Review: 'The Lost City' delivers forgettable fun, but stars Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum are charming together

There was a time when a movie like “The Lost City” would arrive, promising good-looking movie stars doing silly things through a wafer-thin plot, and we’d all enjoy ourselves and forget about the experience by the time we got back to our car.

“The Lost City” delivers that same kind of fun, forgettable moviegoing that we used to do — and if that’s not a sign that we’re returning to “normal,” I don’t know what is.

The pretty stars here are Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum — and let’s hear it for a movie that runs the 16-year age gap between its stars in the not-usual direction. Bullock plays Loretta Sage, a former archaeologist turned romance novelist, who hides out in her house to avoid dealing with the world or her widowhood, now going on five years. Tatum plays Alan, the male model who graces the covers of Loretta’s books, who’s really into the role of Loretta’s hero, Dash.

Loretta and Alan don’t get along — though it’s more accurate to say that Loretta doesn’t like Alan; his feelings for her are rather more complicated. So Alan becomes determined to rescue Loretta when the book tour for her latest novel, “The Lost City of D,” is interrupted by a crazed billionaire (Daniel Radcliffe) who kidnaps her when she’s wearing a body-hugging sequined magenta jumpsuit that makes her look like a 5-foot-7 bike reflector.

The billionaire — whose name, Abigail Fairfax, is just one of the things for which he’s overcompensating — believes Loretta, because of the archaeological knowledge she embeds in her romances, has the key to discovering the real “Lost City,” on a tropical Atlantic island.

Alan’s plan to rescue Loretta centers on getting her publisher, Beth (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), to hire a savvy tracker, Jack (Brad Pitt), to infiltrate the island and save Loretta. Alan can’t help but tag along, though, which becomes important when — for reasons I don’t want to spoil — the rescue falls on Alan to complete.

The tag-teamed script boasts five credited writers — the last two being the directors, brothers Adam and Aaron Nee — and is a carefree mishmash of “Indiana Jones” adventure and romantic comedy squabbling. It’s that banter, between Bullock’s flinty Loretta and Tatum’s eager-to-please Alan that provides most of the movie’s entertainment value, though a word of praise for Radcliffe’s petulant villain and Randolph’s scene-stealing as Beth, traversing the Atlantic in pursuit of her star author.

“The Lost City” isn’t a big movie, even with its big stars. It’s out to provide audiences with an undemanding good time. It’s a modest goal, but it’s one the movie reaches.

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‘The Lost City’

★★★

Opens Friday, March 25, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for violence and some bloody images, suggestive material, partial nudity and language. Running time: 112 minutes.

Review: 'Infinite Storm' needs more than Naomi Watts' performance against the elements

The drama “Infinite Storm” gives Naomi Watts the one-against-the-wild showcase that Robert Redford had in “All Is Lost” and Emile Hirsch had in “Into the Wild” — but here, it’s not quite enough to fill the bill.

Watts plays a real-life person, Pam Bales, an experienced hiker and climber who one day, in October 2010, went on a hike up her local peak, Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. Her friend (Denis O’Hare) back at the diner in town warns her of the storm the weather service has predicted is coming, and Pam says she’ll be careful and head back well before the storm hits. Pam’s a veteran of the local search-and-rescue team, so she’s confident she’ll come back down safely.

At the trailhead, Pam notices a car with no apparent owner. She starts her hike, and after a while, the snow and the wind turn harsh. That’s when she seeks sneaker prints in the snow, leading to a guy (Billy Howle) who’s unresponsive and improperly dressed for the surroundings and the weather. He’s barely conscious, and unable to give his name — so Pam calls him John.

The bulk of first-time writer Joshua Rollins’ script involves Pam gutting out a way to get herself and John down from that mountain, through howling winds and freezing temperatures. There’s also a backstory, with flashbacks of Pam playing with her two daughters — who, notably, are nowhere to be seen in the non-flashback scenes.

Polish-born director Malgorzata Szumowska does her best work guiding Watts through the physically grueling performance, braving the elements in New Hampshire (or, really Slovenia, where the movie was filmed). Watts gives her all, physically and psychologically, in depicting Bales’ inner struggles and her grit as she wills herself into saving this stranger from the mountain.

Where “Infinite Storm” falls short are in Szumowska’s and Rollins’ efforts to try to retrofit a larger life lesson onto this simple survival story. It doesn’t help Rollins that Hoyle’s character is a cipher, a blank slate onto which Rollins — and, apparently, Bales — could write whatever narrative they needed to make it home. 

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‘Infinite Storm’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 25, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for some language and brief nudity. Running time: 104 minutes.

Review: 'Compartment No. 6' is a long, cold train ride through Russia, with two engaging traveling companions

Let’s tackle the big Russian elephant in the room first: I’m not sure now is the right time, what with Vladimir Putin sending the Russian army to invade a sovereign democracy, for a movie where a gruff-but-sensitive Russian laborer is one of the main protagonists.

But those are the cards dealt to us in “Compartment No. 6,” last year’s Grand Prix winner (second place) at the Cannes Film Festival, a Russo-Finnish drama about warming hearts in a cold place.

The titular compartment is shared by two passengers on a train from Moscow to the far-north city of Murmansk. Laura (Seidi Haarla) is wide-eyed student from Finland, in Russia to learn the language and curious to see Murmansk’s famous petroglyphs. Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov) is a hard-drinking Russian construction worker, headed to Murmansk because there are jobs there.

As the trip starts, Laura pines for Irina (Diner Drukarova), a Moscow intellectual with whom Laura was romantically involved — and who was supposed to accompany her on this train ride. Soon after they part, though, Laura learns a hard truth in a single phone call.

Laura and Ljoha take an immediate dislike to each other. She finds him boorish and sexist, and possibly threatening. He finds her standoffish, more interested in looking at her video camera than interacting with real people, like him.

As the train ride goes on, though, they start to see things in each other that are more appealing. That makes it sound like “Compartment No. 6” is a cut-and-dried romance, and it’s not — because Haarla and Borisov bring some complex shades to the characters, and Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen (who co-wrote the screenplay with Andrew Feldmanis, adapting a novel by Rosa Liksom) provides the room during this long train ride to let them explore those shades and take the story down tracks one doesn’t expect.

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‘Compartment No. 6’

★★★

Opens Friday, March 25, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas. Rated R for language and some sexual references. Running time: 107 minutes; in Finnish and Russian, with subtitles.

Review: 'Deep Water' is an unhinged erotic thriller where Ben Affleck lurks in fascinating ways

The overheated erotic thriller “Deep Water” confirms something that’s been in the back of my mind for awhile: Ben Affleck is a really good actor who gives some truly weird performances — and his work here is one of the stranger ones.

Affleck stars as Vic Van Allen, a tech genius who’s retired off the obscene wealth he made designing a guidance system for military drones. He spends most of his time cycling through his well-to-do town and the nearby woods, editing a vanity literary magazine, raising snails in his garage, and keeping an eye on his wife, Melinda (Ana de Armas).

What does Melinda do? Nearly every younger man who comes within flirting distance. This often happens at neighborhood parties, in full view of all of the Val Allens’ friends — and of Vic himself. Vic’s friends (Lil Rey Howery and Dash Mihok) tell Vic, for his own good, that they feel embarrassed for him watching Melinda cavorting with other guys.

Vic and Melinda, it appears, have an arrangement in which she can fool around with other guys, as long as she doesn’t abandon Vic and their six-year-old daughter, Trixie (Grace Jenkins). There are limits, though — as one young beau, Joel (Brendan C. Miller) discovers when Vic mentions a friend of Melinda’s who went missing. Vic tells Joel that he murdered this friend — a story that family friends read as a twisted joke, but Joel takes seriously enough to steer clear of Melinda.

Someone else takes the joke seriously. That’s Don Wilson (Tracy Letts), a newcomer to town, a TV writer who fancies himself a detective novelist. Don starts piecing things together — especially after a different guy (Jacob Elordi) drowns at a pool party, when Vic was the last guy to see him alive.

Director Adrian Lyne used to make his bones with sexually charged thrillers like this — his deep resume includes “Fatal Attraction,” “Indecent Proposal” and 2002’s “Unfaithful,” the last movie he made for 20 years, until now. Lyne’s fastball isn’t what it used to be, but he still knows how to handle the curve, or rather curves, as he captures de Armas (“Knives Out”) as a character with few qualms about getting naked in front of her seemingly unfeeling husband. Lyne also generates some erotic frisson in the scenes between Affleck and de Armas (this was filmed back when the two were dating), whether they’re having sex or avoiding it.

In adapting the novel by Patricia HIghsmith (“The Talented Mr. Ripley”), screenwriters Zach Helm (“Stranger than Fiction”) and Sam Levinson (who created HBO’s “Euphoria”) achieve a certain twisted tension, as Lyne follows Affleck’s Vic through his daily routine — leaving viewers to guess what’s sinister and what’s just mundane. Affleck’s passive facial expressions make the mystery even more inscrutable.

It’s a shame, after all the work at building this strange tension, that the last 10 minutes are bungled in almost comical fashion. What was intensely watchable, through Affleck’s brooding and de Armas’ raw sexuality, becomes unmissable as an example of a movie where the wheels come off in the final chapter.

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‘Deep Water’

★★★

Starts streaming Friday, March 18, 2022, on Hulu. Rated R for sexual content, nudity, language and some violence. Running time: 116 minutes.

Review: Ti West's 'X' pokes fun at porn cliches and cinema pretense, before settling into down-and-dirty horror mode

Writer-director Ti West’s “X” is a horror flick that deftly walks the line between art and exploitation, while commenting on how that line gets drawn.

The bloody prologue, where a Texas sheriff (James Gaylyn) surveys a bloodbath in a remote farmhouse, promises the carnage to come. But after that, West takes nearly an hour setting up the premise: A group of people in 1979 leave Houston for the farm, where they plan to make a porno film that will earn as much money as “Debbie Does Dallas” — if the hopes of its producer, Wayne (Martin Henderson), come true. 

Wayne’s young, coke-snorting girlfriend, Maxine (Mia Goth), has hopes of becoming a star by performing for the camera. The other stars of the film are the more experienced Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) and the self-confident Jackson (Scott Mescudi, aka Kid Cudi). In the back of the van are R.J. (Owen Campbell), the film student Wayne has hired to direct his porno, and Lorraine (Jenna Ortega), R.J.’s mousy girlfriend and boom operator.

The farm owner, Howard (Stephen Ure) — after first greeting Wayne with a raised shotgun — lets the visitors rent out a boarding house on his property. But Howard warns Wayne to stay away from the farmhouse, and away from his fragile wife, Pearl.

As the crew gets to work on their porno film, West makes some not-so-subtle commentary about the creative spirit — with R.J. spouting pretentious nonsense about making not just porn but “independent cinema.” (West also stages a skinny-dipping scene for Goth’s Maxine, which introduces what only can be called “Chekhov’s alligator.”) 

But making an artful horror movie is like making an avant-garde porno film: Whatever creative touches you want to include in it, ultimately the filmmaker has to show the people what they came to see. West (“The Innkeepers”) does deliver those gory, blood-drenched scenes, which show a mastery of visual effects and a love for the classics, from “Friday the 13th” to “Psycho.” If deep-red horror is your taste, “X” will hit the spot.

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‘X’

★★★

Opens Friday, March 18, 2022, in theaters. Rated R for strong bloody violence and gore, strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use, and language. Running time: 105 minutes. 

Review: 'Alice' does an impressive flip from exploitation to blaxploitation, bolstered by Keke Palmer's fierce performance

This is a (mostly) spoiler-free review her for writer-director Krystin Ver Linden’s debut feature, “Alice” — which is tricky, because how much one grooves to the movie depends on how one reacts to what happens at the 39-minute mark.

Ver Linden starts this “inspired by true events” drama with the title character, played by Keke Palmer, in a slave-quarters wedding to Joseph (Gaius Charles), on a Georgia plantation in an unnamed year sometime before the Civil War. The preacher recites their vows carefully: “… in sickness and in health, until distance do you part.” The clear message is that their choice to marry is severely limited by their circumstance as enslaved people.

The plantation owner, Paul Bennett (played by Jonny Lee Miller), treats the Black population on this plantation cruelly. In one moment, he whips Joseph savagely for a seemingly minor violation of the rules — and, later, when Joseph fights Bennett’s overseer, Aaron (Craig Stark), and then tries to escape, he’s brought back almost dead. That spurs Alice’s decision to try to make a break for freedom, too.

That gets us to that 39-minute mark. What happens after? I’ll say this much: Common appears as a major character, and the look of the final hour owes less to strict historical accuracy and more to blaxploitation movies and, specifically, Pam Grier.

I’ll also say that Ver Linden’s film packs a wallop, with intense visuals and a dynamic soundtrack (to which Common contributed). And I’ll say that Palmer gives a fierce and emotionally grounded performance as Alice, whose helplessness and fear transforms into rage and empowerment.

And that event at the 39-minute mark of “Alice”? People are going either love it or hate it. I loved it, and was impressed with Ver Linden’s talent for keeping audiences on their toes.

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‘Alice’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 18, in theaters. Rated R for some violence and language. Running time: 100 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 23, when the movie premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: Mark Rylance gives a tight performance in 'The Outfit,' a thriller that feels too much like a stage play

Learning that “The Outfit” is an original screenplay and not based on a stage play is at first surprising and ultimately disappointing — because a viewer might be more forgiving of the movie’s contrivances if one were experiencing it with live actors.

The story takes place in Chicago, 1956, all in one place: The tailoring shop of Leonard Bunting (played by the great British actor Mark Rylance). We don’t know much about Bunting at first — just that he came to Chicago from Britain, where he once worked on the famed Savile Row. His only regular companionship is his receptionist, Mable (Zoey Deutch).

Like any businessman in Chicago in this era, Bunting must make peace with the Mob. He does this by allowing mobsters to put a dropbox in the back of his shop, where two young gangsters — 

Richie (Dylan O’Brien) and Francis (Johnny Flynn) — pick up their daily payments. Richie, we’re told, is the son of the local mob boss, and he’s dating Mable.

One night, while Bunting is puttering away, Richie and Francis barge into the store in a panic. Richie has a bullet in his abdomen, and Francis has a pistol pointed at Bunting, demanding he help stitch Richie up. Francis also finds something important in the dropbox: A package from “the outfit,” the shadowy network of underworld organizations around the country. Francis, who wants to ingratiate himself to Richie’s father, Roy (Simon Russell Beale) — and delivering that package would be his ticket to getting between Roy and Richie.

Bunting finds himself caught in the middle of these gangland machinations. Both Francis and Roy are concerned about their crosstown enemies, the LaFontaines — and the possibility of a rat within their midst.

All of this should be a scissor-sharp thriller, and a great showcase for Rylance to play a complex character trying to puzzle out his path to surviving the night. But first-time director Graham Moore, who won an Oscar for his adapted screenplay of “The Imitation Game,” doesn’t have the confidence to pull off that kind of tense, nail-biting suspense.

Certainly Moore and co-writer Jonathan McClain get a lot out of their single setting, though not enough to shake the feeling that this is a barely adapted stage production. Unfortunately, those stagy limitations extend to some of the performances, particularly from British actors Flynn and especially Beale, a rightly acclaimed theater actor. On a West End stage, a live audience would forgive those forced Chicago accents, and would share the claustrophobic tension within Bunting’s shop. On film, “The Outfit” is a threadbare garment that doesn’t hold up in the wash.

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‘The Outfit’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 18, 2022, in theaters. Rated R for some bloody violence, and language throughout. Running time: 105 minutes.

Review: In 'Master,' horror meets social commentary, as microaggressions build along with the tension

Microaggressions gradually turn macro in “Master,” which melds elements of horror thriller and social commentary about subtle and not-so-subtle racism on a prestigious college campus.

At Ancaster College, Gail Bishop (Regina Hall) has just taken the position of house master (an unfortunate title that writer-director Mariama Diallo says only recently was altered at her alma mater, Yale) for one of the dormitories — the first Black woman to hold the post. Moving into this dorm is Jasmine Moore (Zoe Renee), a Black freshman from Tacoma who is eager to get good grades and fit in with the mostly white student body, including her roommate Amelia (Talia Ryder).

Jasmine and Amelia have been assigned to what upperclassmen refer to ominously as “The Room.” Room 302, we’re told, is where young women have either jumped out the window or hanged themselves — always at 3:33 a.m. on December 4. That date is significant, as it’s when a woman in the town, Margaret Millet, was hanged as a witch in the 1700’s.

Jasmine starts seeing things, and hearing things, that make her think the legend of the witch has some validity. Away from home and struggling in school and socially, Jasmine feels increasingly isolated — a problem exacerbated when she challenged a grade given by her literature professor, Liv Beckman (Amber Gray). Prof. Beckman, who is Black and one of Gail’s only friends on campus, has her own problems, as she’s up for tenure and battling the entrenched all-white faculty (led by Talia Balsam).

Diallo sets up her film beautifully, as the three Black women — Gail, Jasmine and Liv — try to deflect the small instances of insensitivity dealt to them by the college’s predominantly white populace. As those microaggressions grow larger, and for Jasmine and Gail take on a menacing supernatural element, Diallo builds the tension to a peak. But that peak hits a bit early, and the finale stumbles a bit as subtext becomes the text.

Renee is a welcome discovery, hitting every step perfectly in Jasmine’s descent into possible madness. Gray (who appeared on Barry Jenkins’ “The Underground Railroad”) brings a spiky edge as Liv challenges the college’s status quo. And Hall (“The Hate U Give,” “Girls Trip”) gives a powerful, yet neatly internalized, performance as a woman whose battles haven’t produced the victory she sought. That trio of performances gives “Master” the emotional punch that stays with viewers well after the credits roll.

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‘Master’

★★★

Opens Friday, March 18, in theaters, and streaming on Prime. Rated R for language and some drug use.  Running time: 102 minutes.