double or nothing?

But after watching all four hours of “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” from DC logo to the inevitable cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” over the closing credits, I pictured a scene from another alternate reality. In this parallel universe, Snyder was able to finish “Justice League” back in 2017, and he delivers this four-hour cut to Warner Bros. executives. There is no doubt in my mind that the “suits” would say to Snyder: “That’s great, Zack — but what are you going to cut to get this baby down to a two-hour theatrical window and a PG-13?” That’s the “Snyder cut” I’d be curious to see.

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‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’

★★1/2

Available for streaming on HBO Max. Rated R for violence and some language. Running time: 242 minutes.

Review: In 'The Courier,' Benedict Cumberbatch brings the heat to a tense Cold War spy thriller

Cold War intrigue and some old-fashioned heroism come into play in “The Courier,” which casts Benedict Cumberbatch as an unlikely spy infiltrating the Soviet Union.

Greville Wynne, the real-life figure Cumberbatch portrays here, isn’t a spy at all. He’s an English businessman, making deals on the golf course and then heading home to his wife, Sheila (Jessie Buckley), and their son. So it’s a surprise when, in 1960, he’s approached by an American CIA operative (Rachel Brosnahan) and her MI6 counterpart (Angus Wright) with a request: Befriend a Soviet industry official, Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze), who has made surreptitious contact with the American embassy.

Wynne meets Penkovsky in Moscow, and they strike up an easy friendship. Penkovsky — whose nickname is “Ironbark” (which was this movie’s title when it premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival) — takes Wynne to see the Bolshoi, and Wynne reciprocates with a show on the West End when Penkovsky and a trade delegation visit London. On subsequent trips to Moscow, Wynne receives deliveries of microfilm from Penkovsky — but he’s been told, for his own safety, not to inquire about the information contained on that film. The less Wynne knows, the CIA and MI6 minders say, the more likely he’ll survive if he’s captured.

Penkovsky believes that Nikita Khrushchev, the new leader of the USSR, is to impetuous and erratic — and is looking for a war with the West, if he can start some provocation to rile up the Americans. Penkovsky finds information about a likely plan to turn the Cold War into something hotter: Putting Soviet missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles off the Florida coast.

It’s a fascinating story, and screenwriter Tom O’Connor (“The Hitman’s Bodyguard”) finds a structure — following both Cumberbatch’s Wynne and Ninidze’s Penkovsky on parallel tracks, each wrestling with their own ethical dilemmas as they come to trust each other in this deadly game.

Director Dominic Cooke (“On Chesil Beach”) deftly draws out the tension in O’Connor’s script, and dives into strong emotions when the situation changes dramatically in the final half hour. Cooke has clearly studied “The Third Man” and John LeCarré’s spy novels, and creates an oppressive atmosphere filled with deep shadows from where suspicious eyes may be watching.

Tthe main attraction, though, is Cumberbatch, as he portrays Wynne’s evolution from hapless businessman to resolute freedom fighter. Thanks to Cumberbatch’s performance, “The Courier” delivers as a tense, thoughtful spy drama.

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‘The Courier’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 19, in theaters where open. Rated PG-13 for violence, partial nudity, brief strong language, and smoking throughout. Running time: 112 minutes.

Review: Hard-charging documentary 'Wojnarowicz' is a portrait of an artist at war with AIDS, his political enemies, and his personal demons.

The artist David Wojnarowicz once painted a self-portrait in which he is shown with flames emanating from one side of his body — which is a perfect symbol for the brief, combustible life chronicled in Chris McKim’s documentary “Wojnarowicz.”

Wojnarowicz (pronounced “VOY-nah-ROH-vitch”) was one of the leading voices of the East Village art scene in the early 1980s. He was a multimedia artist, best known for creating giant canvas collages of confrontational images. He also made avant-garde art films, sometimes re-enacting the abuse his alcoholic father in Ohio used to heap on him. He also documented his life on film and in audio diaries, and McKim digs through both to find the nuggets he runs here.

He also took part in a punk band, called 3 Teens Kill 4, made up of friends who hung out at the Danceteria. The place became known as a refuge for future stars; the graffiti artist Keith Haring was a busboy, and a young dancer who went by one name — Madonna — would hang out there. When the place was raided one night, Wojnarowicz and his bandmates gave their first performance at a benefit for a legal defense fund — unnecessary, as one person in the film points out, because Mob-connected lawyers had bailed them all out.

McKim explores Wojnarowicz’ long and intense friendship with the photographer Peter Hujar, 20 years his senior, who became mentor and confidant. One art critic interviewed in the film calls it the most intense relationship between two artists since Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin started hanging out. When Hujar, 53, died of complications from HIV, on Thanksgiving Day of 1987, Wojnarowicz was devastated. Within a year, Wojnarowicz, too, was diagnosed with HIV.

The AIDS epidemic fueled Wojnarowicz’ rage, his art and his activism. He wrote an essay for “Witnesses,” an exhibition curated by Nan Goldin, whose political content (he called out Sen. Jesse Helms and New York’s Cardinal O’Connor for their anti-gay rhetoric) cause the National Endowment for the Arts to pull and then restore funding of the show. He marched with ACT UP, famously showing up at a protest of the Food & Drug Administration wearing a leather jacket with this message on his back: “If I die of AIDS, forget burial — just drop my body on the steps of the FDA.”

McKim hits the viewer with a barrage of images, most of them created by Wojnarowicz — including self-made videos, his art films, and pictures of his multimedia canvases. The artist’s own voice is heard through his audio journals, and the score is all taken from recordings of his band, 3 Teens Kill 4. 

Friends and acquaintances (the best known name is writer and unofficial New York historian Fran Leibowitz) are heard in interview snippets, but McKim smartly avoids the talking-heads documentary cliches, keeping our eyes locked on Wojnarowicz’ hard-hitting visuals.

McKim makes sure we connect the dots between Wojnarowicz’s time and ours. Seeing Donald Trump both as a real estate hustler then or an incompetent, hate-fueled president is one thing. So is hearing Ronald Reagan on the stump in the ‘80s, promising to “make America great again.” What’s most powerful, though, is seeing a virus wreak havoc on a population, and seeing fearsome political activism and thought-provoking art result from it.

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‘Wojnarowicz’

★★★1/2

Available starting Friday, March 19, to stream on virtual cinemas, including SLFS@Home. Not rated, but probably NC-17 for explicit sexual content. Running time: 105 minutes.

Review: 'Long Weekend' imperfectly turns romantic-comedy expectations on their heads

You would think there aren’t any surprises left in romantic comedies — and then an offbeat little gem called “Long Weekend” shows up to spring not one but two twists on the viewer.

Bart (Finn Wittrock) is a down-and-out writer in Los Angeles, a guy who has dealt with a lot in the last year — including, we are told in installments, that his fiancée dumped him, he can’t get his work published, and he has to move out of his apartment and into the garage of his best friend Doug (Damon Wayans Jr.). There’s something else in Bart’s recent past that’s casting its shadow, but that won’t be revealed for awhile.

When Bart meets Vienna (played by Zoe Chao), who’s visiting Los Angeles, she seems too good to be true. In fact, while they’re having drinks at a neighborhood bar and checking out the jukebox, Bart asks Vienna if she’s one of those “manic pixie dream girl” characters too many of his fellow writers put in movies like this. She says she’s not, but what Vienna ultimately does say sounds equally far-fetched to Bart and to the viewer. (No, I’m not going to tell you what her story is. That’s for you to find out.)

That’s not the only twist that writer-director Steve Basilone, who has worked on such sitcoms as “Community” and “The Goldbergs,” unfurls before the end credits. Either you’re on board with those shifts or you’re not — and your feelings toward the leads will determine on which side of that fence you land.

Wittrock, an impossibly handsome actor who’s had sizable roles in “American Horror Story” and “Ratched,” sells us on what a messed-up guy Bart is. But the best thing in “Long Weekend” is Chao (“Downhill,” “The High Note”), who brings an earthy vulnerability to what could have been a thankless role — but turns out to be the warmly glowing center of it all.

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‘Long Weekend’

★★★

Opens Friday, March 12, in theaters where open. Rated R for language throughout. Running time: 91 minutes.

Review: 'The Father' gives Anthony Hopkins a chance to shine, as a man dimmed by age

Movie lovers may sometimes take for granted the power of an actor like Anthony Hopkins — until a role like “The Father” comes along and the old lion, now 83, shows he can still roar.

What writer-director Florian Zeller, who adapted his own stage play, reveals about Hopkins’ character comes out in time-released doses. He lives in a well-decorated flat in London. He’s a retired engineer, though he likes to tell people he was a dancer. He gets daily visits from his daughter, Anne (Olivia Colman), who checks to make sure he’s taking care of himself.

Importantly, Anthony resists Anne’s efforts to bring in a caretaker or nurse to help Anthony get around. He’s run off the last couple of nurses, claiming they tried to steal his watch. The most recent applicant, Laura (Imogen Poots), bears a striking resemblance, he says, to his other daughter, Lucy — which prompts Anthony to complain that Lucy never comes to visit him any more.

Early on, Anne tells Anthony why she’s eager to find some live-in help: Anne has fallen in love with a man, and is planning to move to Paris to live with him. Anthony has his doubts about Anne’s plans — but, then again, he finds himself doubting a lot of things, like when he sees a man (Mark Gatiss) in his flat, claiming he lives there.

Much of “The Father” seems confined to Anthony’s flat, in keeping with the stage roots of Zeller’s story. As things unfold, Zeller hints at what’s going on, without revealing outright why the shifting of viewpoints and even a couple of at-first unfamiliar faces (played by the quite familiar Rufus Sewell and Olivia Williams) appear.

Zeller uses these differing views, employing the semi-surreal tricks of a stage production, to create a portrait of Anthony’s addled mind — an inside-looking-out depiction of dementia that most filmmakers wouldn’t dare to attempt.

It helps Zeller, immeasurably, to have Hopkins in his corner. Hopkins channels both the charm that Anthony still possesses and the frustration and anger as he feels everything important to him — particularly his mind and his dignity — slowly slipping away. Hopkins is electric here, playing off the always-brilliant Colman and his other solid castmates to create a tragic and indelible portrait of a man desperately clinging to some shred of his identity. 

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‘The Father’

★★★1/2

Opened February 26 in some theaters; opens Friday, March 12, at select Utah theaters. Rated PG-13 for some strong language, and thematic material. Runnng time: 98 minutes.

Review: The Russo brothers turn 'Cherry' into a depressing wallow through war, PTSD, heroin addiction and more bad times

“Cherry” is a movie with a lot on its plate — including poverty, war, PTSD, addiction and crime — and nothing consequential to say about any of it.

It’s the movie that directors Anthony and Joe Russo, after helming two of the five highest-grossing movies ever (“Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame”), made because they could without grappling with whether they should. It’s a visually flashy but emotionally hollow drama that goes nowhere, and at two hours and 21 minutes, takes a long time to get there.

Based on Nico Walker’s semi-autobiographical novel, “Cherry” is the story of a young man — called Cherry and played by our current Spider-Man, Tom Holland — who we meet while he’s in the middle of robbing a bank. He’s not so busy that he can’t take time to narrate the process of bank robbery, and continue to narrate how he got where he is.

The movie then flashes back a few years, to Cherry’s life in a dead-end Ohio town in 2002, taking odd jobs tending bar and working construction. He gets a glimmer of hope in his life when he takes some college classes, and meets a pretty student, Emily (Ciara Bravo). They fall in love, but when she talks about leaving Ohio to study in Montreal, Cherry responds by enlisting in the Army. Emily drops her college plans, and the two get married before he ships out to basic training.

After an extended interlude in boot camp that will make nobody forget “Full Metal Jacket,” Cherry lands in Iraq as a medic. He sees the horrors and futility of war, and returns home to Emily with PTSD — and, before long, they both become addicted to opioids, first Oxycontin and then heroin. Bank robbery, to pay off his supplier (Jack Reyonr), soon follows.

Working off a script by Angela Russo-Otstot (the directors’ sister, with a resumé mostly in TV) and Jessica Goldberg (who most recently wrote for the Hilary Swank vehicle “Away”), the Russos pour a lot of cinematic craft into Cherry’s hard-luck tale. The visual flourishes are abundant, particularly in the bloody combat sequences, but the movie is all style and little substance.

For all of the good work put in by Holland as the self-destructive main character, and Bravo’s efforts to bring some passion to an underdeveloped character, the Russos can’t make “Cherry” into more than a dreary and familiar wallow. 

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‘Cherry’

★★

Opens Friday, March 12, in some theaters, and streaming on AppleTV+. Rated R for graphic drug abuse, disturbing and violent images, pervasive language, and sexual content. Running time: 141 minutes.

Review: Strong cast of 'Boogie' makes its familiar coming-of-age story feel fresh and alive

Coming-of-age sports stories are a universal language, it seems — as evidenced by the energy generated in “Boogie,” a tough-minded drama that marks the feature directing debut of restaurateur and author Eddie Huang.

Huang is best known for his memoir “Fresh Off the Boat,” which was the basis for the ABC sitcom that ended its six-season run last year. “Boogie” covers some of the same territory, as it considers the life of a Taiwanese-American teen, Alfred “Boogie” Chin (played by newcomer Taylor Takahashi), and his immigrant parents — who have competing visions of their son’s road to success.

Boogie is a promising high school basketball player in Queens, New York, recently transferred to City Prep in hopes of drawing the attention of college and pro scouts who are eyeing the league’s top stars. At the top of that list is a superstar street-ball player, Monk (played by rapper Bashar “Pop Smoke” Jackson). 

Boogie’s father (Perry Yung), recently paroled, makes his money taking bets at street-ball games, and believes his son has the skills to make it to the NBA. Boogie’s mom (Pamelyn Chee) only wants to know whether Boogie can use his basketball talent to secure a college scholarship. Boogie often plays peacemaker in his parents’ screaming arguments, and it’s clear he’s been in the crossfire since he was very young. 

At City Prep, though, Boogie has a chance to escape his parents’ influence, even if it means bucking 5,000 years of Chinese tradition and family obligation. At school, he finds a coach (Domenick Lombardozzi) who won’t tolerate his selfish play, a teacher (Steve Coulter) who challenges him to speak up about “The Catcher in the Rye,” and a female athlete, Eleanor (Taylour Paige, most recently seen in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), who might give him a chance if he’d ever drop the tough-guy facade.

Huang infuses “Boogie” with commentary about assimilation into American culture, and the myth of the “model minority.” There’s also plenty of talk about the stereotypes Asian-American athletes face, and some sly insults hurled at some who’ve made it. (Fans of Jeremy Lin might take offense.)

As a coming-of-age story, Huang sticks to the familiar — even the built-in critique of Holden Caulfield’s self-absorption in “The Catcher in the Rye” feels formulaic in its irony, as if Huang is elbowing you in the ribs with his cleverness.

Where “Boogie” succeeds is in the performances, which are strong across the board. Even the smaller roles — like Jorge Lendeborg Jr. as Boogie’s wingman Richie, Mike Moh (who played Bruce Lee in “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”) as a ruthless talent agent, or Jackson (who was shot to death last year at age 20) as Boogie’s cold-blooded rival — pop with ferocity. 

Yung and Chee, as Boogie’s warring parents, lean into their arguments so powerfully it’s nearly uncomfortable to watch. Paige brings warmth and a healthy skepticism to what could have been a decorative girlfriend role. And Takahashi, in his first movie, is a true find — whose swagger and underlying insecurities provide “Boogie” with some genuine emotion within the standard underdog story.

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‘Boogie’

★★★

Opens Friday, March 5, in theaters where open. Rated R for language throughout including sexual references, and some drug use. Running time: 90 minutes; in English and in Taiwanese Mandarin with subtitles.