Review: 'Jules' puts some good actors in service to a slight but sometimes funny story of an alien landing

A whimsical and slight comedy, “Jules” definitely benefits from a trio of veteran players — led by the always intriguing work of Sir Ben Kingsley.

Kingsley plays Milton Robinson, living a solitary life in a western Pennsylvania town, where his main activity is going to the city council meeting and repeating the same complaints during the public comment period. His wife died a bit ago. His daughter, Denise (Zoe Winters), checks up on him so he takes his meds and so on, but is often exasperated by his stubbornness. His son long ago moved to California, and they have little contact.

One night, Milton is awakened by a clatter in his backyard. He goes out and discovers a flying saucer has crashed into his garden, crushing his azaleas. Out of the ship emerges a small, gray, naked, hairless and genital-free humanoid (played by actor and stuntwoman Jade Quon), who needs help. Milton quickly figures out that the creature likes apples, so he buys a lot of them.

He mentions his new alien friend at the next council meeting, but no one believes him. Another frequent commenter, Joyce (Jane Curtin), even complains to Milton that such talk makes the other commenters look crazy. 

Yet another commenter, Sandy (Harried Sansom Harris), stops by Milton’s house, and meets the alien — and, after a momentary shock, befriends the creature and gives them the name Jules. Joyce starts spying on Milton’s house, and within a short time is part of the tiny conspiracy to help Jules get their spaceship working again. This, they ultimately figure out, involves cats.

Meanwhile, a secret government agency has detected strange energy waves from somewhere in western Pennsylvania, and is starting to close in on Milton.

Director Marc Turtletaub (who made the 2018 drama “Puzzle,” a minor hit at Sundance) and first-time movie screenwriter Gavin Steckler keep the humor in a calm, quiet register, with one off-putting exception that shows us the range of Jules’ powers. The laughs are mild chuckles, never hearty guffaws.

Kingsley deftly modulates his performance to fit the movie’s low-stress vibe. The standout comic performance is — and this is no surprise to anybody who remembers her “Saturday Night Live” days — is Curtin, who finds the rebel hidden under Joyce’s busybody persona. Her unexpected rendition of “Free Bird” is the movie’s biggest laugh, in a movie that could use more of them.

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‘Jules’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 11, in theaters. Rated PG-13 for strong language. Running time: 87 minutes.

Review: 'Shortcomings' is a funny, smart take on Asian identity, and a sharp directing debut for actor Randall Park

On the blurry line between defending one’s ethnic identity and finding one’s own self lies “Shortcomings,” a funny and thoughtful anti-romantic comedy that’s a strong directing debut for actor Randall Park.

Ben, played by Justin H. Min, runs a failing independent movie theater in Berkeley, Calif., and once harbored dreams of being a filmmaker. As a Japanese American movie snob, he’s particularly incensed about Hollywood movies with mostly Asian casts pandering to the worst impulses of rom-com sentimentality. (The movie opens with such a scene, featuring Stephanie Hsu and Ronny Chieng, that’s a diss clearly aimed at “Crazy Rich Asians.”) 

Ben’s girlfriend, Miko (Ally Maki), works with the Asian American film festival that booked that Hollywood product, so the drive home devolves into the latest in a series of arguments the couple has had recently. Another argument starts when Miko finds porn websites on Ben’s laptop, all of them featuring white women — which, Miko argues, shows Ben’s a hypocrite because he always says his preferences are toward Asian women.

Ben’s olher conversation partner is Alice (played by comedian Sherry Cola), a tart-tongued lesbian college student who can’t seem to go two days without falling in love with some attractive woman — such as the waitress at their favorite diner. Alice is also the only person who can successfully call Ben out on his bullcrap, particularly when he talks about Miko. 

Miko soon tells Ben she’s been picked for a three-month internship — which, she says curtly, is a good time to press pause on their relationship. While Miko’s gone, Ben plunges back into the dating scene, first with Autumn (Tavi Gevinson), a performance artist he hired to staff the theater’s box office, and Sasha (Debby Ryan), whom Ben meets at one of Alice’s parties. Yes, both Autumn and Sasha are white, seemingly bolstering Miko’s case for Ben’s hypocrisy. 

Adrian Tomine’s script, based on his graphic novel, is handled as a series of vignettes that depict Ben’s slow unraveling, and the question of whether he’s a misunderstood defender of Asian American integrity (his P.O.V.) or just a self-centered jerk (everyone else’s view). Director Park — best known for playing the dad on “Fresh Off the Boat,” and FBI agent Jimmy Woo in the Marvel franchise — does Tomine’s story proud, generating a ton of laughs and more than a few insights that upend the romantic-comedy cliches.

Min is outstanding as Ben, which will be no surprise to those who caught him in “After Yang” last year. The supporting cast — which includes Jacob Batalon (from the “Spider-Man” movies) and Sonoya Mizuno (who was the bride in “Crazy Rich Asians”) — is stellar, with Cola shining brightest as the frequently lovelorn Alice. Together with Park’s smart direction, they make “Shortcomings” the AAPI-affirming movie Ben himself might have made if he wasn’t so self-absorbed.

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‘Shortcomings’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 4, in theaters. Rated R for language throughout, sexual material and brief nudity.  Running time: 95 minutes.

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This review first appeared on this website on January 23, 2023, when the movie premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Dreamin' Wild' shows the strength of family bonds and the pitfalls of a musical dream

The biographical family drama “Dreamin’ Wild” is a moving true story of a musician who took a chance on his dreams — and waited 30 years for it to finally pay off.

In 1979, 15-year-old Donnie Emerson and his 17-year-old brother, Joe, recorded an album in the studio their dad built them on their farm in Fruitland, Washington, about 50 miles northwest of Spokane. The album never went anywhere, and years later boxes of vinyl LPs sat in the basement of the farm house. 

In 2011, where the story picks up, Joe (Walton Goggins) built a house on the farm, near their parents, Don Sr. and Salina (Beau Bridges and Barbara Deering). Donnie (Casey Affleck) moved to Spokane and runs a less-than-successful recording studio with his wife, Nancy (Zooey Deschanel), with whom he’s raising two children and performing cover songs at weddings.

Then Donnie gets a weird phone call, from Matt Sullivan (Chris Messina), who runs a boutique record label that specializes in undiscovered gems. A few copies of the Emerson brothers’ album, “Dreamin’ Wild,” have become a find for vinyl collectors — and Sullivan thinks the album could be a hit, more than 30 years after the brothers recorded it.

Sullivan promises the brothers that they won’t lose any money — and may, he says, make them some money. He also tells Donnie and Joe that he thinks the brothers can go on tour, starting with a record label party in Seattle.

The prospect of performing again is exciting to Joe, but less so for Donnie — who worries that they won’t be good enough, and that the hopeful, romantic songs he wrote as a teen don’t hold up when sung by a guy in his 40s who’s been beaten down by life. The tension between the brothers brings up memories of their childhood (seen in flashbacks, with Noah Jupe as the young Donnie and Jack David Grazer as the young Joe), and the sacrifices their dad made to let the boys pursue their musical dream.

Writer-director Bill Pohlad — who made the thoughtful 2014 biopic “Love & Mercy,” with Paul Dano and John Cusack playing Brian Wilson at different ages — doesn’t go for easy sentimentality or a Cinderella story ending. Musical success is far less important here than the relationship between the brothers, and how the years have darkened their outlook but hasn’t frayed their family bond.

Goggins and Bridges give soulful performances, capturing the love Joe and Don Sr. have for Donnie and the faith they have in his talent. In the central role, Affleck conveys Donnie’s ambivalence toward his musical gifts, which he has learned are as much a source of heartbreak as of joy. 

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‘Dreamin’ Wild’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 4, in theaters. Rated PG for language and thematic elements. Running time: 110 minutes.

Review: 'Haunted Mansion' shows turning Disneyland's attraction into a movie remains a bad idea, 20 years after the last time they tried it

With the box-office success of “Barbie,” Hollywood studios are once again looking to their existing intellectual property — the past books, movies, TV shows, video games, toys and other franchises — to save their financial skins.

Before the suits get too excited, though, maybe they should look at Disney’s “Haunted Mansion” as a cautionary tale of what happens with bad IP happens to good people.

This is Disney’s second attempt at making a feature-length comedy action movie based on the Disneyland attraction — and apparently there’s no one in Disney’s front office who remembers the one from 2003, starring Eddie Murphy, which was pretty terrible. (There was a Disney+ special in 2021, “Muppet Haunted Mansion,” which I’m willing to try someday because it’s the Muppets — and because it’s only 52 minutes long.)

The mansion in this telling is bought online by Gabbie (Rosario Dawson), a widowed New York doctor, who is relocating to New Orleans with her dorky 9-year-old son Travis (Chase W. Dillon). But after one night in their new house, they realize it’s haunted by a lot of ghosts — some scarier than others — and that the ghosts follow them if they leave.

Gabbie starts hunting around for someone who can handle her ghost problem. First she enlists a priest, Father Kent (Owen Wilson), who may be a little too relaxed for the job. Father Kent finds Ben Matthias (LaKeith Stanfield), an astrophysicist who operates walking tours of haunted New Orleans landmarks — a job he took over from his wife, Alyssa (Charity Jordan), who died just after the movie’s prologue.

Ben has invented a camera that shoots spectral images that could, theoretically, capture images of ghosts.

Because of Ben’s skepticism, and whole grief-stricken vibe, Gabbie and Father Kent find more people to help: Harriet (Tiffany Haddish), a medium who knows a bit about spells, and Prof. Bruce Davis (Danny DeVito), a historian who knows about New Orleans’ ghostly real estate doings. It’s through Harriet that the group meets Madame Leota (Jamie Lee Curtis), a disembodied head in a crystal ball who knows the spell that could end the haunting — and bring down the malicious Hatbox Ghost (played by Jared Leto, under a lot of prosthetics and computer animation). 

The screenplay, by Katie Dippold (“Ghostbusters: Answer the Call”), hits all the familiar touchstones of the Disneyland ride — the hitchhiking ghosts, the ghost-filled ballroom, the stretchy living room, and so on. What’s missing is a plot that connects those ideas coherently, or characters we should care about as they run through the story’s machinations.

Meanwhile, director Justin Simien is hamstrung in his first major studio assignment, and brings none of the comic timing he showed in his indie debut, the 2014 college satire “Dear White People.” It doesn’t help that the actors don’t connect, and give the impression that they were randomly kidnapped from the same Hollywood party and are being forced to finish the movie before they can see their families again.

The movie does end, in a murky storm of computer effects. Where “Haunted Mansion” fails to generate laughs, it does evoke feelings of terror — mostly the fear that Disney will trot out this IP again in 20 years.

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‘Haunted Mansion’

★1/2

Opens Friday, July 28, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and scary action. Running time: 123 minutes.

Review: 'Talk to Me' is an authentically terrifying horror movie, with young Australian leads who will be going places

Mythology is everything in a horror movie, because if you get the mythology behind the scares right, everything else falls into place — and the Australian horror thriller “Talk to Me” has a powerful mythology that drives the story in unsettling ways.

A group of high school kids are playing with forces they, of course, shouldn’t be messing with. One of them has acquired an embalmed hand, encased in ceramic and covered with graffiti, that can be used to commune with the spirits of the dead. Or, at least, that’s how we’re told the mythology goes. 

One sits in a chair, gets strapped in with a belt just in case, and someone else lights a candle. The person shakes hands with the embalmed hand and says “talk to me.” If that isn’t enough, the person then says “I let you in,” and then stuff really starts happening. After 90 seconds, the person’s friends try to break the person out of the spell by blowing out the candle.

When Mia (Sophie Wilde), whose mother died recently under odd circumstances, tries the game with the hand, things get weird. Her best friend, Jade (Alexandra Jensen), doesn’t like what she’s seeing — and likes it even less when her 14-year-old brother, Riley (Joe Bird), tries it, with brutal consequences. To save Riley, and herself, Mia becomes convinced she has to cross over again and find her mother’s spirit.

The cast is mostly unknown in America — the exception is Miranda Otto, from “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, as Jade and Riley’s mum — but that situation will be rectified soon enough. The young cast, particularly Wilde and Jensen, bring a relatable seriousness to the creepy events.

Brothers Danny and Michael Phillipou directed the film, while Danny Phillipou co-wrote with Bill Hinzman (based on a concept by Daley Pearson) — and the brothers have a keen grasp on how to deliver solid chills. There are a few scenes best (or at least most likely) viewed through one’s fingers, but little feels gratuitous or unnecessary. The terror of “Talk to Me” is well-earned.

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‘Talk to Me’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, July 28, in theaters. Rated R for strong/bloody violent content, some sexual material and language throughout. Running time: 94 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 22, 2023, when the movie premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Theater Camp' is a 'Guffman'-like mock-documentary with lots of laughs, and an ensemble that gets the weirdness of summer camp

It’s not often that a movie sets up as many jokes, and lands so many of them, as the semi-improvised comedy “Theater Camp,” which feels a bit like “Waiting for Guffman” for a new generation.

The setting is AdirondActs, a ramshackle summer camp for theater kids in upstate New York. We first see the camp’s founder, Joan (Amy Sedaris), attending a middle school production of “Bye Bye Birdie,” looking for prospective campers, when a strobe effect causes Joan to have a seizure that puts her in a coma — the first time, we’re told in this mock-documentary, that someone has become comatose in a “Bye Bye Birdie”-related accident.

While Joan is hospitalized, her son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) takes over operations — but as a dude-bro YouTube influencer, Troy doesn’t have the business skills or theater knowledge to run the camp. The bank is close to foreclosing on the camp property, and Caroline (Patti Harrison), the corporate rep for the more expensive theater camp next door, is waving an offer at him.

Meanwhile, life at the camp goes on. The central figures among the teaching staff are the drama director, Amos (Ben Platt), and the music director, Rebecca-Diane (Molly Gordon), who lead the casting decisions for the drama-loving campers. They also, by tradition, write and direct an original musical each year that the campers perform — and this year’s musical will be a tuneful biography of Joan.

Gordon (best known for her roles in “Booksmart” and “Shiva Baby”) and Nick Lieberman (who has directed many of Platt’s music videos) directed “Theater Camp,” and they co-wrote it along with Platt and Noah Galvin — who shines as Glenn, the camp’s overworked technical director. The script is informed by the quartet’s experiences as theater camp kids, and leaves room for plenty of improvised moments that show how wickedly talented they are and how much they enjoy working together. 

Gordon and Lieberman stay true to the Christopher Guest school of mock-documentaries. There are no reality-show confessional interviews, and never an ironic look to the camera, a la “The Office.”

Gordon and Platt — best friends since childhood, Gordon said after the movie’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival — have such amazing chemistry that they seem to finish each other’s sentences. Platt’s performance here, as a blowhard drama teacher, may redeem his career after the tragedy that was the “Dear Evan Hansen” movie.

Others in the cast who shine are Ayo Edebiri as a newly hired teacher with no expertise, Nathan Lee Graham (“Zoolander”) as an imperious dance instructor, and Owen Thiele as the camp’s quite fabulous costume designer. But the real finds in “Theater Camp” are the array of child actors who give hilarious performances as the camp’s eager students.

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‘Theater Camp’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, July 28, in theaters. Rated PG-13 for some strong language and suggestive/drug references. Running time: 92 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 22, 2023, when the movie premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' reboots with 'Mutant Mayhem,' where the stunning animation outpaces a chaotic story

It’s fair to say “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” is a matter of style over substance — but when you’ve got this much style going on, it’s difficult for the substance to keep up.

This animated tale is the latest attempt to make movies off of the cult-favorite comic book — by my count, this is the third movie reboot, after the movie series that started in 1990 and the one that started in 2014 (and that’s not counting all the TV cartoon versions). This one is different in that it’s not attempting to be live-action. This one is animated, in every sense of the word.

The animation is computer generated, but the turtles and other characters are largely made to look like stop-motion clay figures (think Wallace & Gromit), but with lines frequently added to give a sketchbook quality, like something out of a comic book. The effect is eye-popping, and easily the most visually arresting animation in a movie this year that doesn’t have “Spider-Verse” in the title.

The animation is so dynamic that the story, as frenetic as it is, can’t keep up. At heart, it’s the origin story of the Turtle family — how four baby turtles were washed down the sewer and covered in a mysterious ooze that gave them mutant superpowers. The ooze also affected a rat, named Splinter (voiced by Jackie Chan), who became the Turtles’ adopted father, protector and martial arts trainer.

As teens, the four — Leonardo (voiced by Nicolas Cantu), Donatello (voiced by Micah Abbey), Raphael (voiced by Brady Noon) and Michelangelo (voiced by Shamon Brown Jr.) — yearn to get out of the sewers and experience life as normal human teenagers. Splinter, however, forbids them from interacting with humans, and he has the flashback memories of threatening human behavior to bolster his suspicion.

Once, on a rooftop, they encounter April O’Neil (voiced by Ayo Edebiri, from “The Bear”), a high school student and aspiring journalist. After some initial trepidation, she befriends the foursome, and enlists them to help find the master criminal who’s been terrorizing New York — known only as Superfly.

The movie takes a drastic turn when the Turtles learn that Superfly is actually a fly — a mutant, like them, with a collection of other mutant creatures in his entourage. (The voice casting for these mutants is impressive, including Ice Cube as Superfly, plus John Cena, Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Paul Rudd, Natasia Demetriou, Hannibal Buress and Post Malone.) The Turtles also learn that Superfly’s heists are aimed at a larger goal: A device that will turn New York’s animal population into mutants who will dominate the city’s humans.

Director Jeff Rowe (who co-directed “The Mitchells vs. the Machines”) keeps the movie moving, even if the tag-teamed script — credited to five writers, including Rogen — gets bogged down in too many characters to follow and too much mayhem (as the title promises) to track.

Still, the action is brisk, and the animation shows Leo, Donnie, Ralph and Mike as genuine teenagers, even in their masked, shell-covered hero poses. (Casting actual teens to voice the roles was a smart move on the filmmakers’ part.) “Mutant Mayhem” launches this incarnation of the Turtles well, and will certainly spawn sequels to keep the story going.

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‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’

★★★

Opens Wednesday, August 2, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for sequences of violence and action, language and impolite material. Running time: 99 minutes.

Review: 'Barbie' brings the plastic doll, and a smartly funny meta-analysis of her, to the big screen

Director Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” manages a juggling act I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a movie before: It celebrates a corporate symbol of plastic packaged conformity while also being a subversive, proudly feminist critique of that symbol.

What’s equally surprising is that it’s really funny and, at times, heart-warming.

Gerwig, writing with her regular partner (in screenplays and in life) Noah Baumbach, starts with some history, of how in 1959 the company Mattel Inc. introduced the Barbie doll, a 12-inch plastic paragon with long legs, big breasts and no genitals. In an age when dolls were almost always babies, and playing with them required girls to behave like mothers, an adult figurine who could hold down a job and own a house was revolutionary. (Gerwig breaks out the “Also Sprach Zarathustra” to illustrate this change, “2001”-style. It was released months ago, in the movie’s first trailer.)

Barbieland, as Gerwig shows it, is a fantasia of pink, where all the Barbies do all the important jobs — president (Issa Rae), physicist (Emma Mackey), and so on — and still get together at the dream house of Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) for a well-choreographed dance party.

Also attending the dance party are all the Kens, adjuncts to the Barbies. As the narrator (Helen Mirren) explains, Barbie is always happy, but Ken — the lead one is played by Ryan Gosling — is only happy “when Barbie looks at him.”

But is Stereotypical Barbie really happy? In the middle of the dance party, she asks out loud, “Do any of you guys think about dying?” This stray thought freaks out our Barbie, as does the discovery that her feet — previously contoured to fit into her high heels — have literally gone flat. Barbie consults the wisest of the Barbies: Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), who has uneven hair, is always doing the splits and “smells like basement,” because of being played with too roughly.

For Stereotypical Barbie to figure out what’s happening to her, Weird Barbie says, she must travel to the Real World. She barely gets out of Barbieland when she finds Gosling’s Ken is hiding in the back seat of her pink Corvette, tagging along for the ride.

In the Real World, Barbie makes the harsh discovery that most women don’t think of Barbie as empowering to women. She learns this by meeting Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), a surly middle-schooler, and her frazzled mom, Gloria (America Ferrara) — who works at Mattel, whose CEO (Will Ferrell) and yes-men (and they are all men) are freaking out that a Barbie has gotten loose. (Ferrell’s performance is perhaps the one sour note in the movie, too much like his Lord Business character from “The LEGO Movie.”)

Ken, meanwhile, makes a discovery of his own: Something called “patriarchy.” The results are potentially catastrophic, both to Barbieland and Mattel.

Gerwig and Baumbach take some deep dives into the more controversial parts of the discontinued Barbie product line (do you remember Video Girl Barbie? Earring Magic Ken? Ken’s friend Allan? Barbie’s pregnant friend Midge?) and some of the unanswered mysteries of the franchise — like, where does Ken live when Barbie is alone in her Malibu DreamHouse?

The movie also wrestles with Barbie’s place in women’s lives, and how the contradictions of Barbie — an adult aimed at children, sending mixed messages about feminine beauty and health, and so on — are echoes of the micro- and macro-battles real women wage every day. Ferrara delivers a deliciously sharp monologue about this, in a moment that should evoke as much applause as laughter.

Robbie gives what’s perhaps the best performance of her career — funnier than Harley Quinn, more touching than Tonya Harding in “I, Tonya,” more alluringly innocent than Sharon Tate in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” She takes this amorphous idea of the Barbie doll and finds her heart and soul, and makes her a fully realized woman.

And I’ll be damned if the guy doesn’t nearly steal the movie from her. Gosling’s portrayal of Ken is an astonishing comic performance, capturing the fragility of Ken’s ego and the unearned bravado that his embrace of his newly discovered machismo provides. Gosling does something very few Barbie-playing girls (or boys) have ever done before: He makes Ken necessary.

“Barbie” is also a movie that will reward repeat viewings, as the layers of jokes and references are thick enough that you probably missed a few of them. (I haven’t even mentioned the musical numbers.) Robbie’s Barbie and Gosling’s Ken turn out to be fun company on this offbeat road trip.

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‘Barbie’

★★★1/2

Opened Friday, July 21, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language. Running time: 114 minutes.