Missing: Written and directed by Will Merrick and Nick Johnson, this is a follow-up to the excellent Searching that I raved about a few years ago. It's not a follow-up in terms of the characters, but in terms of the narrative structure. Yet again, we have a story of a missing person, and a family member who is searching for this person using all the ubiquitous technology available at their fingertips. And the entire film is told from the perspective of the technology, so we only see the characters on FaceTime or their laptop camera, and we watch our protagonist type her searches and scroll through maps trying to figure out what could have happened to her mother. Is it gimmicky? Of course. But is it a wonderfully effective gimmick that helps to heighten the thrills and action? Of course.
Here we get the wonderful Storm Reid playing June, a teenage girl whose mother, Grace (Nia Long), went off to Colombia for a week with her new boyfriend, Kevin (Ken Leung), but then never returned. What follows is a twisty tale where June is trying to dive into Grace's whereabouts, figure out if Kevin was a con artist, uncovers some startling information about her own mother, and falls deep into a mystery that has a very satisfying conclusion. If you think too long and hard about it, there are aspects of this film that certainly seem too far-fetched. But for the two hours you're in the theater, you'll be along for the ride. And at the end of it all, you might decide to talk to Siri a bit more often.
Magic Mike's Last Dance: Listen, you've either already seen this movie or know that you never will. All I can do is tell you that I saw it, it was a bit weird, but the dancing was incredible and I will watch Channing Tatum make about twenty more of these movies if he is so inclined.
Written by Reid Carolin and directed by Steven Soderbergh, in this installment, Mike (Tatum) ends up in London with a wealthy woman, Max (the glorious Salma Hayek), and agrees to help her put on a one-night-only extravaganza of a male stripper show. There's a lot of plot about Max and Mike and their will-they-won't-they status. There are class dynamics at play given that Max has a ton of money and a butler and all manner of privilege while Mike is a working-class man from Miami who is still economically reeling from the pandemic. But at the end of the day, there are men dancing to "Pony," Tatum takes his clothes off, and a dull woman named Edna gets treated to a lap dance and is so deliriously happy.
All the women are pleased and the men are eager to please them. That's all I want from these movies, and it delivers. The dialogue is odd and Hayek's character is all over the place. But I love the way that Tatum has almost no lines but conveys so much information simply with a small smile and the oodles of charisma radiating off his body. Frankly, if we made a silent movie with this man, we wouldn't even need dialogue cards. Just play some music and watch him dance his heart out on the screen. It's truly magic.
Knock at the Cabin: Well, M. Night Shyamalan is back, writing and directing an adaptation of the novel, The Cabin at the End of the Woods, by Paul G. Tremblay. As always, there's a supernatural element to the proceedings, and a twist ending. And as always, your mileage may vary as to whether or not the twist was worth it. I was decidedly on the side of No, it wasn't.
The film tells the story of a family of three who are vacationing in a remote cabin in the woods (people really need to stop doing that, they're just asking for trouble). There's seven-year-old Wen (played by the exceedingly adorable Kristen Cui) and her fathers Eric and Andrew (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge) and they're all having a wonderful time until four visitors arrive at their house with weapons. Led by Leonard (the marvelous Dave Bautista, who really gets to showcase his dramatic chops), these four strangers have come to deliver an ultimatum to this family. The world is on the brink of an apocalypse, and for some reason, this family is the key to saving the world.
I won't tell you anything more - it's a perfectly well-told story, but it starts to get a bit repetitive and loses steam by the end. However, it does feature some fine actors and if all you want is a diverting horror-thriller to while away an afternoon, this isn't terribly objectionable. It's not Shyamalan's best work, but it's certainly not his worst, and that's a relief.
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