Review: "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim" delivers amazing visuals in a so-so story of a woman at war

There are undoubtedly dozens of stories from Middle-Earth, the realm J.R.R. Tolkien created in his books, that could be adapted into films. 

So it’s slightly puzzling that in “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” the folks who keep Tolkien’s works alive on film — Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh are among the executive producers here, and their writing partner Philippa Boyens shares screenplay credit — have put their time and effort into a somewhat lackluster narrative.

Fortunately, this bit of Middle-Earth lore is beautiful in its telling, a deeply detailed Japanese anime look devised by a crew led by director Kenji Kamiyama, whose career began as a background artist on the classic “Akira” in 1988.

The narrator — who, it turns out, is Éowyn, a character from Jackson’s trilogy (again played by Miranda Otto) — explains that this story takes place happens nearly 200 years before what’s referred to as “the War of the Ring.” It begins with the king of Rohan, Helm Hammerhand (voiced by Brian Cox), facing a challenge by a rival, a Dunlending lord named Freca (voiced by Shaun Dooley), who covets Helm’s throne. 

Instead of a direct approach, though, Freca tries to negotiate an arrangement, where his son, Wulf (voiced by Luke Pasqualino), would marry Helm’s daughter, Hèra (voiced by Gaia Wise) — who, we learn, was a friend and fencing competitor with Wulf when they were kids. Hèra says she doesn’t want to marry anyone, and Helm refuses the deal because he doesn’t want Freca that close to the throne. Helm and Freca take it outside for a fistfight, where Helm’s one punch knocks Freca dead. Wulf vows revenge on Helm and his heirs: Hèra and her two older brothers, Haleth (voiced by Benjamin Wainwright) and Hama (voiced by Yazdan Qafouri). 

Years later and Hèra sees Wulf again, and he’s still determined to exact his revenge — teaming up with a rival army to take down Helm’s kingdom and take his crown. While armies battle, Hèra figures out Wulf’s plan and leads an evacuation of the capital city, Erodas, for a nearby fortress, Hornburg. Soon, Wulf’s forces are preparing for a siege to starve Helm’s people during a bleak winter. Through all this, Hèra proves that she’s not only the fastest rider but shows the king that she’s as fearsome a fighter as her brothers.

Though the script — credited to four writers, including Boyens — is loosely based on Tolkien’s work, a viewer may see other influences. For starters, Hèra, with her red hair and superior archery skills, is more reminiscent of Merida in Pixar’s “Brave” than anything else. The revenge motivation is understandable, but feels a bit simple compared to the complexity of what Jackson so admirably adapted from the trilogy.

Kamiyama’s visual sense raises even this simple story, combining an epic scale with an emotional intimacy for its characters — particularly with Hèra, who must not only fight for Rohan but battle her father’s stubborn insistence that his daughter needs protecting. 

“The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” is a reminder that animation can do anything other forms of filmmaking can. Now Kamiyama needs a story that matches the grand spectacle of the format.

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‘The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’

★★★

Opens Friday, December 13, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for strong violence. Running time: 134 minutes.

Review: "Queer" is an uneven adaptation of William S. Burroughs' weirdness, but Daniel Craig's portrayal of an aging lonely man is transcendent

On paper, the combination of director Luca Guadagnino and a book by William S. Burroughs sounds perfect — so it’s interesting that in “Queer,” sometimes Guadagnino’s lush visuals work with Burroughs’ drug-induced surreality and sometimes they don’t.

What does pay off consistently is the lead performance by Daniel Craig, who’s aging into a fascinating and emotionally complex actor in his post-James Bond career.

Craig plays Burroughs’ alter-ego, William Lee, an American expatriate living in 1950s Mexico City, hanging out in bars with other Americans (Jason Schwartzman appears as one morose pal) and indulging in his addiction to heroin. (Guadagnino’s sly use of songs by Kurt Cobain, though not in line with the time frame, fits the character’s languid, drug-fueled sensibility.) 

Then William spots a young American man, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), and considers how he might ask whether he’s queer. It’s a question where the reward, of finding an attractive new sex partner, is as great as the risk of being exposed as a homosexual.

studGuadagnino’s simulated psychedelic trip is like any other in one respect: The effect will vary from person to person. Some viewers may feel a connection to William’s hallucinogenic visions, while others will see a slew of disjointed images with no clear understanding of what the director and screenwriter Justing Kuritzkes (who wrote Guadagnino’s tennis drama “Challengers”) are trying to say.

As Guadagnino is puzzling out what he’s trying to say here, Craig takes command. He finds in William a tender, wounded soul, filling the void in his heart with drugs and whiskey and laconic stares at unattainable men. Craig turns “Queer” into a portrait of loneliness and longing that transcends whatever tricks the director wants to play.

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‘Queer’

★★★

Opens Friday, December 13, in theaters. Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, strong drug content, language and brief violence. Running time: 137 minutes.

Review: "The End" plays in a post-apocalyptic world where the musical numbers turn absurdity into heightened emotional reality

The end of the world, as we know it, should not be a reason to sing — so the fact that the family that is riding out the apocalypse in director Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The End” does sing their feelings, in emotional musical numbers, adds to the absurdity of this strangely beautiful movie.

The movie takes place in what appears to be a rich family’s home, where well-appointed furniture fills every room and expensive paintings line the walls. We’re soon informed that this “home” is deep within a salt mine, and the family has lived here for some a while, as some sort of catastrophe is taking place on the surface. We aren’t told the details of how the family got here, other than the fact that the mom (played by Tilda Swinton) was pregnant when they descended, and her son (George Mackay) is now around 20 years old. 

Also living down there are the father (Michael Shannon), the mother’s longtime best friend (Bronagh Gallagher), the family butler (Tim McInnerny) and their in-house doctor (Lennie James). You have already noticed that these characters don’t have names — which is apparently by design, as it’s suggested that these are the last mother, the last father, and the last friend, son, butler and doctor left on Earth.

The family lives their life in a well-ordered routine. Mom regularly takes down artwork so the butler can repaint the walls. The doctor gives everyone their medications. And the son is ghost-writing the father’s autobiography, in which Dad highlights the wonderful work he did as the CEO of an energy company — rejecting the notion that his company’s refusal to acknowledge climate change may have led to the calamity that hs put them in this underground chamber.

One day, in the middle of this regular routine, something different happens: A young woman (Moses Ingram) makes her way into the family’s space. Mom and the doctor are adamant that the woman be forced to leave, following the protocol to reject strangers so they can stay safe. But Dad rejects the protocol and lets the woman stay — a decision that has far-reaching consequences, particularly for the son, who has never seen a female his own age before.

Oppenheimer is making his first dramatic feature, after a pair of heartbreaking and landmark documentaries — “The Act of Killing” and “The Look of Silence” — about the dictatorshop that ruled Indonesia for decades. Those movies took reality and amped the intensity to heartbreaking levels of unreality. Here, Oppenheimer finds the dial works the other way, and that ratcheting the unreality to 11 makes a movie that feels real even in its most offbeat moments.

Swinton and Shannon are nicely matched as upper-class parents for whom 20 years in a salt mine is just a more extreme version of what they did before: using their money as a shield to block out the problems outside their world. Mackay as the spoiled scion and Ingram as the first new person he’s ever seen juxtapose the diametrically opposed views of what’s real — thanks to his lack of experience with the outside, and her knowledge of the horrors up top. Together, these characters make “The End” a biting and melancholy parable of the struggles, particularly between classes, that threaten to destroy us all.

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‘The End’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 13, in theaters. Not rated, but probably R for violence and language. Running time: 148 minutes.

Review: 'Y2K' is a horror comedy where the jokes flow as much as the blood, as it fondly recalls '90s sci-fi and teen rom-coms.

Kyle Mooney has been one of the more conceptualist comedians ever to appear on “Saturday Night Live” (his “What’s My Name?” sketch, where he plays every part, is a great example). So it’s no surprise that his first movie as a director, the horror comedy “Y2K,” takes a smart idea and runs through its funniest permutations.  

It’s December 1999, and high-school dork Eli (Jaeden Martell) and his trash-talking best pal Danny (Julian Dennison, from “Deadpool 2”) are once again on the outskirts of social acceptability. For Eli, this means never getting to talk to his crush, popular girl Laura (Rachel Zegler). But when they learn there’s a no-holds-barred New Year’s Eve party happening, and that Laura has broken up with her community-college-going boyfriend, Danny encourages Eli to take the chance and tell her how he feels.

There’s a lot of talk leading up to the party about the potential problems of a computer glitch when the calendar turns over to the year 2000 (yes, kids, that was something we actually worried about) — but these kids pay it no mind. That is, until the clock strikes midnight, and suddenly all the electronic devices start turning into killers. Microwaves cook people’s heads. Electric shavers cut the jugular. A CD player spits out discs that embed into skulls. And the machines start rewiring themselves, combining into massive lethal robots.

The kids at the party either scatter or die. One group that forms to make their escape is led by Eli, along with acerbic stoner CJ (Daniel Zolghadri), punk skater girl Ash (Lachlan Watson), and, of course, Laura. They run into other people, including aged video-store clerk Garrett (played by Mooney) and, for reasons too weird to explain, Limp Biskit frontman Fred Durst (played by Limp Biskit frontman Fred Durst).

Mooney and his co-writer, Evan Winter, mine our obsessions with technology for some sharp humor — it’s hard to believe how many ways gadgets are made to kill teenagers — while also spoofing a previous generation of horror movies and teen rom-coms. (Casting Alicia Silverstone as Eli’s mom helps cement the movie’s ‘90s bonafides.) 

Mooney brings a biting humor and a well-honed sense of period nostalgia for everything from Taebo to Chumbawumba. He makes “Y2K” a movie that’s hilariously gory, smartly comic and surprisingly sweet, the very sort of movie that would play perfectly at a teen sleepover circa 1999.

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‘Y2K’

★★★

Opens Friday, December 6, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for bloody violence, strong sexual content/nudity, pervasive language, and teen drug and alcohol use. Running time: 91 minutes.

Review: 'Flow' is a gem of a movie, a wordless animated tale of animals breaking down barriers to ensure their survival

The artistry and emotion found in the animated adventure “Flow” is so breathtaking, and seemingly effortless, that it’s only in hindsight that you realize how big a risk director Gints Zilbalodis is taking in this brilliant example of wordless, universal storytelling.

It starts with a cat. The cat doesn’t crack jokes, or walk around on its back paws to simulate human behavior. It’s a cat, and behaves like one. The cat sleeps on a human bed, upstairs in a house surrounded by cat sculptures. This cat’s human, we surmise, is an artist. We also start to realize that this cat’s human, as well as all the other humans, are nowhere to be seen.

Something has happened in this world, of an apocalyptic order. That’s even more clear when a giant wave of water comes rushing toward the house, and the cat has to run to stay above it. The cat starts running alongside a river, trying to avoid a pack of dogs, until the river’s banks are also flooded. 

Eventually, the only hope the cat can find is a boat that floats by on the much higher waters. The cat seeks refuge, but soon finds it’s not the only animal on board. Soon the cat is joined by a lemur, a capybara and a heron — and these animals must, without the ability to speak, reach an understanding that they must work together to find a safe space. And then there are those dogs, who are still out there on the perimeter.

Zilbalodis, a filmmaker from Latvia, wears many hats with this production. In addition to being the director, he co-wrote the script with Matiss Kaza, co-wrote the music with Rihards Zalupe, and is listed as the movie’s editor, cinematographer and art director. Here, he creates a fully realized world, where the humans have vanished and the animals are — once again — trying to adjust to a new normal.

The computer-animated visual style is natural while being impressionistic enough to keep the movie out of the uncanny valley. The animals are fully realized as characters — you can understand their motivations and predicaments, even without dialogue — while behaving precisely the way animals would in these extraordinary circumstances.

“Flow” is a movie that you get completely sucked into as you watch it, then marvel at how it came to exist at all. It’s as pure and as specific as storytelling gets. 

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‘Flow’

★★★★

Opens Friday, December 6, in theaters. Rated PG for peril and thematic elements. Running time: 84 minutes.

Review: 'Nightbitch' is a solid, if sometimes obvious, satire of the constraints of motherhood — but Amy Adams' lead perfomance gives it bite

It’s been a minute since we’ve seen Amy Adams get to make a mark in a leading role — probably back  to “Arrival” in 2016 — so it’s a delight to see her inhabit the frazzled new mom in the satire “Nightbitch” with such full passion.

Adams’ character doesn’t have a name (she’s listed in the credits as “Mother”), which is part of the point of writer-director Marielle Heller’s adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s 2021 comic novel. This stay-at-home mom, who gave up a promising career as an artist to raise her toddler (played by Arleigh Patrick Snowden and Emmett James Snowden), has lost her sense of self-identity, between the “book babies” sessions at the library and endless cooking of hash brown patties for her son’s breakfast. 

She is wary of bonding with the other moms she meets — because she doesn’t understand why she should make friends with women whose only common denominator is having recently given birth. And she finds it difficult to make her husband (Scoot McNairy) understand what she’s going through, especially when he comes home from four-day business trips and doesn’t see why he needs to take on the parenting duties for a night.

And, to top it all off, Adams’ character notices she’s experiencing some weird physical symptoms — like the tuft of hair growing in the small of her back. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she’s starting to turn into a dog. This turns out to be a on-the-nose metaphor for her barely suppressed rage, and a way to dodge the million expectations of so-called “perfect” mothering. (Among other things, she buys a new dog bed, and is delighted to discover that her son falls asleep in it instantly.)

Heller — who gave Melissa McCarthy one of her best roles in “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” and directed Tom Hanks’ turn as Mister Rogers in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” — gets great comic mileage out of the mother’s exasperation and her dog-provided liberation. She does tend to underline the point a little too heavily, with dialogue that sounds more like an op-ed than a comedy script. 

What makes the movie worth watching is Adams, who makes us feel the weight this mother is carrying — and the the exhilaration she experiences when she discovers this strange new superpower. With Adams leading the pack, “Nightbitch” has a bite as strong as its bark.

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‘Nightbitch’

★★★

Opens Friday, December 6, in theaters. Rated R for language and some sexuality. Running time: 100 minutes. 

Review: 'Moana 2' finds Disney's South Pacific heroine on a new adventure, in a colorful story of connection

It’s no surprise that “Moana 2” builds on the foundation of 2016’s Disney animated adventure “Moana” — but it is a nice surprise how sturdy that foundation is, and how charmingly the new chapter plays out.

Moana (voiced by Auli’i Cravalho) is as we left her after the last movie, working to do right by her ancestors as her island village’s “wayfinder,” seeking to unlock the biggest mystery of the ocean: Why aren’t there other people like Moana and her village on other islands? 

On one such island, Moana — accompanied by her pet pig Pua and her less-than-brainy chicken, Hei Hei (voiced by Alan Tidy) — finds a pottery piece with an unusual marking. This marking shows a mountain and a line of people, and an unknown constellation. Finding this mountain, Moana believes, could help unravel the mystery of where other people are. When Moana is hit by lightning, she has a vision that tells her that she must find other people, or her own village is in danger of extinction.

At a time like this, Moana could sure use her friend Maui (voiced by Dwayne Johnson), the demigod with a magic fishhook and expressive body tattoos. At the moment, Maui is being held captive by the villainous Matangi (voiced by Awhimai Fraser), who’s doing the bidding of the evil god who is laboring to keep the mountain undetected by humans like Moana.

Without Maui available, Moana figures she needs a crew, so she recruits Loto (voiced by Rose Matafeo), the village’s expert boat builder; Moni (voiced by Hualalai Chung), a scribe who is a major Maui superfan; and Kale (voied by David Fane), an elderly farmer who would rather be back on dry land.

Disney-heads will likely know that “Moana 2” was first pitched in 2020 as a TV series for Disney+, and was later retooled as a feature film. It’s to the credit of the directing team — Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller and David G. Derrick Jr., all first-time directors — that the story (the script is by Miller and Jared Bush) feels like a complete narrative. Only in the mid-credit cut scene, in which a character from the first movie is awkwardly re-introduced, does this movie feel the pull of studio-driven franchise concerns.

With a score of new songs (by Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, Opetaia Foa’i and composer Mark Mancina), the voice cast, led beautifully by Cravalho, captures the doubt and determination Moana feels as she’s called to follow this epic quest. “Moana 2” also deploys Pacific Islander cultural touchstones to bring out a powerful message about the importance of human connection, across oceans and generations.

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‘Moana 2’

★★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, November 27, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for action/peril. Running time: 100 minutes.

Review: In 'Maria,' director Pablo Larrain completes his trilogy of tragic women, and Angelina Jolie finds in Maria Callas a legend worthy of her

In the melancholy biographical drama “Maria,” director Pablo Larrain and star Angelina Jolie don’t employ prosthetic makeup or other such effects to make the portrayal of the opera diva Maria Callas look convincing. They use the oldest bit of movie magic there is: Having a legend play a legend.

This biography could, in a way, fulfill Larrain’s trilogy of tragic women in 20th century history — after Natalie Portman’s Jacqueline Kennedy in “Jackie” and Kristen Stewart’s Princess Diana in “Spencer.” In those films, as with “Maria,” Larrain and screenwriter Steven Knight (who also wrote “Spencer”) use a brief period in the subject’s life to extrapolate a lifetime of sadness, regret and resilience.

The first scene takes place at the end, on Sept. 16, 1977, when Maria’s cook, Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher), and butler, Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino), find their boss on the floor of her sprawling Paris apartment, dead from a heart attack at age 53. 

Larrain and Knight then backtrack one week. Maria is a faded version of herself, but no less imperious than in her prime. She orders Ferruccio to move her piano from room to room on a whim, even though his doctor has told him to take better care of his sore back. Maria’s doctor (Vincent Macaigne) wants to perform blood tests, which Maria refuses, though they both know what the results will show — that her liver is on the verge of failure after years of prescription drug abuse. She particularly dismisses the doctor’s warning that she should never attempt to sing again.

Though her once-spectacular voice is mostly gone at this point, she maintains the belief that she might again be able to take the stage. Larrain doesn’t present Maria as a Norma Desmond character, deluded that she’s still as alluring as she ever was. But the hope that she might perform again gives her hope, as does the encouragement of her rehearsal accompanist.

Also during this week, Maria permits a reporter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) to interview her in a series of encounters, during which Larrain flashes back to Callas’ first marriage to industrialist Giovanni Battista Meneghini (Alessandro Bressanello) and her affair with the tycoon Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer) — and how that affair ended, sort of, when Onassis set his sights on the widowed Jacqueline Kennedy. Larrain leaves unresolved the question of whether the interviews are real or imagined, though there’s a big hint in the reporter’s name, Mandrax, which was also a brand name for a sedative Callas was taking at the time.

Larrain moves fluidly from past to present, from memory to fantasy, and from Maria as a 50-something semi-retired Parisian to the glorious La Callas, enrapturing audiences around the world with her pristine voice. It takes a strong actor to keep up with those many facets of Maria Callas’ personality, and Jolie does so with grit and elegance. In fleeting moments does Jolie allow the La Callas mask to slip to reveal the flawed human being underneath, revealing a woman terrified of being passed by, left alone or forgotten — and it’s in those moments that “Maria” crystalizes the full portrait of this regal and flawed icon.

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‘Maria’

★★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, November 27, in theaters; streaming on Netflix starting December 11. Rated R for some language including a sexual reference. Running time: 124 minutes.