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Reviews for October 18th, 2024

 

      In Allswell in New York,  Daisy (Elizabeth Rodriguez) hopes to adopt the baby of a woman, Nina (Mackenzie Lansing), she meets on Craigslist.  Ida (Liza Colón-Zayas), Daisy's sister, reunites with her terminally ill brother, Desmond (Felix Solis), the husband of Serene (Daphne Rubin-Vega) who's struggling to raise her daughter, Connie (Shyrley Rodriguez). Michael Rispoli plays Ida's husband and Bobby Cannavale shows up as one of the owners of a restaurant that Daisy co-owns. The screenplay by writer/director Ben Snyder and his co-writers, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Liza Colón-Zayas and Daphne Rubin-Vega, bites off more than it could chew with too many characters, subplots and conflicts with oversimplified, contrived resolutions. Although it's refreshing to watch a dramedy made for adults and about adults, particularly women, those feats alone are enough to elevate Allswell in New York beyond mediocrity. It's not dull nor does it overstay its welcome, but it could've been more focused and fleshed out its many characters with more depth which would also allow all of the actors and actresses to shine. At a running time of 1 hour and 35 minutes, Allswell in New York opens in select theaters via Freestyle Digital Media. For a better film about adult sisters in New York which also deals with tragedy and healing, see His Three Daughters.

Number of times I checked my watch: 2







      Ani (Mikey Madison), a 23-year-old Russian-American, lives in Brooklyn and works as a sex worker at a Manhattan strip club in Anora. She meets a young man, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a Russian oligarch, at the club and he hires her to be his "girlfriend" for a week while staying at his father's mansion in Brooklyn. He doesn't want to return to Russia, but in the spur of the moment, he proposes to her because if they get married, he'd be able to stay in the US.She agrees to marry him, so off they go to Las Vegas to get legally married. Ivan's domineering father is furious when he hears the news that he got married. It's up to "flying monkeys", Toros (Karren Karagulian), a priest, and his intimidating sidekicks, Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov), to convince Ivan and Ani to get a marriage annulment, but nothing goes as planned when Ivan runs away without Ani.

      The screenplay by writer/director Sean Baker blends comedy, drama and thriller, but it works best as a character study of a young woman who's broken on the inside. Ani seems confident on the outside; innately, though, she's vulnerable, lonely, insecure and emotionally immature. It's no wonder that she feels connected to Ivan because he's broken and immature too---even more so because, even at the age of 21, his mother and father still control and baby him. He lures her with money and gifts including a very expensive wedding ring. Most of the time she spends with him at the mansion, he's either taking drugs, playing video games, getting drunk or having sex with her. Is that really the kind of person she wants to spend the rest of her life with? She's naive enough to confuse sex with love and materialistic giving with genuine kindness and compassion, so she's in for a rude awakening. Anora isn't very funny or perceptive as a culture clash comedy or when it veers into dark comedy when Toros and his sidekicks arrive at the mansion.

      Anora has a lot of sadness lurking beneath the surface which gradually rises above the surface as you get to know Ani. Ivan doesn't seem like he's truly capable of changing nor does he show signs of introspection, but Ani has a few epiphanies throughout the course of the film and, in the powerful and refreshingly unHollywood final scene, displays a hint of introspection. Kudos to writer/director Sean Baker for seeing and treating Ani as a complex human being because when he unpeels Ani's many masks, that's when Anora resonates the most emotionally. It's also worth mentioning the stylish cinematography, editing and use of music. Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Karren Karagulian and Yura Borisov give breakthrough performances. At a running time of 2 hours and 19 minutes, Anora, is wildly entertaining, honest and tender, but somewhat tonally uneven. It opens at Angelika Film Center and EBM Film Center via NEON.

Number of times I checked my watch: 1





 

      Critical Acclaim centers on Johnny Boy (Robert Funaro), a struggling filmmaker whose previous film received scathing reviews and flopped. Instead of learning from his mistakes and failures, he lets it get to his head and affect him emotionally as well as psychologically. Soon enough, he meets a hooker, Nickie (Emma Hullar), with a heart of gold and falls in love with her while gambling $5,000. The screenplay by writer/director John Martoccia is clunky, dull and contrived with poor exposition and third act that's both maudlin and preachy, so the beats rarely land. The performances are decent, but not enough to breathe life into any of the roles or to elevate the film above mediocrity. Critical Acclaim has very little to say about success, failure, love or self worth. At a running time of 1 hour and 20 minutes, Critical Acclaim

Number of times I checked my watch: 4







      In Goodrich, Andy Goodrich (Michael Keaton), an art gallery owner, has hit a low point. His wife, Naomi (Laura Benanti) checks into rehab for 90 days and might divorce him, leaving him alone with their 9-year old twins, Billie (Vivian Lyra Blair) and Mose (Jacob Kopera), so he suddenly has to become "Mr. Mom." His art gallery struggles financially and, to top it all off, he has a rocky relationship with Grace (Mila Kunis), his oldest daughter from his first marriage who's expecting a baby. A lot goes on within the plot which means that the screenplay by writer/director Hallie Meyers-Shyer has to balance many different tones and to juggle many subplots---i.e the Lola (Carmen Ejogo), the daughter of recently-deceased famous painter whose artworks Andy hopes to show in his gallery. So, the plot feels somewhat overstuffed at times, but that's not a systemic issue.

      Goodrich, at its core, is a heartfelt, funny and honest character study of a narcissistic father. Andy probably isn't a malignant narcissist because he exhibits signs of introspection and remorse for his hurtful action. He's so self-involved that he doesn't even realize that his wife has been battling addictions until she calls him from the rehab center. Fortunately, Goodrich doesn't villainize him. He's a broken man who's aware that he's broken. He just doesn't have anyone to talk to which explains why he confides in a single gay father Terry (Michael Urie), and asks him for advice. Meyers-Shyer grasps the concept that comedy often derives from tragedy because, despite all of the tragic aspects of Andy's life, she manages to find comedic moments which provides the film with some much-needed levity. She's lucky to have Michael Keaton in the lead role because he brings charisma, poignancy, warmth and tenderness to his role. Mila Kunis gives one of the best performances of her career. At a running time of 1 hour and 51 minutes, Goodrich opens in theaters nationwide via Ketchup Entertainment.

Number of times I checked my watch: 1





 

      In  Grace & Pedro: Pets to the Rescue, Gracie (voice of Claire Alan), a dog, and Pedro (voice of Cory Duran), dog, embark on a journey to reunite with their owners when they get separated during a move. The screenplay has four writers, namely, co-writers Jaisa C. Bishop, Bruce A. Taylor, and Kelly Peters, yet none of them manage to come up with any imaginative or fresh ideas. The film is harmless and amusing, but not nearly as funny, witty or exhilarating as Paw Patrol or Cats & Dogs. It's more along the lines of The Garfield Movie in terms of quality. Kids will love it while adults won't be even remotely as entertained. Why pander to younger audiences and alienate everyone else? For an animated film that doesn't do that, see The Wild Robot or Kensuke's Kingdom. At a running time of 1 hour and 20 minutes, Grace & Pedro: Pets to the Rescue,  co-directed by Kevin Donovan and Gottfried Roodt, opens in select theaters nationwide via Second Chance Productions.

Number of times I checked my watch: 3





 

      In  High Tide, Lourenço (Marco Pigossi), an undocumented immigrant from Brazil, hopes to get a work visa to permanently stay in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he meets and romances Maurice (James Bland), a man from New York who's on vacation there. The screenplay by writer/director Marco Calvani begins as a tender romance and character study of a young man struggling to find love and stability, but it becomes increasingly contrived, overstuffed and underbaked. The plot has a lot going on: there's Lourenço's romance with Maurice, his relationship with his neighbor, Scott (Bill Irwin), his friendship with Miriam (Marisa Tomei), and with his mother who's living in Brazil and unaware that he's gay. Calvani barely delves into the relationships beyond Lourenço and Maurice, so the supporting characters remain underdeveloped and forgettable. The dialogue is fine without any stiltedness, but it does lack comic relief and wit. More focus on Lourenço's relationship with his mother would've added some depth to the film. Marco Pigossi gives a moving performance, though, and the cinematography, especially of Lourenço in the ocean, provides visual poetry that speaks louder than words. Ultimately, High Tide is less than the sum of its parts. At a running time of 1 hour and 41 minutes, it opens at IFC Center via Strand Releasing.

Number of times I checked my watch: 2





 

      In  High Tide, Lourenço (Marco Pigossi), an undocumented immigrant from Brazil, hopes to get a work visa to permanently stay in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he meets and romances Maurice (James Bland), a man from New York who's on vacation there. The screenplay by writer/director Marco Calvani begins as a tender romance and character study of a young man struggling to find love and stability, but it becomes increasingly contrived, overstuffed and underbaked. The plot has a lot going on: there's Lourenço's romance with Maurice, his relationship with his neighbor, Scott (Bill Irwin), his friendship with Miriam (Marisa Tomei), and with his mother who's living in Brazil and unaware that he's gay. Calvani barely delves into the relationships beyond Lourenço and Maurice, so the supporting characters remain underdeveloped and forgettable. The dialogue is fine without any stiltedness, but it does lack comic relief and wit. More focus on Lourenço's relationship with his mother would've added some depth to the film. Marco Pigossi gives a moving performance, though, and the cinematography, especially of Lourenço in the ocean, provides visual poetry that speaks louder than words. Ultimately, High Tide is less than the sum of its parts. At a running time of 1 hour and 41 minutes, it opens at IFC Center via Strand Releasing.

Number of times I checked my watch: 2





 

      After getting shipwrecked during a storm, Michael (voice of Aaron MacGregor), a young boy, and his dog, Stella, end up on an island where he meets a reclusive older man, Kensuke (Ken Watanabe) in Kensuke's Kingdom. Based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo, the screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce doesn't waste any time as it begins when Michael and his parents (voice of Sally Hawkins and Cillian Murphy) embark on voyage around the world on a sailboat before their boat goes through a big storm. You don't get to meet Michael's parents for long, but you do learn that they lost their jobs recently. The heart of the film is the relationship between Michael and Kensuke who there's more to that meets the eye. Cottrell does a decent job with exposition while providing a surprisingly dark and tragic backstory for Kensuke which won't be spoiled here. Michael learns some valuable lessons from him throughout the course of the film. Whether or not he'll apply it later in life is a whole other question, though, but Kensuke manages to open Michaels eyes to the harsh realities of the world and bonds with him in ways that are genuinely moving. The ending feels slightly rushed and schmaltzy, though. Despite those minor flaws, Kensuke's Kingdom, co-directed by Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry, is a poignant, wise and exhilarating emotional journey. ,At a running time of 1 hour and 25 minutes, it opens in select theaters via Blue Fox Entertainment.

Number of times I checked my watch: 1







      Deep in the forests of the Eastern Himalayas, two researchers, Mansi Mangee and her assistant, Bicki Marphew, observe hawk moths in the documentary Nocturnes. They set up a screen at night to attract the moths and note the moths' size. Co-directors Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan take a simple, seemingly mundane subject and make it profound and transcendent. They eschew talking-head interviews or bombarding the audience with expositional texts and statistics. Do the moths get bigger or smaller in higher altitudes? What happens to their prey when the moths migrate to a higher elevation because of rising temperatures?Nocturnes asks more questions than it answers, but it's nonetheless a mesmerizing, fascinating and meditative nature documentary with breathtaking cinematography that makes for a cinematic experience. You won't look at moths the same way again. At a running time of 1 hour and 23 minutes, Nocturnes opens at Metrograph via Grasshopper Film.

Number of times I checked my watch: 1





 

      In No One Asked You, Director Ruth Leitman follows Liz Winstead, an activist/comedian, as she joins a team of other activists in the Vagical Mystery Tour across the US in states where it's hard for women to get abortions. They provide support for workers at abortion clinics, confront anti-abortion protesters while using humor as a tool, and speak out against CPCs (Crisis Pregnancy Centers) for being fraudulent by deceptively persuading women to not get abortions. Liz and her activists are loud, persistent and confident in their pro-choice beliefs. No One Asked You mostly focuses their tour without stepping back to debate the complex issue of abortion with depth and different perspectives. If you're anti-abortion, this isn't the documentary that will change your mind. However, it will raise your awareness about the deception of CPCs and how they're legally allowed to continue to operate. At a running time of 1 hour and 35 minutes, No One Asked You is provocative and timely, but not fair and balanced enough. It opens at DCTV's Firehouse Cinema.  

Number of times I checked my watch: 1







      Jackie (Jackie Chan), an action superstar, agrees to adopt Big Babe, a baby panda, from a zoo, but a group of criminal led by James (Temur Mamisasvili), plan to kidnap it for ransom in Panda Plan. It's up to Jackie, his agent, (Xiang Wei), and the panda's caretaker (Ce Shi), to defeat the bad guys and to save the panda. Writer/director Luan Zhang and his co-writers, Wei Xu and Meng Yida, have made an often silly and intermittently funny slapstick comedy. The plot is just an excuse to set up the action sequences which are pretty kid-friendly. Adults will enjoy some of the witty humor during the first act as Jackie Chan pokes fun at himself. This isn't quite as zany as Nicolas Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, but it's a pleasant diversion if you don't mind mindless entertainment where logic is thrown out the window. Perhaps it would've worked better as a cartoon, though, because everyone, including the villains, are one-dimensional, cartoonish characters. Kids will love it. At a running time of 1 hour and 39 minutes, Panda Plan opens in select theaters via Well Go USA.

Number of times I checked my watch: 2







      The leaders of wealthy democratic nations meet at a G7 summit where bizarre incidents happen and they get stranded in the middle of the woods in Rumours. The screenplay by co-writers and directors Guy Maddin Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson is a wickedly funny, surreal, cerebral and Buñuelian political satire. The world leaders include Hilda (Cate Blanchett), Germany's Chancellor, Edison (Charles Dance), the US President, Sylvain (Denis Ménochet), the President of France, Maxime (Roy Dupuis), Canada's Prime Minister, Cardosa (Nikki Amuka-Bird), the UK's Prime Minister, Tasturo (Takehiro Hira), Japan's Prime Minister, Antonio (Rolando Ravello), Italy's Prime Minister and Celestine (Alicia Vikander), the European Commission's Secretary-General. The plot goes batshit crazy, like most plots do these days, as it veers toward horror and sci-fi. The less you know about the twists, the better, but it does require a lot of suspension of disbelief.

      Guy Maddin and his co-directors maintain a campy, off-kilter tone that takes a while to get used to, but it never feels uneven or clunky. Beneath the surface, the film has a lot to say about politics and class. If you combine Triangle of Sadness, The Exterminating Angel and Dr. Strangelove, you'll get something along the lines of Rumours. On a purely aesthetic level, the cinematography, lighting and use of color add plenty of visual style and atmosphere. At 1 hour and 44 minutes, it opens nationwide via Bleecker Street.

Number of times I checked my watch: 1





 

       While on a world tour, Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), an international pop star, experiences horrifying visions that might be real or just hallucinations in Smile 2. Writer/director Parker Finn doesn't take the concept of Smile any further, but he does make it funnier and gorier. The evil entity that possesses its victims' brains and makes them give a creepy smile still remains a mystery. What is it? What's its purpose? If you've seen the previous film, you already know that the only way to get rid of it is for its host to die before it kills its host, so that's not a spoiler. Finn assumes that audiences either haven't seen Smile or did, but forgot about it because Smile 2. recycles everything from that film and even repeats the exposition. A prologue reminds the audience that they're in for a film that doesn't hold back on the blood and guts. Skye becomes increasingly paranoid as the people around her turn out to be possessed. Her mother, Elizabeth (Rosemarie DeWitt), who's also her manager, thinks that she's taking drugs again. When Skye is informed that she'll be giving a speech later on at a special event while reading from a teleprompter, you know that something will probably go wrong with her at the event that's related to the mysterious possession.

      Writer/director Parrker Finn doesn't trust the audience's intelligence nor their emotions because of the overused music score every time something scary is about to happen, so the scary beats don't land very hard. Why telegraph the scares? A new character gets introduced too late in the film and just seems to exist as a plot device. There are also too many plot holes which would've been forgivable if the film compensated for that with more imagination. That said, the production values stand out the most with stylish cinematography, slick editing and effectively eerie set designs. Moreover, Naomi Scott gives a solid, charismatic performance.  Smile 2 is ultimately well-produced, funny and unflinchingly gory, but overlong, tedious, unimaginative and not scary enough. Just watch The Substance instead. At 2 hour and 7 minutes, it opens nationwide via Paramount Pictures.

Number of times I checked my watch: 3





 

      Co-directors Stephen Maing and Brett Story follow the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) as they struggle and battle against Amazon to unionizw in their Staten Island warehouse in Union. They opt for a fly-on-the-wall approach like the films of Frederick Wiseman, but it's rather dry without any thoroughness or fair and balanced perspectives. Merely focusing on the ALU isn't enough. By not having access to Amazon's perspectives, Union feels myopic and incomplete. It also squanders many opportunities to humanize its workers other than letting the audience know that some workers wake up very early to get to work.  What's wrong with getting to know some of the workers beyond their experiences fighting to unionize? This is the kind of doc that could and should make the audience enraged, gripped and/or engrossed, but it fails to accomplish those important goals while also failing to find the right balance between entertaining the audience and provoking them emotionally as well as intellectually. At 1 hour and 42 minutes, it opens at IFC Center.

Number of times I checked my watch: 4