Piece by Piece - Review: Building a Different Kind of Documentary

 

Documentaries can easily be some of the most straightforward films to make. Just film some talking head segments, get some archival photos and video footage, and wrap it all up with narration and some pensive music. But Pharrell Williams doesn’t do straightforward apparently, and when crafting a documentary about his childhood and career with Oscar winning documentarian Morgan Neville (“20 Feet from Stardom,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”), he wanted to do something different. And a documentary animated entirely in LEGO style is certainly something different. 

The film follows Williams’s life growing up in Virginia Beach before breaking into the music industry by creating beats and producing music for numerous artists such as Snoop Dogg, Gwen Stefani, Pusha T, Jay Z, Justin Timberlake, and Busta Rhymes, among others. Eventually, Williams begins to fall into a creative slump before breaking out with his hit single “Happy” and becoming the more unique, creative singer he’s known to be today. 

While the idea of making a documentary in a LEGO animated style might seem like a gimmick at first, it quickly becomes apparent that it really is a stylistic choice that fits Williams’s creative ethos and the central thesis of the movie. It’s a choice that comes from the energy behind the film, not added on after the fact. It also allows for some gorgeous displays of animation and interpretation during some of the film’s most abstract moments. Even little details like showing two different cities coming together by physically pushing them together or showcasing Williams’s synesthesia throughout give the film more life than a standard documentary would have. There are numerous moments that border on psychedelic and help to bring everything to life, and even in the smaller moments, the LEGO aesthetic helps showcase the story in a lively manner. 

Separate from the animation, there is a lot of charm to be found in Williams’s tale and friends. While clearly sanitized a bit given the family-friendly LEGO aesthetic, there’s a lot of good-natured ribbing and laughter to be had amidst this showcase of musical creativity and self-love. There are even bits of introspection that seem remarkably humble, such as Williams’s not only allowing the film to fully go into his numerous failed business ventures and creative outlets, but also letting his collaborators and friends speak so frankly about those failed ventures. 

If there’s a weakness to the film, it's that despite its desire to be a way to showcase Williams’s admittedly inspiring personal thesis on creativity and the music industry, it ends up being a more surface level tale about his own career and upbringing. It certainly goes into plenty of detail, but there are also plenty of times where things are just skipped or glossed over, leading to a skin-deep kind of biopic feeling. The interstitials with his collaborators and friends do make up for a lot though. Even in their plastic LEGO forms, hearing them gush about working and growing up with Williams and his talents even at a young age is legitimately heartwarming and often times remarkably humbling. 

As one would expect, there are plenty of original songs here, and they’re all pretty fantastic; the title track in particular is yet another killer title track from Williams. The film’s large collection of musical hits helps to not only show the wide variety of tracks Williams had his hands in over the years, but also works in being authentic to their original material without stretching too far outside of the LEGO nature.  

“Piece By Piece” is certainly not like any other documentary or LEGO film to come before. Even that’s possibly because it feels less like a documentary and more like an animated showcase of an artist’s career and creative philosophy. Luckily, those talking animated heads who’ve come to play and talk about their friend are pretty charming, and the way the film utilizes the animated landscape to showcase emotional beats is something typical documentary elements couldn’t pull off. It could’ve used a narrative that went a bit deeper into its subject’s life, but there’s a lot to enjoy here, whether you’ve come for the music or the surprisingly inventive display of the creative process. 4/5

Joker: Folie à Deux – Review: The Joke Is On You

When any film makes a billion dollars, there’s a sequel on the horizon, regardless of how unique or singular that first film is. And Todd Phillip’s (“The Hangover,” “War Dogs”) twisted take on DC’s clown prince of crime is as dark and un-sequel-friendly as they come. But it made a billion dollars and won a few Oscars, so here comes “Joker: Folie à Deux”, sequel that’s bigger, bolder, more musical, and more morally ambiguous than ever before. 

The film picks up two years after the events of the first film as Arthur Fleck, played by Joaquin Pheonix (“Walk the Line,” “Beau is Afraid”), awaits trial for the murders he committed that inspired the riots across Gotham. While in Arkham Asylum, he meets Harleen Quinzel, played by Lady Gaga (“A Star is Born (2018),” “House of Gucci”), a fellow inmate who becomes obsessed with Arthur and his Joker persona. She inspires him to embrace his madness further, throwing his case into disarray for his lawyer Maryanne Stewart, played by Catherine Keener (“Being John Malkovich,” “Capote”), and guard at Arkham Jackie Sullivan, played by Brendan Gleeson (“Paddington 2,” “The Banshees of Inisherin”). 

The only somewhat pretentious sounding title “Folie à Deux” means “madness for two.” Phillips and his co-writer Scott Silver (“8 Mile,” “The Fighter”) certainly create a lot of madness, but it all feels wildly pointless by the end of the film. The first half of the film feels bizarrely aimless, just futzing around until the second half set in the courtroom starts. But even then, it results in a lot of surface level discussions about Arthur and his potential mental illness that Phillips and Silver literally end before any definitive statements can even be made. It’s a film that loves to drag a lot of rough subject material up from the depths without actually committing to making any kind of statements on said material. 

Pheonix is doing absolutely the best he can with much flimsier material, puttering around from scene to scene, making funny faces and talking with the slight high-pitched wilt that he crafted for the first film. It's a less compelling performance, but it never feels like it's his fault. Gaga is incredibly underutilized meanwhile. Her performance is fine enough, but the film simply does not know what to do with her after the first act, feeling content to have her pop up a few more times before disappearing completely. Keener is there and then gone, barely making an impact when she is being used, and Gleeson’s performance, while excellent, is buried in the film’s overtly cruel characterization of his role. 

While on paper, the film is building to the end of Arthur’s trial, the actual events and movement of the plot feels wildly unmotivated. Things just sort of happen and never feel as though they’re building to any sort of climax. The biggest thing that happens in the third act comes completely out of nowhere and serves as an excuse to avoid giving a direct statement on the film’s biggest central question. Even the scenes that follow feel so disconnected from that climax that it feels like they took place before the third act and just happened to get slotted into the end. It all feels pointless, like a film based around nihilism but not even in an interesting way. 

Meanwhile, the musical aspect feels even more pointless. While plenty of the scenes are well shot, the rest feel slotted in for no reason. They’re set in average locations, in the middle of other preexisting moments on a whim. But beyond the quality of the numbers or shots, they don’t add anything to the film as a whole. Whether they’re “in Arthur’s mind” or not, removing them from the film would change nothing about the plot or the film as a whole. They add nothing to the story and feel like the film’s most egregious bit of “prestige film” detail slathered upon a project undeserving of that kind of attention.

At least the film’s returning cinematographer Lawrence Sher (“Garden State,” “The Hangover”) shoots the film with the same gorgeous level of detail as before, crafting the best-looking version of these misguided ideas. Hildur Guðnadóttir (“Tár,” “Women Talking”) also returns to score the sequel after winning an Oscar for doing the same for the first. Her music still manages to be an evocative high point, but it’s too often drowned out by the film’s bizarre song choices and musical numbers.

So many of the elements within the film that, as previously stated, work on paper but not in practice, come off as not a mistake somewhere along the filmmaking process, but rather a middle finger to the prospect of the blockbuster industry. Make a sequel to a billion-dollar grossing incel-bait dark comic book movie? Sure, but let’s make it a courtroom drama-slash-musical with half the violence as before and a quarter of the plot. Can the lead character sing? Let’s just wing it and if he can’t, we’ll act like it’s an additional detail underneath all the artsy details we’re playing with.

The problem here isn’t that the film is slower or that Arthur’s singing is bad or that it doesn’t decide to commit to an answer to its central moral question. Plenty of films play with those kinds of aspects. The problem here is that the audience is paying the price, because it doesn’t feel purposeful. It feels like an accident being covered for, and it makes your audience have a worse time as a result. To put it in simpler terms: Arthur can be a bad singer, but he can’t be too bad or you’ll make the audience actually bemoan when he sings, otherwise you’re cutting off your clown nose to spite your face.

“Joker: Folie à Deux” will certainly be remembered for quite a long time, but the reason for that remembrance is almost a complete inverse of the first film. Despite Pheonix and Gaga trying their best while trapsing through a gorgeous looking film, Phillips has far too many heady ideas that never actually result in anything meaningful or compelling. Worse, he stretches it out, resulting in a slog of a film that acts as if it knows better than its audience, without ever stopping to think what it knows better about. It’s a fascinating film in how it fails, and one that could easily be dissected and discussed, but certainly not rewatched, for a long time to come. 1.5/5

Saturday Night (2024) - Review: Live From New York...

Despite the cries of it “no longer being funny” or “never being funny,” the television landscape would be a starkly different place without “Saturday Night Live.” Not only would the landscape of television comedy be different, but without the show, we likely wouldn’t have the likes of Mike Myers, Will Ferrel, Amy Poehler, Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey, Chris Rock, and Adam Sandler among many many many others. Even outside of those directly on the cast, without “SNL” we likely wouldn’t have had “MadTV,” “The Tracy Ulman Show,” “Who’s Line Is It Anyway?,” “Robot Chicken,” “The Muppet Show,” “All That,” “Chappelle’s Show,” “Key & Peele,” and “Mystery Science Theatre 3000.” Suffice to say, there are few shows as influential to the history of television as “SNL,” and now co-writer/director Jason Reitman (“Juno,” “Ghostbusters: Afterlife”) and co-writer Gil Kenan (“Monster House,” “Ghostbusters: Afterlife””) have created a film detailing the night of it’s very first show simply titled “Saturday Night.” 

On October 11th, 1975, 90 minutes before the first show of “Saturday Night,” young producer/creator of the show Lorne Michaels, played by Gabriel LaBelle (“The Fabelmans,” “Snack Shack”), is dealing with seemingly endless problems: his show is double its intended length, his actors, including Gilda Radner, played by Ella Hunt (“Dickinson,” “Anna and the Apocalypse”), Chevy Chase, played by Cory Michael Smith (“Gotham,” “May December”), Dan Akroyd, played by Dylan O'Brien (“The Maze Runner,” “Love & Monsters”), John Belushi, played by Matt Wood, Garret Morris, played by Lamorne Morris (“New Girl,” “Game Night”), Jane Curtin, played by Kim Matula (“The Bold and the Beautiful,” “Fighting With My Family”) , and Laraine Newman, played by Emily Fairn (“Chuck Chuck Baby,” Mary & George”), are all either at each other's throats or in each other’s pants, his wife Rosie Schuster, played by Rachel Sennott (“Bodies Bodies Bodies,” “Bottoms”), is a help and a hinderance to his focus, his best friend and fellow producer Dick Ebersol, played by Cooper Hoffman (“Licorice Pizza,” “Wildcat”), is helping and sabotaging his efforts, and the head of NBC talent David Tebet, played by Willem Dafoe (“Antichrist,” “”), is on patrol and looking for a reason to shut the show down before it’s even begun. 

Much like how “SNL” the show has influenced much of television comedy, the film “Saturday Night” has clearly taken a lot from other influential biopics of recent years. Mostly significantly, it wears much of the “unappreciated genius” swagger and quick-paced dialogue of the two Aaron Sorkin written films “The Social Network” and “Steve Jobs.” It’s hard to imagine the film existing in its current form without those movies, but it does manage to hold its own mostly due to the strength of its cast. Reitman and Kenan’s script itself is fairly by the numbers, walking through and over dramatizing numerous behind-the-scenes moments from the first night of the show, without really delving too deep into the through process behind it all. 

Ironically, for a film that so clearly wants to pay tribute to a specific era and iconic moment, Reitman and Kenan try to imbue the events with some warm-hearted emotion, but it mostly fails due to the film wanting to have its cake and eat it too. They want to keep the anarchistic spirit of the original seasons of “SNL” but meshing that with a big hearted “I can’t believe I’m about to be famous” ethos just doesn’t work. If they had gone for broke with the emotion or just cut it out, either would’ve worked better than it does here. It’s really bizarre when you have Chevy Chase doing Weekend Update or Andy Kaufman’s “mighty mouse” bit played as a third act emotional crescendo. 

That bizarre emotional throughline is not nearly as much of an issue as it seems though, as the film is mostly concerned with communicating the hyperactivity behind the scenes leading up to that first show. When it’s just focusing on LaBelle’s Lorne and his interplay with the cast, especially Sennott’s Schuster, it’s genuinely electric. Even the small bits involving other comedians before their prime, such as Billy Crystal, feel like great window dressing rather than distracting cameos. The claustrophobic camerawork from cinematographer Eric Steelberg (“Juno,” “Dolemite Is My Name”) mixed with an anxiety inducing musical score from Jon Batiste (“Soul,” “American Symphony”) and a chunky layer of Super 16mm grain convincingly takes you back to the era its set in, with fantastic costume work and production design. 

Speaking of the film’s best elements, the cast are absolutely electric. Maybe it’s the chance to get to play some of the most legendary comedians in modern entertainment, but each performer loses themselves in their roles to fantastic effect. Particular highlights are Sennott and LaBelle, of course, but Smith as Chase and Wood as Belushi are also absolutely phenomenal, Wood especially stealing every scene he steps into. Hoffman also excels, and the scenes between him and LaBelle elevate the film from a fun historic romp to something really special. Even the more minimal roles pop from the sheer energy and exuberance behind the eyes of each performer as they get to bring these characters to life. The only one that feels odd is Nicholas Braun (“Succession,” “@Zola”) in dual roles as Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman; his performance certainly isn’t terrible, but it feels more like, ironically, an “SNL” impersonation rather than someone trying to bring these two legendary performers to life. His Henson performance isn’t entirely his fault, as the film decides to use the puppeteer and landmark creative as a punching bag more than anything else. Ironic given that Henson alone likely has had a bigger impact on entertainment than “SNL” ever has. 

“Saturday Night” is certainly a lot of fun, and when it’s letting its young cast run away with these once-in-a-lifetime roles and simply gets out of its own way, it is a positively electric vibe and a truly fun romp. When it tries to delve into something more without letting go of its devil-may-care attitude is when things start to falter, but LaBelle and the cast carry it to the finish line with a rousing energy and spirit that makes this an easy recommendation and a fun night regardless. 3.5/5

Megalopolis - Review: Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

When you're a legendary talent like Francis Ford Coppola, the man who's directed some works that are referred to as the greatest of all time, such as "The Godfather," "Apocalypse Now," and "The Conversation." He's also directed some that are referred to as some of the worst of all time, such as "Twist," the arguably bad "One from the Heart" and the infamously terrible "Jack (1996)." With a career as expansive as his, any new films, regardless of concept or origin, should be cause for celebration. His latest movie, "Megalopolis", certainly falls into one of the two previously mentioned groups. Unfortunately, it's not the good one.

Billed as "A Fable" with Coppola's own name directly above it, "Megalopolis" stars a cornucopia of actors. Adam Driver (“Marriage Story,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”) leads the pack as Cesar Catalina, an architect and leader of the Design Authority, who wants to build a massive city in New Rome made of the mysterious material Megalon. He's opposed by the mayor Franklyn Cicero, played by Giancarlo Esposito (“Breaking Bad,” “Do The Right Thing”), whose daughter Julia Cicero, played by Nathalie Emmanuel (“Hollyoaks,” “Game of Throne”), slowly begins to fall for Cesar. Meanwhile, behind all of this, Cesar's cousin Clodio Pulcher, played by Shia LaBeouf (“Holes,” “Transformers”), attempts to wrestle political and monetary power for himself, while television presented Wow Platinum, played by Aubrey Plaza (“Parks and Recreation,” “Agatha All Along”), tries to romance Cesar's uncle, the elderly bank magnate Hamilton Crassus III, played by Jon Voight (“Midnight Cowboy,” “National Treasure”), into giving his fortune to her. All of this is also loosely narrated by Cesar’s chauffeur and personal assistant Fundi Romaine, played by Laurence Fishburne (“The Matrix,” “Boyz N The Hood”).

Coppola, who's written and directed the film, has talked plenty about his inspirations for the film; there's a clear line to be drawn from "Megalopolis" back to the fall of Roman and of the Catalina Conspiracy event. He’s also been toiling with this film in some respect since the 80s, eventually forgoing any studio involvement and selling some of his wineries to self-fund the $120 million budget and make the movie his own way.

This does mean that the film we're left with is an epic example of the power of critique and criticism. So many directors in the history of cinema have been ruined simply because no one stepped in and said no. By freeing himself from any critics during the production, yes Coppola has made exactly the vision of this film he's always wanted to make. It also means the film has its head shoved so far up its own ass, it can see what it had for lunch that day.

There's a self-important air throughout the entire film, from the way it’s staged and edited down to the dialogue. At random intervals, there are bits of text shown on the screen carved into giant slabs of marble like one would see in ancient Rome. Cesar's introduction scene with the rest of the cast has him reciting about half of the "To Be or Not to Be" monologue from Hamlet. It gives the film an identity of something deeply important, but it never builds to anything. Even if the characters seem almost unchanged by the end of it all, there doesn't even seem to be a grand statement about civilization made. At one point, Cesar literally says, "We are in need of a great debate about the future" and the film simply doesn't offer anything more to say than "Boy, America sure does seem like a Roman empire, doesn't it?"

The entire cast is unfortunately let down by the man behind the camera. While so many of them have been fantastic in other works, they all just seem left out to sea here. Driver in particular has the biggest struggle; his way of playing larger than life characters with such minutia works when there's a good script to back him up. But unfortunately, the script here makes him come across more as a pompous high school theatre kid than a trained actor. Emmanuel just seems lost, like she has nothing to react against, as if she was filmed against a green screen and digitally added in after the fact. The oldest members of the cast, like Voigt and Dustin Hoffman (“Kramer vs. Kramer,” “The Meyerowitz Stories”), seem like they've gone senile and are just stumbling around the set haphazardly. LaBeouf might be the worst of them all, reducing his role to the kind of stereotype of "annoying manchild with effeminate tendencies" that we thought was left behind decades ago. The only one who comes out semi-unscathed is Plaza, who does so simply by cranking up her delivery to the point where she seems to believe she's in a comedy skit that could turn into a porno at any moment, and by extent she seems like the only person involved who's having any fun.

Given the gargantuan budget, the film would at least be expected to look the part. And for the most part it does, and yet so much of it appears as though it's the first draft of a visual effects company. An early moment has Cesar and Julia standing on top of a floating clock overlooking the skyline of New Rome, later revisiting that same site with additional floating girders, suspended thousands of feet in the air. Why are these things here? Who knows! But they do look absolutely gorgeous while they're up there. And yet, later on we see amateurish and garish blemishes, like poorly composited green screen effects or just bad looking CGI. It's a comically mixed bag of visual stylings, betraying a largely gorgeous cinematic look from cinematographer Mihai Mălaimare Jr. (“The Master,” “The Harder They Fall”).

There's so much bad here and so much bizarrely well intentioned as well. But it all comes down to the film's ending. So much can be forgiven if the tale being told at least wraps up in a satisfying way or has something interesting to say. Coppola has nothing to say, seemingly, if one goes by the way the film ends. It feels like a half-gorgeous retread of the last four decades of "rich and powerful madmen" stories, as if Coppola wrote the script and simply tossed it in a drawer until he finally got the cash to bankroll it. There's a lack of a subtlety; this is a film where a Russian satellite named "Carthage" crashed into an American city named "New Rome" after all, but the biggest crime at the center of "Megalopolis" and its most depressing one: it's just kind of boring. Even draped in this bizarre visual style, dialogue, and performances, the story at the center of it all just doesn't excite or invigorating like something of this scale should.

There’s a longstanding belief that some of the best writers, directors, and creatives in any entertainment industry are great because they know how to control themselves. Infamously, many blame the unfettered and unquestioned support George Lucas received from 20th Century Fox for the state of the Star Wars prequels. Even some of the greats have spoken about how their works are so great because they have people with them willing to say no. “Megalopolis” is the ultimate example of that kind of power: yes, it is a singular vision from a filmmaking legend, exactly the kind of film he wanted to make. But it’s also garish, confusing, full of wooden and terrible performances, and either building to nothing or told so confusingly that the point it is building to is lost amongst everything else. As so many fables end with a lesson for it’s audience, and this is billed explicitly as a fable, it seems that the lesson to be learned here is the power of saying “no.” 1/5

The Wild Robot - Review: The Best Film DreamWorks Animation Has Ever Made

 

In October of 2023, it was publicly announced that “The Wild Robot” would be the last film animated in-house at DreamWorks, with all subsequent films being animated by outside studios with the internal teams being shut down. This is not uncommon in the industry, but for a studio that’s been around for 30 years, this is monumental. It’s as if Disney or Pixar or Studio Ghibli announced they would no longer be animating their own animated movies going forward. It’s a massive blow to the animation industry, and an unfortunate result of nothing but pure cost cutting measures from corporate board members and studio CEOs. It’s also unfortunate because this very human tale of a robot is without a doubt the best film to ever bear the studio’s name. 

The film follows a ROZZUM unit, also known as Roz, voiced by Lupita Nyong’o (“Us (2019),” “12 Years a Slave”) who finds herself stuck on an island inhabited entirely by animals. After befriending some of them, such as a Fox named Fink, voiced by Pedro Pascall (“The Last of Us (2023),” “The Mandalorian”), Roz finds herself raising a runt gosling named Brightbill, voiced by Kit Connor (“Heartstopper,” “Rocket’s Island”), and attempting to prepare him for his winter migration. The film’s ensemble cast also consists of Catherine O’Hara (“Beetlejuice,” “Schitt’s Creek”) as Pinktail the opossum, Bill Nighy (“Love Actually,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest”) as Longneck the goose, Matt Berry (“What We Do In The Shadows (2019),” “Garth Marenghi's Darkplace”) as Paddler the beaver, and Ving Rhames (“Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” “Lilo & Stitch”) as Thunderbolt the falcon. 

Writer/director Chris Sanders (“How To Train Your Dragon,” “Lilo & Stitch”) has many years of experience working with animated tales filled with big emotions, and his work here is no exception. Roz’s tale of parenthood and naturalistic love is explored with thoughtfulness and maturity, without betraying its ease of understanding. It manages to be easily digestible without dumbing things down or coddling its audience. There are often frank discussions involving death throughout the film, without ever lingering on them or brushing too fast past them. It all builds to a film that feels remarkably adult and mature, without being crude or immature. Even the way Roz emotes has an added layer to it, forgoing giant eyebrows, a mouth, or other facial features for simple eyes and colors, all backed by her fantastical vocal performance. 

It all results in a kind of film that invites you in, enveloping you in its tale. At barely over 100 minutes, its scope and pacing feel like it tells a grand and massive tale, without ever dragging or overstaying its welcome. It leaves you with just enough, making you want slightly more but not feeling unfulfilled or underdeveloped. It’s even, somehow, almost devoid of pop culture references and poop jokes, a rarity in almost any kind of animated film nowadays. 

Nyong’o’s vocal performance is absolutely phenomenal, one packed with nuance and an evolution throughout the film. You can actively hear her inflections and nuances change as her character shifts and evolves in her new naturalistic home. Even if that change wasn’t as pronounced, her emotion and performance helps to craft Roz’s emotional journey in a fantastic way, helping to quite literally bring the character to life in a way as immediately iconic as the likes of Tom Hanks as Woody or Mike Myers as Shrek. The rest of the cast is just as good, coming across as legitimate voice acting talent, rather than celebrity voice acting stunt casts. Pascal and Connor in particular match Nyong’o’s emotional journey fantastically, and small performances from Nighy and Rhames make big impacts thanks to the strength of the casting and voices matching their characters. 

There’s a brush stroke, watercolor aesthetic to the world and animation that bring the world to life in a painterly way. It isn’t just a gorgeous look for the film, but it showcases the animal and naturalistic world in a the continues to bring it all to life. The hard metal design of Roz mixes with the world of these animals in a fascinating way, and the musical score from Kris Bowers (“Bridgerton,” “King Richard”) brings these two worlds together by fusing an orchestral score with the electronic beats inspired by Roz’s presence. 

But there’s also something here, beneath the surface, something “in the sauce” as the kids say, that sets the film apart that feels borderline unexplainable. “The Wild Robot” has that immediately timeless feeling that allows virtually anyone of any age to sit down and enjoy it to its fullest. It practically dares you not to fall in love with Roz, Brightbill, Fink, and the rest of this island. Each of the film’s individual elements build to something that is more than the sum of its already fantastic parts, and it's no hyperbole to describe the film as one of DreamWork’s best films ever, if not the best it’s ever made. 

“The Wild Robot” is a spectacle of visual beauty and deep, gorgeous emotions. Sanders has delivered a film that feels like a mission statement on the kind of universal storytelling animation can create. With his fantastic voice cast, including a career best (live action or animated) from Lupita Nyong’o, breathe life into a heart wrenching and truly spectacular tale of family, love, nature, and emotion that stakes its claim as one of the best films of the year. If this truly ends up being the final film made internally at DreamWorks, then it goes out as one of the best, possibly the best, films the studio has ever made. 5/5 

Transformers One - Review: More Mature Than Meets The Eye

 

Since the 1980s, there’s been one major toy line showing more than meets the eye. “Transformers” has always existed somewhere in pop-culture, whether in comic books, video games, the aforementioned toys, or the numerous television series or films. Now, after almost two decades of live-action films, these robots in disguise return to their original medium of animation for an origin story and their best film in decades. 

Set before they became arch-enemies, the film follows Orion Pax, voiced by Chris Hemsworth (“Thor,” “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”), and D-16, voiced by Brian Tyree Henry (“Atlanta,” “Bullet Train”), two bots working in the Energon mines in the city of Iacon on the planet of Cybertron. Their leader, Sentinel Prime, voiced by Jon Hamm (“Mad Men,” “Top Gun: Maverick”), is out searching for the lost Matrix of Leadership which will help bring their planet to prosperity. Determined to make a difference and help their planet, Pax and D-16, along with Elita-1, voiced by Scarlett Johansson (“Black Widow,” “Marriage Story”), and B-127, voiced by Keegan Michael-Key (“Wonka,” “Schmigadoon!”), leave their city to try and find the Matrix themselves. 

Despite initially feeling like typical Hollywood celebrity stunt casting, the entire vocal cast ends up being remarkably fantastic, getting better as the film goes on. Hemsworth and Henry not only have fantastic chemistry with each other, but their own voices slowly shift as the film goes on, eventually ending up closer to the original vocal types of Optimus and Megatron. Michael-Key makes B-127 just as much of a hyperactive character as he’s been in the past, but he doesn’t feel annoying or overstay his welcome. And Johansson has a surprising level of restraint given how the film positions Elita-1's character in the overarching storyline. Hamm also makes for a great hero with more going on under the surface as Sentinel Prime, using his charming “good guy” sounding voice to expert effect. 

With someone who’s worked in animation as long as Josh Cooley (“Inside Out,” “Toy Story 4”) has directing, the film not only manages to excel with a fantastic sense of fullness and a gorgeously animated style, but it eventually shakes off some creaky opening points to really come into its own in a surprisingly mature way. The first ten-to-fifteen minutes really is the film’s weakest part, mostly because it's when the film most clearly engages in plenty of “kid’s movie” cliches. It doesn’t at all mean that the opening is bad, but it slowly morphs into a more engaging, mature, and even darker version of this story. Writers Eric Pearson (“Thor: Ragnarok,” “Godzilla vs. Kong”), Andrew Barrer (“Ant-Man and the Wasp,” “No Exit (2022)”), and Gabriel Ferrari (“Ant-Man and the Wasp,” “No Exit (2022)”) weave tons of fanservice and deep-cut lore into a tale that embraces decades of Transformers material without ever disrespecting it or requiring that knowledge to enjoy it. They also manage to zero in on the most fundamental tragic idea of this tale and, with the help of Hemsworth and Henry’s performances, absolutely nail the brother versus brother tragedy that evolves from it. 

It cannot be understated how truly gorgeous the film looks. After decades of detailed but complicated designs, the visual aesthetic of the film is clean and retro, without sacrificing the robotic building blocks. Even the environment of this interpretation of Cybertron takes inspiration from the franchise’s 80s origins, with a sun and horizon that looks ripped from decades old VHS tapes and retro-wave stylings. Brian Tyler (“Furious 7,” “Avengers: Age of Ultron”) crafts a score that helps bolster the look of this world, bringing in big orchestral moments coupled with the electronic. It's clearly inspired by the likes of Vangelis, but it's hard to care too much when it compliments everything this well. 

Given how long the Transformers films have somewhat ignored the implications of the war and battles between these robotic people, it's refreshing to have this film treat the material with a surprising level of maturity. The film’s third act, while not devoid of silly one-liners and still entirely aimed at the twelve-year-old crowd, also manages to effectively nail the inevitable betrayal at the center of these two leads’ long lives. When it really matters, Cooley and his writers know that these kids know that there’s more than meets the eye and they treat them with the respect that they deserve. 

“Transformers One” isn’t perfect, but it is pretty great and it’s easily the best a “Transformers” movie has been for decades. A strong visual style, voice cast, and sense of maturity by the end help to smooth over its initial struggles. Once the film gets out of its own way, it barrels down the highway of fun, action, and intense stakes, amounting to an adventure and tale of brotherhood that anyone can enjoy, whether they know the difference between a Deception or an Autobot or not. 4/5

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice - Review: The Ghost With the Most

 

There are few things more attractive to Hollywood than the pull of nostalgia, and now that we’re in the full swing of decades later sequels for the likes of “Ghostbusters,” “Scream,” “Jurassic Park,” and “Top Gun”, it only makes sense that the film that popularized the “fake poster tricking moms on Facebook” trend finally gets its own actual next installment. With Burton, Keaton, and Ryder involved once again, it's time to say his name for a second time with the cleverly titled “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” 

Set a few decades after the events of the first film, this latest installment follows television psychic Lydia Deetz, played by Winona Ryder (“Stranger Things,” “Girl, Interrupted”), returning to the town of Winter River with her daughter Astrid, played by Jenna Ortega (“Wednesday (2022),” “Scream (2022)”), and hapless boyfriend/manager Rory, played by Justin Theroux (“Mulholland Drive,” “”), in tow after the death of her father Charles. While back in town along with her stepmother Delia, played by Catherine O’Hara (“Schitt's Creek,” “Home Alone”), she encounters the bio-exorcist demon Betelgeuse, played by Michael Keaton (“Spotlight,” “Birdman”), once again as he attempts to hide from his soul-sucking ex-wife Delores, played by Monica Bellucci (“The Matrix Reloaded,” “Mozart in the Jungle”), and former-actor-turned-dead-cop Wolf Jackson, played by Willem Dafoe (“Spider-Man 2,” “Poor Things”). 

It’s quite a cast, not just in terms of new and returning star power, but in terms of size as well. And that’s not even including the myriad of small cameos, as well as Astrid’s love interest in the form of Jeremy, played by Arthur Conti (“House of the Dragon”), or the number of shrunken headed grunts working for Betelgeuse. It’s quite a stuffed film and that’s honestly its biggest flaw. For as fun as it can all be, at just over 100 minutes, co-writers Alfred Gough (“Shanghai Noon,” “Wednesday (2022)”), Miles Millar (“Shanghai Noon,” “Wednesday (2022)”), and Seth Grahame-Smith (“Dark Shadows (2012),” “The LEGO Batman Movie”) have delivered what feels like too much of a good thing. There are something like three different antagonists, with each of them capable of standing on their own. By the time the third act hits, they all feel as though they get the short end of the stick, leading to an ending that feels strong thanks to the titular demon, but weak in the antagonists’ resolutions. 

Even if it has a few too many characters, those characters are all a blast to be around. It cannot be overstated how Keaton and Ryder simply slip back into these roles, seemingly completely in step with how they were decades ago. O’Hara is also excellent, keeping the same bizarro line deliveries she’s made a career staple for years now. Ortega is a fun addition to the cast, keeping in step with Ryder, although she’s a smaller part of the film than one might initially assume. Bellucci, as good as she is, feels wasted given how little she ends up on screen, and Dafoe hams is up almost too much every moment he’s on screen, a hard thing to do when you’re in a “Beetlejuice” film. Theroux meanwhile feels weirdly underbaked, a compelling antagonistic force filled with slimy buffoonery, but yet he lacks a real identity besides being a sleazy wimp. 

With Tim Burton (“Batman (1989),” “Edward Scissorhands”) back in the director’s chair, it's safe to say that the film’s effects and sets live up to his madcap sensibilities. Each moment is bent wall-to-wall angles and otherworldly locations, leading to a real tactile sense of fantasy throughout. Danny Elfman (“Men in Black,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas”) also returns to compose for the film, and he also steps right back into the world without missing a beat. It simply looks, feels, and sounds exactly like the world of the original film, but just expanded in some very natural ways. 

This also works as a fantastic example of Burton returning to form. While of course it makes more sense given that this is a world he’s previously inhabited, he slides back into it effortlessly. It makes the last two decades of works like his live action “Alice in Wonderland” and “Dumbo (2019)” films and "Dark Shadows” feel like they were made by a completely different person. It’s a joy to just watch him play, and even if the film has narrative issues and feels a bit overstuffed, watching a skilled director play in a space he’s so familiar with makes a lot of those issues go over much smoother. 

The cleverly titled and playful “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” might not be as much of a lightning strike as the original, but it's hard to deny the pure joy on display throughout the entire adventure. It’s a return to gothic form for Burton, and Keaton and Ryder slide back into these roles fantastically, surrounded by a tale that makes great use of virtually every practical effect and set technique in the book. It’s exactly the kind of adventure you’d expect, and despite a few too many characters giving it an overstuffed feeling by the end, it’s still a film full of ghoulish delights. 4/5 

Alien: Romulus - Review: They Still Can't Hear You Scream

 

In space, no one can hear you scream, but they can keep cranking out movies about the inability to scream in space. 45 years after the first film’s release and seven years since the previous installment, the franchise is getting the “interquel” treatment with “Alien: Romulus,” a new film co-written and directed by Fede Álvarez (“Evil Dead (2013),” “Don’t Breathe”) and set in-between the events of the first film and “Aliens” that’s ready to take you back to space and scare the pants off you. 

The film follows Rain, played by Cailee Spaeny (“Priscilla,” “Civil War”), a young miner working for the Wayland-Yutani corporation with her synthetic adopted brother Andy, played by David Jonsson (“Rye Lane,” “Industry”). They, along with a group of Rain’s fellow miners Tyler, played by Archie Renaux (“Shadow and Bone,” “Upgraded”), Kay, played by Isabela Merced (“Instant Family,” “Dora and the Lost City of Gold”), Bjorn, played by Spike Fearn (“Tell Me Everything,” “Back to Black”), and Navarro, played by Aileen Wu, all decide to scavenge an abandoned space station for supplies to fuel their light-years travel to a better planet. However, while scavenging the station, they discover sinister and horrific experiments that unleash the horrors of the Xenomorph once again. 

If this sounds much like virtually every previous “Alien” film, that’s not an unfair assessment. There are only so many ways to make a film like this without completely reinventing the concept or entering an entirely different genre. Luckily, having an experienced horror director like Álvarez at the helm helps to create more interesting scenarios. Even despite the numerous moments clearly aping other famous situations from across the franchise, Álvarez and co-writer Rodo Sayagues (“Evil Dead (2013),” “Don’t Breathe”) manage to craft plenty of creatively terrifying moments and inject the ones that do repeat with a heavy layer of fun. 

Spaeny is fantastic, now having proved her skills in three different types of films in the last twelve months. She makes for a phenomenal lead, nailing the mixture of vulnerability and sternness that Weaver herself nailed so many years ago with Ripley. Her chemistry with Jonsson is fantastic, bolstered by a great performance of his own. The two are the heart of the movie and they nail everything about their roles. The rest of the cast, however, while being well performed, feel mostly forgettable. Merced is the only one who somewhat escapes this, thanks to one of the most beaten and battered performances in a blockbuster in recent memory. 

While the film industry has recently straddled the line between reintroducing more practical effects into modern filmmaking, Álvarez and his team dive headfirst into the craft for this film. Numerous practical facehuggers leap across the screen, and giant sets with impressive scale and lighting help to establish the setting. Even with our modern-day CGI techniques, the old-school retro-futuristic style of the technology in the “Alien” world never ceases to impress or look absolutely gorgeous. There are truly multiple moments that not only feature great works of practical effects-work, but it also meshes with the CGI in such fantastic ways that it makes the film look like it should easily cost double its budget. It's all set to a great score from Benjamin Wallfisch (“Twisters,” “Blade Runner 2049”) that also manages to fuse new, electronic beats with plenty of cues and notes clearly lifted from past “Alien” scores. 

Which is exactly where this new trek into the terrifying world of “Alien” ends up, because for as much as it takes from previous entries, Álvarez clearly wants to put his characters through the ringer and bring them to a life beyond serving as walking reference machines. Thankfully, the cast is headlined by two fantastic performers in Spaeny and Jonsson, and the almost entirely practical affair is sold by their emotional bond and the great effects on display. It’s taking a lot from what’s come before, but that doesn’t mean it's not adding its own works or pulling it off well. 4/5

Jackpot! - Review: A Middling Payout

 

Our world has gone from one wherein the satire of something like “Robocop” can start to not only seem like reality, but like the logical solution to a lot of people. But that doesn’t mean the desire to tell skewed, satirical tales of humans and their search for money has been diminished in the slightest. That’s why we keep getting films like “Jackpot!”, an action-black comedy and the latest from director Paul Feig (“Bridesmaids,” “A Simple Favor”). 

Set sometime after the year 2030, the film follows Katie, played by Awkwafina (“The Farewell,’ “Crazy Rich Asians”), a former child-star who finds herself accidentally winning the Grand Lottery, a multi-billion-dollar California state lottery wherein the winner must survive until sundown to claim their winnings. If anyone is able to kill them without using guns, then the killer may claim the winnings. Katie finds herself unwittingly under the protection of Noel, played by John Cena (“Blockers,” “The Suicide Squad”), a lottery protection agent who wants to make a name for himself amongst more successful agents, including his former colleague Louis, played by Simu Liu (“Kim Convenience,” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”). 

It's certainly a heightened concept, and the level of violence and humor could easily lead to comparisons to films like “Robocop.” Feig and writer Rob Yescombe (“Outside the Wire”) certainly mine the scenario for tons of wacky, over the top violence that’s mostly staged with bloody glee. Yet the material itself lacks the sort of punch required to really make a concept like this sing. The observations made about the surrounding world are one-note and surface level, and the script is far more invested in trudging through bland emotional arcs and character revelations. It’s not that these decisions come across as lazy, just uninspired. The film as a whole could hardly be called lazy, given the extensive stunts and sets, so it at least has that working in its favor. 

Awkwafina and Liu are fine with the material they’ve been given, and the pair manage to come out fairly unscathed, even as they're turning in fairly routine performances. Cena makes an absolute meal of the material though, further cementing himself as a scene-stealing comedic master. The film seems to brighten up whenever he’s on screen, and he manages to effortlessly sell his character’s action and meekness in equal measures. 

Given how central it is to the plot, thankfully the action is fantastically choreographed. There’s a lot of it here, and it manages to feel well staged and sloppy at the same time. It makes sense given the fact that it's supposed to be perpetrated by members of the general populus, and thankfully it never comes across as too pompous or overly finessed. There’s variety and verticality in the stunts that means it all really shines. 

Despite a fantastic turn from Cena and the excellent action, “Jackpot!” is mostly saddled with the disappointing nature of being the blandest version of its premise. The emotional arcs, execution of its central idea, and general worldbuilding of this not-to-distant future setting all feel like the first draft version of what they could be; it's the most generic way you could tell this story. It’s even stranger then that, even for how simplistic it’s kept, the rules seem to keep changing at the whim of the writer and director as the story goes on. 

“Jackpot!” is a fun action comedy when it's kept to those two elements. Cena is a delight, easily leaping over Liu and Awkwafina’s performances, and when it pairs him with any of his co-stars, the comedy really excels. The action is violent, choreographed, and fun, but it's all surrounded by a story far too generic for what this concept is. It’s a high concept, low execution movie that’ll be hard to remember too many days in the future. 3/5

Borderlands - Review: It Will Drive You Psycho

 

There are plenty of bad video game movies in existence. There are also, especially recently, plenty of good ones, and even plenty of ones that are bad in interesting ways. For every good or mediocre one, we get something bizarre or filled with weird ambition that doesn’t work. “Borderlands” is none of those things. It’s not good, and it certainly isn’t filled with misunderstood creative ambition. It’s just simply very bad. 

The film follows Lilith, played by Cate Blanchett (“Tár,” “Ocean's 8”), a bounty hunter sent by corporate CEO Atlas, played by Edgar Ramírez (“Hand of Stone,” “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story”), to the wasteland planet of Pandora to rescue his daughter Tiny Tina, played by Ariana Greenblatt (“65,” “Barbie”), after she was kidnapped by a rogue soldier Roland, played by Kevin Hart (“Ride Along,” “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle”), and murderous psycho Krieg, played by Florian Munteanu (“Creed II,” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”). Along the way, Lilith also finds herself stuck with the malfunctioning and annoying robot Claptrap, voiced by Jack Black (“School of Rock,” “Kung Fu Panda”), and the insane Dr. Tannis, played by Jamie Lee Curtis (“Halloween (1978),” “Everything Everywhere All At Once”), and the group of misfits try to find a legendary vault, said to contain vast amounts of wealth and weapons, before Atlas. 

Directed by Eli Roth (“Hostel,” “Thanksgiving”) and written by Roth and Craig Mazin (“Chernobyl,” “The Last of Us (2023)”), “Borderlands” is a film for no one, plain and simple. Roth’s style and expertise with gore and horror films seems wasted here, as the movie ends up coming across as a generic action movie with no real sense of style or uniqueness. The script likewise shoehorns in a lot of plot and cool sounding terminology that amounts to a lot of macguffins getting tossed around and very little in the way of actual characterization or emotional arcs. 

You could say that the cast is doing the best they can with what they’ve been given, but they all mostly feel like they’re wandering around, like lost puppies in search of an owner. Blanchett is the strongest of them, mostly just due to the sheer charisma and strength of her acting talents. Hart is simply miscast, as his funny man wisecracking abilities don’t fit a strait-laced serious military man archetype. Greenblatt takes a role clearly meant to be silly and immature into something insanely annoying, and Curtis seems just simply lost, as if she wandered onto set and got forced into participating. As for Ramírez, when the film remembers that he exists, he’s simply a generic bad guy with little personality and even less memorability. The few bright spots come from Black’s vocal performance, which is thankfully one of the few moments the film’s over-the-top sense of humor works, and Munteanu, who simply works as a massive pile of hulking muscle, spouting non-sequitur lines as showpieces for his own madness. 

Given the film was shot back in 2021 and delayed for almost two years, even before reshoots began, you’d at least expect a film with a $120 million price tag to look nice. It certainly had the time and budget for it, but “Borderlands” fluctuates between looking painfully average and terrible. Some sets and shots look fine enough, if exceedingly cheap. It’s the kind of film that is stuffed to the gills with knick-knacks all over the place as if to hide the cheapness of it all, sometimes even looking like an above average fan film or theme park location. Then there are also the numerous gunfights and explosive action sequences that just look unfinished, plain and simple.  

Not only that, but the film seems to play fast and loose with the series’ lore in a way that will be confusing to newcomers and frustratingly dull for fans of the games. Yes, not every video game adaptation needs to stick religiously to the material of the games, but Mazin and Roth have crafted a story that can sometimes be painfully overexplained and then later intelligible to only those familiar with the difference between a skag and a bullymong. Even the film’s sense of “insanity” comes across as painfully watered down, reduced to a barrage of “well that happened” level jokes and constant references to its characters’ seemingly nonexistent “major issues.” 

To add the cherry on top of this dumpster fire, the film was also shot as an R-rated affair to keep in line with the games’ mature tone, but then later edited to be PG-13. Normally, this wouldn’t be worth mentioning if it wasn’t painfully obvious that this was the case. Any casual observer could see the out of place visual effects cuts and overlays to hide the intensity of the violence, and it just seems really weird to see a movie so full of legitimate gunfire (not laser blasters or pseudo-science-fiction weaponry) with nary a bloodspurt in sight. 

It’s kind of fascinating to find a film as bad as “Borderlands,” a film adaptation of a game series that’s sold over 75 million copies and yet somehow made for no one. The acting is serviceable to bad, the writing is poor and fluctuates between confusing or boring the viewer, and it doesn’t even manage to look good despite a long post-production period. It’s a maddening film in that it can’t even be bad in an interesting way. It’s just a boring, bad, bland action film wearing the skin of a popular IP to lackluster results. Maybe this film is what drove everyone on Pandora insane. 1/5