Review: 'Bullet Train' is a ridiculously fun ride, action-packed to the point of absurdity

Exciting, action-packed and just the other side of ridiculous, “Bullet Train” is a movie that rewards viewers for paying attention to its labyrinthine plot mechanics and not thinking too much about everything else.

The train is a super-fast vehicle headed from Tokyo to Kyoto, and it seems nearly everybody on board is a contract killer or otherwise bent on violence. In the middle of it all is a luckless gun for hire, given the code name Ladybug (played by Brad Pitt), who is told by his unseen handler that he’s got an easy job: Get on the train, pick up a particular briefcase, and get off the train. Simple, right?

Wrong. For starters, the guys overseeing the case — called Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) — have to deliver it to a shadowy mob boss called The White Death, along with the boss’s son (Logan Lerman). Then there’s The Prince (Joey King), a coldblooded assassin in a bubblegum-colored schoolgirl outfit, who’s manipulating a junior-level mobster (Andrew Koji) with a sage warrior father (Hiroyuki Sanada). Then there’s the Mexican killer, The Wolf (played by Benito A Martinez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny), who starts stabbing the second he lays eyes on Ladybug.

There’s a lot more happening, and more surprising faces, but I don’t want to reveal any spoilers. Besides, this is more than enough information to tide you over until you get to the theater. 

Blessed with a talented supporting cast — particularly Taylor-Johnson and Henry, who have a smart, spiky chemistry — Pitt gives a more casual performance than a bonkers action movie should have, but it works. It’s as if Pitt saw how much crazy was coming at him and decided the best way to counter was to ride it like a surfer, loose and laid back. (By the way, avoid the most recent trailers for the movie, which give away too much.)

Director David Leitch, who gave us “Atomic Blonde” and “Deadpool 2,” knows how to stage a dynamic fight scene in three dimensions, and some of the action sequences here explode with surprise. The script by Zak Olkewicz, adapting a Kôtarô Isaka novel, is a cleverly worked affair, a puzzle box of flashbacks and flash-forwards that reveals its secrets at all the proper times. It may all fall apart a day after viewing, but in the moment, “Bullet Train” is a fun ride.

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‘Bullet Train’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 5, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong and bloody violence, pervasive language, and brief sexuality. Running time: 126 minutes.

Review: 'Prey' is the coolest, most tension-filled movie in the 'Predator' franchise. Too bad it's not in theaters.

If you want proof of screenwriter William Goldman’s observation about Hollywood, that “nobody knows anything,” look no further than what Disney is doing to “Prey.”

The bloody science-fiction thriller, the fifth in the “Predator” franchise (seventh if you count the “Alien vs. Predator” crossovers), is hands-down the best of the lot — and probably would be luring a ton of fans into movie theaters. But Disney, which now controls 20th Century Studios (formerly Fox), decided not to bother with a theatrical release, and is releasing it directly on its streaming platform, Hulu.

Too bad, because director Dan Trachtenberg’s engrossing, thrilling action movie would play audiences like a calliope, a symphony of yelling, gasping, screaming and cheering,

The story is set in 1719 in the northern Great Plains, in a Comanche village where Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young woman, aims to prove she’s as good a hunter as any of the young men, including her brother, Taabe (Dakota Beavers). When a cougar is spotted near the village, Naru wants to join Taabe in the hunting party, and is mocked by the other young male warriors.

Naru comes face to face with the big cat, but ultimately it’s Taabe who kills it and drags it back to the village. While Taabe receives the praise of the village, and the mantle of war chief from their father (Julian Black Antelope), Naru is ignored when she asks an important question: What scared the cougar enough to make it change its pattern and come close to the village?

Trachtenberg (who directed the tension-filled “10 Cloverfield Lane”) shows us what scared the cougar: The same armor-wearing, invisibility-cloaked hunter-killer that gave Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers and Jesse Ventura a run for their money 35 years ago.

Naru, who becomes the center of the story, quickly understands the menace of this remorseless killer, but convincing the young men of her village is another challenge. She also comes across quicksand, French-Canadian fur trappers, and other obstacles before the inevitable showdown with the bloodthirsty alien.

Trachtenberg and screenwriter Patrick Aison, who share story credit, strike a deft balance between creating something new and referencing the previous films. It’s fascinating to see them adapt 300-year-old weapons to face the Predator’s laser-guided arsenal, and push Naru’s skills and strategy to the limit.

It certainly helps that Midthunder is fully committed to this demanding role, and has the chops to deliver. She gives Naru the grit and determination to make “Prey” the sort of movie you hope will spawn additional installments. Hopefully, in a movie theater next time.

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‘Prey’

★★★1/2

Starts streaming Friday, August 5, on Hulu. Rated R for strong bloody violence. Running time: 100 minutes.

Review: 'Luck,' even with John Lasseter involved, is a pale imitation of Pixar

The all-ages animated adventure “Luck” is being touted, quite loudly in some quarters, as Apple TV+’s first major foray into the territory long held by Pixar Animation Studios — with much attention to the return of Pixar’s and Disney’s former rainmaker, John Lasseter, as a producer, after an industry exile due to reports of toxic behavior.

That backstage intrigue may be fascinating to some, and it’s certainly more intriguing than the bland imitation Pixar movie that is the eye of the marketing department’s media storm.

The story centers on Sam Greenfield (voiced by Eva Noblezada), a preternaturally unlucky young woman whose life is filled with flat bicycle tires, workplace mishaps and toast always landing jelly side down. Her life, as the movie begins, has been spent in a foster home, which she is aging out of as she turns 18, with a long list of families who looked her over and decided not to adopt her.

But Sam remains a kind person, feeding her panini to a black cat, or encouraging young Hazel (voiced by Adeline Spoon), a younger denizen of the foster home, when it’s her turn to meet potential parents. When she finds a lucky penny, she’s determined to give it to Hazel — but before that happens, Sam loses the penny.

The key to getting the penny back, Sam quickly realizes, involves that cat. Turns out the cat, Bob, can speak (with the voice of Simon Pegg), and leads Sam to a secret portal to the Land of Luck. It’s a land of lucky pennies, leprechauns, ladybugs and other symbols of good luck — all overseen by a lucky dragon (voiced by Jane Fonda), who is determined to stamp out any traces of bad luck she encounters.’

What’s absent from the Land of Luck, Bob tells Sam in his most agitated voice, are humans — especially ones as unlucky as Sam. And Bob’s efforts to get Sam her own penny, and then get her home, without risking an entrance into the Land of Luck’s polar opposite, a land of bad luck.

Director Peggy Holmes and writer Kiel Murray get so into the details of luck — from Japanese waving cats to how the Scots think a black cat is good luck — that they don’t see how derivative the story is. There’s a distinct vibe of “Monsters, Inc.” another tale of a human girl infiltrating a secret supernatural world hidden from humankind.

Some of the gags — like a unicorn (voiced by comic Flula Borg) who collects bad luck — are engaging, but there’s a distinct lack of hills and valleys in Murray’s script, and it all chugs along to a predictable conclusion. The one kind of luck missing for Apple TV+ in “Luck” is beginner’s luck. 

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‘Luck’

★★1/2

Starts streaming Friday, August 5, on Apple TV+. Rated G. Running time: 106 minutes.

Review: 'Hallelujah' reveals the secrets behind 'the secret chord,' and the highs and lows of Leonard Cohen's singular career

Yes, we’ve all heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord — but the really good stories in the documentary “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song” are the ones about the man who wrote that much-loved and sometimes overused song, the Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen.

The story of Leonard Cohen starts as a kid in Montreal, Quebec, and moves to New York, where he starts working as a songwriter. Pitching one of his early songs, “Suzanne,” to Judy Collins, already a star, Collins’ response is that she’ll record the song the next day. She did and it was a hit. Collins is one of the numerous admirers of Cohen interviewed in the film.

Soon, Cohen is recording his own songs, and getting a reputation as the kind of songwriter other songwriters admire. Oddly, though, the song that would ultimately become his signature, “Hallelujah” — which took Cohen years to write — was on an album that his label, Columbia Records, refused to release in the United States.

The movie takes a circuitous route at this point, to delve into how “Hallelujah” became an iconic song. Firstly, Cohen started performing it live with a different set of lyrics, trading in the spiritual references for an earthier, more carnal flavor. Standing before the Lord of Song was out, replaced by “I remember when I moved in you / And the holy dove she was moving too.”

And soon other performers took up the song. John Cale, of the Velvet Underground, recorded a stunning cover. So did Jeff Buckley, which became so recognizable that many people — particularly after Buckley died tragically young — thought he had written it. Then, in 2001, the makers of “Shrek” put some of Cale’s cover (minus the naughty bits) in the movie, and it soon became a go-to song for stuffing a soundtrack with added emotion. (Fun fact: The “Shrek” soundtrack album used Rufus Wainwright’s cover rather than Cale’s, because Wainwright was signed to DreamWorks’ record label.)

The husband-and-wife directing team of Daniel Seller and Dayna Goldfine — whose past films include “Ballets Russes” and “The Galapagos Affair: When Satan Came to Eden” — got access to a wealth of information and footage of Cohen. They use it beautifully, including a sequence toward the end that seamlessly fuses a dozen late-career live performances of “Hallelujah,” after he had overcome his ambivalence about the song’s success, into a single sterling rendition.

If you hate the song “Hallelujah,” you won’t like this movie, because it plays Cohen’s version repeatedly, along with some striking covers — Cale and Buckley and Wainwright, of course, but also Brandi Carlile (who talks about how the song came along as she was reconciling her faith with her homosexuality) and k.d. lang, who sang the song at the Canadian memorial service after Cohen’s death in 2016. (It’s even better than her rendition during the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, which was amazing.)

If you’re not a fan of Cohen, “Hallelujah” the documentary could turn you into one, as it depicts him as a incredibly thoughtful and introspective writer, who considered songwriting a craft that improved with practice and hard work. It’s clear that Cohen could stand before that Lord of Song with a lot more on his tongue than simply “Hallelujah” — but that one song would be enough.

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‘Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song”

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 5, at several theaters. Rated PG-13 for brief strong language and some sexual material. Running time: 118 minutes.

Review: 'Vengeance,' B.J. Novak's directing debut, is a smart culture-clash drama but falls apart as a murder mystery

In the darkly comic thriller “Vengeance,” B.J. Novak — who also wrote and directed the film — plays a writer out to “find America” by reporting on and narrating a true-crime podcast deep in the heart of Texas.

And if you’ve ever listened to a true-crime podcast, you’re going to appreciate how Novak’s directing debut comes out: Often thrilling, occasionally insightful, and with an ending that can’t neatly wrap what has led up to it.

Novak plays Ben Manalowitz, a Brooklyn-based writer who tells his friend, Eloise (Issa Rae), that he wants to tell a story that’s meaningful, that says something about America in the 21st century. “America isn’t divided by space; it’s divided by time,” Ben declares, to which Eloise, a radio producer, responds, “That’s a theory. It’s not a story.”

Then Ben gets a call from someone he doesn’t know, Ty Shaw (Boyd Holbrook), with news that Ty’s sister, Abilene (Lio Tipton), has died. Ben used to hook up with Abilene a time or two when she lived in New York,  but, apparently, her family thinks their relationship was more serious. So Ty insists that Ben fly to Texas — not Austin or Dallas or Houston, but “real” Texas — for her funeral.

Ben lands in the Lone Star State, and Ty is there to drive him to meet the rest of the Shaw family. Riding shotgun in Ty’s truck (which has a shotgun and a rifle in the gun rack behind Ben’s head), Ben hears Ty’s theory that Abilene didn’t die of an accidental drug overdose, as then not-too-bright local law enforcement has said, but was killed. And Ty wants to enlist Ben in finding her killer and avenging her death.

Ben decides this is the story he wants to tell, and immediately calls Eloise to pitch it. She’s on board, and ships him a pro-grade recorder to capture every voice.

Soon, Ben is meeting the rest of the Shaw family: Abilene’s mom, Sharon (J. Smith-Cameron, from “Succession”); Abilene’s fame-hungry sisters, Paris (Isabella Amara) and K.C. (Dove Cameron), and her little brother, nicknamed El Stupido (Eli Bickel); and Abilene’s salty grandma, Carole (Louanne Stephens, from “Longmire”). They all express astonishment that Abilene died of a drug overdose, with each of them saying with suspicious regularity that “she didn’t take so much as an Advil.”

Ben tries to plumb the depths of Texas culture, such as going to the rodeo, pouring chili in a bag of Frito’s, and grabbing dinner at the Shaw family’s favorite place, Whataburger. He also tries to investigate the mystery of Abilene’s death, away from a well-known weekend party site in the scrub lands, in an oil field with no cellphone service in an area conveniently split among four jurisdictions. And Ben seeks clues to the type of person Abilene, whom he barely knew, was — a would-be musician who confided in a suave record producer, Quentin Sellers (Ashton Kutcher), and befriended the town drug lord, Sancholo (Zach Villa).

Novak mines a fair amount of humor from the culture clash between Ben’s urban vibe and the Texas setting — though he’s careful not to be too condescending to the Texas side, deriding the Brooklyn pomposity with equally acerbic barbs. He also captures the glossy sterility of Eloise’s public-radio offices, where the gritty humanity of Abilene’s death is sanded down to just another story about America. (Bonus points for casting “Fresh Air” host and radio icon Terry Gross as the voice of Eloise’s boss, seemingly dialing in from the radio equivalent of Mount Olympus.)

Unfortunately, Novak can’t stick the landing. All the set-up and sharp observational details he plants throughout “Vengeance” pay off when Ben and the Shaw family finally get real with each other about what each thinks about the other’s geographically centered worldviews. But then there’s the mystery-thriller part of the story, which fizzles when it should explode, leaving audiences wanting to seek their own vengeance for being led down a path to nowhere.

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‘Vengeance’

★★★

Opens Friday, July 29, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language and brief violence. Running time: 107 minutes.

Review: 'DC League of Super-Pets' is purely an intellectual property exercise, but the jokes have some bite

The animated, mostly kid-friendly “DC League of Super-Pets” is what it is: a sporadically entertaining jaunt through Warner Bros.’ Intellectual property, a starter kit for little ones who haven’t yet been exposed to Superman, Batman and their friends in tights.

The two-legged superheroes aren’t the stars of this adventure. Instead, the character at the center is Krypto, the stalwart companion of Superman, aka Clark Kent. (A flashback scene shows the puppy Krypto stowing away in baby Kal-El’s capsule when his parents, Jor-El and Lara, send him away from the soon-to-be-destroyed planet Krypton.) Krypto, voiced by Dwayne Johnson, is super-strong, super-loyal, and super-jealous when Clark (voiced by John Krasinski) starts spending less time with his favorite dog and more time with Lois Lane (voiced by Olivia Wilde). 

Clark and Lois go to a Metropolis pet shelter, seeking a potential new playmate for Krypto. It’s there that we meet a motley collection of rescue animals, led by a scruffy terrier named Ace (voiced by Kevin Hart). Ace takes an instant dislike to Krypto, judging the super-dog to be too goody-goody, and not in touch with his dog side. (Johnson and Hart previously paired up in the “Jumanji” movies and the action-comedy “Central Intelligence,” so the banter comes off as quite familiar.)

Also living in the shelter is Lulu (voiced by Kate McKinnon), a guinea pig who once lived in a laboratory run by supervillain Lex Luthor (voiced by Marc Maron). Luthor was experimenting with different colors of kryptonite, and Lulu discovered that orange kryptonite gave animals superpowers. Lulu has telekinesis, and pieces of the orange stuff give the other shelter animals powers, too. 

When Lulu plots to capture Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the rest of the Justice League, it’s up to Ace and his friends — and the temporarily depowered Krypto (thanks to a shard of green kryptonite Lulu stashed in a cheese snack) — to save the day.

Director Jared Stern (who worked on the scripts of “The LEGO Batman Movie” and “The LEGO Ninjago Movie”) and writing partner John Whittington take the often stodgy superhero characters and pump up the humor level. Many of the jokes are squarely aimed at the kid audience, while some — like when Clark, getting dressed for a date with Lois, sings to himself R.E.M.’s “I Am Superman” — are winkingly self-referential and will fly over the children’s heads like a bat-rang.

Adults also will be impressed with the massive voice cast. Among the animals, besides Johnson, Hart and McKinnon, there’s Vanessa Bayer as a pig that can go giant or small; Diego Luna as a squirrel that throws electrical bolts; Natasha Lyonne as a turtle that, of course, acquires super-speed. The superheroes are represented by Krasinski as Superman, Keanu Reeves as Batman, Jameela Jamil as Wonder Woman, Jemaine Clement as Aquaman, and more. (In a post-credit scene that confirms the purpose of post-credit scenes as advertising for the next IP product, Johnson also voices another character.)

An adult watching “DC League of Super-Pets” (after realizing the title is a bit of a spoiler, and the movie is actually an origin story) may wonder whether kids, not versed in decades of DC lore, will understand enough to make sense of this assembly of superheroes and their soon-to-be pets. Fret not, grown-ups — the action and silliness is bright and breezy, and the young audience will have fun even if they don’t know all the references.

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‘DC League of Super-Pets’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, July 29, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for action, mild violence, language and rude humor. Running time: 106 minutes.

Review: 'Nope' is an emphatic yes, as Jordan Peele experiments with the elements that make up a thriller

This is an attempt at a spoiler-free review of “Nope,” writer-director Jordan Peele’s latest experiment in twisting genres into new shapes — though I could probably describe the first 45 minutes of the movie in great detail and still not spoil anything, because of the way Peele expertly sets his traps and patiently waits to spring them.

The story starts with a family of horse trainers in a remote valley in California. The Haywoods — Otis Sr. (Keith David), son Otis Jr, aka OJ (Daniel Kaluuya), and daughter Emerald (Keke Palmer) — have spent years training horses for work in the movies. The business has been struggling, ever since Otis Sr. died in a freak accident (shown in the movie’s early moments).

To keep afloat, OJ has been selling or loaning horses to the neighbors, a Wild West amusement park operated by Ricky Park (Steven Yuen), known to all as “Jupe” because of a role he performed in the 1980s as a child actor. Jupe — who harbors memories of a bloody tragedy on a sitcom set — hosts the park’s biggest attraction: An arena show with a very surprising finish.

Something’s happening in the skies above the ranch and the amusement park, and OJ and Emerald are determined to find out what it is — with some audiovisual help from Angel Torres (Brandon Perea), a camera tech from the nearby Fry’s Electronics, and Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott), a cinematographer obsessed with getting the perfect shot.

Love of the movies permeates “Nope,” as Peele revels in movie history. He gives Emerald a great monologue at the beginning, where she describes how her great-great-great-grandfather rode the horse that Eadweard Muybridge photographed in motion, creating the first series of moving images. The common thread of the disparate characters is a shared obsession for movies, and for getting the shot at all costs.

Peele also seems to channel early Steven Spielberg, specifically “Jaws” and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” in a rousing adventure of people chasing and being chased. Peele eases back on the bloody horror of “Get Out” and “Us,” but there are moments that are truly — with elements of bloody horror — that are authentically upsetting.

“Nope” may not be Peele’s most perfectly calibrated movie, but it’s one that gives the audience things it never knew to expect. Peele is experimenting with the audience’s very notions of what makes a good thriller, as he delivers one that thrills in gloriously unexpected ways.

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‘Nope’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, July 22, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language throughout and some violence/bloody images. Running time: 131 minutes.

Review: 'Fire of Love' is a blazing documentary, capturing two scientists' love for each other and their dangerous love for volcanoes

Director Sara Dosa’s “Fire of Love” is one of those movies that had to be a documentary — because no one would believe a narrative film with such a strange story and such compelling characters.

Maurice and Katia Krafft were in love, though the details of their first meeting have fallen into the level of myth. It might have been on a park bench at their college, or at a movie screening, or a blind date. Whichever it was, the subject of volcanoes came up at some point, and the two realized they were kindred spirits.

The two became inseparable from then on. They conducted their first expedition in 1968, getting grant money and a donated car to check out volcanoes in Iceland. Two years later, they were married in a small ceremony in their home province of Alsace, France — and vowed not to have children, because they would be too busy traveling the globe to study volcanoes.

The timing was perfect. The Kraffts started their joint career just as the theory of plate tectonics — the idea that the Earth’s crust is a series of interlocking plates, and the seams are where volcanoes and earthquakes occur — was becoming accepted science. Though Maurice espoused his belief that every volcano was different, he and Katia broke down volcanoes into two main groups: “Red” volcanoes that produce lava flows, and “gray” volcanoes that explode with torrents of ash and rocks.

Maurice and Katia said the color designations could be explained by plate tectonics. “Red” volcanoes occurred when two plates pulled apart, allowing magma to rise to the surface as lava. “Gray” volcanoes were the opposite, the result of two plates pushing against each other, forcing material upward explosively.

At first, the Kraffts mostly studied the “red” volcanoes, and did so by getting breathtakingly close to the lava. They called it a “calculated risk,” but invaluable for getting good data and, more importantly, great footage — and it’s that footage that makes “Fire of Love” such a beautiful and intense movie.

The couple switched to studying “gray” volcanoes after Mt. St. Helens blew in 1980, killing 57 people nearby and spewing ash for hundreds of miles (including on my house in Spokane when I was a sophomore in high school). It was Katia’s ambition to create a warning system for active volcanoes, something that could save lives if people evacuate in time.

Dosa has pored through hundreds of hours of the Kraffts’ footage, much of it astonishing in its beauty and danger level. She also compiles the couple’s writings and TV appearances — their daring exploits made them stars in France — into a running narrative, written by Dosa, Shane Boris, Erin Casper and Jocelyne Chaput. The narration, delivered by filmmaker and performance artist Miranda July, is tender and poetic.

Dosa’s film paints an aching portrait of two people who adored each other and the adventure their lives had taken. “Fire of Love” is among the most passionate, and most tragic, love stories you’re likely to see in a long time.

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‘Fire of Love’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, July 22, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG for thematic material including some unsettling images, and brief smoking.. Running time: 93 minutes; partly in French, with subtitles.

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This review originally ran on this site on January 21, 2022, when the film premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.