Renfield

Posted on April 13, 2023 at 8:05 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for bloody violence, some gore, language throughout and some drug use
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended fantasy peril and violence, vampires, some very grisly and disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	April 13, 2023

If I told you to try to imagine a film from the creators of “Rick and Morty,” “The Walking Dead,” and “Robot Chicken” based on the IP (intellectual property) owned by the movie studio behind “Frankenstein,” “Dracula,” “The Mummy,” and “The Wolfman,” you would probably guess that it would be a a very gory but amusingly slanted take on a classic, filled with goofy contemporary references. And you’d be right.

No one every paid much attention to Renfield in the many previous versions of the Dracula story, but as the title informs us, here he is the main character. Renfield is the unfortunate soul who is stuck as Dracula’s “familiar,” somewhere between a sidekick and a servant. Dracula has endowed (or cursed) him with eternal life at a lesser level. While Dracula (Nicolas Cage, having a blast) feasts on human blood, fresh, pure blood from unsuspecting tourists, nuns, and busloads of cheerleaders preferred, giving him some superpowers of strength and flight, blood that can cure injuries, and the ability to transform into bats, Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) feasts on insects, giving him extremely good fighting skills. They both have some vulnerabilities as well. Dracula has his well-known problems with sunlight (it makes him burst into flames) and can be confined within a circle of protection. He also cannot enter unless invited in, giving rise to one of this film’s funniest sight gags.

What would happen if Renfield, utterly in thrall to his master, joined a support group for people in co-dependent relationships? That is where this movie starts, with the contrast between Renfield’s gothic persona (the faux archival footage putting Cage and Hoult into the settings of Universal’s classic Bela Lugosi film are a lot of fun) and the pastel colors, folding chairs, and perky affirmations. The leader of the group is the empathetic Mark (Brandon Scott Jones of “The Good Place” and “Ghosts”). And when others in the group describe the people in their lives as monsters, Renfield can identify. Dracula and Renfield always have to be on the move, with a cycle of Dracula’s being attacked by hunters, reduced in power, and needing to recuperate. Their latest home is in a dank (of course) abandoned building in New Orleans.

It occurs to him that he can change his life by helping others, starting with Mitch (Dave Davis), the toxic boyfriend of support group member Caitlin (Bess Rous). When Renfield goes to confront Mitch, though, he ends up in the middle of a shoot-out with the Wolf gang, the city’s most powerful crime family, led by ruthless Bellafrancesca Lobo (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and her hot-headed son Teddy (Ben Schwartz).

Rebecca (Awkwafina) is the honest cop who has been trying to bring down the Wolfs, but the rest of the police force is on the Wolf payroll. Rebecca’s sister is part of an FBI task force investigating the Wolfs, but they have not made much progress. This is personal for them; their father, also in the police force, was killed by the Wolfs. When she is attacked by the Wolfs, Renfield saves her life. She sees him as a hero and he begins to see himself that way. He wants to keep that feeling. And he likes Rebecca.

Dracula has other plans. He wants total world domination. “There is no more good and evil; only followers and food.” Mark tells Renfield the person co-dependent with a narcissist is the one with the real power in their relationship.

While the trailer suggests that this is a comedy with vampires it is more of a bloodbath with some funny moments. Cage has the role he was born for and he, I have to say it, forgive me, sinks his teeth into it all the way and then some. Hoult deftly conveys the slightly decayed English gentleman, suffused with longing and regret and hoping some inspirational posters will help. Awkwafina is, as always, delightful. It’s good to see Universal making use of its IP, I mean archive, in an innovative and affectionate way.

Parents should know that this movie is extremely gory with lots of carnage and many graphic and disturbing images and sounds. Characters use strong language. The includes drug dealing and drug use.

Family discussion: How do support groups help people who are in toxic relationships? What does Renfield’s apartment tell us about his feelings? How did Dracula get people agree to be his familiars?

If you like this, try: “What We Do in the Shadows,” the film and television series, and of course the many versions of the Dracula story starting with the Bela Lugosi 1931 version imitated in this film’s fake archival footage

Mafia Mamma

Posted on April 13, 2023 at 5:40 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for bloody violence, sexual content and language
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and drunkenness, references to drug dealing
Violence/ Scariness:	Crime-related peril and violence including shoot-outs, murders, poison
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	April 14, 2023

“Mafia Mamma” is a high concept elevator pitch that might have sustained a seven-minute comedy sketch but does not work as a feature-length movie. It’s a classic fish out of water: American suburban mom inherits an Italian mafia operation in the middle of a turf war. It could have worked. I kept thinking of the ever-delightful “Married to the Mob.” But it relies too heavily on the set-up to carry the movie, with thinly conceived characters. The plot twists are predictable and boring, the funny parts are not that funny, and the gory parts are, well, also not that funny, and not very
exciting.

Toni Collette plays Kristin. She works in marketing at a pharmaceutical company. The men in her group do not appreciate her. Neither does her immature and dependent husband, Paul (Tim Daish). Their son is leaving for college (Tommy Rodger as Dominick). When she discovers her husband is cheating on her just as she learns that her grandfather in Italy has died, she decides to go to the funeral, even though she had not been in contact with him since she and her mother left Italy when she was a toddler. The character has exactly one attribute: always doing for others and putting herself last. With the encouragement of her best friend, Jenny (Sophia Nomvete), she decides to turn the trip to Italy into a chance to enjoy herself, or, as she puts it with the absence of any charm or wit that makes this movie such a trudge, “my own ‘Under the Tuscan Sun,’ eat, pray, f***.”

At the airport in Rome, she literally bumps into handsome Lorenzo (Giulio Corso) and, encouraged by his aunt (Dora Romano) gives him her number. Then she is whisked off to the funeral of the grandfather she does not remember, which turns into a massive shoot-out. Grandpa was a mob boss, and in a video he left for Kristin he explains that after her father was killed he sent her and her mother to America and had no contact with them to keep them safe. Since only a family member can take over for him, he has essentially left the entire operation to Kristin. Bianca, her grandfather’s closest associate (Monica Bellucci) persuades her to take a meeting with the rival mob, promising that if she does that, Bianca will let her see Lorenzo so she can have sex for the first time in three years.

Kristin stumbles successfully through various encounters with the rival bad guys and with some threats inside her own bunch of bad guys, with some very grisly but intended to be humorous murders, including poison and death by stiletto. Also intended to be humorous is the contrast between her various nice suburban lady persona and the ruthless murderers and drug dealers she is surrounded with. “I made muffins!” she announces cheerily, and then feels called upon to explain that she had to use the bananas before they went bad. Collette and Belucci are great as always, but their underwritten roles, and the script’s unsurprising surprises and lurches from set-up to set-up, and tone to tone keep getting in the way instead of moving it forward. By the time it gets to a big courtroom climax, the trial somehow conducted in English with an American lawyer, and somehow being about how nice Kristin is instead of the bloodbath she was involved in. The result, not just of the trial but of the movie itself, just feels lazy.

Parents should know that this has a lot of graphic violence for a comedy, with shoot-outs and grisly murders, chopping off the hand of a corpse to send a message, poison, gouging out someone’s eyes, etc. Characters commit many crimes including drug dealing. Characters drink and smoke and use strong language and there are sexual references and situations.

Family discussion: What qualities did Kristin have that made her a good boss? Has anyone in your family ever inherited anything unusual?

If you like this, try: “Married to the Mob” and “The Ladykillers” (1955 version)

Air

Posted on April 5, 2023 at 5:45 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language throughout
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Some alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	April 7, 2023

A good movie will capture our attention even when we know, because it is a true story, how it turned out. How it happened can be an engrossing story itself, especially if it was a shift with consequences so pervasive we can hardly remember when things were different. Today, dozens of celebrities, even the biggest box-office actors and platinum-selling singers, make more money from their lines of cosmetics, fragrances, clothing and shoes, housewares, books, phone plans, liquor, and perhaps, someday, steel-belted radial tires and vacation time shares. But it began when a man named Sonny Vacarro, working for Nike, made a deal with an athlete who had not yet played his first professional basketball game. His name is Michael Jordan.

Matt Damon plays Sonny, with director Ben Affleck as Nike founder Phil Knight. As the movie begins, In 1984, Nike was known as a running shoe company. Converse and Adidas had most of the market for basketball shoes. Nike, with only 17 percent, was considering giving up entirely. Vacarro, whose life could easily fill a few more movies, wants to change the division’s approach, a poor (in both senses of the word) imitation of the vastly more successful competition. They would pay the top athletes a set fee to appear on posters and ads, representing the brand. Sonny and his colleagues discussed the lower-tier athletes they might be able to afford but no one thought that pursuing the same failed strategy would produce a better result. They just did not know what else to try, and the old system might not work, but it was safe.

Nike was an upstart company, and, as Sonny reminded Phil Knight, before they were a public company, with all of the bureaucracy and high profile disclosures that requires, they were the opposite of safe. The film cleverly uses the company’s real-life principles as commentary or chapter headings. “Our business is change” is number one.

Sonny decides that instead of hedging their bets by picking three basketball players and hoping one of them would excel, they should spend their entire budget on Michael Jordan a #3 draft pick rookie who has not yet set foot on a professional court. He has to persuade his colleagues (Chris Tucker and Jason Bateman, both excellent as always). He has to persuade Knight. He has to persuade Jordan’s ultra-alpha agent, David Falk (Chris Messina, nailing it like the real-life Jordan buzzer-beater). And when Falk refuses to give Sonny a meeting, Sonny has to persuade Jordan’s parents, more specifically, Jordan’s mother Deloris.

She is played by the magnificent Viola Davis because that was real-life Jordan’s one request for the film. And she is on fire. A scene near the end has a phone conversation between Deloris and Sonny that will be in the highlight reels for both stars forever.

Affleck is a fine actor and a better-than-fine director. As an actor since childhood, his skill at selecting the right actors and allowing them to do their best is to be expected. He also has an exceptional sense of narrative structure. The script from first-time screenwriter Alex Avery was chosen as Best Unproduced/Blacklist Screenplay of 2021. He gets sole credit, but Affleck and Damon, Oscar-winning screenwriters in their 20s for “Good Will Hunting,” worked with him on the final version. It is the way the story is shaped that allows each of the characters to make a contribution and keeps us somehow wondering how it will come together.

There is also a deeper meaning, a medium is the message connection. It is the first film from a new company formed by Damon and Affleck that hopes to do for the people who work on films what Sonny did for Michael Jordan, recognizing the contributions of below-the-line crew like cinematographers, designers, and sound technicians with a chance to share in the profits of the work they help to create. Let’s hope they all do as well as Jordan, who, according to the film’s ending updates, makes $400 million a year from the Nike products bearing his name.

Parents should know that this film has constant strong “locker-room” language

Family discussion: What made Nike different from its competitors? Which of the Nike principles do you think are most important? Would you buy something just because it had the name of a celebrity on it?

If you like this, try: “Sole Man,” the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary about Sonny Vacaarro and some of the interviews with Vacarro on YouTube, especially the ones concerning his reversal from creating marketing programs that exploited amateur athletes to leading the Supreme Court challenge that recognized their right to be paid for the use of their images and names

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Posted on March 30, 2023 at 5:22 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some language, fantasy action, and violence
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended fantasy action and violence, characters injured and killed, sad death of a parent
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	March 31, 2023

Hey, if the game is as fun as this movie, get me some 20-sided dice. “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” is an ebullient mix of fantasy, action, and comedy with a terrific cast, thrilling stunts and genuinely fantastic special effects.

We meet two of our heroes in prison (the dungeon part of the story). One is a talker and one is a fighter. The talker is Edgin (Chris Pine), a lute-player and a one-time spy for the good guys turned thief after his wife (Georgia Landers) was killed by the bad guys. He went on “one last” job to steal a magical tablet that could bring her back to life. But they were captured, and he had to leave his daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman) with the con man of the group, the con man Forge (Hugh Grant, all smarmy smiles, with teeth so white they almost glow).

The fighter is Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), “a fellow resident of rock bottom,” fearless and easily able to dispatch various threats, human and non, individual and horde of attackers. They escape from the prison. They find that Forge has somehow, with the aid of a powerful sorceress (Daisy Head as Sofina) become a ruler, living with Kira in a castle. And he will not let her go. Forge has told Kira that her father abandoned her and she believes it.

And so, as in all epic journeys and of course in the Dungeons and Dragons game, there is a quest involving many steps and some more characters with distinctive special abilities. Edgin wants to get Kira and retrieve that tablet, which is now secured by sorcery in a vault below Forge’s castle. And that requires some additional help. Simon (Justice Smith) is a sorcerer of limited abilities who was formerly part of the group led by Edgin. And he leads them to shape-shifter Doric (Sophia Lillis), an Elvin-looking creature who can transform into anything from an insect to a gigantic creature described as an owl-bear.

Directors and co-screenwriters John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein deftly balance the action, emotion, and comedy. You think you’re in for some gruesome scares in a cemetery scene where corpses are dug up and re-animated, but it turns into one of the film’s funniest moments. And the most serious character, a classic handsome hero played by “Bridgerton’s” Regé-Jean Page deftly makes his serious and straightforward Arthurian honor and gallantry witty when seen through the eyes of the raffish band of thieves. Bradley Cooper shows up in a small role, funny and utterly charming. “Magic can’t fix everything,” a character warns more than once. But amovie with great characters, settings, special effects, excitement, heart, and humor can feel like magic and that’s good enough.

NOTE: Stay for a funny mid-credits extra scene.

Parents should know that this film has extensive fantasy-style peril and violence with many characters injured and killed, including a beloved wife and mother. Characters also use some strong language.

Family discussion: Which character would you most want with you on a quest and why? Try playing Dungeons and Dragons and create your own character.

If you like this, try: action comedies like “Guardians of the Galaxy” and the 1973 “Three Musketeers”

John Wick: Chapter 4

Posted on March 19, 2023 at 4:23 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language and violence
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended and very graphic peril and violence, many characters injured and killed, disturbing and gory images
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	March 24, 2023
Date Released to DVD:	June 12, 2023

I will begin with a quote from another Keanu Reeves movie: “Whoa.”

“John Wick: Chapter 4,” almost twice as long as the original, is, like its three predecessors, non-stop action with just enough story and character to establish the stakes. And endless style. As important as the stunts, and reminder, this series was conceived by stunt coordinators, is the demimondaine, the world within a world it occupies. This is the world of assassins. They have their own rules, their own leaders, their own currency, their own telecommunications, a fascinating blend of high and low tech, and their own ultra-luxurious and ultra-discreet hotels. We will not worry about how they support themselves since most of their assassinating seems to be other members of their community, or why none of their chases and shoot-outs never attract anyone from law enforcement.

The rules are made and enforced by a group called The Table, and the person in charge is now an effete French Marquis (Bill Skarsgård just as creepy without the clown make-up as he was in “It”). He is always shown in the grandest possible settings, enjoying exquisite food, drink, art, and music.

And he has a hit out on John Wick. Many many hits out on John Wick.

That’s basically it. A lot of people are highly motivated to kill John Wick, and he goes to various places to avoid being killed and they keep coming after him and he keeps being the takes-a-licking-and-keeps-on-ticking John Wick we know and love.

The Marquis is more in the burn it all to the ground category. He de-sanctifies the Continental Hotel, the sanctuary for all Table-ers. This puts Winston (Keith David) back on John Wick’s side. Most of the intrigue in the film comes from the shifting realignments of the characters’ loyalties. We even get a glimpse of a backstory for John Wick, as he has to re-connect with his family to position himself to resolve things with the Table, permanently.

The Marquis has deployed a former colleague and friend to kill John Wick, the blind assassin Cane (a galvanizing performance by Donnie Yen). It is not about money; that would not be enough. It is the safety of Cane’s daughter. John Wick understands and even respects that. The fights with the two of them are simply spectacular and there is one falling down the steps scene that is an instant classic.

There is a new character in this film who almost steals the movie. He says he is nobody, and that is the only name he has. He has a dog sidekick. Somehow he can find John Wick when no one else has any idea where he is. And he is dazzlingly played by Shamier Anderson. Spin-off, please.

There are many striking locations. There are so so many fight scenes, featuring guns, knives, bigger guns, cars, nunchucks, martial arts, old-school punching, and swords, often combined. And an attack dog. Like all the best action/stunt scenes, they are choreographed like a ballet, even down to the spurts of blood. Even at almost three hours, the franchise has the combination of exciting stunts, expertly paced (if contrary to the laws of physics and, well, reality — and look out for that fall down the steps) and the intriguing world the characters occupy makes this all the fans could wish for.

NOTE: Stay through the credits for an extra scene.

Parents should know that this film is about assassins. There is non-stop action and peril with many characters injured and killed, including major characters, and gory, disturbing images, plus strong language

Family discussion: Why did John Wick want to be known as “loving husband?” What do you think is the meaning of “such is life?” If the series continues, who should be in the next chapter?

If you like this, try: the other John Wick movies and the Matrix series