Opus

Posted on March 13, 2025 at 12:50 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for violent content including a grisly image, language, sexual material and brief graphic nudity
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	March 14, 2025

“Opus” is almost smart, almost good, and almost worth your time. A first-rate but mostly under-used cast flounders in the second half of a story that begins as a satire of obsession with celebrity that veers into a less successful thriller.

The first feature film from writer/director Mark Anthony Green stars John Malcovich as Alfred Moretti, a rock star who is a combination of Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley, not in style of music but in prominence and influence. Thirty years ago, he was the most popular musician in the world (every teenager of the era used his signature song as a ring tone, we learn). And then he burnished his legend by disappearing. Now, after decades of isolation, his long-time publicist (a very funny Tony Hale playing a character with the wonderfully name Soledad Yusef) informs the world that Moretti will release a new record and he is inviting a very small group to his compound to be the first to hear it.

They are Ariel Ecton (Ayo Edebiri), a frustrated young journalist working at a Rolling Stone-style magazine whose ideas are always given to more senior writers, her boss, Stan Sullivan (Murray Bartlett), television star Clara Armstrong (Juliette Lewis), estranged former Moretti colleague Bill Lotto (Mark Sivertsen), veteran photographer Bianca Tyson (Melissa Chambers), and “influencer” (I always have to put that term in quotes) Emily Katz (Stephanie Suganami). Other than Ariel, these characters have at most one attribute each, despite the best efforts of the excellent cast. Stan is starstruck and arrogant, telling Ariel to take notes and forbidding her to write even a subsidiary piece about the compound and its residents. The others barely have anything to do except taking for granted this exceptional opportunity and going along (as long as they can) with everything that happens because they want Moretti to keep including them. They keep telling the emperor that his clothes are fabulous. Maybe they’ve deluded themselves into thinking he is. Maybe they just want him to think they’re cool, an even bigger delusion.

Their phones and laptops are confiscated “to preserve the integrity” of the experience (so much for the “influencer.” And the residents of this remote compound are more than staff; they all seem to be part of a cult. At first, they seem to be a peaceful arts community. Then things get quirky. Then they get creepy. Then they get terrifying.

Like Moretti, this movie is not as smart as it thinks it is. It is better at raising thoughtful questions than illuminating them. By the end, it does not earn its provocation.

Parents should know that this movie has extended peril and violence with many graphic and very disturbing images. Many characters are injured and killed. Characters use strong language and drink alcohol.

Family discussion: Why do the visitors go along with some of the craziness? At what point would you decide to leave? Who does Moretti remind you of? What is the meaning of the final “thank you?”

Flight Risk

Posted on January 23, 2025 at 7:12 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for violence and language
Profanity:	Very strong and crude languagecdure
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended peril and violence, airplane peril, characters injured and killed, some grisly and disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	January 24, 2025

“Flight Risk” has all of the ingredients for a tight little thriller except one. There’s a good set-up — transport of a cooperating witness, accompanied by just one US Marshal in her first return to field work after a failure that left her feeling vulnerable, and a pilot sent by the bad guys to kill the witness. It has a good setting — a small plane flying through the snowy mountains of Alaska. And a good run-time — just over 90 minutes. But the direction by Mel Gibson is sloppy. Not the editing or special effects, which range from serviceable to tense, but some of the choices that interfere with the best the movie has to offer.

Topher Grace, who plays Winston, is, as always, immediately engaging, well cast as the talkative prisoner. He’s first seen in a low-end motel, sitting on the bed and staring into an aged microwave waiting for it to warm up a styrofoam cup of soup. US Marshals break in and he immediately offers to cooperate with them. Like Charles Grodin in the infinitely better “Midnight Run,” Winston was an accountant for a vicious mob boss. He agrees to tell law enforcement everything he knows if they will give him immunity and protection.

Michelle Dockery (“Downton Abbey”) is Madolyn Harris. She has to bring Winston east to testify in the gangster’s trial. Without his testimony, there will not be enough evidence to convict him. She charters a plane, gets Winston settled with handcuffs, and takes the only other seat, next to the pilot (Mark Wahlberg), who says his name is Booth. His backwards baseball cap, chewing gum, and cornpone accent do not create a great deal of confidence, but he assures Madolyn that they’ll be in Anchorage and on their way to Seattle in 90 minutes.

Except he was never told their next stop was Seattle. Madolyn gets suspicious. “Booth” is there to kill Winston. He is also the only pilot on board. There is nothing around them but snowy mountains. The rest of the movie is the very bumpy ride.

The problem is that the fun of all the tension and action is interrupted by weird dialogue that is as off-balance as the plane. As Madolyn is using the limited access to her phone to update her colleagues (and try to figure out who has been leaking key information to the gangster), she is also on with Hassan (Maaz Ali), a pilot who is talking her through the instrumentation. He is creepily predatory, in the midst of the direst possible situation insisting that she go on a date with him. What is the idea behind this? Is there any world where someone might imagine this could be reassuring? It j’ust kept taking me out of the film.

And then there is “Booth.” Reportedly, Gibson let Wahlberg write some of his own dialogue, which gives his character a chance to free-associate a series of comments that he and Gibson may have considered evidence of recklessness and pleasure in hurting people, showing us why he is so dangerous. But they are crude and off-kilter (too many references to prison rape, for example) in a way that is at odds with the tempo and tone of the film. They’re also tedious. They do not add anything to the sense of menace or the stakes. It just comes across as self-indulgent, the last thing you want in a 90-minute thriller.

Parent should know that this is a very violent film with a knife, a flare gun, a very dangerous plane flight, criminal behavior and corruption, and extended strong language with very crude sexual references.

Family discussion: How did Madolyn decide who she could trust? How did her past experience help or hurt her ability to handle the challenges of this transport?

If you like this, try: “Plane,” “Fathom,” and “Con Air”

Kraven the Hunter

Posted on December 12, 2024 at 5:41 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong bloody violence and language
Profanity:	Some strong language, f-words
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol, potions
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended and graphic action and comic book style violence with disturbing and bloody images, knives, poison darts, bombs, fire, guns, bear traps, spears
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	December 13, 2024

Another day, another second or third-level Marvel character “from the Spider-Man universe” given main character energy as Sony makes sure it takes every possible advantage of the contractual carve-out that gives it a small piece of the Marvel universe that isn’t run by Kevin Feige and Disney. The best I can say is that “Kraven the Hunter” is a bit better than the dismal “Madame Web” and less goofy than Tom Hardy’s “Venom: The Last Dance.”

This is the sixth of the Sony films about ancillary Spider-Man characters, the longest (2 hours, 7 minutes), and the first to be rated R.

The rating is primarily for extended bloody violence, as indicated by the poster showing Kraven’s face with specks of blood (not his) and the sobriquet “Hunter.” In the comics, he hunts Spidey because he wants to test himself against the most challenging prey. That character is inspired by Richard Connell’s short story about hunting humans, “The Most Dangerous Game.” But this movie is an origin story, and Kraven hunts bad guys.

It opens in present day, where a bus is taking men in chains to a remote Russian prison. We see the man we will come to know as Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) holding his meager bedding as he enters his cell. An extremely tough-looking guy watches him enter, then says, “I do not like roommates.” Kraven tells him that he will be gone within three days; if not, his cellmate can hit him. Kraven stays long enough to kill another prisoner, one of those still-running-the-crime-syndicate-from-prison kingpins. And then he escapes, automatic weapon bullets all around him as he races to catch the plane that was sent for him.

Flashback to 16 years earlier. Teenage Sergei Kravinoff (Levi Miller) and his half-brother Dimitri (Billy Barrett) are attending a posh boarding school in upstate New York when they are told their father has come to pick them up. He is Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe), a powerful crime boss and the embodiment of toxic masculinity. He abruptly tells the boys that Sergei’s mother has committed suicide because she was “weak” and disturbed. There will be no funeral; instead he is taking his sons on a safari, so they can prove their manhood by killing dangerous animals.

Nikolai teaches his sons that the only things that matter are strength and power; they must never show weakness or fear. Sergei, who is brave and thoughtful, tries to protect his sensitive and vulnerable younger brother. When a legendary lion many hunters have failed to kill approaches them, Sergei puts himself in danger and is fatally mauled. But he is found by Calypso, a young girl on a photo safari with her parents. Her grandmother, a tarot card reader with some mystical power, had just given Calypso a vial with a potion that can “heal someone in undreamed ways.” She pours it into Sergei’s mouth and later, at the hospital, after he is pronounced dead he suddenly recovers. Between the potion and the lion’s blood that dripped into his wound, Sergei now has the powers of the world’s apex predators.

Yes, this is a superhero story about daddy issues. Nickolai is a narcissist who belittles everyone around him, including his sons and also some random guy named Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) who tagged along on the safari in hopes of persuading Nickolai to allow him to be a part of all the criming. We will see him again later. When Nickolai tells Sergei he is taking him into the family business, Sergei runs away, leaving his brother behind.

Sergei becomes Kraven, living in a remote Russian forest on property once owned by his mother’s family. And he becomes a hunter, trying to balance his father’s ruthless brutality by taking out bad guys. He tracks down Calypso (Ariana DeBose), now an American lawyer working in London to thank her for saving his life and ask for her help in locating some bad guys. And then Dimitri is kidnapped, and Nickolai refuses to pay the ransom, because it will make him look weak.

All of this is just a light framework for a lot of impressive stunts. Kraven is old-school, so while people are shooting at him, he is using spears, knives, poison darts, and bear traps. At least the action scenes relieve us from the clunky dialogue and bad accents.

Parents should know that this is a very violent movie with constant action and comic-book-style chases and fight scenes and many graphic and disturbing images. A teenager gets mauled by a lion. There is a very unsympathetic discussion of suicide. Weapons include machine guns and rifles, spears, knives, poison darts, bear traps, and bombs. Characters drink alcohol and use some strong language.

Family discussion: Why did Sergei and Dimitri respond so differently to their father? What were Kraven’s strengths as a hunter? What mistakes did he make?

If you like this, try; “The Most Dangerous Game” and Taylor-Johnson’s “Bullet Train” and “Kick-Ass”

Kinds of Kindness

Posted on June 27, 2024 at 5:15 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Adult
Profanity:	Constant very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and smoking, characters drugged for abuse
Violence/ Scariness:	Explicit, disturbing violence including self-mutilation, suicide, and rape, very graphic and shocking images
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	June 28, 2024

Director Yorgos Lanthimos is more interested in shock and sensation than story or character. He reunites with his “Poor Things” stars Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe and his “The Lobster,” “Dogtooth,” and “Killing of a Sacred Deer” co-screenwriter Efthymis Filippou for “Kinds of Kindness,” which is not about kindness at all but about obsession, dominance, and sacrifice. In its almost three-hour run time it features self-mutilation, suicide, murder, rape, a valuable broken tennis racket, and a cult centered around a notion of purity, a sweat lodge, and the possibility of reviving the dead. And it features a repertory cast of actors playing different characters in three otherwise unrelated stories, each appearing with a title referring to “R.B.F.”

Those initials are glimpsed onscreen just once, at the beginning of the film. “Sweet Dreams are Made of This” by Eurythmics intones on the soundtrack, telling us what is ahead: “Some of them want to abuse you. Some of them want to be abused.” There are many symbolic allusions throughout, though most gesture toward meaning rather than attempting it. Like these: There is a street named Perdido (lost). A close-up of two mouths kissing is so extreme it may make you wonder how humans ever got started with it. There is the novel Anna Karenina. That broken tennis racket was smashed during a game by John McEnroe. There’s also a cracked helmet worn in a race by Ayrton Senna. We see a blue pick-up truck, and then two more just like it.

The first story is titled: “The Death of RMF.” A man comes to the door of a luxurious home and is let in by a beautiful young woman (Margaret Qualley) wearing a very short silk robe. She describes what he is wearing to someone over the phone, including the monogram on his shirt: RMF, which she initially mistakes for BMF, explaining that the embroidery is poorly done. The person on the other end of the phone is Raymond (Dafoe), wealthy, powerful, and obsessively concerned with controlling the most intimate details of everyone around him. One of those is Robert (Jesse Plemons), an executive in Raymond’s construction business, who lives in a modern mansion with his wife, Sarah (Hong Chau). Robert receives a hand-written note card with a minute-by-minute description of his day, from the socks, shoes, and suit he must wear to when he must and must not have sex with his wife. Robert for the first time, after ten years, tries to say no to Raymond when his first attempt to complete a dangerous, possibly deadly, task, is unsuccessful. This is when we find out what Raymond is willing to do, how much he is willing to debase himself by pleading, lying, stealing, harming himself, and worse.

“RMF is Flying” is the title of the second story, with Plemons as a police officer named Daniel whose wife, Liz (Emma Stone) is missing with her colleagues who were on a marine research trip. Daniel cannot think of anything else, worrying about what she is eating, imaging that a suspect in the police station looks like her. His partner and best friend is Neil (Mamoudou Athie), married to Martha (Qualley). They do their best to provide comfort and support, but Daniel is inconsolable. And then Liz returns. But Daniel believes something is wrong, and this being who looks and sounds like Liz cannot possibly be his wife.

The title of the third story is “RMF Eats a Sandwich.” This time, Stone plays Emily and Plemons is Andrew. They are testing young women on behalf of a group we will learn about. This is so important to her that she has left her husband, Joseph (Joe Alwyn) and the daughter they just call The Little One (Merah Benoit).

The screenplay relies heavily on the shock value, the performances and the production design by Anthony Gasparro to make the movie seem weightier than it is. And when that’s not enough, it winks at the audience to let us know that it just doesn’t care.

NOTE: Stay into the credits to see a bit more. Stone’s dance is every bit as good as the one that was a highlight of “Poor Things.”

Parents should know that this movie has pervasive adult material including sexual references and explicit situations, nudity, very strong language, alcohol and smoking, and graphic and disturbing images including suicide, murder and police shooting an unarmed man.

Family discussion: Why does Robert do want Raymond tells him to do? Why do Emily and Andrew do what Omi and Aka tell them to do? Why does the tennis racket mean so much to Sarah and so little to the people who buy it? How do you decide who you trust? Who is RMF and why does he matter to these stories?

If you like this, try: “The Lobster” and “Poor Things”

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Posted on May 9, 2024 at 11:37 am

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence/action
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended and intense peril and violence, beating, sling-shots, taser-like spears, explosion, flood, marauders, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	A metaphorical theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	May 10, 2024

Know going in that this is the kind of movie where the humans are mute, cognitively impaired, and yet the main human character wears tailored pants and a woven shirt that look like they came from the mall. This should not be a surprise as it is also the kind of movie there the title is, at best, paradoxical, as a planet is bigger than a kingdom and in any even the kingdom in this story is only a small part of the planet. So shouldn’t it be “Kingdom ON the Planet of the Apes?” Of all the suspension of disbelief required for the film, the idea that complex machinery would operate as intended after hundreds of years — well, that idea procured intended laughs in Woody Allen’s “Sleeper” and unintended laughs in “Battlefield Earth.”

Know, too, that, for anyone who is trying to keep track of the “how does ‘Tokyo Drift’ fit into the chronology”-type questions about the original series of films, the television show, and the Tim Burton-and-after movies, this one takes place a long time after the death of legendary character Cesar, who sacrificed himself, and, possibly, before the Charlton Heston original. Maybe.

Noa (Owen Teague) is a young, male ape who lives in a gentle clan with his parents and two best friends. We first see them preparing for a coming-of-age ritual. Each of them must find an eagle’s egg (but always leaving one in the nest), and bring it back safely. The clan is centered around their trained eagles, and Noa’s stern father is their leader. Noa struggles to get his father’s approval. We see that they have some signs of what we think of as human civilization, in addition to the rituals. They have built some simple structures as homes, they ride horses, they obey the rules of the clan, and they have adornments and some tools and simple weapons, like slingshots. Also, as mentioned above, that most human of attributes, daddy issues.

A marauding group of apes arrive, with more powerful weapons, including spears with taser-like points. They destroy the compound, kill Noa’s father, and capture everyone else, except for Noa, who manages to escape, vowing to find his clan and get revenge. He meets up with Raca (the deep, kind voice of Peter Macon), a follower of the lessons of Cesar. And they meet up with a human woman they call Nova (Freya Allan) — cue the jokes about how humans are slow-witted and smell bad.

They try to drop Nova off with a group of humans (note: none wearing pants and a shirt), but the same marauding apes arrive to capture the humans like cowboys capture mustangs or, in “The Time Machine,” the Morlocks capture the Eloi. It turns out Nova has some secrets.

She and Noa are themselves captured by the apes, they find themselves in the kingdom of Proximus (Kevin Durand), a tyrant who, like the male humans of our time, is obsessed with Ancient Rome. They live on what was once a human stronghold, and Proximus is determined to break into the vault, to get access to whatever it was the humans were so intent on protecting.

I suspect we may hear some people claim that this film is intended as a metaphor to illuminate some of the most divisive topics of our era — colonialism, immigration, xenophobia, the way we tell our history. That gives this film too much credit, but the way both Raca and Proximus claim to be the true heirs of Cesar’s authority, with very different interpretations of his message, should resonate with viewers.

We are mostly there for the special effects and action scenes, though, and those are vivid and effective. The settings are stunning and the motion capture and CGI are next-level, giving the ape characters real weight and their expressions, well, expressive. As one of the most enduring series in history moves, potentially, toward the time of the very first film, the questions remain: whether humans and apes can find a way to co-exist, whether technology can advance without causing great harm and existential threats, and whether humans or apes can ever find a way to overcome fear and greed to work together for the common good.

Parents should know that this movie includes extended peril and violence. Characters are injured and killed and there are some graphic and disturbing images. Characters use brief strong language (a human teaches it to the apes, of course).

Family discussion: Why did the clans have such different cultures?

If you like this, try: the other movies in the series and the original films with Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter, and Charlton Heston