Nobody understands how to exploit the unearthly beauty of stop motion animation better than director Henry Selick. In films such as The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Coraline, he has crafted macabre dream-like images that are not just astonishing to look at, but have true heart and meaning behind them. His latest feature, Wendel & Wild (his first film in 13 years, due to a failed project with Pixar that went nowhere), finds him at the top of his game visually, but the heart and maturity I have come to expect is missing.
Here is a movie that combines wondrous images, such as an underworld nightmare carnival and dream-like visions acted out with detailed cut out figures, with a story so overstuffed yet oddly underwritten, I found myself enthralled and uninterested at the same time. I was loving the technique on display so much, I almost want to recommend you watch it for them alone. But then, just as I was getting into it, that convoluted storyline kept on rearing its ugly head. The story is based on an unpublished book by Selick and Clay Mcleod Chapman, and has been adapted by Selick and Jordan Peele, who reunites here with his comedy partner, Keegan-Michael Key, for the first time in years as the titular duo, a pair of demons who are more like a comedy team, which probably is not surprising.
And yet, they are not the central focus here, as Wendel and Wild are mainly here for comic relief. Instead the movie tells the story of Kat (voice by Lyric Ross), a sour and rebellious 13-year-old girl who is haunted by the death of her parents, and believes she is responsible. This has led to a life of pushing others away and bad decisions, and has dropped her into a run down boarding school in her dying hometown of Rust Bank. There, she meets a few of the other local kids, creates a few guarded relationships ("Everyone who gets close to me dies".), and finds out that she is a Hell Maiden, and can directly communicate with demons of the Underworld.
This is particularly of interest to Wendel and Wild, two demon brothers who want to escape from their controlling father Buffalo Belzer (Ving Rhames), and start their own demonic amusement park up on Earth. They trick her into helping them, because they have magical hair cream that can raise the dead, and potentially return Kat's parents back to the land of the living. If the movie was just about Kat's emotional journey, I could get behind it, but the plot never gets to stand out, because it's constantly being crowded by more subplots than any one movie needs, including a sinister plot by a pair of greedy corporate twits who are slowly destroying the town, and caused a deadly fire that led to the town going downhill in the first place, the efforts to save the town, a plot to raise the dead, and one of the teachers at the boarding school named Sister Helley (Angela Bassett) also being a Hell Maiden, and teaching Kat how to grow into her powers and believe in herself.
All of these plots and side characters give Wendell & Wild an overly bloated tone that killed whatever enjoyment the visuals were able to provide. It turns what could be a powerful story about grief and emotional trauma into something that simply can't settle on a proper tone, because each plot and character seems to exist in a completely different film. The kids at the school seem to come from a tween sitcom, the evil corporate characters are broad parody villains, the whole raising the dead plot brings memories of the horror-themed Coraline, and Wendell and Wild themselves mainly seem to be on the outside of the story doing a Key and Peele comedy routine. There's even a cute little pet goat for one of the kids for no reason other than perhaps appealing to young kids.
This is a movie that has a lot on its mind, and I admire that, but it needs to connect better for it to seem like a cohesive whole. The movie's combination of the macabre, social commentary on wealth divide and the prison system, female empowerment and sketch comedy simply ends up being a mess. You can see the effort that went into creating the visuals and the world, but the story ends up crashing it all down. I wanted to get behind the lead character Kat, as she has an interesting character design and a potentially interesting arc. But because it's never exploited to its fullest, having to compete with everything else the movie wants to say, it ends up being less than it should.
Wendel & Wild is a movie that is easy for me to admire, yet hard to enjoy. I'm sure it was a thrill for Selick just to be working again after the problems he had getting his Pixar project off the ground, which almost led to him quitting filmmaking. I fully support his vision, but he needs a central idea to guide it, and this film simply goes in too many directions.
Sometimes when I review a movie, I don't feel like a film critic, but rather someone making a Public Service Announcement, trying to steer people away from seeing a truly awful film. Halloween Ends is one of those times. This is as joyless, dull, and idiotic a film as I have seen this year. Even worse, this is intended to be the end of a legendary franchise. If true, all I have to ask is, what were they thinking?
While I have not exactly been a big supporter of director and co-writer David Gordon Green's attempt to return the classic slasher franchise to its roots, I have always found something to admire in the last two entries. This time, however, I am truly at a loss. The movie is being advertised as the final standoff between series heroine Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and masked killer Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney, with assistance from Nick Castle) after over 40 years. And yet, this plot plays very little into the film itself. Heck, Michael does not even enter the picture until almost an hour in, and then he doesn't actually do much until the climax. Fans who have stuck with these characters might be disappointed to learn of the bait and switch that Green and his team of writers have in store for a send off.
Instead, the movie is focused on Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), a character entirely new to this series, and whom the screenplay makes very little effort into making an engaging lead character that we want to follow. Corey is your typical wimp who gets picked on by everybody he comes in contact with, and lives with a mother so domineering and controlling, even Norman Bates' Mom would tell her to dial it down a little. He's introduced in an opening prologue set on Halloween Night 2019, where he's babysitting a bratty little boy, and causes an accident that winds up with the boy's death just as his parents come home. Since then, Corey has become the town outcast, and he seems to have a violent rage building within him.
Laurie senses this, and wants her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) to stay away from him, but for some reason, Allyson is insanely attracted to this bland nice guy who is picked on and bullied so much, it almost becomes a running gag. The guy can't go anywhere without being harassed by the high school marching band, the local DJ, homeless people, or drunken cops. He happens to come upon Michael Myers' current hiding spot in the sewers of Haddonfield, Illinois while hiding from some bullies, and I guess old Michael senses a kindred spirit or something, as he teams up with Corey to take revenge on his enemies. Eventually, nice guy Corey becomes deranged psychopath Corey, who steals Myers' mask, and begins a series of copycat murders, none of which are memorable in the slightest for those in the audience who are into that sort of thing.
And yet, Allyson has to be written as the dumbest person in the world to stay with this guy as long as she does before she realizes the guy's going psycho. By that point, the bodies are stacking up, and Laurie knows that Michael is somehow involved, and is getting ready for the final showdown. The thing that has always bothered me with Green's take on this series is that he refuses to give us one single likeable character. Apparently it's a law that in order to live in Haddonfield, you have to be haunted, psychotic, or a complete and total a-hole. There's not a single character to relate to, no interesting scenes or set pieces, and not a line of dialogue that doesn't clang with a heavy thud. There are no believable scenarios or character relationships, because everybody's too busy poking around in dark places so they can get killed off.
Halloween Ends is a surprisingly junky conclusion to a trilogy that started out with some faint promise in 2018, and quickly devolved into total crap with each passing film. Now, here we are, with what is reported to be the final film. I'm not buying it, but if it's true, what a kick in the teeth. While it's always great to see Jamie Lee Curtis again, she's given little to do here by stand around and fret over her granddaughter going out with a guy she doesn't approve of, because she senses evil within him. Think of how many years she has invested into this role and this franchise. Don't you think they could give her some real scenes to play, or an interesting character moment? Apparently that was too much to ask.
This is a clunky and junky film that doesn't have the decency to ratchet up any tension or suspense. It's just uninspired, and plays like everyone involved wanted to get this entry over with so they could move on with their lives. I felt the same way watching this, so at least I was feeling something with the actors, even though I felt nothing for the characters they were playing.
The Good House can't decide if it wants to be dramatic or cute about a very serious subject matter. The movie (based on an acclaimed novel by Ann Leary) is about alcoholism, and the denial that most alcoholics have that they have a problem, and there are a lot of truths within the film about this. But then, the movie will veer into comic fantasy, and have its lead star Sigourney Weaver break the fourth wall and give comical asides to an invisible audience like an AARP Ferris Bueller.
Weaver does still give a natural performance here as Hildy Good, a hard-nosed realtor in a New England coastal town. She gives the outward appearance of success with fine clothes, the Land Rover, and the kind of cocky confidence that can only come from knowing that she is the best at what she does. However, it's getting harder for her to hide a string of disappointments in her life. She's losing clients to a rival (Kathryn Erbe), her bills are piling up, and she has to financially support one of her adult daughter's dreams of going to New York to be an artist. She also has to constantly put up a ruse to everyone that she is a recovering alcoholic, when in reality, she's cracking open cases of wine that she keeps hidden in her home at the end of every work day.
In one of the many moments throughout the film when Hildy becomes the only character in the movie to acknowledge and talk directly to the camera, she tells us "Wine is not really drinking". It's the kind of excuse that is common to people who don't want to admit to a problem, right up there with "I can stop whenever I want". We witness a flashback at one point in the film where her family staged an intervention, wanting her to get help, and even there, she couldn't help but joke about needing a drink to handle it. Like I said, there are a lot of truths about the topic throughout, and Weaver's presence alone in the film lifts the material. The problem is that directors and co-writers Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky can't pick a proper tone, and keep on veering into overly cute comedic elements.
With its cute seaside town setting, colorful supporting characters, and Weaver constantly cracking wise with the audience, The Good House develops a light tone that really doesn't work with the darker elements that are eventually revealed. The movie is so desperate to keep a light and upbeat tone, it even skims over certain elements, such as both of her daughters talking about what a terrible mother Hildy was when they were growing up, yet we never get to see it in flashbacks or even hear about it. The movie keeps on touching on interesting dramatic material, such as how Hildy's husband left her for a man, but it's afraid that if it really dives deep into this subject matter, it will ruin the light and tranquil mood that it wants to create.
Instead of really diving into Hildy and the issues that plague her, the movie wants to focus on her relationship with Frank (Kevin Kline), a local handyman who has a history with her, and still might hold feelings for her. As always, Kline is excellent in the role, and brings a soft, comic likability, but that's all there is to Frank. He's essentially a Saint, and we don't learn anything about him other than he's a nice guy who truly cares for Hildy and worries about her. By having the film focus on cute humor and romance, it makes the hard shift it takes toward dramatic and tragic consequences in the Third Act all the more jarring. The movie has not earned what happens near the end to some of the people in Hildy's life, because it hasn't taken itself seriously or dived into its own issues, then it suddenly wants to without warning.
I never knew quite how I was supposed to react to The Good House. There are moments where I smiled, and I always enjoyed the performances, but there are also moments that are dark and depressing, and don't match the overall tone of the film. This is a movie that can't decide if it wants to be lighthearted about alcoholics, or facing hard truths. It tries for both approaches, and because of that, it never engages, despite the two incredibly engaging leads at the center of it.
Lyle Lyle Crocodile is a very strange kiddie movie. Normally, I would say that with a big grin on my face, but this movie brought me no joy. It's heart is mechanical and barely there, and its brain is totally absent. It mystified me how a movie about a family living with a CG anthropomorphic crocodile who enjoys singing pop songs and Broadway show tunes could be so bland and forgettable. This cries out for a wild and creative touch, but everything about it is by the numbers.
And yet, I found the film's opening moments promising, as we're introduced to a scene-chewing Javier Bardem going over the top as wannabe magician and entertainer, Hector P. Valenti. Things kick off with him patrolling the streets of Manhattan for something that will push his act over the top and make him famous. He finds it in the back room of an exotic pet store when he discovers a tiny baby crocodile named Lyle that can't talk, but can somehow sing with the voice of pop star Shawn Mendes. He takes the little guy home, and they work on a sensational musical duo act. But when the time comes for them to perform on the stage in front of a massive audience, Lyle suffers from stage fright, and can only let out a tiny squeak.
I immediately asked myself why doesn't Hector just videotape Lyle singing and dancing around his home, and upload it to YouTube. It would go viral in seconds, and all of his problems would be over. Alas, Hector decides to go on the road alone to try to raise money, and leaves Lyle alone in his New York brownstone home. Flash forward 18 months later, and the Primm Family moves into the home. It's this moment that the movie veers hard into kid's movie cliches, and never looks back. The Primms young son is Josh (Winslow Fegley), a shy and neurotic Middle School kid who has a hard time making friends. He discovers Lyle living in the attic, and quickly bonds with the creature when he finds out it can sing. They explore the rooftops of New York, and go dumpster diving together. Somehow, this helps Josh come out of his shell and make friends at school, though I'll be darned if I know why, as the movie doesn't say.
Lyle quickly wins over Josh's dad Joseph (Scoot McNairy) and stepmom Katie (Constance Wu), and becomes one of the family. Again, we never really get to see these characters bond with Lyle. One minute they're terrified by the sight of their kid with a crocodile, and the next, Katie's singing with the reptile in the kitchen, while Joseph is won over when Lyle reminds him of his high school wrestling days. Even when Hector comes back into the picture, the movie is just curiously flat and boring. It goes through all the standard cliches of a kid's movie, but with no passion or interest. There's the mean and nosy neighbor (Brett Gelman), the girl at school who warms up to Josh, and a lot of original musical numbers that all sound exactly alike and that I forgot as soon as they were done.
But nothing could prepare me for the climax of Lyle Lyle Crocodile which must pull off some kind of record by combining four completely different climax cliches into one ending. We get Hector and Josh having to break Lyle out of the Zoo after he's taken away by animal control, we have a race down the streets of Manhattan to get to a singing competition, we have the singing competition itself (complete with the parents showing up late, but just in time to see their boy perform on stage), and finally, we even get a courtroom scene. Yes. A courtroom scene, complete with a stern judge deciding Lyle's fate, and whether he will get to stay with the loving Primm family, or if he will have to go back to the zoo. I would have been beside myself with hysterical laughter if the movie wasn't so boring.
I wonder if the filmmakers realize they've basically done an inferior remake of a movie that came out around this time last year, Clifford the Big Red Dog. Both are based on beloved children's books franchises, both focus on a lonely child living in Manhattan who get a magical animal friend with the aid of an eccentric adult character played by a respected actor, and both are about how the child and their family grow to love the strange creature, despite initially being afraid of it, while having to keep it a secret, and when that secret gets out, they have to protect it, and there's a chase down the streets of New York. The thing is, I liked Clifford. It was a sweet movie with genuine heart. This movie knows what plot points to hit, but it acts like its merely checking them off a list. It never once gets close to the heart of these characters, and make them into anything more than placeholders inserted into a generic screenplay.
I found a lot of things about Lyle strange or bizarre, but not in a way that made me smile. It simply did not charm or delight me in any way, and it bored me to no end. I did not find Lyle himself cute or entertaining, and aside from Bardem completely throwing himself into the material with little care, the human actors were dull. This needed to be more manic, fanciful, and alive.
There are many who will say that Amsterdam is a bad movie, but I'm here to set the record straight. The latest from writer-director David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook) is much too ambitious to be awful, and therefore, it must be labeled as a disappointment. There's a big-name cast and a clear effort being made here, but it's all at the expense of a muddled story that is too complicated to be fun, and nowhere near the effort to figure out.
Here is a movie that manages to be too much and not enough at the same time. It's overstuffed with plot and character, yet meanders and crawls its way through its own labyrinth that it creates for itself, until the audience either succumbs to its weak charms, or simply drops off and stop paying attention. Here is a movie with a cast that most directors would kill to work with. Put Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Chris Rock, Robert De Niro, Zoe Saldana, Taylor Swift and Anya Taylor-Joy up on the screen, and you're sure to draw attention, and it does for a while. The problem is Russell has given us all these great actors, and never got around to giving them interesting characters, or putting them in a plot worth giving a damn about.
Maybe all this star-power is supposed to distract us from how poorly put together the film itself is. It's been a while since I found myself asking myself, "Just what is this movie trying to say, and where is it going"? Sometimes that can be a fun experience if you're watching something truly amateur and wondering what the filmmakers thought they were doing when they made it. But, I'm afraid Amsterdam was made with the best of intentions, and the movie is worse for that. It doesn't have the decency to be a misguided mess that we can laugh at. It's been shot expertly, and again, the performers all demand our attention, darn it. Some movies that misfire are fun to watch, but this one ends up being a chore, because you can see actual effort went into making something worthwhile, and it never quite came together.
If you should attempt to decipher the plot at play, here it is to the best of my knowledge. Bale and Washington play best friends who find themselves suspects in a murder. Looking for answers, the friends unravel something much bigger, which brings about a number of extended flashbacks that time jump the plot to different eras in early 20th Century America. The whole thing is focused on fascist ideas that were gaining power at the time, and I guess we're supposed to be shocked at how similar they are to a lot of today's politics. In case we don't pick up on this, he stops the movie and has the characters explain everything to us in droning dialogue.
Amsterdam tries to mix its murder mystery and political anger themes with zany comedy. You've got Bale going to great lengths to make us laugh by taking numerous falls, and by giving his character a glass eye that is always falling out and causing him trouble. His best friend (Washington) has been by his side since serving in the War, and we get extended flashbacks about how they met. There are some nice moments during the flashbacks when they meet a girl (Robbie) who sets their spirits free and teaches them how to live. But then, it's back to the wackiness, such as throwing in Michael Shannon and Mike Myers as a pair of goofy spies. This is a movie that can't decide if it wants to be a comic lark or a heavy-handed message movie that spells out its thoughts instead of trusting its audience.
Because of that lack of balance, the movie becomes a failure, but one too ambitious to be labeled as truly awful. You can admire certain elements, such as the sets, costumes, and maybe some performances. But, on the whole, the thing collapses in on itself, and leaves no impression on the viewer, other than they spent too much time watching it, and didn't get enough in return.
Bros is being hyped as the first wide-release mainstream film to feature a largely LGBTQ cast, but it has much more reasons to be celebrated. It not only serves as a proper introduction for many audiences to lead star Billy Eichner, but it shows that he has incredible leading man star-power. It's also easily the funniest film I've seen in 2022, and that's not something to ignore.
Up to now, Eichner has been mainly known for his viral series, Billy on the Street, with his main brush with Hollywood fame up to now being voicing Timon the meerkat in the 2019 remake of The Lion King. Here, he draws upon some of his own likely personal experiences, and gives a film that is not only largely funny, but has multiple layers and is largely therapeutic for the star. Co-writing the script with director Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall), the film is constructed in the usual mold of producer Judd Apatow, where the comedian draws upon their own experiences for both laughs and pathos. Like a lot of Aparow productions, the movie is probably longer than it needs to be, but the film as a whole works, not only because it's genuinely funny, but because Eichner simply commands the screen.
As his character, Bobby Lieber, Eichner simply is energetic from the moment he steps onto the screen, and only gets better as the film goes on. By taking moments of personal experiences and observations about gay relationships, and molding it into the standard romantic comedy formula in the style of When Harry Met Sally or Notting Hill, he creates an entertainment that is much more complex than it initially appears. While the film is mainly about the courtship between Bobby and a handsome lawyer named Aaron (Luke Macfarlane, incredibly winning also), the movie probes deeper into sex, and Bobby's personal view of himself. He has to learn that he is worthy of being loved before he can accept Aaron's affections, and there are a lot of insecurities between both men that rise to the surface that feel like they've been written not just with care, but from personal experience.
Bros is a lot of things. It's frank on the subject of sex, it pokes wicked fun at Hallmark Channel movies trying to expand their demographic, and it has occasional flights of comic fantasy, while always remaining grounded in reality. You can tell that Billy Eichner is swinging for the fences here as he covers so many topics and ideas that are probably personal to him. As the film opens, his character is a 40-year-old podcaster living in New York City who has never been in a real relationship, aside from random sexual encounters. He's self conscious about his body image, and how others see him. His observations on dating provide some of the biggest laughs, but we also sense that they are coming from an honest place.
Bobby's main focus is being on a committee to open the first LGBTQ history museum, and it becomes further complicated when Aaron steps into his life, which threatens his preconceived notions about relationships and gay culture. Aaron has to learn how to fit into Bobby's life as well, and often wonders if there's a place for him in his life. While most romantic comedies create idiotic plot devices to keep the lovers at the center apart, Bros is smart enough to hook them up early on, and then have it be about figuring out what they want from each other, and if they're truly right. This is partly why I did not mind the extended length of the film which, as mentioned, is expected with a Judd Apatow movie. It uses its running time wisely to truly explore these characters, and how they feel about each other.
But most of all, and the best reason to recommend the film, is that it is genuinely laugh out loud funny, and probably the best romantic comedy I've seen since The Big Sick. Eichner shows such great wit and comedic timing here, you feel like you're watching a comic star-making performance here. And while the opening weekend numbers are not looking great so far, I hope Hollywood does not give up on him. He shows so much sharp humor, it'd be a shame not to let him show it in a big feature again. More than the cinematic history that it is making, I feel it's important to focus on the fact that it's a movie that just about anyone can enjoy, relate, and laugh with.
Bros expertly juggles manic, screamingly funny humor with genuine emotion, and is simply one of the more effortlessly winning films I've seen this year. When you sit stone faced through as many comedies as I do, getting the chance to truly laugh often is an experience that cannot be ignored.
You go to a movie like Smile for some quick jolts, and it provides. This is a well-executed little thriller that will make you jump more than once. It's not the most original horror movie out there, and it's certainly not the smartest. But first time feature director Parker Finn (adapting from his own short film) plays his audience well.
The plot centers on an overworked psychiatric doctor named Rose (Sosie Bacon, daughter of Kevin Bacon), who takes on a new patient named Laura (Caitlin Stasey), a PhD student who witnessed her professor take his own life just one week ago. Since then, Laura claims that she's being followed by a presence that only she can see, and can take the form of anyone from her past. Each time she sees the entity, it bears a sinister grin and tells her that she's going to die. During the session, Laura seemingly sees the presence in the room with them, though Rose sees nothing. Poor Rose only has her back turned for a minute, but when she looks back at Laura, the girl is smiling at her evilly before she slits her own throat.
This incident naturally haunts Rose, and it's not long after that she too starts seeing the same sinister presence that Laura was talking about. The people in her life including her supervisor at work (Kal Penn), her sister (Gillian Zinser), and even her fiance (Jessie T. Usher) aren't sure how to react when she tries to explain what's happening. The only one who just might be convinced is her ex-boyfriend Joel (Kyle Gallner), a police officer who begins to dig into a series of bizarre suicides that are similar to what she's talking about. The movie owes a heavy debt to films like The Ring or It Follows when we learn that the evil spirit is a curse that is passed along from one person to another, and haunts a person for up to a week before they die.
Writer-director Finn does not really try to explain much behind his evil, and perhaps it's for the best. Smile works as a "Boo Machine" movie, where it sets up some effective and quick scares that are unsettling. When you try to apply logic to the plot, the movie quickly loses its effectiveness. There's a scene involving a kid's birthday party and a dead cat that I'm still trying to figure out exactly how or why it happened. The movie is also pretty thin when it comes to character, as many possess a single trait to carry through the entire story. Some, like Rose's disbelieving fiance who becomes increasingly concerned for her sanity, just completely disappear from the film without any explanation whatsoever.
The reason why the film works despite this is because the director understands an important thing that Stephen King once said when it comes to writing horror; "Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there's little fun to be had in explanations". Horror films are supposed to get a reaction from the audience, and this one does. It's well made, effectively gets under your skin while you're watching it, and features an unnerving music score to aid the suspense. This may not be the smartest or best thought out thriller, but it knows exactly what it's doing. Like King said, it knows that the fun comes from the experience it gives to the audience, not in trying to explain itself.
Smile is the kind of movie that you enjoy seeing with the right audience in a dark theater, and then probably never think about again after. Regardless, we need these kind of films just as much as we need the big, important ones that start to show up in the Fall season. No one will ever mistake this for anything great, but it's good at what it does.
I am a rabid movie fan since 1984 who calls them as he sees them. Sometimes harsh, but always honest, I offer my 'reel opinions' on today's films. I don't get money for my reviews, and I have to pay to get into every movie I see (even the really awful ones), so what you will see here is the true reaction of a man who is passionate about film. - Ryan Cullen
