Review: 'Tron: Ares' looks spectacular, but could have gone deeper into critiquing our tech obsession

“Tron: Ares” is caught between two worlds — the one where director Joaquim Rønning gets to comment on our technology-addicted society, and the one where he must deliver a Disney legacy sequel that must drive ticket sales for the shareholders — and can never fully reconcile the two.

The plot exposition at the opening, delivered through fake news reports, tells us that Encom, the computer game maker at the heart of the franchise, was acquired by a pair of tech-savvy sisters, Eve Kim (Greta Lee) and Tess Kim (Selene Yun). They forced out the previous CEO, Julian Dillinger (Ewan Peters) — the grandson of David Warner’s ruthless character from the original movie. Julian has started a rival company, Dillinger Systems, and started working on creating cyber weapons for the military.

Julian’s breakthrough is in implanting a super-soldier computer program into a 3D-printed body. His most sophisticated program is named Ares, for the Greek god of war — and enters the real world as a human-like mechanism, played by Jared Leto. 

The glitch in Julian’s plan is that nothing he builds in the real world, including Ares, lasts more than 29 minutes. Julian needs something called the “permanence code,” which will allow his devices to last indefinitely. Eve, off the grid in Alaska, has found that her late sister found that code — which has something to do with Encom’s long-missing chief programmer, Kevin Flynn (the part Jeff Bridges played in the original). Eve must get back to Encom’s headquarters before Julian sends Ares and another battle program, Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith), to steal it.

What Julian doesn’t notice at first is that Ares, programmed to consume information, has learned too much from studying the Kim sisters — including their capacity for empathy, which he adopts as he goes against his programming and try to help Eve, in both our world and the computer world. (Ares also develops a taste for Depeche Mode, a joke about the ‘80s culture that created “Tron.'“ The joke never quite lands.)

Rønning — a Disney veteran, having directed the fifth “Pirates of the Caribbean” installment and the second “Malificent” movie — and screenwriter Jesse Wigutow (who shares story credit with David DiGilio) create some eye-popping set pieces, such as the deployment of the Tron lightcycles in the real world, creating energy trails that look like molten glass. Dillinger’s CPU world, where Eve briefly finds herself, is too brooding to be effective, but there’s a later visit to the cyber realm that will make fans of the 1982 version smile.

The best performance here is from Peters, who takes the maniacal supervillain trope and finds new life in it — with the bonus of pairing Julian with his mother (Gillian Anderson), who continually warns Julian that he’s playing with forces he doesn’t understand and can’t control.

Speaking of control issues, couldn’t Rønning have done something about Jared Leto? Turns out that Leto is more fascinating when he’s a villain, and dull as dishwater when he’s supposed to be heroic. It’s a casting choice that comes close to sinking the movie.

What keeps “Tron: Ares” going are the breathtaking special effects, which borrow ideas from the original and adds some updates, and the propulsive score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (recorded under the name of Reznor’s band, Nine Inch Nails). One wishes the movie’s viewpoint on technology — after all, the original “Tron” was Hollywood’s first real exploration in the world we now call A.I. — was as dynamic as the visuals and as insistent as the Nine Inch Nails music.

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‘Tron: Ares’

★★★

Opens Friday, October 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for violence/action. Running time: 119 minutes.

Review: 'Roofman' puts Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst in an absurd true-crime story, and finds the loneliness and love underneath.

The wacky, but true, premise of “Roofman” turns out to be only half the story of the completed movie, a surprisingly tender movie about crime, love and the tricky nature of second chances.

Channing Tatum stars as Jeffrey Manchester, an ex-soldier who took to crime after his return from Afghanistan in the late ‘90s. His modus operandi was to break through the roof of a McDonalds, then wait for the morning crew to arrive. Then he would get them to open the store’s safe, then put the workers in the walk-in freezer.

Jeffrey applies the proceeds from these robberies around North Carolina, for which the media dubs him “the roofman,” to his young daughter (Alissa Marie Peterson), and briefly rekindling his marriage to Talena. It’s all going well for Jeffrey, until it doesn[t — when he’s caught in 1998, and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Prison, Jeffrey soon figures out, is a system like any other — and if you blend into the crowd, and are generally nice to others, they will forget about you, which makes escape controllable. After he escapes, Jeffrey gets some advice from Steve (LaKeith Stanfield), a former comrade from Afghanistan who’s now selling phony ID’s. Steve’s advice: Don’t run; lie low and find some place to hide until public interest in the escape dies down.

Jeffrey finds that hiding place in an unseen space in a Toy’s ‘R’ Us store. From there, he lives off of baby food and M&M’s and wears Spider-Man t-shirts — and he disables the store’s surveillance cameras, and creates his own network using baby monitors so he can keep an eye on the employees and the store’s officious manager, Mitch (Peter Dinklage). He also notices Leigh (Kirsten Dunst), who prods Mitch unsuccessfully to donate some surplus inventory for her church’s toy drive.

Venturing out from his hiding place, Jeffrey takes some toys to Leigh’s church, and soon finds himself welcomed by the church’s husband-and-wife pastors (Ben Mendelsohn and Uzo Aduba). He also connects with Leigh, a divorced mom with two daughters — Dee (Kennedy Moyer), who’s 11 and quickly accepts Jeff’s presence, and Lindsay (Lily Collias), a sullen 16-year-old who objects to her mom bringing a new man into the house.

Director Derek Cianfrance isn’t known for comedy — his best known movies are the dark dramas “Blue Valentine,” “The Place Beyond the Pines” and “The Light Between Oceans” — so it’s a nice surprise that he plays the absurdities of Jeffrey’s situation with such a light touch. At the same time, though, he and co-writer Kirt Gunn dig into the raw emotions as Jeffrey and Leigh take their first steps out of their loneliness, a risk for both of them for different reasons.

Tatum and Dunst give tender performances, one holding back because of his dangerous secret, the other hoping he’ll let down his guard and let her in. They raise “Roofman” from what could have been a ridiculous true-crime comedy to something truly touching.

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‘Roofman’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language, nudity and brief sexuality. Running time: 126 minutes. 

Review: 'Orwell: 2+2=5" recounts the life of the "1984" author, and shows how his descriptions of totalitarianism still hold true

In his latest documentary, “Orwell: 2+2=5,” filmmaker Raoul Peck does for the author of “Animal Farm” and “1984” what he did for James Baldwin in “I Am Not Your Negro”: He transcends the mere recitation of the events of the writer’s life to analyze the writer’s work and how it resonates in today’s world.

With Orwell, who dissected the effects of totalitarian societies and described them with laser-like precision, the parallels between what was written in the 1940s and what’s happening today are frighteningly prescient.

The biographical information is compelling in itself. Orwell was the pen name of Eric Blair, a journalist and activist — he espoused democratic socialism — who was born in 1903 in India, at the height of British imperialism. At 19, he began serving in the Indian Imperial Police in another part of the empire, what was then called Burma. 

There, he witnessed first-hand the brutality and absurdity of his people subjugating another on the flimsy excuse that they thought themselves better because of their skin color and class status.

Blair became a journalist, eager to report on these class divisions and the efforts to dismantle them. This led him to go to Spain to report on the Spanish Civil War — where he became disillusioned with Soviet-style Communism, which he came to believe was no less brutal and authoritarian than the Nazi-backed Spanish regime.

Peck uses Blair/Orwell’s actual words, read by the British actor Damian Lewis, to illustrate the author’s points but also to fill in moments of his life — through letters and diaries. Some of those entries were written on the Isle of Jura in Scotland, where Orwell wrote his masterpiece, “1984,” and in sanatoriums, where Orwell was treated for the tuberculosis that took his life in 1950, at age 46.

Peck uses movie adaptations of “Animal Farm” and particularly of “1984” to illustrate the book’s points. When the protagonist, Winston Smith, is shown four fingers and told it’s actually five, the movie shows us Edmond O’Brien in a 1956 version being tortured for saying there are four fingers. (The documentary also uses clips from a 1954 British TV movie starring Peter Cushing, and director Michael Radford’s adaptation, released in the actual year 1984, with John Hurt as Smith and Richard Burton as his torturer.)

It’s in the dissection of the themes of “1984,” and their applications to today’s world, where Peck’s movie burns brightest. It starts with the way Orwell described the malleable nature of language, and how regimes have always twisted words to hide their crimes. A recent example was in 2022, when Russian leader Vladimir Putin called the invasion of Ukraine a “special military operation.”

Peck doesn’t spare countries we in the West may like more. He also cites Orwellian doublespeak within propaganda from China, Sudan, Israel and the United States (e.g., George W. Bush’s orders to invade Iraq).

The point Peck makes is that Orwell would have recognized much of what’s going on, particularly in the United States right now, because he saw it coming — if not in these specific details, at least in the broad contours.

Peck tabulates the censorship both around the world (the Soviets banned “Animal Farm” for being anti-Communist) and in the United States. One list that scrolls on the screen shows book bans in U.S. states from 2022 to 2023 — and my home state of Utah pops up, for books by Elana K. Arnold and Margaret Atwood. (The list is so long that in the time it’s displayed in the film, it only gets through the authors whose names start with “A.”)

Censorship, like rewriting history (cue the footage of the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol), is of a piece of the totalitarianism playbook, Orwell said. “From the totalitarian point of view, history is something to be created rather than learned,” he wrote. 

Any time Lewis reads a quote from Orwell’s writing, an image from the evening news pops into one’s head. The scariest observation Orwell made in “1984” is the idea that “no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.” It’s almost 80 years since Orwell wrote that, and Peck’s “Orwell: 2+2=5” is a reminder of how it’s just as true now — and will become more true unless the people speak up, march and vote.

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‘Orwell: 2+2=5’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 10, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG-13 for some violent content and brief graphic nudity. Running time: 119 minutes.

Review: 'A House of Dynamite' emulates the great nuclear-war thrillers of the '60s, but pulls its punches in the end

The geopolitical thriller “A House of Dynamite” tries to tackle a big topic — the ever-present threat of nuclear war — within a series of small spaces: Military control rooms, the White House situation room, and ultimately Marine One, where the president is faced with the awesome decision whether or not to order a missile strike.

Through these tense sessions, one can see how director Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker,” “Zero Dark Thirty”) and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim (“Jackie”) were trying to evoke classic Cold War nuclear movies, like “Fail-Safe” or “Dr. Strangelove.” One can also see how delivering an ambiguous ending, or making one mistake in the movie’s execution, can undercut those efforts.

The story plays out in three acts, each depicting the same span of time — during which an intercontinental ballistic missile is launched, from where our surveillance satellites cannot tell, and is heading toward the American Midwest. The people in charge of preventing such things, and the people who must respond to them, have about 35 minutes to figure out what to do next.

Act 1 is partly set in a military base in Alaska, where a team of soldiers sit behind screens trying to operate the levers of the U.S. missile defense system, as Maj. Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos) must give the order to launch interceptor missiles to take out the rogue nuke. Gonzalez’ team is in contact with the White House situation room, where Capt. Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) gives the orders — because her boss, Adm. Mark Miller (Jason Clarke), has been ordered to a bunker, in case the worst happens.

Act 2 gets a little closer to the center of the decision web, in a control room of Central Command, or CentCom, where Gen. Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts) has to relay information to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the cabinet and ultimately to the president — who, for this section, is just a blank square on a Zoom call. Brady is trying to relay what the military knows about the missile’s origin, while in another room, Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso), a nervous deputy national security adviser, tries to wrangle enough foreign intelligence to determine whether our chief adversaries, Russia or China, launched the missile.

Act 3 takes us to the heart of the decision, putting us close to the one man who must make the decision whether to retaliate — the President.

Up to now, the audience has been able to play out all the scenarios, just as the military and civilian strategists have been doing. We also get to appreciate a strong supporting cast, which includes Jared Harris as a bewildered defense secretary, Moses Ingram as a FEMA official who’s surprised to learn she’s been moved to that top-secret bunker, and Greta Lee as a security analyst being called on her vacation — trying to help stop armageddon while keeping her son from running off at a Gettysburg re-enactment. After that moment, there are two more familiar actors who deliver quick, soulful performances: Kaitlyn Dever and Renée Elise Goldsberry.

However, the moment we see the president is when the military authenticity Bigelow has been so carefully building starts to fall apart, because of a single casting choice. The President is never identified by name or political party, but by casting Idris Elba to play him, Bigelow irrevocably alters the movie’s tone and message.

Casting Elba makes this president someone who’s cool under fire, thoughtful in his decision-making, and understanding the weight of the choice he must make. In other words, a president unlike any we’ve had in about a year — and, one could argue, since Jan. 20, 2017. 

Of course, any hope the audience might have of the characters of “A House of Dynamite” surviving this scenario depends on having an Elba-like president — not one modeled after the current occupant of the White House. It’s the difference between a sharp-minded Henry Fonda in “Fail-Safe” or a buffoonish Peter Sellers in “Dr. Strangelove.” “A House of Dynamite” presents the threat of nuclear war as we would hope it would be handled, but the true horror is how it makes us think about how poorly it would play out in this reality.

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‘A House of Dynamite’

★★★

Opens Friday, October 10, in theaters; then streaming on Netflix starting October 24. Rated R for language. Running time: 112 minutes.

Review: 'The Smashing Machine' traps a strong performance by Dwayne Johnson in a surprisingly ordinary sports drama

Sometimes the people who handicap Oscar contenders care more about the narrative behind an actor’s potentially award-winning performance than what’s actually on the screen — which is why there’s maybe more hype than substance behind the talk about Dwayne Johnson’s performance in the sports drama “The Smashing Machine.”

Don’t get me wrong, Johnson gives a good performance as Mark Kerr, an early star in the fledgling sport of mixed martial arts. He shows a range of emotions, allows himself to be vulnerable, and even does something Johnson contractually does not allow in his action movies: He loses a fight.

The problem here isn’t Johnson, who goes the distance and submerges his charismatic persona behind facial prosthetics and a moody character. The problem is with writer-director Benny Safdie, who takes a conventional underdog sports story and tells it quite conventionally — which is a surprise for one half of the sibling filmmaking team who made gritty work like “Uncut Gems” and “Good Time.”

When Safdie introduces the audience to Kerr in 1997, he’s recently graduated from college wrestling and starting into mixed martial arts — which combines elements of boxing, karate and other kicking sports, and old-school wrestling, which is Kerr’s specialty. Kerr wins all of his early matches, and he describes (in voice-over) how winning is the best feeling ever. 

It’s a feeling that’s difficult to share with his girlfriend, Dawn (Emily Blunt). Dawn is supportive, trying to help Kerr at home by mixing his protein shakes, but she gets defensive when Kerr says she got the recipe wrong. 

Their relationship is depicted as a series of arguments, where Dawn yells at Kerr until he explodes into physical violence — never hurting her physically, but terrifying her when he destroys a door or some other inanimate object — and they then kiss and make up for a while. Even when Kerr enters rehab for an opioid addiction, that pattern doesn’t change much.

The relationship Safdie depicts with more nuance is between Kerr and fellow fighter Mark Coleman, played by former MMA champ Ryan Bader. Coleman alternates between training Kerr and competing against him, notably in a brutal MMA tournament in Japan, where the grand prize (as various sports announcers say repeatedly) is $200,000, then a respectable number for winning an MMA competition. Bader shows some talent in his first acting role, depicting Coleman as the level-headed family man whose life contrasts with Kerr’s personal and professional rollercoaster ride.

Johnson works up some genuine emotion as he portrays Kerr’s rapid professional rise and, more particularly, his stumbles in the ring and out of it. I wonder about the prosthetics to make Johnson look more like Kerr, because (as the obligatory photos of the real Kerr play over the closing credits) I think Kerr at that age looked more like Johnson than Johnson does here. Maybe Johnson decided that wearing them helped him get into character, without carrying the persona of The Rock into the ring. 

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‘The Smashing Machine’

★★★

Opens Friday, October 3, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language and some drug abuse. Running time: 123 minutes.

Review: 'Good Boy' is a lean, economical supernatural thriller, anchored by a compelling central performance — by Indy, a dog.

America’s new horror-movie hero is charismatic and impossibly good looking, and the camera loves him. His name is Indy, and he’s a dog — and the best thing about director Ben Leonberg’s smartly experimental supernatural thriller “Good Boy.”

In the opening scene, we find Indy waiting patiently at the food of a couch, as his human, Todd (Shane Jensen), is having a medical crisis in a remote rural cabin. The moment is only interrupted by Todd’s sister, Vera (Arielle Friedman), entering the cabin, finding Todd bleeding and unresponsive, and calling 911. 

Leonberg keeps the camera at all times on Indy, who shows concern for his person — but also relief that another human is taking care of Todd in ways even a dog cannot.

After that intro, Leonberg shows us a montage of simulated home-movie footage that quickly summarizes Todd and Indy’s relationship, from Indy’s puppyhood and frisky adulthood, and the support Indy gave Todd as the human suffered a major health issue. After an apparent remission, Todd decides to take Indy and get away from the city, to move into his late grandpa’s secluded cabin. 

Vera, over the phone, reminds Todd that Grandpa (seen in home video footage, played by the cult movie icon Larry Fessenden) went insane in that cabin — and claimed there was something evil lurking about. 

Even before Todd settles into the cabin, Indy is feeling unease about the place. Noises can be heard from upstairs, things go bump in the night, and there seems to be something, or someone, in the dark spaces just out of view. 

Leonberg and co-writer Alex Cannon use all the classic horror-movie tricks, and demonstrates that when they’re done well, they can still scare the crap out of a viewer. Even Indy is scared, and it speaks volumes about Leonberg’s filmmaking talent and Indy’s screen presence that the dog can convey those emotions with an economy of movement and, of course, no dialogue. (If you’re wondering, Indy is a Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever. 

One of Leonberg’s best tricks is that he keeps the camera at the level of Indy’s face, solidifying the focus on the dog and putting the humans — and whatever else is out there — on the periphery. The heightened tension from that simple camera move is electrifying.

The other smart play in “Good Boy” is its brevity, clocking in at a mere 73 minutes. Like any good dog, this movie does its business, cleans up and moves on.  

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‘Good Boy’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 3 in theaters; will be available for streaming starting Oct. 24 on Shudder and AMC+. Rated PG-13 for terror, bloody images and strong languages. Running time: 73 minutes.

Review: 'One Battle After Another' mixes genres for an electrifying story of revolutionaries on the run, a perfect movie for these divided times

The most remarkable thing about writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s new movie “One Battle After Another” — and there’s a lot that’s remarkable about this movie — is that it could be labeled at different moments a political satire, a stoner farce, an action thriller, a twisted romance and a father-daughter drama, and it’s most entertaining seeing how Anderson smartly weaves them together.

The father is Bob, a pot-smoking former revolutionary played with a wry exasperation by Leonardo DiCaprio. Bob lives with his 16-year-old daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), in a small town somewhere in the American Southwest. Willa wants to hang out with her school friends, and doesn’t understand why Bob lays down strict rules — like not allowing her to have a cellphone.

What we know is what we see in the prologue, which shows Bob 16 years earlier, as part of a radical revolutionary organization called the French 75. (The name comes from both a field gun and a gin-and-champagne cocktail served at Rick’s Cafe Americain in “Casablanca.”) Anderson kicks off the movie with Bob’s group breaching an immigrant detention center, with Bob’s lover, the charismatic Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), taking the lead.

During the raid, Perfidia gets the drop on the base’s commander, Capt. Stephen Lockjaw (Sean Penn) — and what Perfidia does next gets Lockjaw so horny that it changes the trajectory of all of their lives. In short order, Lockjaw takes down the French 75 — leaving several members dead, Perfidia missing, and Bob and their new baby finding a new home under a new identity.

In the present day, Bob soon learns that Lockjaw is on his trail — and he has to kick the rust off of his old radical tactics. If only his marijuana-addled brain could remember the password to access what’s left of the old French 75’s network. Thankfully, Bob has friends, including an old radical comrade, Deandra (Regina Hall), and Willa’s karate teacher, Sergio (Benicio Del Toro).

In the credits, Anderson notes that the movie is “inspired” by “Vineland,” a novel by Thomas Pynchon — who also wrote the source of Anderson’s 2014 stoner detective movie, “Inherent Vice.” This new movie is less convoluted than that one was, which allows Anderson to focus less on the plot — which moves with the speed, power and grace of a Fornula 1 racer — and center more on Bob’s determination to protect Willa and Lockjaw’s obsession with catching Bob and locating Perfidy.

Anderson takes some fascinating detours, including two subplots that take viewers into shadowy underground systems. On one hand, Sergio maintains a maze of hallways and hiding places, and a network of skateboarding shock troops, to give sanctuary to undocumented people crossing from Mexico. On the other hand, Lockjaw is recruited to join a secret group, called the Christmas Adventurers Club, dedicated to quietly maintaining the stranglehold of rich white men on power. 

With all this going on, Anderson never allows the movie to feel overstuffed or overlong, even in its nearly three-hour running time. And as he mixes his genres — including a few he’s never really done before, like action — he keeps tight focus on Bob, who’s like a more composed version of Jeff Bridges’ The Dude from “The Big Lebowski,” as he and Lockjaw keep moving on a collision course, with Willa in the middle.

“One Battle After Another” is a masterpiece from a filmmaker who’s made his share of them, from “Boogie Nights” to “Phantom Thread,” with “There Will Be Blood” and “The Master” in between. It’s also an intensely timely movie, showing the divide that’s splitting America in half — and reminding us that there are some battles that have to be fought, and won.

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‘One Battle After Another’

★★★★

Opens Friday, September 26, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for pervasive language, violence, sexual content, and drug use. Running time: 161 minutes.

Review: 'Dead of Winter' is a gradually ludicrous thriller, nearly ennobled by Emma Thompson's earthy and edgy performance

Justly acclaimed actor Emma Thompson labors mightily to raise the one-against-all thriller “Dead of Winter” to heights that its pedestrian writing and directing can only dream of reaching — but can’t quite hit.

Thompson plays a widow — her name is Barb Sorensen, though that’s so immaterial we only learn it in the movie’s final moments — driving through the frozen woods of rural Minnesota. She’s driving a beat-up Ford pick-up truck, carrying an ice-fishing hut and a small tackle box whose importance grows as the movie proceeds. 

While seeking a particular lake, she comes up to a cabin and gets directions by a bearded man (Marc Menchaca). This would be inconsequential, if Barb hadn’t later heard a gunshot, and seen the man chasing a young woman (Laurel Marsden) in the woods. Barb circles back, and sees that the man is holding the young woman hostage. Barb soon realizes the man has a wife (Judy Greer), who’s the brains of the operation, and a good shot with a rifle — putting a bullet into Barb’s arm.

What follows in director Brian Kirk’s frozen thriller is a series of set pieces, set either around the couple’s cabin or out on the ice near Barb’s hut, in which Barb tries to stay ahead of the couple and fulfill her promise to rescue the young woman. Those moments are intercut with flashbacks of a young Barb (played by Gaia Wise, Thompson’s real-life daughter) and her boyfriend-turned-husband, Carl (played by Cúán Hosty-Blaney), over different stages of their courtship and marriage — and why the lake and that tackle box figure prominently in their lives.

The script, by Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb (who has a cameo as a hunter who comes across Barb), starts promisingly, dispensing its information in measured doses to increase the tension. Unfortunately, as we learn more of what Greer’s character is plotting, the story becomes more ludicrous.

Thompson, the great actress that she is, undoubtedly worked on an authentic rural Minnesota accent — a tough assignment for a movie that was actually filmed in Finland and Germany. But it’s hard to listen to Thompson as Barb and not be put in mind of Frances McDormand’s performance as the down-to-earth cop in “Fargo.”

Still, it’s refreshing to see a thriller like this entrusted to two strong women actors like Thompson and Greer, and the cat-and-mouse games between will keep viewers riveted — before the plot mechanics kick in.

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‘Dead of Winter’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 26, in theaters. Rated R for violence and language. Running time: 98 minutes.