Review: Willem Dafoe commands the screen, as a lone thief trapped in a high-rise, in a solo performance in 'Inside'

Willem Dafoe may be one of the most fascinating actors to ever appear in movies — and that fact is what keeps “Inside” watchable, since Dafoe is practically the only character.

Dafoe plays a master thief — the credits say his name is Nemo, but we never hear it during the film — who has been dropped onto the balcony of a penthouse apartment in a New York high-rise. The quick bit of information we get from the voice on his walkie-talkie (Andrew Blumenthal) is that Nemo has a few minutes to disable the alarm, grab the precious art that’s inside, and punch the code to get out the front door. All goes to plan until that last part, when the exit code doesn’t work and Nemo is left trapped in the apartment, abandoned by his radio accomplice.

The penthouse’s absent tenant (Gene Bervoets, seen mostly in photos) is an architect who turned his home into a fortress, as difficult to get out as it was to get in. He’s away on a project in Kazakhstan, so there’s little food in the fridge and no running water. And the thermostat is on the blink, sometimes sending the temperature from over 100 to the 40s. So Nemo’s challenge is to find a way out while also figuring out how to get water, how not to starve, and how not to freeze or roast to death.

Director Vasili’s Katsoupis and screenwriter Ben Hopkins create a scenario that’s as tight and as solid as the door out of the penthouse. Nemo has moments of discovery, of hope, and of despair when he runs into new obstacles. The script also gives Dafoe’s character, who knows good art when he’s stealing it, room to ruminate on what make art valuable, both monetarily and in the eye of the beholder.

Dafoe jones a short list of actors who can own a movie by themselves. Robert Redford did it brilliantly in “All Is Lost,” and Blake Lively’s work in “The Shallows” was quite effective. In the “alone except for people on the phone” category, there’s Tom Hardy in “Locke” and Ryan Reynolds in “Buried” — and with actors who are alone for part of the movie, there’s Tom Hanks in “Cast Away” and Sandra Bullock in “Gravity.”

Dafoe, with his angular body and eyes always looking for a way out of his cage, is fascinating to examine as his character seeks the answers for his life-or-death dilemma. He’s trapped in “Inside,” but never not in command.

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‘Inside’

★★★

Opening Friday, March 17, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City), Century 16 (South Slat Lake) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for language, some sexual content and nude images. Running time: 105 minutes.

Review: A young cast with intellectual disabilities may be the only thing going for 'Champions,' but the hint of exploitation doesn't go away.

There’s something noble in what director Bobby Farrelly is trying to do in his new movie, “Champions” — by centering a story on a group of intellectually disabled characters, played by actors who share those disabilities, and laboring mightily not to be condescending in portraying them.

But nobility is about intentions, not the results — and apart from some funny moments provided by those performers with disabilities, there’s not much to “Champions” other than a formulaic sports comedy.

The premise of Mark Rizzo’s script (adapted from a 2018 movie from Spain) starts with Marcus (Woody Harrelson), the hot-headed assistant coach for a minor-league basketball team in Des Moines, Iowa. His career starts spiraling when he disagrees with his head coach, Phil (Ernie Hudson), and pushes Phil to the ground during a game — a moment that goes viral, makes ESPN, and gets Marcus fired. 

Marcus compounds his misfortune with a bad choice: Getting drunk and then driving. He hits a police car, gets arrested, and is given one choice by the judge (Alexandra Castillo): Do 18 months in prison, or work 90 days of community service by coaching a team of kids with intellectual disabilities. Reluctantly, Marcus chooses the community service.

Marcus arrives at the community center, run by the kindly Julio (Cheech Marin), and meets his players. Take it on faith that each of these players has a name, and at least one character quirk — but it would take a second or third viewing to get the names and quirks straight. Notable are Cosentino (Madison Tevlin), a pint-sized and foul-mouthed girl player, and Darius (Joshua Felder), who’s the best player on the team but refuses to play for Marcus (for reasons explained later). 

There’s also Johnny (Kevin Iannucci), whose older sister, Alex (Kaitlin Olson, late of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) who has had a previous encounter with Marcus — a Tinder hookup that ended with bickering — and isn’t particularly eager to start anything long-term. Alex, a struggling actor who teaches Shakespeare in Iowa schools from her camper van, agrees to become the team’s chaperone and transportation to away games.

Farrelly used to work with his brother, Pater, on such transgressive comedies as “Dumb and Dumber,” “There’s Something About Mary” and “Kingpin” (which featured Harrelson) — before Peter went for moralizing with “Green Book.” Bobby Farrelly seems to be trying to please the angels in the same way, though Bobby still recognizes when a good dirty joke can be employed.

One of the formulaic parts of the story comes when Marcus’ coaching is improving the team and making them better —and, when word gets out, Marcus’ dream of an NBA job seems in his grasp. But the question of whether Marcus is exploiting the teens’ disabilities pops up, which is an odd thing for a movie whose comedic structure is, one could argue, doing the same thing.

At least someone’s generating laughs here. Harrelson and Olson, both reliable comedy performers, have few funny moments and zero chemistry. The young hoopsters may be winners, but not much else in “Champions” is.

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‘Champions’

★★

Opens Friday, March 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for strong language and crude/sexual reference. Running time: 123 minutes.

Review: 'The Quiet Girl' is an Irish drama that packs a lot of emotion under its serene surface

As the title implies, the Irish drama “The Quiet Girl” does have a reserved, pensive tone — but there are some powerful emotions brewing under the placid surface of this film, which is one of the nominees in the Academy Awards’ international film category.

Set in a rural part of Ireland, around 1981, the film centers on Cáit (played by newcomer Catherine Clinch), who’s maybe 10 or 12 years old. She’s a middle child in an overstuffed family, where Mam (Kate Nic Chonaonaigh) is pregnant again, and Da (Michael Patric) is spending too much time at the pub. Cáit, too young to go off with her older sisters and too old to be treated like a child, often is left alone, fading into the background.

With the new baby’s imminent arrival, Mam decides that Cáit would be better off going somewhere else for awhile. She makes arrangements to have Cáit spend the summer with an older couple, distant relatives of Mam on a dairy farm a couple hours’ drive away. Da drives her to the farm, but drives away before remembering to unload Cáit’s suitcase.

The woman of the house, Eibhlin (Carrie Crowley), gives Cáit a warm welcome, shows her around the farmhouse, invites her to join in some cooking, and finds some boys’ clothes in a spare room that Cáit can wear. Eibhlin’s husband, Seán (Andrew Bennett), stays at a distance, but eventually warms to the girl, who’s eager to join in the chores and help out on the farm.

Over time, Cáit warms to farm life, and comes out of her shell. But when a neighbor woman, Úna (Joan Sheehy), starts gossiping about Eibhlin and Seán, Cáit starts to question whether everything is what it seems with her new guardians.

Writer-director Colm Bairéad, adapting a 2010 short story by Irish writer Claire Keegan, focuses tightly on Cáit, the calm center of all the excitement going on around her — whether it’s the domestic chaos of Mam and her family, or the life among adults on the farm. Some child actors might wither under such a spotlight, but Clinch is a poised and quietly emotional young performer. 

What’s most remarkable about “The Quiet Girl” is the detail Bairéad imbues to the Irish country life, and the emotional specificity he delivers in every scene. It’s a movie that moves subtly, almost imperceptibly, but packs an emotional punch all the same.

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‘The Quiet Girl’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 10, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG-13 for some strong language and smoking. Running time: 96 minutes, in Irish Gaelic with subtitles. 

Review: 'Scream VI' takes Ghostface to Manhattan, for some effectively staged mayhem and pointed movie commentary.

The most surprising thing about “Scream VI” is that a horror franchise that is forcing you to count installments on your other hand can come up with anything surprising at all — which this solid, true-to-the-premise slasher does.

After the traditional opening celebrity kill — nice to see you, Samara Weaving, even if it’s just for a few blood-curdling moments — we get to our main characters. These are the four survivors of the fifth movie, called just “Scream,” from last year. They are Samantha Carpenter (Melissa Barrera) and younger sister Tara (Jenny Ortega), and twin siblings Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad Meeks-Martin (Mason Gooding). The four have all moved to New York, where Tara, Mindy and Chad have started college in New York, and Sam watches over Tara to the point of suffocating her social life.

Sam is trying to deal with the aftermath of the last movie, which ended with her killing the last Ghostface, Richie Kirsch (Jack Quaid, seen here in flashbacks). Now, though, internet rumors have prompted the conspiracy theory that Sam is the real murderous mastermind, orchestrating kills in an effort to top her father, the original Ghostface, Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich). 

(Side note: It can’t be coincidence that Sam’s last name references “Halloween” director John Carpenter, the king of the slasher flick — and that if Sam used her family name, she would be Sam Loomis, the name of Michael Myers’ nemesis, played by Donald Pleasance, in the “Halloween” franchise. I missed the last movie, or I would have caught that earlier.)

With another Ghostface on the loose, Sam gets even more concerned about protecting Tara, and her friends Mindy and Chad. She’s also trying to explain stuff to her therapist (Henry Czerny), which goes badly — and is seeing the hunky neighbor, Danny Brackett (Josh Segurra), on the sly.

After the first few bodies, the movie gives us a meeting of the roommates — Sam and Tara’s roomie Quinn Bailey (Liana Liberato), Chad’s roommate Ethan (Jack Champion), and Mindy’s girlfriend Anika (Devyn Nekoda) — to figure out who is trustworthy and who might be a suspect. 

Also, Mindy, the film student of the bunch, observes that the killer isn’t following the rules of a horror movie, or of a sequel. This is a franchise now, and a franchise has its own rules. The most important rule: All bets are off, and anyone can be the killer or the next victim — even legacy players, like reporter Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), who’s been on this case since the first movie, or “Scream 4” final girl Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere).

Kirby, by the way, is now an FBI agent who comes to New York to assist the lead NYPD investigator, Detective Bailey (Dermot Mulroney), who’s also Quinn’s dad.

That’s a lot of characters to keep track of, and that’s not factoring in how the script drops names of the previously deceased (like David Arquette’s Dewey) or, in the case of Sidney Prescott, conveniently offstage because Paramount wouldn’t pay Neve Campbell what she freakin’ deserves. And writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick also have fun with the trope — previously used by Jason Voorhees and the Muppets — of moving the action to Manhattan, where safety in numbers doesn’t necessarily work like the characters hope.

The directing team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who made the fifth “Scream” and the tricky “Ready or Not” (which starred Weaving), build the suspense well and regularly find the right buttons to push to keep the audience on edge. They also get good work out of the talented cast, particularly Barrera (who sang and danced in “In the Heights”) and Ortega (now in the meme-generating “Wednesday”), who keep their squabbling sister routine as the movie’s through line between the knife attacks.

“Scream VI” is about 15 minutes longer than it needs to be, and some of the “kills” feel repetitive. But overall, it’s a good edge-of-the-seat horror thriller with twists of the knife that will unsettle and surprise viewers — much like the original did.

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‘Scream VI’

★★★

Opens Friday, March 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violence and language throughout, and brief drug use. Running time: 123 minutes.

Review: 'Creed III' lets Michael B. Jordan, as star and first-time director, step out from Rocky's shadow

“Creed III” feels like a summation of sorts, but also a new beginning — because it shows a franchise, and a character, finally walking out of the long shadow of Rocky Balboa.

Star and first-time director Michael B. Jordan returns as boxer Adonis Creed, who’s at a good place in his life. Five years after his last fight, he’s enjoying his retirement from the sport, living a luxe life in Los Angeles with his wife, Bianca (Tessa Thompson), and their daughter, Amara (Mila Davis-Kent), who’s 8 years old and (as we saw in the second “Creed” movie), with a hearing impairment. 

Bianca has retired from performing music, to preserve what’s left of her hearing, and produces other people’s music in her home studio. Creed watches over his gym, working with his ringside man, Duke (Wood Harris), in managing Felix Chavez (Jose Benevidez), the heavyweight champ preparing to defend his title — the one he inherited from Creed when he retired — with a fight against Creed’s former rival, Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu).

That’s when someone from Adonis’ past returns. Damian Anderson, played by Jonathan Majors, was Adonis’ protector and “big brother” when the two lived in the group home — before, we’re told, Adonis was brought to live with his father’s wife, Mary-Anne (Phylicia Rashad). The movie begins with the moment when Adonis’ and Damian’s paths split, when Adonis was 15, and Damian wound up going to prison for what eventually became an 18-year stretch.

Damian wants what he lost when he went to prison: A chance to be a boxer, like he was when he was in Golden Gloves. Adonis agrees to let Damian train at his gym, and spar with Felix, against Duke’s advice. Things move fast, and at a party for Bianca’s record label that crosses into Adonis’ boxing scene, a brawl breaks out that leaves Drago injured and unable to fight. Rather than postpone, Adonis convinces Felix to let Damian have a chance, an underdog going up against the champ. (It’s in this conversation that the movie, for the only time, mentions Rocky.)

Adonis figures out, a little too late, that there’s nothing coincidental about Damian’s arrival on the scene. Damian tells Adonis his plan: “I’m coming for it all.” And “all” includes Adonis’ life, which Damian thinks was taken from him when he went to prison.

The script — by Keenan Coogler (who worked on “Space Jam: A New Legacy”) and Zach Baylin (“King Richard”), who share story credit with Ryan Coogler (Keenan’s brother, and the director of the first “Creed”) — builds up to the inevitable showdown, with the aggressor Damian prodding Adonis out of retirement. The buildup is worth it, as it gives Jordan, Thompson and Rashad moments to dig into the pain and the joys of the boxing life. Jordan’s transformation of the Creed character, from hotheaded boxer in the first movie to the responsible adult here, is a delight to watch.

On the other side, Majors shows — even more so than he did in “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania” as the antagonist who’s being built up to dominate the MCU — how much power and intensity he carries, both physically and psychologically, as Damian. This is a character who has to get under Adonis’ skin, and Majors shows he can push all of his opponent’s buttons.

The summation of “Creed III,” true to the series’ traditions, is in the ring. Jordan does a solid job directing the fight scenes, which range from gritty and sweaty to mythic and operatic. The fight scenes work because Jordan has laid the groundwork earlier in the film, to reveal the battle between Adonis and Damian as a family feud — which makes the confrontation all the more brutal and meaningful.

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‘Creed III’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 3, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for intense sports action, violence and some strong language. Running time: 116 minutes.

Review: Léa Seydoux shines in 'One Fine Morning,' capturing the passion and emotion of a Parisian woman's surprisingly normal life

The events depicted in “One Fine Morning” are shockingly normal — a woman raising her daughter, dealing with her ailing father, embarking on an affair — but they’re captured with such narrative precision and emotional depth by writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve and her leading lady, Léa Seydoux, that the result is radiant.

Seydoux — known to American audiences as the doomed lover of the last James Bond movies, or the prison guard who distracts Benicio Del Toro in “The French Dispatch” — plays Sandra Kienzler, who lives a good life in Paris. She raises her 8-year-old daughter, Linn (Camille Leban Martins), and works as an interpreter.

Sandra picked up her love of languages from her father, Georg (Pascal Greggory), a retired professor of philosophy — particularly versed in the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Georg’s retirement, we’re told, was forced upon him because he was diagnosed with a degenerative neural condition, posterior cortical atrophy (also called Benson’s syndrome), which makes it increasingly difficult for him to make sense of what his eyes are telling his brain.

Sandra works with her mother, Françoise (Nicole Garcia) — who has been divorced from Georg for 20 years — and her sister, Elodie (Sarah Le Picard), to figure out a nursing home arrangement for Georg. (Turns out France’s health care system is nearly as heartless as ours, except that theirs is largely paid for.) They also must deal with Georg’s belongings, including a mountain of books accumulated over a lifetime of feeding his mind.

While all this is happening, Sandra encounters Clément (Melvil Poupaud), a “cosmo-chemist” who was a good friend of Sandra’s late husband. Their dormant friendship rekindles, and soon erupts into a passionate romance. The complication is that Clément is married and has a son, who is one of Linn’s classmates.

Hansen-Løve, coming off the intricately devised narrative of “Bergman Island,” lets her characters and viewers breathe in the spaces of Sandra’s life — her small but cozy apartment, the Parisian pocket parks where she takes Linn, even the succession of hospital rooms and nursing homes where Georg is moved. It’s fascinating that only toward the end is there even a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, because Hansen-Løve is depicting Paris as Parisians experience it, not as a tourist destination.

Those places help illuminate Sandra’s life, as she navigates romance, desire, motherhood and the impending slow-motion grief from watching her father’s slow decline. Seydoux navigates those emotions brilliantly and bravely, never afraid to display Sandra’s heart out in the open. “One Fine Morning” shows a life being lived, and lived well, even as she’s working through some of the hardest moments of it.

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‘One Fine Morning’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 3, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for some sexuality, nudity and language. Running time: 112 minutes; in French with subtitles.

Review: 'iMordecai' is a family story with its heart in the right place, but so much else going wrong

The story of “iMordecai” is based, loosely, on the family of its first-time director, Marvin Samel — and there’s enough authentic charm here that one wishes the rookie filmmaker had handed the project off to someone who could dodge the sentimental pitfalls that he plunges into head first.

This comedy-drama centers on Mordecai Samel, a retired plumber pushing 80 in a Miami apartment complex with his wife, Fela (Carol Kane — making for the “Taxi” reunion you never knew you wanted). Mordecai thinks he can still fix things like he used to, which is why his exasperated son Marvin (Sean Astin) finds him taking a jackhammer to his bathroom, to give Fela a walk-in shower.

Marvin also notices Mordecai’s ancient flip phone, held together with electrical tape, and decides it’s time for his dad to enter the iPhone age. Turns out that having a phone without buttons is liberating — once Mordecai gets some lessons from one of the “Einsteins” at the store (no mention of “Genius Bar” in this unlicensed movie), Nina (Azia Dinea Hale). Mordecai and Nina become fast friends, sharing a love of painting, and their cross-generational friendship opens up Mordecai to art and other pursuits.

Mordecai’s new life is not without its complications. Fela is starting to experience dementia, and Mordecai needs to watch over her more closely than before — particularly when Fela hears Mordecai on the phone with another woman, not realizing it’s Siri on his new phone.

Mordecai starts painting again, inspired by his childhood in Poland, escaping in 1939 before the Nazis invaded. Not everyone in his family was so lucky, he tells Nina, noting that some of his aunts died in the Treblinka concentration camp. Nina — who volunteers at the Jewish Center where Mordecai sometimes visits — doesn’t tell him that she learned that her recently deceased grandfather was an SS guard at Treblinka.

Samel and the script — written by Rudy Gaines, who shares story credit with Samel and Dahlia Heyman — lumbers through the connect-the-dots plot, and spends way too much time on Marvin’s troubles trying to sell a cigar factory he invested in using money borrowed from his dad. More interesting are the animated sequences that depict Mordecai’s memories of Poland and the antisemitism that prompted his family to escape to America.

The best parts of “iMordecai” are Hirsch and Kane, both committing to their sometimes overwritten characters and embodying the movie’s message — that you’re never too old to live a full life — better than the script and direction do.

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‘iMordecai’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 3, at the Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy), Megaplex at The District (South Jordan). Megaplex at Legacy Crossing (Centerville) and Megaplex at Thanksgiving Point (Lehi). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for some language, drug use, cigar smoking, and discussions of the Holocaust. Running time: 102 minutes.

Review: The title says it all in 'Cocaine Bear,' but the movie could do a lot more with its crazy premise

Say this much for the horror-comedy “Cocaine Bear”: It’s all right there in the title. There’s a bear and a lot of cocaine — what more do you need?

Since I’m asking, I could have used some narrative coherence amid all the drug-fueled animal incoherence. For all the craziness of “Cocaine Bear,” there’s a rote predictability about it, as if director Elizabeth Banks (“Pitch Perfect 2,” “Charlie’s Angels”) and screenwriter Jimmy Warden didn’t given every indication they didn’t just think up the concept of a cocaine-snorting bear and went on autopilot the rest of the way.

Actually, there once was a bear who got into some cocaine, back in 1985 — which is enough to kick-start the “inspired by true events” tag at the movie’s beginning. When a drug mule flying over the South dumps duffel bags full of cocaine, and then conks himself in the head and dies without opening his parachute, there’s a race between cops and drug dealers to retrieve the kilo bricks.

What neither side knows is that a black bear got there first, which makes sense because the bags landed in a national forest in Georgia and the bear already lives there. The bear consumes a kilo or two, and gets a hankering for the white powder, and goes sniffing for more — and anyone getting in the way is going to be the bear’s next meal.

Among the humans who cross paths with the bear: 

• Two low-level drug dealers, Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) and Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), sent by their boss Syd (Ray Liotta, who finished work on the movie just before dying last May) to retrieve the kilos before Syd’s Colombian business partners get mad.

• Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), a detective on the trail of the cocaine.

• A nurse, Sari (Keri Russell), who realizes her teen daughter Deedee (Brooklynn Prince) has skipped school with her friend Henry (Christian Convery) to go into the woods.

• The Forest Service ranger, Liz (Margo Martindale), who reluctantly escorts Sari up toward a waterfall, when Liz would rather be making time with a forest biologist, Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson). 

• Various other actors who probably had to have various body parts molded by the special-effects crew, so their characters could be chomped into and scattered about convincingly.

Banks, as a director, has an ear for a good throwaway joke or comic performance, and she has the sense not to get in the way of Martindale or Liotta, to name two, when they’re giving more than the material contains. 

But “Cocaine Bear” reaches a point of diminishing returns, where everyone involved —onscreen, behind the camera and in the audience — realizes there’s not as much material here as was needed to fill 90-or-so minutes. Starting with a crazy premise gets you so far (e.g., “Snakes on a Plane”), but you have to have a plan for getting out of the woods.

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‘Cocaine Bear’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 24, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for bloody violence and gore, drug content and language throughout. Running time: 95 minutes.