Review: 'Amsterdam' aims to cross a screwball comedy with an espionage thriller, but is too overstuffed with characters and tangents to succeed at either

So much content, and way too many people, get packed into “Amsterdam,” a meandering cross between screwball comedy and espionage thriller that never delivers enogh of either to be satisfying. 

Writer-director David O. Russell (“Silver Linings Playbook,” “American Hustle”) starts the story in New York, 1933. Dr. Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), a semi-defrocked physician with a glass eye, is called in for an emergency by his friend from The Great War, Harold Woodman (John David Washington), an attorney who still carries the scars of the war.

Harold tells Burt he has a client who needs an autopsy done pronto. The recipient of the autopsy is Gen. Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.), who was Burt and Harold’s commanding officer back in Europe, and a man for whom they owe their lives. Harold’s client, the person who wants the autopsy done, is Meekins’ daughter, Liz (Taylor Swift), who suspects that her father was murdered — and needs the evidence that only an autopsy can provide.

Burt knows a nurse at the coroner’s office, Irma St. Clair (Zoe Saldaña) — who’s kinda sweet on Burt — and she can get autopsy results in a hurry. But not soon enough, when someone is pushed into the street and run over by a truck, and the guy who gave the shove accuses Burt and Harold of doing the deed. Soon, Burt and Harold are on the run, trying to avoid the cops, who have them tagged as the prime suspects.

The movie then flashes back 15 years, to 1918, and the closing months of World War I. Burt, then a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, is put in command of a unit of Black soldiers, because no one else wants to associate with them. Not even the U.S. Army, which makes the Black enlisted men wear French military uniforms.

Burt and Harold are wounded severely, and they would be dead if not for one nurse who saves them and picks most of the shrapnel out of their faces. That nurse, Valerie (Margot Robbie), befriends both Burt and Harold, and the three become fast friends and, after the war, roommates in Amsterdam — and, eventually, the name of that city becomes a shorthand for a particular shared moment in these three peoples’ lives, a paradise .

Back in 1933, Burt and Harold — who, thanks to some major plot contrivances, reunite with Valerie — try to follow a trail of rich and influential people who can clear their good names and keep two detectives (Matthias Schoenaerts and Alessandro Nivola) off their necks. For reasons too convoluted to get into here, that list includes a rich dealmaker, Tom Vote (Rami Malek), and his status-conscious wife, Libby (Anya Taylor-Joy); Burt’s loveless first wife, Beatrice (Andrea Riseborough); two “birdwatchers” (Michael Shannon and Mike Myers) who might be spies; and the war hero Gen. Gil Dillenbeck (Robert De Niro), who could be the key to Burt and Harold’s problems — as well as an attempted coup against FDR.

It’s worth mentioning that Russell begins by informing us that the story is based, in part, on actual events. That tends to be more of a hindrance than a help with Russell’s narrative, since it causes the script to delve into some weighty topics — like the guy who’s just taken control of the German government — and never strikes a good balance between the screwball and the serious.

Russell tries to cram so many characters, and so much story, into “Amsterdam,” that it feels hectic and tedious at the same time. And while I admire some performances — particularly Bale’s beaten-down doctor and Taylor-Joy’s skeletal social climber — everyone is going in so many directions that the movie never feels like it making forward progress. 

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‘Amsterdam’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 7, in theaters. Rated R for brief violence and bloody images. Running time: 134 minutes.

Review: Marvel's 'Werewolf by Night' is a delicious throwback to old-school monster movies

It’s getting increasingly difficult for anything with a Marvel Studios logo to surprise us, but “Werewolf by Night” — billed as a “Marvel Studios Special Presentation,” like it was an old Charlie Brown cartoon — manages to deliver the unexpected several times during its hourlong run.

On a dark night, a gaggle of mercenary monster hunters have gathered at the mansion of one Ulysses Bloodstone, to mark his death and to earn the right to carry Ulysses’ family talisman, the bloodstone. The rules, as explained by Ulysses’ second wife, Verussa (Harriet Sansom Harris), are simple: The bloodstone will be attached to a monster, which will make it stronger but also put it in pain, and let loose on the grounds — and the first hunter who can bring the beast down can claim the stone.

Most of the hunters know each other, and can compare notes on the number of kills they have completed. Two people in attendance, though, don’t come off as your regular mercenaries. One is Ulysses’ estranged daughter, Elsa Bloodstone (Laura Donnelly), back to claim her birthright from her stepmother, Verussa. The other is, we eventually find out, is named Jack (Gael García Bernal), and he claims he’s responsible for more than 100 kills — but he doesn’t brag about it the way the other hunters do.

Once the hunt starts, screenwriters Heather Quinn and Peter Cameron drop some bombshells on the audience, and eventually we know everything we need to know about the Jack, Elsa, the monster, the hunt and the bloodstone. 

In this case, getting there is most of the fun, as Jack and Elsa reluctantly join forces to make it through the night alive. Movie composer Michael Giacchino makes his feature directing debut, and he creates a brooding, black-and-white atmosphere inspired by the classic monster movies of old — where shadows show transformations from human to beast, and sometimes from human to pile of dismembered meat. The callbacks to “Frankenstein” and “The Wolf Man” are clever, and don’t get in the way of the cleverly choreographed fight scenes.

There’s a lot that happens that I’m not describing, because I don’t want to ruin your fun as the story unfolds. I will say this: “Werewolf by Night” is a celebratory throwback to old-school horror movies, one that’s so exhilarating that you’ll hope the powers that be at Marvel make more in the franchise.

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‘Werewolf by Night’

★★★1/2

Starts streaming Friday, October 7, on Disney+. Rated TV-14. Running time: 52 minutes.

Review: 'Bros' puts Billy Eichner through the Apatow movie-comedy machine, creating a funny movie about LGBTQ joys and anxieties.

You can’t call “Bros” the gayest movie ever made — though it’s plenty gay. But this guy-meets-guy romantic comedy is, perhaps, the gayest gay movie ever made, if one uses the old definition of “gay” meaning happy.

One of the themes that star and co-writer Billy Eichner attacks frequently is that too many movies with gay characters in the lead are sad affairs about lonely gay cowboys or something, and are usually “about two straight actors trying to win an Oscar.”

“Bros” is not that kind of gay movie. Instead, Eichner becomes the latest comedian to run his stand-up persona through producer Judd Apatow’s star-making machine — the way Amy Schumer did in “Trainwreck,” or Pete Davidson did in “The King of Staten Island.” And Eichner’s persona is witty, acerbic, a little jaded, and unabashedly homosexual.

Eichner plays Bobby Leiber, a New York podcaster who talks about his failures in creative endeavors — like when he auditioned for “Queer Eye” and couldn’t cry at the right moment — and in maintaining a long-term relationship. At age 40, Bobby has largely resigned himself to random sexual encounters with men he meets on Grindr or in gay bars.

It’s at one such bar that he meets Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), a probate lawyer who’s incredibly buff. (When Bobby meets Aaron, Aaron is shirtless.) They seem to hit it off, but something in their mutual distrust of relationships and commitment keeps them from turning lustful attraction into a dating scenario.

Meanwhile, as Bobby tries to figure out what Aaron’s deal is, Bobby is also deep into his job organizing the first national LGBTQ+ history museum. Most of his work involves begging rich gay people and celebrities — including a brilliant cameo by someone perfect for this demographic — and constantly arguing with his staff, a smorgasbord of queer representation whose members can’t agree on much of anything.

Director Nicholas Stoller (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “Neighbors”), who co-wrote the script with Eichner, packs “Bros” with tons of jokes and lots of funny queer icons, including Harvey Fierstein, “SNL’s” Bowen Yang, “Married With Children’s” Amanda Bearse, Jai Rodriguez (from the original “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”) and others. One of the best running gags involve suddenly inclusive Christmas movies on the “Hallheart Channel” — a joke that’s even funnier when you know Macfarlane has starred in a few Hallmark Channel movies.

There were moments during “Bros” where I wondered if I, as a straight male, wasn’t supposed to be enjoying this, because of how some jokes target straight attitudes about LGBTQ+ people. One of Bobby’s trans colleagues, Tamara (Eve Lindley), asks in a meeting, “Guys, do you remember straight people,” which prompts their lesbian colleague Cherry (Dot-Marie Jones) to respond, “Yeah, they had a nice run.” At another point, Bobby complains that “gay sex was more fun when straight people were uncomfortable with it.”

Speaking of which, “Bros” will indeed test straight people’s comfort level with gay sex — because the sex scenes here definitely earn the movie’s R rating.

Get over it, straights. The whole point of movies is to be exposed to lives and cultures outside of your own, and “Bros” delivers a view of the world not often seen in movies. It’s also ridiculously funny, which is reason enough to watch it.

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‘Bros’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, September 30, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong sexual content, language throughout and some drug use. Running time: 115 minutes.

Review: 'Hocus Pocus 2' is a funny and engaging movie, a far cry from the dull original

Maybe there is magic in the world, if a terrible movie like 1993’s “Hocus Pocus” can inspire a sequel 29 years later, “Hocus Pocus 2,” that has more laughs and heart than the original ever hoped to have.

Yes, I know the original is beloved in some quarters, a slumber-party staple for kids whose parents wouldn’t let them watch real scary movies around Halloween. I was not one of them; I checked my original review (I’ve been doing this for a long time) and I gave it one-and-a-half stars, with a little bit of charity because I enjoy Bette Midler in pretty much anything. Before settling in on “Hocus Pocus 2” the other night, I watched the first movie again, just to see if I had mellowed — and, nope, it’s still awful, a cheaply produced affair that wastes the talent of Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy.

So how did the sequel manage to leap over my nonexistent expectations and land squarely in “hey, this is pretty good” territory? Let’s start with the fact that Midler, Parker and Najimy have leaned into the joke more this time. They play the again-resurrected Sanderson sisters knowing they’re in a ridiculous Halloween movie, and they enjoy themselves a lot more. My favorite sight gag is when the Sandersons enter a house and are looking for something; when Midler’s Winifred says “spread out,” it’s Parker’s dim Sarah Sanderson who takes her literally and starts doing the splits.

A lot of the credit for the sequel’s success goes to director Anne Fletcher (“The Proposal,” “Dumplin’”), who latches onto the humor and the sisterly empowerment of the script by Jen D’Angelo (who shares story credit with David Kirschner, who co-wrote the original, and Blake Harris). 

That empowerment isn’t held by the Sanderson sisters, but by the teen friends who inadvertently bring them back from the dead: Magic obsessed Becca (Whitney Peak, who starred in the “Gossip Girl” reboot) and Izzy (Melissa Escobedo), who are currently feuding with their friend Cassie (Lilia Buckingham) because she’s got a dorky boyfriend, Matt (From Gutierrez), who bullies Becca and Izzy. 

The set-up is also funny, a prologue in 17th century Salem that shows us how the young Sanderson sisters became witches, with a strategic cameo from Hannah Waddingham (“Ted Lasso”). The prologue also introduces the Sandersons’ tormentor, Rev. Traske, whose descendant in 2022 is Salem’s mayor and Cassie’s father — both played with droll wit by Tony Hale.

Also throw in Sam Richardson (“Veep”) as a magic-shop owner who get in over his head by the Sandersons, and Doug Jones reprising his role as the zombie Billy Butcherson, setting the record straight about his puritan “romance” with Winifred.

With that cast, and a script that’s only partly reverential to the original, and “Hocus Pocus 2” turns out to be worth a look — even if you didn’t suffer through the original.

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‘Hocus Pocus 2’

★★★

Starts streaming Friday, September 30, on Disney+. Rated PG for action, macabre/suggestive humor and some language. Running time: 104 minutes.

Review: 'Nothing Compares' artfully relives the most intense part of Sinead O'Connor's career, with bracing commentary from O'Connor today

The documentary “Nothing Compares” shows you everything you think you know about Irish singer Sinead O’Connor from her breakout in 1987 to her infamous career-derailing 1993 appearance on “Saturday Night Live.” 

But what’s most fascinating about director Kathryn Ferguson’s intimate profile is how much it reveals that people don’t know about O’Connor — much of it from O’Connor’s own mouth.

O’Connor’s voice today — gruff and aged, and about an octave lower than the banshee wail that made her famous — is heard via audio through most of this impressionistic documentary, describing her tough childhood. O’Connor cites her Catholic upbringing, the oppressive grip Holy Mother Church had on the Irish and particularly its women, and the generations of abuse handed down from her grandmother to her mother to her.

Music, which she learned from her father, was her lifeline, and her ticket out of Dublin. Non-traditional female singers were unheard of in Ireland, and O’Connor’s only chance to sing the music she wanted to was to go to London. She joined her first band in Ireland, Ton Ton Macoute, and attracted the attention of a label and a manager, which got her to London, where she worked on her debut album, “The Lion and the Cobra,” and met drummer John Reynolds, who became the father to her first child, Jake, when she was 20.

O’Connor talks candidly about how her pregnancy upset her record label, who she said suggested she get an abortion. She also discusses how she defied feminine norms with her image, from shaving her head to wearing leather jackets and Doc Martens boots. 

It was O’Connor’s second album, “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,” that yielded her breakthrough hit, her cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Everyone in the film talks about the song, and the way it lit O’Connor’s career like a rocket. What the movie doesn’t do is play the song — Prince’s estate wouldn’t let them.

The most important job Ferguson performs is to set O’Connor’s actions and career in context, of both the times and her personal story. That’s no more apparent than discussing her 1993 appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” when she ended a song by tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II. The moment torpedoed her career, but she says, in interviews then and now, that she doesn’t regret it. Considering how much has come out about the Catholic Church’s decades of abuse of children in Ireland, it’s time for a lot of people to admit that she had a point.

Ferguson’s film doesn’t delve into the rest of O’Connor’s sometimes bizarre life after 1993, which might be for the best considering her personal struggles in recent years. What it does deliver, a concentrated punch of O’Connor’s combative personality and fierce defense of herself during the most intense part of her career, is fascinating and impossible to turn away from.

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‘Nothing Compares’

★★★1/2

Starts streaming on Friday, September 30; airs on Showtime on Sunday, October 2. Not rated, but probably R for strong language and some disturbing imagery. Running time: 96 minutes.

Review: 'Don't Worry Darling' is a slick trip through suburban paradise, with a lot of ideas it can't or won't explore

Director Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling” is a puzzle box of a movie, one where the unraveling of the mystery is more satisfying than what we find inside.

Wilde and screenwriter Katie Silberman (who shares story credit with brothers Carey and Shane Van Dyke) introduce us to Alice and Jack Chambers, a loving and frisky young couple in a suburban desert paradise. Alice (Florence Pugh) fries up bacon and eggs for Jack (Harry Styles), who hops into his massive hunk of Detroit steel and heads to work at the top-secret Victory Project — a routine repeated by the other couples on their cul-de-sac. 

While Jack works, Alice cleans house, goes shopping with friends Bunny (played by Wilde) and Peg (Kate Berlant), or takes dance classes taught by Shelley (Gemma Chan). When Jack comes home, Alice is waiting with a glass of Scotch and a pot roast, and the promise of sex on the dining table. Their life seems perfect, in a dream house that seems like something out of “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” (Co-writers Carey and Shane Van Dyke are Dick’s grandsons.)

The other constant in this perfect life is Frank (Chris Pine), the founder of the Victory Project and the benevolent boss to all the men in the community. With Shelley as his wife, Frank delivers backyard speeches about how this community is a family — and stays that way because everyone knows the part they play in it.

Alice starts to notice unusual things, like the discordant images that flash in her brain. She also listens when her friend Margaret (KiKi Layne) starts saying “we don’t belong here,” and draws the attention of the jumpsuit-wearing Victory Project Security and the project’s pill-dispensing Dr. Collins (Timothy Simons).

Wilde’s realization of this suburban dreamscape, and the cracks that start to become visible to Alice and to us, is striking — and proof that her directorial debut, “Booksmart,” was no one-off. The sunlit desert views, the sleek interiors, and the too-perfect cars and costumes combine to make this ‘50s setting feel too good to be true.

The set-up is so well handled that it’s aggravating when Wilde reveals the twist — which I won’t here, because of “spoilers” and because if I start lamenting where it goes wrong, I may never stop.

Suffice it to say that Wilde opens the door to some serious conversations — about women’s bodily autonomy, about fragile masculinity, about what’s love and what’s control in a relationship — and then stubbornly refuses to go through that door. Because of that lack of follow-through, “Don’t Worry Darling” is left being an intriguing idea for a movie rather than a fully explored one.

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‘Don’t Worry Darling’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 23, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for sexuality, violent content and language. Running time: 122 minutes.

Review: 'Blonde' is an artfully done but cruel recounting of the worst parts of Marilyn Monroe's tragic life

In the 60 years since her death at age 36, Marilyn Monroe and her mystique have been analyzed, dissected and commented upon by pretty much everyone who has ever watched a movie — and, as director Andrew Dominik’s fictionalized take, “Blonde,” shows us, we remain no closer to understanding what made her tick.

Dominik’s lushly constructed but cruelly staged biopic is only about a few sides of her life. It’s never about Monroe as human being, or as artist. It’s only about Monroe as object of other people’s desires, and as victim of those people’s whims.

Cribbing from parts of Joyce Carol Oates’ doorstop of a novel, Dominik (who directed and wrote the screenplay) begins with a painful prologue shows Norma Jeane Baker (played as a girl by Lily Fisher) suffering at the hands of her unbalanced mother, Gladys (Julianne Nicholson), who talks about Norma’s never-seen father, someone so famous his name can never be mentioned — and someone, in Gladys’ delusional state, she thinks will someday return. Ultimately, Gladys ends up in a sanitarium and Norma Jeane in an orphanage.

Fast forward, and Norma Jeane — played as an adult by Ana de Armas — launches a modeling career, on shoots mostly for advertising but a few for skin mags. Her agent (Dan Butler) gets her an opportunity for a contract with 20th Century Fox, but she soon learns the price is being raped by the studio chief, Mr. Z (David Warshofsky). (Following Oates’ novel, the main men in Norma Jeane’s life are not identified by name in Dominik’s script — though occasionally, as with Daryl F. Zanuck, he lets a bold-face name slip.)

Norma Jeane’s early career shows promise, but her private life — a three-way relationship with Charlie Chaplin Jr. (Xavier Samuel) and Edward G. Robinson Jr. (Evan Williams), scions of Hollywood royalty — draws a warning from her agent and Mr. Z., to stay out of the scandal sheets.

Norma Jeane finds a more publicly acceptable romance with the ex-athlete — Bobby Cannavale as the recently retired baseball legend Joe DiMaggio — that seems picture-perfect. She even calls him “Daddy” in private. Dominik depicts the ex-athlete as physically abusive and possessive, particularly showing his rage when Marilyn shoots her iconic scene from “The Seven-Year Itch,” as paparazzi leeringly capture her billowing dress.

As Marilyn tries to show her seriousness, taking acting workshops in New York — which is where she meets “the playwright” (Adrien Brody, channeling Arthur Miller well). Happiness for Marilyn, again, seems just out of reach.

In the later scenes of the film, there’s another man put in the picture, identified as “the president” (played by Caspar Phillipson). This is where Dominik indulges in the most lurid tabloid speculation about Marilyn and JFK. It’s also where the movie — by focusing tightly on de Armas’ face as she simulates oral sex — that the movie earns its NC-17 rating.

Dominik, beloved by cinephiles for his mournful Western “The Assassination of the Outlaw Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” shoots mostly in black-and-white with some passages in color. Much of his technical prowess is deployed in matching de Armas into classic movie scenes (pairing her with George Sanders in “All About Eve” and Tony Curtis in “Some Like It Hot”) or re-enacting famous photos of the star.

For every moment of grace and elegance, there are shots like the one where the point of view is from inside Marilyn’s vagina as a speculum is inserted to begin an abortion procedure. (This happens in two different parts of the film.) Or there’s the shot from inside an airplane toilet, as Marilyn vomits on the lens.

What, exactly, is the point of “Blonde” — besides letting de Armas pull off a fearless, frequently topless performance as the much-tormented Norma Jeane? It’s hard to divine Dominik’s motives. But the end product serves to drag the image, the persona, of Marilyn Monroe, and the person of Norma Jeane Baker, through all the slime and innuendo that dogged her in life. Any moviegoer with a heart will wince throughout “Blonde,” and wonder why we all can’t leave Norma Jeane to rest In peace. 

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‘Blonde’

★★

Starts streaming Wednesday, September 28, on Netflix. Rated NC-17 for some sexual content. Running time: 166 minutes.

Review: 'Railway Children' is a somber children's adventure with lessons about war and racism

The cherished British chsracter trait of the stiff upper lip apparently gets taught early, as evidenced by the characters in “Railway Children,” a plodding child-centered drama from the Homefront of World War II.

It’s 1944, and parents in English cities are putting their children on trains heading to the country, to keep them safe as German bombs are dropped on metropolitan areas. That’s how the Evans children — teen Lily (Beau Gadsdon) and her little siblings Pattie (Eden Hamilton) and Teddy (Zac Cudby) — end up leaving their mother (Jessica Baglow) in Manchester to live in a town in Yorkshire.

The three land with Annie (Sheridan Smith), who’s the principal of the town’s school. Annie has a son, Thomas (Austin Haynes), and her mother, Bobbie (Jenny Agutter), who reassures the Evans children that when she was a girl, she, too, was transported from the city to the country, and ended up making her life there.

There’s more to Bobbie’s statement than most American moviegoers know. It turns out that “Railway Children” is not a remake of the 1970 film “The Railway Children,” but a sequel — because Agutter, when she was 17, played Bobbie as a girl, relocated to Yorkshire in 1905 (which is when Edith Nesbit wrote the children’s book on which both movies are based). Nesbit’s story and the 1970 movie version are, like Cliff Richard and bubble-and-squeak, uniquely British products that are beloved there and largely unfamiliar in the States.

The Evans children, with Thomas as their new companion, try to make the best of the situation, as they play around the train station and dodge the school bullies. Then they find Abe (KJ Aikens), a young Black American soldier who claims he’s hiding because he’s on a secret mission — but Lily soon learns that Abe has deserted his unit because of the racist MPs, and that he’s only 14.

The children are mostly left to their own devices — Annie is preoccupied when she gets a telegram from the British Army about her husband — and become the focus of a plot that’s equal parts children’s adventure and social-studies class in which the English kids learn about the harsh treatment of African Americans in the United States.

Director Morgan Matthews, whose credits are mostly in documentaries, doesn’t let things get too silly. He works with his young actors to impart the gravity of their wartime life, putting a serious edge on the adventure. Matthews benefits from the presence of the veteran actors, including Agutter, Tom Courtenay as a kindly uncle who works for the government, and John Bradley (“Game of Thrones,” “Moonfall”) as a secretive stationmaster.

“Railway Children” is more sober-minded than most American children’s films, as it teaches kids about the horrors of war and racism. Some may find it a little dry, but it has its share of gentle charms.

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‘The Railway Children’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 23, in theaters everywrhere. Rated PG for thematic material, some violence and language. Running time: 95 minutes.