Review: In 'Gladiator II,' director Ridley Scott nearly matches the spectacle of his original, but only Denzel Washington can bring the same emotional stakes.

There are few directors alive who can bring the massive sweep and dramatic intimacy of an old-fashioned epic the way Ridley Scott does — and, at 86, we may not get many more opportunities for Scott to deploy those gifts the way he does in the bigger-than-life “Gladiator II.”

If only the emotional stakes of David Scarpa’s screenplay could match the grandeur Scott and his crew bring to this sprawling but slightly distant drama that follows a bit too closely in the sandal-worn footsteps of Scott’s Oscar-winning 2000 predecessor. 

We’re not told much about Hano (played by the Scottish actor Paul Mescal) at the start. We meet him on the eve of battle, a general in the service to an African ruler, Jubartha (Peter Mensah), defending his territory from oncoming naval forces of Rome, circa 200 A.D. He’s married to one of his archers, Arishat (Yuval Gonen), and hold each other’s rings as they prepare to fight.

Unfortunately for Hano, the Roman forces are too massive and too well-equipped to be beaten — and their general, Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), is too savvy a fighter to lose. Many of Hano’s troops are killed, including Arishat. Hano and many of his fighters are captured and put into slavery. For the strong, like Hano, that means training to be a gladiator, killing for the amusement of the Roman mobs and their emperors, twin brothers Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger). 

Someone notices Hano’s skills, and his pent-up anger. That’s Macrinus, a rich merchant with vast resources and well-disguised motives. The fact that he’s played by Denzel Washington, who’s clearly having a great deal of fun with this garrulous but shrewd character, makes every scene with Macrinus a fascinating watch.

Meanwhile, Marcus Acacius returns home to Rome, weary of pointless battles that do nothing but serve the vanity of the emperors. Acacius has joined with others to plot a coup to overthrow Geta and Caracalla. Among those involved in the coup are an old Roman senator, Gracchus (Derek Jacobi, reprising his role from the first “Gladiator”), and Acacius’ wife, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen).

People who remember the first “Gladiator” can tell you that Lucilla is a key player in the first movie. She was the daughter of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris in the original), sister to the claimant to the throne, Commodus (remember Joaquin Phoenix?) — and lover of the general-turned-gladiator, Maximus (the role that got Russell Crowe his Oscar). Lucilla wonders if Hano could have some connection to Maximus.

Scott, using an array of practical and computer-generated effects, brings the gaudy spectacle of the Colosseum to life most effectively. What’s more, Scott makes it look like he did it the old-fashioned way, the way the old masters like David Lean did, making crowds and fighters and bloodshed look like a cast of thousands are there and not just pixels.

The human element, though, leaves something to be desired. It’s telling that it takes two actors, Quinn and Hechinger, to approximate the levels of insanity and menace that Phoenix achieved all by himself. And Mescal, who can be a strong and sensitive actor (his breakout performance in “Aftersun” being a powerful example), doesn’t bring the same brooding charisma that Crowe had in abundance.

Thankfully, Scott’s eye for the very big picture, and Washington’s skill at gleefully subverting the audience’s expectations are enough to make “Gladiator II” watchable. Are we not entertained? Once again, we are.

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‘Gladiator II’

★★★

Opens Friday, November 22, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violence. Running time: 148 minutes.

Review: 'A Real Pain' pairs an uptight Jesse Eisenberg and a live-wire Kieran Culkin as mismatched cousins on a Polish pilgrimage.

The short synopsis of “A Real Pain” — mismatched cousins touring their Jewish grandmother’s former home of Poland — is insufficient to capture the prickly humor and raw emotion that its stars, Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg, serve up.

Eisenberg, who wrote and directed, plays David, a New Yorker who is leaving his comfortable life — wife, toddler son, job — for a week on a “heritage tour” of Poland with his cousin, Benjy (Culkin). They are taking this trip to honor their recently deceased grandmother, Dory, who left Poland ahead of the Nazis.

The cousins are a study in contrasts. David is neurotic, worriedly calling from the cab to JFK. David is laidback, chatting happily with the TSA agent and blithely mentioning the marijuana he bought for the trip. Under that charming facade, though, David has his own problems — which emerge as the trip progresses.

David and Benjy are on a tour with several American Jewish tourists (Jennifer Grey is the most recognizable one) and one Jewish convert (Kurt Egyiawan) — a survivor of the Rwandan genocide now living in Canada. Guided by an Oxford scholar (Will Sharpe), the group visits the remnants of Poland’s Jewish community, culminating in a visit to a concentration camp.

The focus of Eissenberg’s story is the conflicted relationship between the cousins. This opens up the film for two outstanding performances. Culkin’s performance dominates from start to finish, as Benjy veers from effusively excited to angry and morose. Eisenberg gives himself the quieter, more reactive role, and he’s brilliant doing it — though he also gives himself a monologue about midway through the movie that is raw and devastating.

“A Real Pain” asks of its characters, and of the audience, some tough questions about how comfortable our lives are, particularly in comparison to what some of our ancestors faced. The answers are funny and thought-provoking, and it’s good that Culkin and Eisenberg are such energized tour guides on this journey.

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‘A Real Pain’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, November 15, at area theaters. Rated R for language throughout and some drug use. Running time: 89 minutes.

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

Review: 'Red One' is a Christmas action movie with no holiday cheer, overloaded with bad ideas and worse special effects

Dwayne Johnson always looks good in his movies, like chiseled granite — but the movies themselves, and the Christmas action movie “Red One” is as good an example as you’ll get, are more and more becoming bloated and immobile.

The idea that Johnson’s Seven Bucks Productions shingle and director Jake Kasdan (who helmed Johnson through two “Jumanji” movies) are going for here is a mix of jokey action and holiday cheer. What they get instead is a ton of undercooked computer-graphic effects, stock action characters and forced whimsy that is as fake as a plastic Christmas tree.

Johnson plays Callum Drift, commander of the E.L.F. Task Force, the North Pole entity that is essentially the Secret Service detail for Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons). Cal tells the boss, code named “Red One,” that he’s going to retire after this Christmas, because he’s not sure he’s up for the job any more. 

Cal thinks the effort to bring Christmas to children around the world is falling behind, and that this year, for the first time, the naughty list is longer than the nice list. (Some pundit type is going to point to that line in relation to the results of this year’s presidential election and say Hollywood is pontificating again — and I’ll remind you that this movie was supposed to come out last year, before delays ballooned the budget to $250 million.)

Less than two days before Christmas Eve, there’s a security breach and Santa Claus is kidnapped. Callum checks in with Zoe (Lucy Liu), director of a global agency overseeing all mythological activity, to see if they can figure out how someone got through the North Pole’s defenses. Their only lead is a cyber-criminal, a sleazeball mercenary tracker named Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans).

Jack, as we establish in a freakishly unnecessary prologue flashback, has since boyhood known that Santa’s not real. In adulthood, he sells his expertise to the highest bidder, and squanders his money gambling. (How he affords his only-in-movies computer hacking set-up and still drives a broken-down SUV is a mystery the movie never attempts to solve.)

Zoe’s agency nabs Jack and drags him to the North Pole, where he’s confronted by both Callum and Callum’s lieutenant, Garcia — who’s a giant polar bear rendered in not particularly convincing CGI. Jack doesn’t know who hired him to find the secret to penetrating the North Pole’s security, but he knows who hired him. So now Callum and Jack have to become reluctant partners to follow the trail — because that’s how movies like this are supposed to go.

This might be fun if Johnson and Evans had anywhere to go with their characters. Johnson’s Callum is written as if the only instruction was “It’s the Rock, but in Christmas colors.” Evans’ Jack is a mishmash of action-movie cliches: The hungover lowlife who knows computer stuff, plus he’s a deadbeat dad to his son, Dylan (Wesley Kimmel, who’s Jimmy’s nephew). And together these two are going to discover the true spirit of Christmas, not because either of them feel it but because the movie will get a crappy CinemaScore rating without it.

There’s one scene stuck in my head that exemplifies this productions’ wastefulness. It’s when Callum realizes that Santa is in danger, and he’s sent his team to search every room in the complex. At one point, someone checks in from “mistletoe hydroponics.” And Kaadan shows us a guard in a room with plants hanging from trays on shelves lining the walls. They actually built a mistletoe hydroponics room, a space never referenced again in the film, all for a lame joke that could have been dispensed with a line on Callum’s radio. 

The one part of “Red One” that doesn’t completely unravel, amid the bad special effects and lifeless narrative, is when Callum and Jack are in the lair of Krampus, the anti-Christmas demon (played by “Game of Thrones” actor Kristofer Hivju and a lot of prosthetic makeup) — and must play a face-slapping game with the master to escape. That scene has more humor, and genuine feeling, than the rest of “Red One” put together.

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‘Red One’

★1/2

Opens Friday, November 15, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for action, some violence, and language. Running time: 122 minutes.

Review: 'Heretic' finds fright in the dialogue, setting a dangerous game between Latter-day Saint missionaries and a terrifying Hugh Grant

There are many dangers in horror movies, but the psychological terror of “Heretic” serves up something novel — and I don’t say this in a bad way — by showing a sociopath who’s trying to talk his victims to death.

Two young women, missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are walking their bicycles through a Colorado ski town, trying without success to start conversations about their faith with anyone who passes by. Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) is the more senior of the two, it seems, while Sister Paxton (Chloe East), is the new arrival. This ranking is never stated, but the script by co-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods suggests it strongly.

Paxton and Barnes have an address for a likely prospect, so they lock up their bicycles and ring the doorbell as the rain is starting to turn to snow. A man, Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant), answers, and says he’s interested in learning what the missionaries have to say about the Latter-day Saint faith. The missionaries hesitate, citing the rule that they can’t enter a man’s home if a woman isn’t also present. Mr. Reed assures them that his wife is inside, making a blueberry pie.

Once inside, the missionaries begin their well-rehearsed message — what members call “the first discussion” — but Mr. Reed already seems to know a lot more about the Latter-day Saint faith than he was letting on. He even pulls out a large leather-bound volume of the Book of Mormon, with plenty of Post-It notes sticking out from the pages. Paxton and Barnes start thinking they’ve got a good prospect for baptism.

But there’s something off about Mr. Reed, some level of insincerity that the missionaries pick up on. And where’s that wife of his with the blueberry pie?

It doesn’t take long Paxton and Barnes to realize they’re in danger — in fact, in movie terms, they’re pretty sharp on the uptake. But still, they don’t realize their problem until it’s too late, and Mr. Reed is drawing them further inside his labyrinthine house, and into a lesson about Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and what he says he has learned is “the one true religion.”

Beck and Woods, who wrote the nearly wordless “A Quiet Place,” here go the opposite direction, building up tension mostly through dialogue. It’s a smart screenplay, that uses allusions to Monopoly and Radiohead’s “Creep” to make Mr. Reed’s points about comparative religion and gives Paxton and Barnes the grit and intelligence to challenge him — and East (“The Fabelmans”) and Thatcher (“Yellowjackets”) give those characters the courage and grit they need if they want to escape with their lives.

What gives “Heretic” its menace, though, is Hugh Grant, who’s clearly reveling in the villain phase of his career. (See “Paddington 2” and “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” as other examples.) As Mr. Reed, Grant deploys the shambling charms of his “Notting Hill”/“Four Weddings and a Funeral” days, then twists our expectations into something devilish. It’s a captivating performance, one that lifts “Heretic” to the heights of unbearable tension.

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‘Heretic’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 8, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for some bloody violence. Running time: 110 minutes.

Review: 'The Best Christmas Pageant Ever' is a charming family drama that remembers what Christmas is all about

If all Christian-themed movies were as kind, as caring and as joyful — in short, as Christian — as “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” the world would be a much nicer place.

Adapted from Barbara Robinson’s much-loved short story, the movie centers on a church in the small town of Emmanuel, known far and wide for its Christmas pageant — a depiction of the birth of Jesus, carried out by the congregation’s children. It’s a wordless and solemn affair with only one line of dialogue, spoken by the kid playing the angel Gabriel.

For years, the stern Mrs. Armstrong (Mariam Bernstein) has directed the pageant with a set list of rules. When Mrs. Armstrong gets injured at home, someone in the congregation has to take on the burden of directing the kids. That someone is Grace (Judy Greer), one of the church’s moms — who only volunteers when she gets belittled by the snootier moms around her.

Grace tries to keep a lid on the chaos of directing a bunch of kids. Then she makes a decision that everyone expects to add to the chaos — casts the six unruly kids of the Herdmann family, known for bullying, thievery and all manner of bad behavior. They are, declares Grace’s daughter Beth (Molly Belle Wright), “the absolutely worst kids in the history of the world.” (An adult Beth, played by Lauren Graham, narrates the story.)

The snooty moms, and the convalescing Mrs. Armstrong, question Grace’s move. But she senses that this is right, and in introducing the Herdmanns to the story of the baby Jesus, is doing what a Christian should be doing. “Jesus was born for the Herdmanns as much as he was for us,” Grace tells Beth. “We’ll be missing the whole point now if we turn them away.”

As that dialogue illustrates, director Dallas Jenkins — known for creating the TV series about Jesus’ life, “The Chosen” — doesn’t shy away from putting Christ in this Christmas pageant. The message is clear, but also genuine. In adapting Barbara Robinson’s short story, screenwriters Ryan Swanson, Platte F. Clark and Darin McDaniel manage to deliver the same childlike wonder about the Nativity that Linus does in “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” which is as good as one can get with this kind of movie.

The cast’s charm carries a lot of the load. Greer’s been a reliable supporting player forever, and seeing her shine in a lead role is delightful. Pete Holmes gets some nice moments as Grace’s understanding husband, Bob. But the standout is a comparative newcomer: Beatrice Schneider, who plays Imogene, the oldest and most fiercely protective of the Herdmann kids. 

“The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” is a rare thing, indeed — a movie that shows its Christian heart, in all its warm and generous humility, with complete sincerity and goodness. God bless us, everyone.

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‘The Best Christmas Pageant Ever’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 8, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for thematic material and brief underage smoking. Running time: 99 minutes.

Review: 'Memoir of a Snail' is a beautiful, melancholy story of a woman retreating into her shell, told in poignant animation

The Australian animated drama “Memoir of a Snail” is hand-crafted stop-motion animation that feels like something grown organically, like mushrooms in a bog — but a bog where only sad, profound and painfully beautiful things are supposed to live.

The “snail” here is Grace Pudel (pronounced like “puddle”), a lonely woman (voiced by “Succession’s” Sarah Snook) who, when the story begins, has held the hand of her elderly best friend and surrogate mother, Pinky (voiced by Jacki Weaver), in her dying breath. As Grace sits in Pinky’s garden, she releases the jar of snails she has raised for years, and in the process tells one snail, Sylvia (named for her late mom’s favorite author), her life story.

It’s a harrowing one. Born prematurely and with a cleft lip, Grace was a twin — her brother, Gilbert, was born shortly after her, after which their mother promptly died. They lived with their father, Percy (voiced by Dominique Pinon), a former street performer in Paris who emigrated to Australia and became a paraplegic and an alcoholic. 

Gilbert protected Grace from bullies, who teased her for the funny hat she wore. Gilbert had dreams of becoming a great street performer, like his dad was, and practices fire-eating and other pyrotechnic tricks — often getting singed in the process. 

When their father died, Child Services forced the twins to live apart with foster parents. Grace had a reasonably OK draw: A pair of supportive if clueless parents in Canberra with an obsession with self-help books and positive reinforcement — who also discover a penchant for all-nude cruises. Gilbert got it worse, being sent to an apple orchard near Perth run by a sternly Christian couple who work him like a slave. 

While the twins exchange letters, in which Gilbert (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee) vows to escape the orchard and rescue Grace from her mundane life, Grace finds comfort in collecting snails — both real ones and tchotchkes representing them. Grace also meets Pinky, who has lived the kind of adventure-filled life that Grace can’t even dream about.

Writer-director Adam Elliot has a distinctive animation style, molding pasty, doughy characters with giant, soulful eyes. (If you’ve seen his 2009 feature “Mary and Max,” or his 2003 Oscar-winning short “Harvie Krumpet,” you have some idea of this.) They’re a bit alien, but as outsiders they’re even more relatable and sympathetic — particularly when we follow Grace through a lifetime of pain and regret.

Be advised, “Memoir of a Snail” earns its R rating. The animated depictions of nudity and sexuality are strongly done — though they’re also the least sexy human figures ever rendered by animation. And the themes of loneliness and despair are moments that even adults will have trouble processing without tears.

“Memoir of a Snail,” with its grim color palette and harrowing narrative, may not seem the most obvious choice for animation. But the care with which Elliot approaches the story, and brings Grace’s hard-knock childhood and lonely adult years into focus, is a perfect melding of artistic fancy and emotional connection.

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‘Memoir of a Snail’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 8, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for sexual content, nudity and some violent content. Running time: 95 minutes.

Review: 'Here' — where Robert Zemeckis reunites with his 'Forrest Gump' stars and screenwriter — wallows in nostalgia, and a framing gimmick that gets old really fast

Director Robert Zebecks loves melding technology with his storytelling — and that has brought him glory and ignominy.

This can produce good movies, like the animated wonders of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” or the history-bending drama of “Forrest Gump” or the time-tripping antics of the “Back to the Future” trilogy. It can also overwhelm the story in a dump truck of gimmicks, like with the creepy animation of “Welcome to Marwen” or the stifling single-location conceit of his new drama, “Here.”

The setting for “Here,” taken from Richard McGuire’s graphic novel, is the living room of a house. Zemeckis and his co-screenwriter Eric Roth (his collaborator on “Forrest Gump”) start in 2024, as an old man arranges with a real estate agent to set up a couple folding chairs. 

Actually, the movie starts in the same spot, millions of years earlier, before there’s a house, and dinosaurs are running wild. Then we see a meteor, and fire, and an ice age — as if Zemeckis saw Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” and decided he should try to top it.

After the ice age, the movie shows us this spot as indigenous people hunt deer. Then American colonists — one the son of Benjamin Franklin, the dialogue tells us — have built a mansion in the distance. And, around 1900, a crew is building a sturdy brick house on the spot the cameras, and considerable computer graphics work, is showing us. 

The main period the movie shows us stretches from 1946 to around 2015, give or take. We see Al (Paul Bettany), a G.I. just back from World War II, and his young wife, Rose (Kelly Reilly), deciding whether to buy the house. They do, of course, and start their family. Their oldest, Richard, grows up to be a nice young man — played by Tom Hanks, often with the assistance of computer-aided de-aging — who brings a nice young woman, Margaret (Robin Wright), to meet his parents. 

Richard, the movie shows us, is an aspiring artist. His father is skeptical of his son’s sketching, and advises him to pursue a career that pays. When Richard, at 18, tells his parents that Margaret is pregnant, the living room plays host to a quick wedding, and Margaret moves in for the next few decades — though, as the narrative drones on, she grows increasingly unhappy there.

These scenes of Al and Rose, and Richard and Margaret, are intercut with other families who have lived in the house over the decades: In the 1910s, a would-be aviator (Gwilym Lee) and his plane-phobic wife (Michelle Dockery); an inventor (David Fynn) and his dance-happy wife (Ophelia Lovibond) in the early 1940s; and a prosperous Black couple (Nicholas Pinnock and Nikki Amuka-Bird) and their teen son (Cache Vanderpuye) in the 2020s, coping with COVID and the “Black Lives Matter” protests. These supporting stories are drawn as fleeting sketches that don’t connect with each other or the audience.

Zemeckis relies too heavily on nostalgia — and not just by reuniting with the co-writer and two main stars of his Oscar-winning movie, “Forrest Gump.” It also pops up in the endless stream of musical cues to shorthand the date of each scene. (For example, the backdrop of Richard and Margaret’s wedding is The Beatles’ 1964 performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” which is also a reference to Zemeckis’ 1978 directorial debut, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”)

Zemeckis applies much attention to pulling off the technology to make the transitions between eras, including the extensive de-aging to show Hanks, Wright, Bettany and Reilly over decades. Unfortunately, the conceit gets tedious in about 20 minutes, leaving the moviegoer alone with a bland and cliche-filled story of Baby Boomer anxiety and thwarted ambition.

In “Here,” Zemeckis aims to show us slices of a normal life over centuries. The problem is that the movie misses the point that life is about moving forward — or moving anywhere at all, rather than staying anchored in the living room.

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‘Here’

★★

Opens Friday, November 1, at theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for thematic material, some suggestive material, brief strong language and smoking. Running time: 104 minutes.

Review: 'Emilia Pérez' is an exuberant, heartbreaking drama about a drug lord and a lawyer going through radical changes — and singing through it all

It’s hard to say what’s most compelling about “Emilia Pérez,” the heartbreaking Mexican drama from the French director Jacques Audiard: The story that it tells, or the way that story is being told.

Audiard’s script, adapted from Boris Razon’s novel, starts with Rita Moro Castro (Zoe Saldaña), a brilliant but unappreciated attorney at a major law firm in Mexico City. She’s working on a defense argument for a client — a rich man accused of murdering his wife — that her boss (Eduardo Alfaro) will read in court. Rita laments how she puts in all the work, getting a guilty man off the hook, and never gets the credit for it.

It’s how Rita pours out her heart that’s surprising: She sings her woes, in Spanish, while the people in the city — from the food-cart cooks to street protesters — acting as her chorus. It’s maybe the least likely scenario for a musical, but it works, thanks to the powerful emotions evoked by songwriters Camille Dalmais (who goes by her first name) and Clément Ducol. 

Rita gets a mysterious phone call from an anonymous client, one offering enough money that she would never have to work for another unappreciative boss again. She’s taken, with a bag over her head, to meet this client — and learns that he’s a powerful and threatening drug lord, Manitas Del Monte.

Manitas hires Rita to fulfill his plan to disappear from the cartel life, by arranging the work necessary to let Manitas transition to a woman. Rita goes to Bangkok and Tel Aviv to research the plastic surgery options, and hires a doctor (Mark Ivanir) to perform the complex procedures. Later, Rita escorts Manitas’ wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez), and their two sons to Switzerland for their safety. Rita assures Jessi that the separation is temporary, so Jessi is shocked when the news reports that Manitas was killed in a fiery shootout.

The movie then cuts ahead four years, finding Rita living the high life in London. One night, at a dinner party, she’s engaged in conversation with a woman, Emilia Pérez — and it takes Rita a moment to realize the Emilia used to be Manitas.

Both Manitas and Emilia are played by the Spanish-born Mexican trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón, whose incredible performance gives the movie a ferocious energy. As Emilia reveals to Rita why she’s come out of hiding — she wants to bring Jessi and her sons back to Mexico, taking the role of a favorite aunt — Gascón reveals both a romantic charm and an underlying rage. (Gascón shared the best actress award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival with Saldaña, Gomez and Adriana Paz, who plays a woman who becomes Emilia’s love interest late in the film.) 

Audiard (“The Sisters Brothers,” “Rust and Bone,” “A Prophet”) creates an earthy, gritty drama that isn’t afraid to wear its bruised heart on its sleeve through its melancholic musical numbers. With a quartet of dynamic, fascinating actresses, “Emilia Pérez” is a potent, touching look at the parts of one’s self that can change and the parts that remain constant.

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‘Emilia Pérez’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 1, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language, some violent content and sexual material. Running time: 132 minutes; in Spanish, with subtitles.