April Showers: The Northman, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, The Secrets of Dumbledore

April is a fairly lackluster month for movie releases as evidenced by the three films I will review below. Enormous caveat - there is an audience for all three of these movies (I considered myself the target demographic since I went to see them all!). But ultimately, this is a post about movies that overwhelmed me with their weaknesses, and you will have to figure it out for yourself if our tastes are different enough that you should give these films a try.  Consider yourself warned.

The Northman: This was my first Robert Eggers film (he directed and also co-wrote the screenplay with Sjon, an Icelandic poet, novelist, and lyricist who frequently works with Bjork). I have always heard great things about Eggers' movies, how they are weird and unconventional, so I went in cautiously optimistic. Unfortunately, I found this movie to be much more conventional in its storytelling and far too unnecessary.

This film could be re-titled Vengeance: The Movie. For two hours, you will follow the saga of Amleth (Alexander Skarsgard), a Viking prince who is seeking revenge on his uncle Fjolnir (Claes Bang), who murdered his father, Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke), and married his mother, Gudrun (Nicole Kidman). If you're saying, hey, that sounds familiar, yes, this Scandinavian legend is the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet. But this movie is less about introspective monologues and more about blood and gore as Amleth eviscerates everyone he can find in increasingly inventive ways as he closes in on Fjolnir. Along the way, he teams up with an enslaved sorceress, Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy), who could be his salvation...but death and destruction take precedence.

This movie is gorgeously shot and will likely give you a hankering to visit Iceland. The actors offer up fine work, though only the Scandinavians (Skarsgard and Bang) won't make you giggle with their attempts at Nordic accents. But I found it so terribly hard to be invested in a story that is about war and vengeance and men whaling on each other while the women exist on the sidelines to be raped or sold into slavery. There has been a lot written about this movie's attention to detail and attempts to be historically accurate. Well, turns out I don't care about Viking history at all, and this film is already being used by right-wing white supremacists as propaganda. I can applaud its aesthetics and brief descents into weird creepiness and magical thinking. But overall, it ends up being a conventional story about war and the worst that humanity has to offer, and that is a narrative I am less and less interested in every day.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent: If you've seen the trailer, you've probably seen the best this movie has to offer. This is the movie where Nicolas Cage plays himself, except a fictionalized and self-obsessed version. His career is going nowhere, he is divorced and has a strained relationship with his daughter, and he is deeply in debt. So when his business manager says that he has been offered a million dollars to go to the island home of a billionaire named Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal) who is a fan and wants Cage at his birthday party, he agrees. What could go wrong?

Well turns out Javi is a bad guy that the CIA is watching and Cage gets recruited by  agents played by Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz to help them out. What follows is a twisty action movie with lots of meta interludes where Javi and Nick talk about a buddy movie they're going to make together that is basically the plot of this movie we're all watching, and it's all silly and precious and occasionally funny but mostly odd. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it ended up being more of an action thriller and less funny than I hoped. Haddish and Barinholtz were woefully underutilized, and while I fully appreciated Nic Cage's commitment to this role, it turns out I am not enough of a fan to derive enough enjoyment from all the in-jokes and movie references. If you're a fan, you will probably LOVE this movie, but if your Cage filmography knowledge is a bit hazy, this may not be the right film for you. 

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore: I am a huge Harry Potter fan and the books meant a great deal to me growing up. However, much like the Hobbit movies left me cold after the initial nostalgia for Lord of the Rings wore off, I have lost my passion for the Fantastic Beasts universe. I never reviewed the second movie because I watched it in a bit of a pandemic haze and couldn't follow most of the plot, so watching this third film was quite the challenge as I had managed to forget major plot points, almost all the characters, and generally couldn't care about anything happening on screen.

If you need to keep the Potter nostalgia going, obviously don't pay attention to a word I've said and indulge freely in these films. But no matter how charming and game Eddie Redmayne is as Newt Scamander, and how much all the other actors are giving their all, including Mads Mikkelsen as the new Grindelwald, it can't make up for the convoluted writing and self-indulgent editing. Yes, there are great special effects and new creatures, and it's nice to see Hogwarts and Hogsmeade again. But all of that isn't enough to make this a compelling story that keeps you invested in this bloated franchise. 

April Movie Watch: The Lost City, Windfall, The Adam Project

Another weekend approaches and you want to watch a movie? Well I've got a romcom, a thriller, and/or sci-fi action to whet your appetite. Settle in. 

The Lost City: Sandra Bullock playing a romance novelist and Channing Tatum as her Fabio-esque cover model in a romcom adventure on a tropical island where they're being chased by a dastardly villain played by Daniel Radcliffe. I mean, come on. Do I need to sell you on this any further? 

This movie is a silly and effervescent delight that delivers exactly what you expect. Bullock and Tatum will charm the pants off you (metaphorically, and perhaps even literally if you're watching at home) and it is wonderful to watch their relationship blossom as they get to know each other better and are put through extreme duress. No need to get into too much plot here, but suffice to say, they spend a lot of time in a jungle trying to make their way to safety and this affords the two of them many opportunities to demonstrate their excellent physical comedy skills. They are funny, they are sweet, and they are gorgeous, so it's a match made in heaven.

There's also a great Brad Pitt cameo that will make you guffaw. And overall, everyone in this film knows exactly what they're doing here and having fun. As a fervent romance reader, I loved the commentary on the romance genre and taking down the stereotypes about romance novelists and their characters, or what their readers are looking for in this genre. Much like this movie is leaning into all the romcom stereotypes and telling us, hey it's OK to take a break from serious cinema and enjoy this fizzy little film.

Windfall: Directed by Charlie McDowell from a script written by Justin Lader and Andrew Kevin Walker, and starring the holy trinity of Jason Segel, Jesse Plemons, and Lily Collins, this is a taut Hitchcockian thriller that is a little bit scary, a little bit funny, and a whole lot entertaining. 

None of the characters are named in this film, they are just labelled in the credits as CEO (Plemons), Wife (Collins), and Nobody (Segel). There's a fourth character, but given the brisk 92-minute running time, I am loath to give away any details so you'll just have to find out who that is for yourself. The plot is simple - CEO and wife arrive at their vacation home, only to discover Nobody has broken into it. Nobody takes them hostage, and our little drama unfolds. It feels like a play, where you only have three people stuck in one house, trying to figure each other out. The dialogue provides all the characterization you need and you will find your sympathies shifting as the scene demands.

This is the perfect movie if you want to stay in, turn on Netflix, and enjoy a quick adrenalin rush. The actors are doing great work and the writing and direction are crisp. There are no wasted moments here, and there are clues throughout the film that lead to its startling conclusion. Everything made sense once I got to that finale, and I appreciated how I had been carefully led along this path to the ultimate resolution. 

The Adam Project: Unlike Windfall, I cannot say The Adam Project is a brisk and economical piece of entertainment. The best I can say for it is that the casting director did a phenomenal job of finding a young kid, Walker Scobell, who could do an amazing Ryan Reynolds impression.

The plot is...simple? Adam Reed (Reynolds) is a time-travelling pilot from the dystopian hell of 2050 who takes a time jet and crash lands back in 2022 where he meets his 12-year old self (Scobell). Much banter ensues between the two of them, all very peak Reynolds, and then they team up to help defeat the evil woman who is destroying the world in 2050 (played by the very game Catherine Keener). But there's also a lot of family drama playing out involving their mother, played by the wonderful Jennifer Garner, who is dealing with the recent death of their father (played by Mark Ruffalo - so this is a 13 Going on 30 reunion to boot!), and the older Adam counselling his younger bereaved self with the benefit of hindsight. 

There's a lot going on in this movie, as is to be expected of anything involving time travel, and the script gets very twisty, taking on a "don't think about this too hard" stance. The family stuff is all great, the sci-fi and action is all a bit much, and the comedy beats are all fine but a bit too shticky. If you love Ryan Reynolds, you will love this movie, and if you don't love him, you will hate it. If you're ambivalent about him, as I am, then you will be fairly lukewarm. This movie is a perfectly tepid way to spend an afternoon, so if you've run out of things on your Netflix queue, throw it on and give it a shot. After all, Netflix claims it's the fifth-most watched movie on their service, so you might as well see what all the fuss is about!

A Deluge of Dramas: Yellowjackets, Severance, The Gilded Age

The golden age of TV continues. Looking for something dramatic to add to your TV queue? Consider one of the following.

Yellowjackets: I could not stop bingeing this show. I heard so much about it as it was airing week to week over the winter, but I only got around to it now and what a thrill ride it was for all ten episodes of its first season. The relentless pace meant that even though I was bingeing, I would still watch the "Previously on Yellowjackets..." montage at the start of each episode to remind myself of all the shenanigans that had ensued so far. Created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, this show is unlike anything I've ever seen on TV before, and full of powerhouse performances, intricate plotlines, and creepy and spectacular visuals. 

The show tells the story of a high school girl's soccer team and what happens when their plane crashes in a remote location when they are on the way to Nationals. Forced to survive on their own for nineteen months until they are finally rescued, a lot goes down during their time in the woods. But the way the story is told echoes the flash-back and flash-forward structure of Lost. You are getting the story of what these girls were up to in high school before they ever got on the plane. You're getting the story of what happened after the crash and they had to figure out ways to survive. And most importantly, you're getting the story twenty years later of the surviving women, who have made a pact to never tell the world what happened to them in those woods, but are now having to deal with the consequences. 

It is so complex but this is a show that demands your attention and richly rewards you for it. The casting is absolutely sublime. At first I was worried I would never be able to keep straight who all these characters were. But the actresses they have cast to play the younger and older versions of each character are pitch perfect and you won't be confused for long. The older women are played by the likes of Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis, Tawny Cypress, and Christina Ricci, who is playing an absolute psychopath. Their younger counterparts are incredible, including (but definitely not limited to) Sophie Nelisse, Sophie Hatcher, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Sammi Hanratty. And as each episode passes, more secrets and dark tales come to life. This show is Lord of the Flies, except with young girls, and it's incredible to see what happens when these women are stranded and have to deal with things like everyone getting their period at the same time, navigating relationships with the two men who also crashed with them, and dealing with new and old friendships and shifting loyalties. Not to mention the lurking specter of eventual cannibalism.

I cannot praise Yellowjackets highly enough. The theme song spurred extreme agita in me every time it came on, and the soundtrack was always incredible, offering up a welcome dose of 90s nostalgia in every flashback. It is insanely well-written and well-observed, capturing the many nuances and complexities of female friendships, and while you will be sorely disappointed when it's over, you will still get satisfying answers to some of your questions by Episode 10 whilst having your appetite whetted for Season 2.

Severance: This show initially feels like it's all vibes, and then as it gets to its first season finale, it is a propulsive thrill ride than ends on an agonizing cliffhanger. It is so worth the watch, but be forewarned that it's gonna leave you hanging at the end and you will now have to wait a whole year to find out what happens next. 

The show is centered around a group of employees who work at Lumon, a company that has pioneered a Severance brain operation that allows any individual to completely separate their work memories and non-work memories. This is touted as a breakthrough for work-life balance that allows people to live their lives to the fullest, but of course there is a whole ethical morass to wade through and it turns out this benevolent corporation might be up to no good. Boasting an incredible cast of Adam Scott, Patricia Arquette, John Turturro, Zach Cherry, Britt Lower, and even Christopher freakin' Walken, this show is bananas from the jump and just keeps getting wilder.

The show was created by Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller directed most of the episodes, with Aoife McArdle stepping in to helm three episodes. The writing and direction are top notch, forcing the viewer to immerse themselves in this weird alternate reality with all its jargon and bizarre logic. The production design deserves special kudos because it captures the deadly fluorescent hell of office cubicle life, and makes everything feel creepy and claustrophobic to the max. The actors are impeccable, having to play dual roles as they transform each day when they arrive at work into their "innie," the work self who has no idea what their "outie" is like in the world. The mysteries keep piling up, and the season finale is this fast-paced, ingeniously edited, gasp-inducing bit of TV magic. So steep yourself in the world of Lumon and get caught up so you're ready to experience Season 2 with the rest of the world in 2023.

The Gilded Age: As a big Downton Abbey fan and a New Yorker, I was looking forward to seeing what creator Julian Fellowes had in mind for this show, which looks at high society in 1880s New York City. The action centers around Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson), a penniless woman who arrives in Manhattan to live with her estranged aunts after the death of her father. In the meantime, Bertha and George Russell (Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector), have just moved into a mansion across the street on the elegant Upper East Side. The Russells are nouveau riche and aspire to be accepted by the snobs in high society, while Marian's eldest aunt, Agnes (Christine Baranski), is old money and very much disdains these interlopers. She cautions her niece to never mingle with these rich upstarts, but of course, our heroine has a mind of her own and shenanigans ensue. 

Like Downton, there's also a fair amount of downstairs action as we follow the household staff and their various adventures as well as their interactions with their wealthy employers. But unlike Downton, the show never seems to deliver much exciting plot. Everything seems telegraphed from a mile away, and I don't think anyone was seriously surprised by the twists and turns that took place by the time we got to the season finale, apart from a rather brilliant reveal regarding a chef. This is a show that probably has an eye-watering budget for costumes, and it is a joy to look at the sumptuous dresses and hats gracing the screen every minute, but I found myself fairly bored by the writing. This is a great mood piece, but it lacks sexy intrigue, instead settling to be much more about economic intrigue. There's an interesting attempt to address racism and the place of Black people in this society, but it's all a bit ham-handed and currently doesn't seem to be going anywhere particularly meaningful so we shall have to wait and see. This is a great watch if you want to look at something pretty, but if you're looking for propulsive and compelling plot, you are better off with the other shows I've recommended in this post.

Bollywood Blast: Gangubhai Kathiawadi & Badhaai Do

I am very choosy about which Bollywood movies I watch but recently I have seen two rather excellent ones. They are both extremely Bollywood - there are songs, emotions are high, everything is dialed up to 11. But they also deal with serious social topics that Bollywood traditionally does not want to tackle or will only treat as a joke or a subplot. So if you're looking to make a foray into what India has to offer in terms of cinema, perhaps one of these movies could tickle your fancy.

Gangubhai Kathiawadi: Starring Alia Bhatt, a woman you can generally depend on to deliver an impeccable performance, this is a story loosely based on Gangubhai Kothewali, a sex worker who became a brothel madam and pushed for social reforms and legal rights for the women in the Red Light Kamathipura district of Mumbai in the 1960s. She was a formidable woman, who even got an audience with Prime Minister Nehru, and this movie offers up a romanticized but still fairly brutal account of how she was tricked into prostitution and then rose to become an influential leader who strove to help orphans and young women who found themselves in dire straits. 

Directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who also co-wrote the script with Utkarshini Vashishtha, this movie manages to simultaneously be very conservative and not. For a dramatic movie about sex work, you are not going to see any nudity, and not even a kiss (well, I guess Julia Roberts would say that was acceptable behavior for a Pretty Woman). But you are going to get a lot of progressive content about the rights that sex workers should have, their unfairly maligned status in society, and the respect and freedom that they are owed. While you may not see any sex in the film, you will unfortunately see a great deal of violence, and while this movie may be set in the 1960s, it certainly feels like a contemporary piece as we haven't made much headway in the intervening decades on deciding how exactly we want to legalize prostitution and give sex workers their due. 

Like all Bollywood films, this movie could do with more judicious editing, but I wasn't bored for a second. The songs aren't memorable, but while you're watching the movie you will certainly be swept away by the spectacle, and the production design to make 1960s Bombay come to life is gorgeous. Bhatt's central performance is sublime, with her transformation from naive young girl to Mumbai slang-slinging, alcoholic madam, perfectly attired in a white sari and sunglasses. She allows for nuance, capturing the fact that this woman wasn't a saint, but she did the best she could given her circumstances and the horrors she had been through. The film has some weird romantic sub-plots that seem out of place, and having a hijra villain is wildly unnecessary and a stereotypically transphobic element in a film that is otherwise trying to be wildly feminist. But overall, this is a compelling tale about a fascinating woman and I'm glad she is finally getting some long overdue recognition.

Badhaai Do: This film is a comedy about Shardul (Rajkummar Rao), who is a closeted gay cop, and Suman (Bhumi Pednekar), a closeted PE teacher. They are now in their thirties so obviously their meddling families are jonesing for them to get married. They have stalled for as long as they can, but their excuses are starting to fall on deaf ears. However, when Suman has to file a report with Shardul when she is being harassed by a stalker (a subplot that is decidedly eerie and a reminder of the many dangers the gay community face in India), he comes up with a neat solution. Why don't they marry each other so their families get off their backs? They will live together as roommates and be free to live their own lives with whoever they want, and their families will be none the wiser. What could go wrong?!

You may have already spotted the flaws in this plan. Needless to say, while the families are overjoyed by the wedding, this is quickly followed by pressure to have children. Many shenanigans ensue, further complicated by the fact that Sumran and Shardul have partners and need to figure out a way to make all of this work. While the first two-thirds of this film mostly play out like a fun farce, the latter third is where your heartstrings will be tugged. This is such a sweet and thoughtful film about the toll it takes on a person to keep their sexuality hidden and the constant fear they live with when they are in a society that rejects their existence. The joy that Shardul experiences when he finally has Sumran, another gay person who can accept him and share the burden of his secret is wonderful, and getting to see their baby steps out in the world as they try to make a life in this deeply conservative society is wondrous. 

This film felt very light and silly but it snuck up on me towards the end. Rao and Pednekar deliver  nuanced and rich performances, portraying these two people as perfectly average everyday Indians, who just happen to be gay. The family drama is awful, but is a very realistic depiction of how these things go in most conservative families (not just Indian ones, of course), and I appreciated the filmmakers not shying away from illustrating the pain and loneliness that so many people endure during this journey. But what I also love about this film is, spoiler alert, it has a very happy ending. We have too many tragic LGBTQ+ stories in the world so let's celebrate one that ends on such a delightfully optimistic and hopeful note. 

Everything Everywhere All at Once: 2022's Best Movie

It's only April but when I saw Everything Everywhere All at Once, I knew I had already seen the year's best movie. My mind was blown, my heart was full, every one of my emotions had been engaged. What an experience.

Over the course of the weekend, my boyfriend and I have been recommending this movie to tons of people. But when they ask, "what is it about?" we run into difficulty. This movie defies description, and if you watch the trailer, you will have some sense of what an over-the-top and raucous conceit it is. It reminded me of what it felt like to watch The Matrix for the first time and alternately think, "This movie is incredible" and "How high were the screenwriters?" From the minds of writer-director duo Dan Kwan and Daniel Schienert (who are collectively known as the "Daniels") this is a scintillating film that covers every genre known to man and manages to coalesce all its plots into one cohesive whole that serves as a rumination on life, the universe, and everything. 

The goddess Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn Wang, a Chinese American woman who is having a very bad day. She runs a laundromat with her husband, Waymond (the brilliant Ke Huy Quan) and they are being audited by the IRS, specifically by a woman named Deirdre, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who is having a damn good time. Evelyn and Waymond are also planning a Chinese New Year party later that night, dealing with the fact that Evelyn's father, "Gong Gong" (Cantonese for "grandfather," played by prolific all-star, James Hong) has just arrived from China, and that their gay daughter, Joy (the marvelous Stephanie Hsu) has chosen today to ask her family to be more accepting of her girlfriend, Becky (Tallie Medel). The opening scenes of this film are chaotic and stressful as you see all the many woes being heaped upon Evelyn as she tries to deal with her family and her business. But her day is about to get a lot worse, because it turns out that she lives in a multiverse, and in a parallel universe, there's a villain named Jobu Tupaki who is on a rampage and threatening to destroy everything. Bet you didn't see that twist coming. 

Suffice to say, you will get to see a multitude of Evelyns, which serves as a fine showcase for the many facets of Michelle Yeoh, from kung fu queen, to glamorous film star, to...sidewalk sign spinner. The first part of the film plays like a sci-fi action comedy. But the second part suddenly veers into a deeply existential treatise on humanity. There was a scene that made me burst into tears, even as it involved the entire audience laughing out loud collectively in the theater. If I had to describe that scene to you as a standalone cinematic moment, you would think I was insane, but the genius of this film lies in its relentless pace, editing, and ability to weave together different strands to make an absolute masterpiece out of disparate elements that seem like something conceived during an acid trip.

Everything Everywhere All at Once contains such multitudes. It evokes all manner of visceral reactions from you, whether you are crying because you suddenly feel seen or whether you are squirming in your seat because you cannot bear paper cuts (yeah, that scene was more powerful than any horror movie). It has some gross-out gags, some incredibly absurd comedy, and then all of a sudden is a profound love story and meditation on kindness. It's about accepting yourself and loving your family and your community, and trying to get by in the world with decency even if it's all absolutely pointless. God, what a movie. What a ridiculous, insane, sublime movie.