Review: 'Exhibiting Forgiveness' is a difficult, but rewarding, story about breaking the cycle of toxic fatherhood

A tough watch but an ultimately beautiful one, “Exhibiting Forgiveness” is an emotional story of the ugly cycle of abusive fatherhood and the difficult work of breaking it.

Writer-director Titus Kaphar’s film is deeply informed by his own experiences, though calling it semi-autobiographical seems inadequate. The main character, Tarrell (André Holland), is a painter, like Kaphar (in fact, Kaphar painted Tarrell’s canvases). Tarrell is quickly becoming an acclaimed young Black artist, and his agent, Janine (Jamie Ray Newman), wants him to mount another gallery show, hot on the heels of his last one. But Tarrell has a deal with his musician wife, Aisha (Andra Day), that he’ll stay home and take care of their son while Aisha records her next album.

Tarrell is also working to help his mother, Joyce (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), move out of the house where she raised him — a move Joyce is reluctant to follow through on. Further complicating Tarrell’s life is the sudden return of his father, Laron (John Earl Jelks), a recovering crack addict who treated Tarrell badly as an adolescent, as he applied what he learned from his own father.

It would be easy for Kaphar to lapse into the storytelling clichés of addiction and abuse, and there are moments, particularly in the flashbacks, where the movie comes perilously close to falling into those traps. The cast — Holland, Day, Jelks and particularly Ellis-Taylor — keep the emotions real and raw, and the layers of art, between Tarrell’s paintings that evoke the old neighborhood and Aisha’s music (Day wrote or co-wrote many of the songs here), provide a depth usually not achieved in this type of story.

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‘Exhibiting Forgiveness’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 18, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language and brief drug material. Running time: 117 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 20, 2024, when the movie premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Smile 2,' with Naomi Scott's dynamic turn as a tormented pop idol, puts the staging of gore ahead of a plotline that's ploddingly predictable

In 2022’s “Smile” and now in the sequel, “Smile 2,” director Parker Finn shows he has the smarts to deliver chilling scenes of horror tension and the stomach to stage some effectively disgusting bits of gore.

Now if Finn could overcome the plot excesses and leaps of illogic of the franchise’s scripts — which he wrote. 

The sequel picks up six days after the first “Smile” ended, with that movie’s lone survivor, New Jersey police detective Joel (Kyle Gallner). As the first movie established, there’s an evil spirit of some kind that feasts parasitically on a person, and when that person has given up everything the spirit wants, that evil makes the host kill themselves in the messiest way possible and in front of a witness — who then becomes the next host, going mad until they kill themselves in front of someone else and keeping the streak alive.

Joel figured out the daisy chain of horrific death, but not before becoming infected himself. His plan, in the sequel’s opening sequence, involves trying to pass the evil parasite on to a skeevy drug kingpin, who presumably will off himself and infect other criminal scum. This doesn’t exactly go as planned, and the next victim turns out to be a minor drug dealer, Lewis (Lukas Gage). 

Finn then cuts to a different character: Skye Riley (played by Naomi Scott), a pop star who’s preparing for her next world tour — after being away from performing for the last year, going through rehab for alcohol and cocaine addictions, and healing from the car crash that also killed her movie-star boyfriend, Paul Hudson (Ray Nicholson). 

While going through the stress of rehearsals for her first concert, and accepting the tough-love care of her mother/manager (Rosemarie DeWitt). Skye is still dealing with back pain from her accident. She aims to score some Vicodin from a drug dealer she knows — her high school acquaintance, Lewis.

When Skye goes to see Lewis, he’s ridiculously paranoid, seeing things that aren’t there and screaming. Then the screaming stops and Lewis suddenly has a maniacal, Joker-like smile on his face. Then he bashes his own head in with a barbell weight. And, just like that, Skye becomes the next person to be trapped in the curse.

Skye starts seeing people displaying maniacal grins everywhere, and is sure that she’s going nuts. Not even the intercession of her mom, her assistant (Miles Gutierrez-Riley), her record label’s boss (Raúl Castillo) or her estranged best friend, Gemma (Dylan Gelula) seem to cut through the terror Skye is experiencing.

The reason nothing penetrates in “Smile 2” is that, in all the jump scares of Finn’s script, everything is happening in her head. The familiar plot device is handy because it allows the audience to see the most terrifying things Finn can imagine and bring to the screen, and that part of his imagine is fertile indeed. The best set piece involves demonic versions of Skye’s dance crew converging on her, like a disturbing game of “Red Light, Green Light.” 

The problem is that watching the movie devolves into a simple guessing game — is this part real or in her head? — that often becomes predictable, which is the worst thing a horror thriller can be. That said, the conclusion is bat-crap crazy, in a good way.

The main thing that breaks up the script’s plodding expectations are Skye’s rehearsal scenes, which allow Finn to sneak some musical numbers into the mix. (What is happening with thrillers and horror movies this year, like “Joker: Folie À Deux,” secretly being musicals?) If Skye Riley ever opened on tour for Lady Raven, the pop icon at the center of M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap,” I would try to buy tickets until the vendor’s website crashed.

Scott — who played Jasmine in the live-action “Aladdin,” and was strong in Elizabeth Banks’ unfairly maligned “Charlie’s Angels” reboot — is compelling here, giving the tormented Skye a ferocious determination not to be sucked down by these evil forces. If she could apply that spark to breaking free of Finn’s tedious storyline, “Smile 2” could have been a horror thriller worth smiling about.

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‘Smile 2’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 18, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violent content, grisly images, language throughout and drug use. Running time: 127 minutes.

Review: 'Saturday Night' captures — but keeps from falling into — the madness of putting together a TV classic's iconic first show

As someone who would sneak downstairs to watch “Saturday Night Live” with his older brothers, there was a large part of me that desperately wanted to love “Saturday Night,” director Jason Reitman’s frenetic and fond re-creation of the 90 minutes before the first episode of the venerable sketch-comedy show hit the air.

As someone who’s older and more realistic about the half-century of myth-making that has been made of both the original cast and the show’s creator and producer, Lorne Michaels, I was wary of falling in love with this airbrushed history.

In the end, though, Reitman’s story of scrappy underdogs sticking it to the corporate behemoth of NBC hit more often than it missed — which is, if we’re being honest, a better batting average than “Saturday Night Live,” then or now, has ever achieved.

It’s 10 p.m. in New York, on Oct. 11, 1975, and Michaels — played by Gabriel LaBelle — is nervously waiting for a cab outside NBC’s studios at Rockefeller Center. In that cab is one of the acts he’s booked for the first episode of “SNL,” an awkward comedian named Andy Kaufman (Nicholas Braun). 

Coming back into the show’s studios on the 8th floor, there’s chaos all around. Crew members are darting this way and that, cast members are bumping into each other, the writers are exchanging pages, and Michaels is looking at a bulletin board with cards. Each of those cards represents one sketch or performance he wants to put on the show — and, if they all got in, the 90-minute show would run three hours.

Michaels has to bounce around the studios, putting out fires — sometimes literally — at every turn. His top writer, Michael O’Donoghue (Tommy Dewey), is bristling at the red-pencil changes being ordered by the woman from the network’s standards department (Catherine Curtin). The crusty director, Dave Wilson (Robert Wuhl), has no idea what’s supposed to happen or when. And one of his actors, John Belushi (Matt Wood), still hasn’t signed a contract.

Michaels is being constantly reminded — by his boss, Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), and the network’s head of talent, Dave Tebet (Willem Dafoe) — that NBC can easily pull the plug on this new show and run a Johnny Carson rerun. And the network’s old guard, embodied by a phone call from Carson and a set visit from “Mr. Television” Milton Berle (J.K. Simmons), hovers nearby, like ghosts of television past.

The one person is Michaels’ corner is one of the show’s writers, Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), who was also Michaels’ wife at the time. Rosie becomes Michaels’ sounding board, as well as taking on roles as cast wrangler, Belushi whisperer and writers-room champion — and Sennott’s warm, vivacious presence cuts through the clutter of this frequently overstuffed movie. 

The script, by Reitman and Gil Kenan (Reitman’s collaborator on the “Ghostbusters” reboots), neatly gives small moments to each of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players. They show us Belushi as the gonzo artist, Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) as the arrogant leading-man-in-waiting, Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien) as a smooth-talking lecher, Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris, no relation) as a Juilliard-trained thespian questioning his role in this madness, Jane Curtin (Kim Matula) as a chameleonic pro, Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn) as an anxious comic inventor, and — my favorite in this bunch — Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt) as the big sister who sweetly watches over them all.

Reitman and Kenan have apparently collected a ton of stories from “SNL” veterans about the show’s origins, and tries to stuff in every origin story — from rookie comedian Billy Crystal (Nicolas Podany) pitching himself to keep a slot on the show to Michaels hiring writer Alan Zweibel (Josh Brener) in a bar — into one crazy night.

The result is a free-wheeling backstage comedy, dissecting the inner workings of a network TV show as it’s on the verge of falling over the edge. It’s reminiscent of Tina Fey’s “30 Rock” or Aaron Sorkin’s short-lived “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” and it would have helped for Reitman to enlist either of those writers for a light polish over the script. Maybe one of them would have convinced Reitman to tone down the attempts at straight impersonation (though Matthew Rhys as George Carlin, singer Naomi McPherson as Janis Ian and musician Jon Batiste as Billy Preston all have smile-inducing moments).

At the center is LaBelle as Michaels, threading through many rooms, barely keeping his head above water as he labors to keep it all together and give a satisfactory answer to the often-asked question “What is this show?” (It’s the second time LaBelle has played the younger version of an entertainment icon, having been Steven Spielberg’s fictional alter ego in “The Fabelmans.”)

Thanks to the lead performances by LaBelle and Sennott, as well as sharp supporting turns at every corner, “Saturday Night” comes close to what Lorne Michaels imagines his show has been — a one-of-a-kind experience as much as it is a show. 

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‘Saturday Night’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 11, in theaters. Rated R for language throughout, sexual references, some drug use and brief graphic nudity. Running time: 109 minutes.

Review: 'In the Summers' captures the eras of two siblings' life with their troubled dad, more with looks than with words

The thoughtful and sometimes wrenching drama “In the Summers” takes an episodic look at a difficult childhood, showing two siblings on their summertime visits to their volatile father.

Each of the four chapters starts the same way: The kids, Violeta and Eva, are standing outside the airport in Las Cruces, New Mexico, waiting for their father, Vicente (René Pérez Joglar, known by his rap name, Residente), to pick them up. In the first chapter, Violeta (Dreya Castillo) and Eva (Luciana Elisa Quinonez) are elementary-school age, and enjoying swimming in the pool at Dad’s house, or going out stargazing in the desert. The most dramatic moment in this segment, and a foreshadowing of what’s to come, is Violeta cutting her hair to a more masculine bob.

In the second chapter, Violeta (Kimaya Thais) and Eva (Allison Salinas) are a few years older, and Dad is more troubled. They notice more easily, playing pool at the bar of Vicente’s friend Carmen (Emma Ramos), that Dad drinks too much. One night, on a long drive, Dad’s interest in beer leads to horrific results.

Chapter 3, and Eva arrives without her sister, and finds Dad has a new girlfriend, Yenny (Leslie Grace, from “In the Heights”), and together they have a baby girl, Natalia. In Chapter 4, the siblings are out of college, Violeta (played now by Lio Mehiel, from last year’s Sundance hit “Mutt”) is transitioning and Eva (Sasha Calle, who played Supergirl in “The Flash”) is wary of getting too open with Dad.

Writer-director Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio is not particularly interested in the surface details of these characters — for example, it’s never clear what Vicente does for a living, other than once when we see him tutoring a student, Camila (played by Gabriella Surodjawan and Sharlene Cruz at different ages). Instead, Lacorazza is aiming for the emotional truths that lie deep below. This may be confounding for fans who expect an explosive argument where all the grievances are finally aired, but it turns out the subtle approach is more true to who these characters are.

Though Pérez Joglar is the constant force of “In the Summers” and carries Vicente’s pain well, the film’s emotional weight is handled adeptly by the six young actors who play Violeta and Eva at three different ages — particularly Mehiel and Calle, who communicate years of pain and memory with a single look.

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‘In the Summers’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, Oct. 11, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City), and other theaters. Not rated, but probably R for sexuality, some violence, alcohol and marijuana use, and language. Running time: 98 minutes.

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This review originally ran on this site on January 24, 2024, when the movie premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Joker: Folie à Deux' is a dull wallow that drags Lady Gaga into Joaquin Phoenix's tedious darkness

There’s a dim coldness to director Todd Phillips’ “Joker: Folie à Deux” — like a carp flopping in the bottom of the boat — that permeates every moment of this casually cruel and clumsily nihilistic follow-up to the 2019 Gotham-as-cesspool psychological drama that won Joaquin Phoenix his Oscar.

Phillips and writing partner Scott Silver find Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck right where his past crimes left him: Arkham Asylum, taking his court-ordered meds so he can be deemed competent to stand trial for the five killings he committed, most prominently of talk-show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) live on national television. He spends his days anonymous among the other asylum patients, even though his notoriety has the guards (led by an oily Brendan Gleeson) constantly asking him to tell a joke.

One day, after a visit from his overworked defense lawyer (Catherine Keener), Arthur is being led back to the maximum-security ward and sees a woman in the minimum-security area. That woman, Lee Quinzel (played by Lady Gaga), seems to make an instant connection with Arthur — two kindred spirits who see the madness of the world as more dangerous than the madness of each other. (The movie’s title translate to “madness for two.”)

Here, the shared insanity manifests itself through music. Arthur and Lee begin a halting, unsteady duet on a song like “For Once in My Life” or “That’s Entertainment,” in the dank confines of Arkham — and, within a few bars, their voices firm up, and the “reality” of the asylum transforms into a colorful Broadway stage or a TV studio, and the pair are dressed like movie stars. But there’s no rhyme or reason to the song cues, seemingly chosen less for appropriateness to the story than because Gaga likes the oldies.

Lee gets released from the asylum just as Arthur’s trial is starting, which means Lee gets a gallery seat while Gotham City prosecutor Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) launches into an open-and-shut case of five murder counts. Arthur’s defense, such as it is, is to plead that Arthur’s mind was hijacked by the character of Joker, and wasn’t responsible for his actions. That argument takes on added weight when Arthur, as Joker, decides to represent himself — playing to the gallery and the mob more than to the jury.

The trial’s details cling so tightly to the events of the first movie that there’s no room for this suffocating movie to breathe on its own. How dark and depressing is this movie? Let’s put it this way: If “Seven” had musical numbers, it might get to where “Joker: Folie à Deux” has set up shop.

The only positive note for this movie is Gaga, who fully commits to the bit. She imbues Lee, aka Harley Quinn, with the true-believer zealotry of a true convert. And getting to hear Gaga sing, even in this dispiriting context, is a pleasant experience. 

The worst part about a movie being as nihilistic as “Joker: Folie à Deux” is that it’s boring. Right up to the movie’s final image, nothing matters in a world this bleak — and when nothing matters, why bother watching?

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‘Joker: Folie à Deux’

★1/2

Opens Friday, October 4, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for some strong violence, language throughout, some sexuality, and brief full nudity. Running time: 138 minutes.

Review: 'The Outrun' is a raw, beautiful look at alcoholism, with a fearless performance by Saoirse Ronan

Director Nora Fingscheidt’s “The Outrun” is a strong drama about alcoholism — joining a crowded movie roster that includes “The Lost Weekend,” “The Days of Wine and Roses,” “When a Man Loves a Woman,” “Leaving Las Vegas,” “Flight” and countless others.

What brings the movie to that top tier are the raw honesty of the script, by Fingscheidt and Amy Liptrot — on whose memoir it’s based — and the full-tilt fearlessness that actor Saoirse Ronan applies to the central role.

Ronan’s character, Rona, has been in London for several years, in a life of rave parties and constant drinking — and, as the movie jumps forward and backward in her timeline, we see the toll that all this drinking has had on her health, her physical safety, her romantic life, and her overall happiness. (Fingscheidt uses a clever visual device to help viewers keep the threads of Rona’s timeline straight: The changes in her hair color, from aquamarine to faced blue-on-blonde.) 

Months into sobriety, Rona moves home to the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland. That’s where her mother (Saskia Reeves) lives in their house on the family farm, while her father (Stephen Dillane) lives separately in a caravan on the property. As the story unfolds, we learn about Mom’s late-in-life conversion to evangelical Christianity and Dad’s recurring bouts of manic depression — and their effect on Rona growing up.

Flashing back and forward, we get glimpses of more of Rona’s life. A boyfriend, Dayton (Paapa Essiedu), and how Rona’s drinking intruded on that relationship. A career in biological research that was derailed. Moments of blackout drinking and their violent aftermath. A rehab circle in London, and an AA meeting on the island — where one man, sober for 12 years, gives her the advice that staying away from alcohol “never gets easy. It just gets less hard.”

Much of the power in “The Outrun” comes from scenes where Ronan is alone, on the windy shores of the Orkneys, helping a conservation group’s survey of a rare bird, or hanging out in a drafty cottage — always alone with her thoughts, considering her past mistakes and figuring out what to do with her life next. 

Ronan’s performance is tender, passionate and intense, and will be deserving of every bit of awards-season conversations coming in the next few months. Most of those conversations will mention that Ronan turned 30 in April, and how weird it is that a 30-year-old actor would be considered overdue for an Oscar. (She’s been nominated four times before — “Atonement,” “Brooklyn,” “Lady Bird” and “Little Women” — without winning yet.) Ronan is overdue, and “The Outrun” could be the venue to correct that omission.

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‘The Outrun’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 4, in theaters. Rated R for language and brief sexuality. Running time: 118 minutes.

Review: 'A Different Man' depicts two ways a life with disability can be lived, and gives actor Adam Pearson a springboard to greatness

In the drama “A Different Man,” writer-director Aaron Schimberg provides an offbeat object lesson in how fate is what one makes of it — and what happens when one discovers that your best life is being lived by someone else.

Edward (played by Sebastian Stan) is a morose man living in New York with dreams of being an actor. Schimberg shows him at work, with a minor role in what turns out to be a training video — to teach employees how not to freak out when they meet a coworker with a physical disability. Edward has neurofibromatosis, a genetic condition that causes his face to be disfigured.

Edward lives a sad, lonely life. He tries to make friends with his neighbor, Ingrid (played by the great Norwegian star Renate Reinsve), a budding playwright, but his self-consciousness about his disfigurement keeps him from showing his feelings for her.

His doctor tells Edward that a researcher he knows is working on a wonder drug that might help lessen Edward’s disfigurement. He gives it a try, and it turns out to be even better than advertised. In a short time, the lesions and skin tags have peeled away, and Edward has a face that looks like — well, like Sebastian Stan without prosthetic makeup. Edward takes on a new persona, Guy, and goes out to be the success he always dreamed of being.

In short order, Guy is a real estate success and sleeping with beautiful women in his new luxury apartment. One day, he comes across an off-Broadway theater, and discovers that Ingrid is auditioning people for her new play — which is largely inspired by her encounters with Edward. Ingrid’s problem is finding an actor, preferably one with a physical condition, to play the lead role. Guy retrieves the mask of his old self, made by the researchers who gave him the wonder drug, and lands the part.

During rehearsals, though, someone steps into the theater. He has a face similar to what Guy used to have when he was Edward. But this fellow, Oswald (played by the British actor Adam Pearson), is happy-go-lucky, enjoying life to its fullest — without letting his disfigured face stand in his way. In short, he’s living happily in ways Edward could never imagine doing, and living a better life than Guy is now.

Here’s the thing that makes “A Different Man” fascinating to watch: Pearson isn’t wearing prosthetics or movie makeup. That’s all him.

Schimberg works hard to make sure Pearson’s casting isn’t a gimmick or exploitative. He and Pearson make such a rich character of Oswald, with an aura of humility and joie de vivre radiating around him, that he steals the movie — though he only enters at about the midpoint. Pearson puts the lie to every narrow cliche we think of when we think of depicting people with disabilities on the screen, and seems to be enjoying himself immensely in the process.

Once that brilliant set-up is sprung, though, Schimberg has a bit of difficulty bringing the movie in for a landing. But Pearson’s performance, and the byplay of Stan and Reinsve to both react to him and be worthy to share the screen with him, makes “A Different Man” an astonishingly different movie experience.

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‘A Different Man’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 4, in theaters. Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, language and some violent content. Running time: 112 minutes.

Review: 'Monster Summer' is a thriller without thrills, a kid-friendly supernatural tale with nothing to surprise you

The supernatural thriller “Monster Summer” feels like one of those movies the Disney Channel (now, I suppose, Disney+) would release every October — a blockheaded kid-centered scary story, one where 12-year-olds race around on their bikes either toward or away from something menacing and creepy.

This variation on that theme stars Mel Gibson — who, despite what many people who have encountered him will tell you, is neither menacing nor creepy in this none-too-thrilling thriller.

The movie’s young hero, Noah (Mason Thames), wants to get out of the small Martha’s Vineyard summer town, circa 1997, where he lives with his mom (Nora Zehetner), who runs a bed-and-breakfast and can barely make ends meet. Noah wants to be a journalist, like his deceased father, but he can’t convince the tourism-obsessed editor of the town paper (played by comedian Kevin James) to run his exposés of unusual small-town occurrences.

One town over, a very unusual occurrence is happening: A local boy goes missing, and when he returns he’s catatonic and uncommunicative. When the same thing happens to Noah’s best friend, Ben (Noah Cottrell), Noah can’t get the paper’s editor or the police chief (Gary Weeks) to believe it’s something supernatural.

The one person Noah comes to trust is the crotchety old man with the big “no trespassing” sign outside his yard. That’s Gibson’s character, Gene, an ex-cop who, we’re told, saw his 5-year-old son taken from him decades before.

Reluctantly, Gene agrees to hear Noah out, even if his theories — namely, that the woman lodged (Lorraine Bracco) in her mom’s bed-and-breakfast is a child-snatching witch — are on the outlandish side.

The Disney Channel vibe isn’t an accident, since director David Henrie came to fame as Selena Gomez’ brother on that network’s “Wizards of Waverly Place” (as well as the son who listened to his dad’s stories on “How I Met Your Mother”). Henrie and screenwriters Bryan Schulz and Cornelius Uliano (who collaborated on “The Peanuts Movie”) have trouble finding a consistent tone, as the movie moves from bargain-basement ghouls to CGI-generated monsters without any sense of what makes a thriller — even one aimed at young audiences — truly work. It may be a “Monster Summer,” but it doesn’t hold up to the chills of Halloween season.

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‘Monster Summer’

★1/2

Opens Friday, October 4, in theaters. Rated PG-13 for some violence and terror. Running time: 97 minutes.