Director: Greg Berlanti
Writer: Rose Gilroy
Stars: Channing Tatum, Scarlett Johansson, Woody Harrelson

Synopsis: Sparks fly in all directions as marketing maven Kelly Jones, brought in to fix NASA’s public image, wreaks havoc on Apollo 11 launch director Cole Davis’ already difficult task of putting a man on the moon. When the White House deems the mission too important to fail, Jones is directed to stage a fake moon landing as backup, and the countdown truly begins.

That Greg Berlanti’s Fly Me to the Moon was originally intended to be a direct-to-streaming release makes some sense, actually. A high-concept, low-stakes romantic dramedy about the Space Race and what it must have been like to work for Richard Nixon, it’s the sort of project that those prone to the daily brainless scan of Netflix’s library would lap up in a heartbeat. As for how it might fare on Apple TV+, where it will inevitably land once its unexpected theatrical run concludes sometime this summer, it’s likely that it will fit right in. One can already imagine the “Out of This World” banner, branding the streamer’s oddly-copious selection of space-related programming, from its slew of science-fiction duds to For All Mankind, and even The Morning Show. (Why they sent Reese Witherspoon to space is something I refuse to try to understand. Best you do the same.)

Despite the similarities to normal streaming fare, it rises above this. Fly Me To The Moon is better written, better staged, and starring better performers than any of those often-schlocky offerings typically bother to bring to the table. Perhaps that’s why test audiences – all of which saw it on the big screen as Berlanti and his crew showcased their work to gauge whether it could play well in a theater – loved it: Not just for its humor and its romance, but for its originality. The director and producer himself even told Variety that his testing audiences wanted to see an original movie: “Even though it’s obviously historical fiction, it’s an original story wrapped around that,” he said. “They didn’t know what was going to happen in a way in the movie and that was so fresh for them.”

Of course, it’s worth considering that this interview was 1) published in a Hollywood trade, and 2) skewed quite positive; had an audience member waltzed over to Berlanti and told him to shove his movie where the moon doesn’t glow, we wouldn’t read about it, least of all in Variety. But no matter how rave the reviews Berlanti received really were, Fly Me to the Moon will launch its theatrical run on July 12, despite it already having had a peculiar roll-out ahead of that official release date. On July 1, both the AMC and Regal theater chains screened the film as part of their recurring five-dollar mystery movie series’; then, on July 5 and 6, it landed in theaters again, this time for a few “early access” screenings. It appears that Apple hopes to rake in as much cash as possible at the box office, given the gamble it took to put the movie in theaters. That is, if you can really call a movie starring Channing Tatum, Scarlett Johansson, Woody Harrelson, and others a “gamble”. 

Really, nothing about it is very risky. It begins with an over-edited slog of a newsreel that hands us our sense of time and place on a silver platter, a far-too-standard and grossly tired habit that historical dramas tend to employ nowadays. Blink-and-you’ll-miss-them snippets tell us that John F. Kennedy is the President of the United States, with Lyndon B. Johnson and Nixon following suit, and that all any of them want to do is make sure that American astronauts arrive on the moon before the Russians. Once we finally cut away from a montage that might as well have been an advertisement for the Adobe Suite, we meet Cole Davis (an exhaustingly straight-faced Tatum), an ex-pilot turned NASA’s hard-working, tirelessly focused launch director for Apollo 13. If Cole hates anything more than lying and disorder, he hasn’t found it yet, so it’s only fitting that Kelly Jones (Johansson) should enter his life when it’s at its most stressful peak. She’s a marketing maven, one who is talented enough to sell a sports car based on its seatbelt, thus making her the ideal choice to persuade politicians and the public alike that going to the moon is worth the cost. 

This duo’s meet-cute at the local diner gives the film one of its dueling threads, while what ensues in the aftermath of Kelly’s sudden hiring provides the other. The mutual attraction between the two is evident, and it’s not all that hard to believe in, given that Tatum and Johansson are the actors tasked with inhabiting these roles – though they are hard to believe as late-’60s NASA employees from an aesthetic perspective. But there is a constant air of antagonistic tension; Cole prefers stability, and Kelly is a natural-born disruptor. She’s here to “sell the moon,” while he’s there to ensure that three men can get there and back safely. That Cole was the launch director on Apollo 1, NASA’s initial attempt to get a man on the moon, doesn’t help matters in regards  to Kelly’s cavalier attitude; that mission’s Command Module caught on fire during a launch rehearsal test and killed the three astronauts inside, a tragedy Cole blames himself for and can’t move past. His best hope? Apollo 11’s success.

About that: While Kelly was initially hired to nab endorsement deals that would help fund this mission and to convince the country to support it, her duties eventually evolve as the government’s top brass grows more wary that Apollo 11 will be the success NASA seems to believe it will be. That she isn’t who she says she is – a stab at character development that feels both out of place and underbaked, yet looms large nonetheless – gives Moe Berkus, a mysterious government agent played with giddy aplomb by a paycheck-hunting Woody Harrelson, enough ammo to task her with the ultimate con. “Project Artemis”, named after Apollo’s sister, is presented a little over halfway into the movie, but it’s what the film’s trailers sell even more than the Cole-Kelly romance: A staged moon landing to broadcast in the event that things 240,000 miles away go awry.

Needless to say, this is not something Cole would go along with nor appreciate, so Kelly opts to hide it from him, unfortunately leading to occasional scenes where Fly Me to the Moon’s two most captivating characters don’t share the screen. Which would be disastrous if not for Ray Romano’s Henry Smalls, Cole’s lovable right hand man who… is just Ray Romano (about which I’m not complaining), and Jim Rash’s Lance Vespertine, the Kubrick of commercials who Kelly hires to direct her faux moon landing. Rose Gilroy’s script does its best to give the principal players their due, and thankfully, it’s not all one-liners and trailer bytes. Thematically and tonally, this thing might be all over the place – its political subtext is just as forced as Kelly’s secretive arc and Cole’s grief, though at least the latter should give audiences something to root for, despite the face that they know about the success of the moon landing before the opening titles roll – but it does have its finger on the pulse of something fresh and original. Even if the desire to grasp originality often manifests itself in the form of corny pastiche, it makes an attempt at being unique, which is more than most theatrical offerings can say these days.

When Kelly first sets foot on NASA’s Florida campus, Cole is dismissive, his opinion that sales is a trade built on deceit muddling his view of how Kelly’s craft could aid operations on his side of the street, not detract from them. “Don’t take him personally,” she is told. “Pilots fight gravity. It’s part of their nature.” Fly Me to the Moon seems to be doing a similar thing, making a constant effort to keep the mood up among the clouds despite some of its more dour moments. Even as the lines between the character’s motives and emotions begin to blur, with everything becoming significantly more complicated in both a professional and a romantic sense, the film doesn’t seem to know how to show it other than by having whoever is on screen display a long face while a downbeat score from Daniel Pemberton drones on in the background. 

There’s a difference between a film that is never short on charm and one that relies on it to the point where it’s worthy of the world’s longest eye roll. Fly Me to the Moon falls somewhere in the middle. Yes, it features quotes that would befit an inspirational poster in your seventh-grade English classroom – “I don’t think our sad stories are supposed to teach us how to survive the world. I think they’re supposed to teach us how to change it”, etc. It’s also an ungodly 132 minutes long, inappropriate for plenty of movies and especially bloated for a film that spends most of its runtime careening towards inevitable resolutions to its pair of central narratives. 

But as a project that proudly wears its M.O. on its sleeve, it’s a simple crowd pleaser that aims to be nothing more, nothing less. Watching it reminded me, in a way, of The Big Picture podcast host Sean Fennessey’s recent Letterboxd review of Jaws: “Watching this movie is like getting a base hit,” he wrote. “It’s so pure, specific, and finite. But while it’s happening, you’ve never been happier and you never want it to be over.” Now, Fly Me to the Moon is hardly Jaws, nor is it remotely as exciting as getting a base hit. But a walk – even a hit-by-pitch – still counts towards on-base percentage. If you’re lucky, you might even make it home with a smile. 

Grade: C+

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Writer: Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou
Stars: Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Margaret Qualley

Synopsis: A man seeks to break free from his predetermined path, a cop questions his wife’s demeanor after her return from a supposed drowning, and a woman searches for an extraordinary individual prophesied to become a renowned spiritual guide.

Yorgos Lanthimos is the director that today’s audiences point to when seeking out bizarre stories with a unique personality and feel. With each feature he offers, people seem to increase their praise and admiration for the Greek filmmaker, especially after the release of the Golden Lion-winning Poor Things, which put him under a new spotlight that nobody saw coming. I have grown to like him more throughout the years, as I deem his works pre-his collaborations with Tony McNamara to be patience testers lacking humanity. The exception is 2015’s The Lobster, where Lanthimos made a film about society’s pressure on people to conform to normative relationships. The characters felt distanced as usual, yet there was a more emotional touch to them that felt quite gripping. 

McNamara reigned in Yorgos Lanthimos’ absurdist ideas into truly poignant, humanistic concepts to the same degree as they are weird. This division makes the Greek filmmaker the incredible talent that he is. The Favourite and Poor Things have a sense of control and balance between McNamara and Lanthimos; the screenwriter and director came together to unite styles and visions while maintaining each’s personalities. These works are not bogged down by a necessity to disturb the viewer to the point of disgust or loathing. They provoke thought more so than elicit this kind of reaction. Lanthimos’ follow-up to his ‘Frankenstein’ meets Belle de Jour story, Kinds of Kindness, is the complete opposite of what I have described, going back to his unrestrained concepts and unfiltered canvas that diminishes the effects his themes have. 

Co-written by Yorgos Lanthimos and his past collaborator Efthymis Filippou (Dogtooth, Killing of a Scared Deer), Kinds of Kindness is a triptych about the lengths people go through to enrich their human connections. The film tells three stories that interlace thematically yet narratively do not come close to being similar. The only detail that ties them is the appearance of a man named R. M. F. (Yorgos Stefanakos) – a character treated as a running gag, getting less funny by the hour. Jesse Plemons plays the lead role in all three of them, with the rest of the cast (Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, and Hong Chau) playing second and third fiddle in this machiavellian orchestra of shock and no awe.

The first story, “The Death of R. M. F.”, centers around a businessman, Robert Fletcher (Plemons), who lives his life the way his boss and lover, Raymond (Dafoe), intends him to. The man has no choice; he must follow the demands of the puppeteer moving his strings, whether it is his dietary habits, what books to read, or the time and date he has intercourse with his partner, Sarah (Chau). The manipulation behind this relationship is more than evident, as we see Robert being forced to shape his life around the likes of a more powerful person. However, Lanthimos wants to demonstrate that this behavior is an act of love, albeit exaggerated to fit the satiric tone. 

He talks about how people sometimes go to great lengths for this kind of devotion and attention, or, in its most minuscule description, “the crazy things people do for love.” This theme is explored in all three stories. Still, this first one is the most well-observed and fascinating because it focuses on the desperation and hopelessness people often feel when a powerful, passionate relationship collapses. In real life, these scenarios do not tend to play in this manner, where violence, self-harm, and denigration are most apparent. But there is a sense of trying to regain what is lost; we usually don’t appreciate things until they are gone. And Lanthimos, in his usual, unconventional ways, explores that mentality. 

The second story, “R. M. F. is Flying,” is a slight reworking of Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession–in my books, one of the best films of all time. In addition, you can also tie Andrew Semans’ Resurrection with this chapter of Kinds of Kindness, where love and death are intertwined with manipulation and devotion. Both films mingle love and death with manipulation and devotion as a couple tries to forge the best version of themselves through abuse and humiliation. Lanthimos and Filippou only manage to scratch the surface of the potential lingering around this story. A police officer, Daniel (Plemons), is holding onto that last brink of hope that his wife, Liz (Stone), will return after her expedition team gets lost at sea. 

Months have passed, and Daniel’s mental state is more than fractured. One day, he receives a call that Liz has been found and relocated to the nearest hospital for medical evaluation. Daniel should be ecstatic, totally bewildered that his partner is now back. However, his emotions sour quickly after noticing something strange in Liz’s behavior. Liz eats chocolate and smokes cigarettes, which she didn’t do before. Daniel believes that the person in his house is not Liz. She might be an imposter or a clone sent from another place, à la Invasion of the Body Snatchers. So, he questions her identity and subjects Liz to a series of acts to prove her love. It begins with an interesting premise yet rapidly transitions to an array of cheap shock and humorless gags rather than thematic exploration.

This is where Kinds of Kindness started to lose me and annoy me to the point of being exhausted by Yorgos’ childish behavior. He has done some absurd and crazy things in his features involving sex and violence. Most of the time, they add something to the narrative or atmosphere. You can take all those scenes out of the movie, and it leaves plenty of room to curate a broader analysis. This insistence on having those moments feels like a baby’s first attempt at shock. Indulgence and a need to create disquieting imagery are all he has in mind, and the end credit sequence of his chapter confirms such immaturity. 

The third (and final) story, “R. M. F. Eats a Sandwich”, is about two members of a sex cult, Emily (Stone) and Andrew (Plemons), and their journey to find an extraordinary person who might (or might not be) the savior of the world. This messiah-like figure can bring people back from the dead. The woman they are searching for appears in Emily’s dreams. The stupor is a recurring, ineffective motif in the film that speaks about the escapist feelings dreams bring and, as a form of nihilism to the characters, the inescapability of their troubled, puzzled lives. Without much explanation, a stranger recognizes Emily and Andrew and provides them with a tip about the whereabouts of this mysterious woman. 

The events leading up to the “is she or is she not” reveal of the woman in Emily’s dreams as a messiah are all done in a scattered, incredibly messy manner. Each plot strand makes little to zero sense and seems crammed together to make it fit one way or another. Coherence is off the table in this third story. Lanthimos and Filippou struggle to make room for each character without the exercise becoming more laborious. There is one curious narrative thread here between Emily and the family she left behind as a means to escape a toxic relationship for one that is masquerading as healthy. The intrigue is lost when Lanthimos adds an unnecessary scene of assault, removing the little spark of brilliance the chapter had. 

Like all of Yorgos Lanthimos’ works, Kinds of Kindness is ambitious and, in many ways, creative. There is a fascination with big studios giving directors like Yorgos money to do these odd creations that will not attract many viewers outside of those who know of his work. And somehow, his latest one might motivate audiences to seek out his filmography if they haven’t already. Giving complete freedom to a filmmaker known for ingenious provocation has plenty of consequences. What is missing here is the blend of the sadistic and absurd with the humanistic and sensitive, which Filippou does not know how to construct through Yorgos’ mad ideas. 
That is why Tony McNamara is a brilliant writer. He holds the Greek filmmaker back from his pretentious and self-gratifying excess, which allows Lanthimos’ ideas, concepts, and themes to flourish while maintaining his personality. When working with Filippou, he concocts fascinating projects riddled with unnecessary, goading baggage. Kinds of Kindness is not a showcase of his abilities but a project demonstrating his worst, unfiltered tendencies.

Grade: D

Director: Liz W. Garcia
Writer: Liz W. Garcia
Stars: Emma Roberts, Tom Hopper, Poppy Liu

Synopsis: Rex, a Florida party girl, turns out to be the only hope for the NASA space program after a fluke puts her in training with other candidates who may have better resumés, but don’t have her smarts, heart, and moxie.

Space Cadet is so tediously artificial and insincere that the rather light-hearted film becomes excruciatingly insufferable. In fact, it’s the type of film made for a “star” like Emma Roberts, and I use those quotation marks to prove a point. Without streaming, would she be able to make movies? Roberts has made some of the worst comedies that tend to lean on the romantic side in recent memory.

Let’s review her filmography. With the jaw-droppingly wrong Madame Web, Little Italy, and Holidate, she has 43 feature films under her belt, but only 11 have a positive Rotten Tomatoes rating. (I would like to add that only 14 of them have an audience approval rating, the highest being 76% for a supporting role in We’re The Millers.). Less than a third of those would be considered Emma Roberts vehicles, and most of those would not be comedies. 

This brings me to my point: can we have an intervention so Ms. Roberts can stop starring in comedies like Space Cadet? Unfortunately, with the streaming wars still raging, studios will keep bringing her scripts like Space Cadet from the bottom of the trash heap, which would never have been made if they had been tested in a theatrical release.

Space Cadet follows Tiffany Simpson (Roberts), whom her friends and family affectionately call “Rex.” Ever since she was a little girl, watching the stars with her mom, she has dreamt of going into the great void known as space. Sadly, her mother died, forcing Rex to give up lucrative opportunities to utilize her degree in engineering so she could help out at her father’s bar.

However, even though her mother has passed, Rex still feels that mother-daughter bond that will never go away. She still dreams of working for NASA. Her best friend, Nadine (Poppy Liu), takes matters into her own hands. Nadine embellishes Rex’s application and does such a stellar job that the paper ends up on top of the pile for the government’s uber-competitive astronaut training program.

The program director, Logan (Tom Hopper), is against her, but Pam (Top Five’s Gabrielle Union) feels the legendary space program could use new blood and a fresh perspective. When Rex finds out that her best friend doctored her application, she is in over her head. Still, she relies on her intellect, ability to think on her feet, and an unusual amount of empathy to endear herself to her classmates and administrators.

Liz W. Garcia executive produced, directed, and wrote the script for this Prime Video film. You can hardly be surprised after watching the final results since the same filmmaker did Kristen Bell dirty with The Lifeguard. She is one of the few filmmakers with the talent to bring critics and audiences together when agreeing about movies they both hate.

This is the perfect example of a studio remaking a movie with a different story but generally the same premise. For instance, in this case, the film is Legally Blonde, except that it replaces Harvard’s law program with NASA’s space program. Here, everyone underestimates Roberts’s character, but she proves her worth with an unorthodox approach. Yes, you have many who oppose her, but she slowly wins others over. And yes, there is that romantic attraction to a handsome brainiac.

Yes, it’s that classic story of never judging a book by its cover. Except that this is all accomplished by having a bonehead and utterly implausible plot as if NASA wouldn’t fact-check a resume to begin with. Also, as if having strict rules and standards in a military organization like NASA wouldn’t be necessary? The entire script is a trite example of a romantic comedy that is too shallow and simplistic to be enjoyable, and for the genre, that’s saying something.

Then, to top it off, the movie isn’t funny on any level. Most of the humor is placed on Roberts’s shoulders, which needs to be commercially talented enough to carry a feature-length film without any support or comic relief from supporting characters. Besides the mildly amusing turn, albeit a complete character trope, by Kuhoo Verma (The Big Sick), who plays Violet, the film is virtually free of humor.

Yes, many will find Space Cadet inoffensive. No, I am sure many will embrace its light touch and relaxed vibe, which comes with little to no thought so that viewers can turn their brains off for 90 minutes. However, as Jeffrey DeMunn’s District Attorney in The Shawshank Redemption would admit, this could be understood if not condoned, but considering this genre has such a low standard and Garcia’s movie cannot even meet that low-hanging fruit, you shouldn’t reward a film for wasting your time so blatantly.

After all, that is our most valuable asset.

Grade: D+

Director: Chris Renaud
Writers: Mike White, Ken Daurio
Stars: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Will Ferrell

Synopsis: Gru, Lucy, Margo, Edith, and Agnes welcome a new member to the family, Gru Jr., who is intent on tormenting his dad. Gru faces a new nemesis in Maxime Le Mal and his girlfriend Valentina, and the family is forced to go on the run.

I understand why some people may not like the childish antics of the Despicable Me franchise, as it has given us our most annoying animated toy sale machines in the Minions (once again brilliantly voiced by Pierre Coffin), but there’s something so joyfully exuberant about these movies that it has been impossible for me to outright hate them, even if past installments have never quite been able to reach the heights of the terrific Despicable Me 2. 

It’s clear that Despicable Me 4 only exists to capitalize off the success of the Billion-dollar franchise, with one film every few years to milk Illumination’s most popular intellectual property. But as long as they remain fun, who are we to complain? Sure, they may not be the most refined, intellectually compelling pieces of animation ever made, but they can at least tickle the imagination and blend the high-stakes environment of heists with colorful characters who are always a thrill to watch on screen. 

As such, Despicable Me 4 is no different from its previous installments, Minions: The Rise of Gru and Despicable Me 3, in terms of storytelling, but it’s a noticeably funnier and more investing entry in the franchise, as Steve Carell’s Felonious Gru goes toe-to-toe against Will Ferrell’s Maxime Le Mal. The two have frequently partnered in their respective careers, most notably in the Anchorman movies (Brick Tamland remains the best character Carell has ever portrayed), and have made quite the terrific pair on screen. It’s only natural for Ferrell to play the fourth installment’s main antagonist, whose sole goal is to enact revenge on Gru after allegedly stealing a very popular song during the Lycée Pas Bon’s talent show. 

Yes, it’s stupid, but so is every villain in the franchise. Le Mal is no different, though what director Chris Renaud (who also voices the Lycée’s principal) and writers Mike White (yes, The White Lotus’ Mike White) and Ken Daurio do to him isn’t as inspiring as one would hope. With such a name like Maxime Le Mal, one would think he would be Gru’s most formidable foe, but he, in turn, wants the world to become cockroaches. This conceit could be funny, but it’s treated in the most unimpressive possible way, especially when twists involving the character are seen coming a mile away, and the results never land. 

The same can also be said for Ferrell’s portrayal of the villain, which isn’t as strong as his other vocal roles. Sure, he can hold his own and shares fun chemistry with Sofia Vergara, who portrays his girlfriend, Valentina, but he can’t match up to some of the villains of the past. Compared to them, Le Mal is far more one-note than, say, Jason Segel’s Vector and his motivations sound very similar to some of the other foes Gru had to face up with. You can tell the franchise is running out of ideas when they recycle a character who’s basically a carbon copy of Vector but way inferior with a cockroach-laden master plan (stealing the Moon was far more inspired). 

Most of the fun in Despicable Me 4 involves Gru pretending to be an all-American dad as Silas Ramsbottom (Steve Coogan) ships him and his family to a small suburban town to hide from Le Mal. This leads directly into the film’s funniest sequences, one involving a Minion becoming a tennis umpire and the other riffing on The Terminator during a supermarket chase with Lucy (Kristen Wiig). Of course, pop culture references are par for the course with such a franchise, and they’re usually lazy or past-date (such as the floss being a recurring movement, which is so 2019). 

However, in one incredible moment of inspiration, Renaud has Poppy Prescott (Joey King) dance to Dragonforce’s Through the Fire and Flames, the deepest-cut joke this franchise has ever crafted (the ones that know, know). With a moment like that, how can I possibly hate a movie that will bring so much joy to kids who may not understand all of its humor (if they didn’t grow up playing Guitar Hero 3 like I did, too bad), but will find great joy in what they do understand, particularly every antic involving the Minions?

I’ll admit there’s not much new here with these characters, even when they become Super Minions and, instead of putting their newfound powers for good, end up destroying half of the city. However, their demeanor never feels worn-out or dull. Instead, Renaud, White, and Daurio always find ways to make them funnier, such as that umpire scene. The physical comedy is simple, but it’s so well-timed and executed that it’s hard not to laugh. Even in sequences where they get involved in the heat of the action, such as when Gru teams up with Poppy to steal Lycée Pas Bon’s Honey badger, the comedy never feels trite and is always in service of ultra-expressive characters like Gru and his new son, Gru Jr. (admittedly a Jack-Jack ripoff, but it still works). 

It also helps that the animation adds to that expressive feel and is particularly striking to watch on IMAX. The action sequences look massive and have great dexterity in how Renaud captures the stretching-and-squashing of Gru and his Minions as they defeat a half-anthropomorphized insect. The climax, while rushed, sees this strategy fully realized and is the most inspiring bout of action this franchise has seen in a very long time. It’s probably helpful that the franchise returned to its 1.78:1 roots after its last installments utilizing the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. 

The animation looks way more extravagant in that regard, especially when the ‘cartoonish’ look of its settings and characters is purposeful, which many animation studios don’t achieve anymore (looking at you, Pixar, with Inside Out 2). In turn, it makes the movies even more fun, even if the latest sequel isn’t without its shortcomings. 

But does it really matter? Sure, kids deserve better than a simple-minded piece of ‘content,’ but this is harmless. It’s full of lively characters (and impeccably crafted colorful worlds) that pop off the screen and bathe in the exuberance and joy of being a child. It also tickles the imagination when it propels its central heist in motion, adding a bit of thrill to the proceedings while never dialing down on the comedy. Perhaps the Despicable Me franchise is worn out, and perhaps it’s time for Carell to retire as Gru. Perhaps the Minions were once great, but now they’re a fad. Maybe all of it is true. But it still hits for small children, and that’s all that matters. As long as they’re continuously swept away by the antics of Gru (and, by extension, the Minions), this franchise could go on forever.

Grade: B

Director: Ti West
Writer: Ti West
Stars: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Kevin Bacon

Synopsis: In 1980s Los Angeles, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past.

To catch lightning in a bottle is something of a curse these days, especially in Hollywood. Once you make a hit, the expectation is that you can (and will) make another. Sometimes, the most ambitious studios – filmmakers, too – find themselves wondering, “Hey, why not another on top of the first another?”, and as a result, audiences are left with a litany of “anothers”, none of which live up to the first. As if they should have been expected to in the first place.

The problem for Ti West is that he caught lightning in a bottle twice in a single year. In March of 2022, A24 released X, West’s first feature in six years to that date, to critical adoration. Shot for a modest $1 million in New Zealand, X was a killer take on gender roles in horror films with a porno production as its backdrop. It was an early post-pandemic hit, grossing $15 million, and though it starred big-adjacent talents like Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Brittany Snow, Scott Mescudi, and Martin Henderson, its success was half-dependent on A24’s credo as an outfit for quality horror offerings, half-dependent on word-of-mouth advertising. 

September of 2022 brought West’s second bolt in the form of Pearl, a prequel to X that was filmed “in secret”, nevermind that the studio greenlit West’s franchise ahead of time (“Shot in secret” sounds better, anyway.). Co-written with Goth, Pearl told the origin story of the old ax-wielding woman from X, whom Goth portrayed in addition to Maxine Minx, the original film’s heroine. Pearl charts the titular farm gal’s descent into murderous madness as her dreams of becoming a movie star crumble due to her hilarious lack of stage presence. She can’t sing, nor can she really dance – even if it’s funny to watch her try – but boy, could she chop a dude up in the back of a barn. She could also bring in a hair more than 10-times her $1 million budget; all the more reason for West to make another.

Enter MaXXXine, the trilogy’s biggest and starriest entry, a tale of one woman’s desire for fame and her relative willingness to do anything in order to get it. Its opening epigraph, courtesy of Bette Davis, reads, “In this business, until you’re known as a monster, you’re not a star,” a theory Goth’s Maxine is willing to test the limits of en route to celebrity status. MaXXXine takes place in 1980s Hollywood, and its titular leading lady is itching to make a name for herself beyond the limits of the adult film industry. She may not be considered hot stuff to Tinseltown’s powers that be just yet, but if faking it until you make it were a screen test, there would be no round of callbacks; the part would be hers. 

Yet when she auditions for The Puritan II, a nun-sploitation horror sequel with the up-and-coming director Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki) tapped as its helmer, Maxine confidently asserts that she needs no cue cards to guide her through the producer’s scene of choice and subsequently nails it, shrugging off her performative anguish as if it’s just another day at the office. Impressed, Bender and co. thank her for her time. Maxine then bids farewell to her audience of three, struts into the California sunshine and past a line of equally-desperate aspiring actresses towards her convertible, and beelines for her convertible, naturally marked with a vanity plate boasting her name. As if already in the spotlight, she hollers at her fellow wannabes, “Y’all might as well go home, ‘cause I just fuckin’ nailed that.”

To that end, the third go-round for West’s collaboration with Goth posits itself as a solid extension of X and Pearl’s thematic ideas. But given that MaXXXine is meant to serve as this de facto series’ big finale, it makes sure to cram in as many noticeable nods as possible into the fray, almost as if it’s trying to legitimize itself as it hurtles  its way through an over-extended conceit in what, to this point, had been a straightforward and successfully invariant collection of genre pictures. Since Maxine is shooting a horror movie in Los Angeles, we’re treated to a number of familiar sites as she trots around the Universal Studios backlot, with the Bates Motel receiving special treatment. These bits of horror fan-service might manage to scratch an itch if they weren’t all-but immediately followed by lines that sound like, “This is where they shot the movie Psycho, which is a movie about a psycho.”

And because MaXXXine is set in Sin City, 1985, it feels the need to infuse the real-life tale of the Night Stalker’s murderous spree as its pinpointed milieu. West incorporates authentic newsreels from the time, not to mention his characters’ constant referencing of the very-scary serial killer that is still on the loose, so as to center his audience in a time frame it easily could have deduced from the hair, the clothes, the cars, the soundtrack, the smoking indoors, and the city’s general vibe and appearance. I, for one, would have been pleased to have played a guessing game of my own after being assaulted by the massive technicolor “1985” title card that drops minutes into the movie, but beggars can’t be choosers.

The issue, though, is that West doesn’t choose, either. Not how many times he wants to remind us that this is L.A., and it is, indeed, the ‘80s, for one, but he also doesn’t seem to know what movie he wants to make. What starts as a story about a starlet setting out to make her cinematic dreams come true despite horror lurking around every corner later introduces Maxine’s deep-seated trauma from both her religious upbringing and the Texas porn star massacre her character narrowly survived in X. On top of that, while attempting to navigate her starring turn in what Debicki’s director calls “a ‘B’ movie with ‘A’ ideas”, Maxine must also deal with a private detective (Kevin Bacon) who has been hired by a shadowy figure to follow Maxine’s every move and terrorizes her on the daily, thus impacting her ability to shoot The Puritan II’s dailies; the mysterious disappearances/deaths of multiple friends that two unrelated detectives (Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale) are convinced she has something to do with or knows something about; and the lingering possibility that she may be the Night Stalker’s next victim. Quite the week for Maxine. And it’s only Wednesday.

Lost yet? Don’t be. It’s not all that confusing to follow, but it is a bit distracting and unnecessary for a film that has all of its ingredients so clearly outlined on the label. MaXXXine’s ambition, while admirable, results in the deterioration of a pitch-perfect recipe into a cluttered mess of mishegoss and movie stars all struggling for screen time in a film that goes to desperate lengths to reassure us that Goth is its star while hoping that everyone else who’s ever acted in Hollywood can steal the show, too. Beyond Goth, Debicki, and the smattering of other aforementioned actors who pop up throughout, MaXXXine’s ensemble cast includes Moses Sumney as Leon, Maxine’s best friend; Halsey as Tabby Martin, Maxine’s fellow porn star pal; Lily Collins, who plays an actress from the Puritan films; and Giancarlo Esposito as Teddy Knight, Esq., Maxine’s agent. Thankfully, both Esposito and Bacon seem to have been given free rein to chew on the scenery with aplomb; audiences have been clamoring for Esposito to break free of his recent straight-man-in-the-suit typecastings, and he does so to new heights here, while Bacon almost certainly showed up on set for two days, decided he was going to do an accent – think Foghorn Leghorn by way of Jake Gittes, bandaged nose and all – and had the time of his life. But everyone else, no matter how long they manage to stick around, feels disposable. Monaghan and Cannavale seem to have a fair bit of good-cop-bad-cop chemistry, but their collective presence is intermittent at best, never leaving them the opportunity to gel on screen for much more than a few chuckles.

Perhaps that’s a plus for Maxine (and Goth). As she puts it, she can handle herself. (“So said every dead girl in Hollywood,” Halsey’s Tabby replies in one of MaXXXine’s many snippets of stale dialogue.) And in the past, such claims have been true; after all, Maxine survived X and Goth turned Pearl’s Pearl into an icon. But as the scale has been upped and the budget, inflated – an exact number has yet to be reported, but one look at this cast and one listen to the soundtrack provides enough hints for any amateur P.I. to solve the case – the charm that fueled West’s first two X film seems to have gone by the wayside in favor of flimsy flair. There’s enough pure entertainment and filmmaking gravitas on display here to inspire yet another trip back to the Maxine Minx well, but as a narrative exercise, it feels strained, like West and his studio got high on their own supply, proceeded to chuck mounds of ideas (and stars) at the wall, and didn’t bother to wait to see what stuck before picking it all up and throwing it in the movie regardless of its adhesion. Maxine Minx may be a movie star, but she deserves a better movie than MaXXXine to serve as her big break.

Grade: D+

Director: Nikhil Nagesh Bhat
Writer: Nikhil Nagesh Bhat
Stars: Lakshya, Raghav Juyal, Ashish Vidyarthi

Synopsis: A passenger train bound for New Delhi becomes a bloody battleground of brutal close-quarters combat as a pair of commandos square off against a 40-strong army of invading bandits.

If Dev Patel did indeed break several toes and his hand over the course of Monkey Man’s production, one can only imagine how many injuries the punch-happy ensemble of Kill procured throughout filming. The 40-plus fighters on writer-director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s train ride from (and, perhaps, to) hell spend the majority of the action-thriller’s runtime taking hit after hit, stab upon stab, and every wound that could possibly be inflicted in between. Best of all: It’s all done in the name of our entertainment. Cinema is alive and well; sometimes, the more alive a movie is, the harder those within the film in question are trying to murder each other.

Nothing could be more true of Kill, Bhat’s Hindi-language answer to the question, “What if Die Hard, but on a train?”. Set on a choo-choo that appears to be traveling at Snowpiercer-like speed yet manages to make its regular stops a la your everyday Amtrak, Kill almost immediately introduces us to our main character, an army commando named Amrit (Lakshya, making his silver screen debut after a number of Indian television credits). While checking his phone upon returning from a recon mission, he finds dozens of distressed texts from his secret lover, Tulika (Tanya Maniktala), informing him that her father has arranged her marriage to another man. Responding as any hopeless romantic would, Amrit enlists his comrade, Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan), to join him on a cross-country train ride – the same one that Tulika and her family are also on – in order to properly crash the engagement party and prove his devotion to her parents. He even manages to find time during the early stages of the ride to pull her into the lavatory for an impromptu proposal, one that is far more romantic than whatever conversation she was roped into by her father and her predetermined in-laws.

It’s a prologue that, at first blush, feels clouded in forced exposition, but given what has yet to come, the emotional stakes this introduction provides are as important to Kill as its kills themselves. In short order, we are introduced to Fani (Raghav Juyal) and his crew of “dacoits” – a term used to describe bandits in India – a big band of big bads who are willing to terrorize the vessel’s passengers by any means necessary, as long as they get what they came for. What did they come for, exactly? Beyond some cash from wallets and noticeably expensive items that could be easily found in accessible luggage or on a passenger’s person, it’s not entirely clear. But the discovery that Tulika’s father, also a passenger, is the owner of Shanti Transport, a successful transit empire that could make this looting lot handsomely rich, adds fuel to Fani’s fire. As this skinny twerp of a villainous leader begins to wreak havoc on those inhabiting the locomotive, the more vengeful Amrit becomes, making for a rip-roaring massacre aboard a monorail that rivals, if not trumps, any action flick we’ve seen this year. 

This all sounds relatively straightforward, a hero-versus-army-of-villains tale of revenge and power littered with uber-violent kills and enough gore to whet James Wan’s appetite. And if viewed through the lens of its premise and early action setpieces, Kill is a simple film, one in which our heroic commandants can be seen handily dispatching of their enemies with simultaneous kicks to the chest and nods to one another before preparing to take out their next targets. A standout gesture like this might seem cartoonish in a John Wick installment, but feels right at home in an Indian action epic backed by a studio more accustomed to the genre sensibilities associated with typical Bollywood projects; producer Karan Johar’s two pre-Kill credits were Selfiee, an action comedy, and Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, a romantic comedy for the whole family to enjoy.

That’s not to say that your loved ones won’t enjoy Kill, just that it certainly features far more barbaric offings than even RRR, the most popular Indian film in recent memory – as far as American audiences are concerned – and that is a movie that sees a tiger burst from its cage to rip a British soldier to shreds during a battle scene. But to reduce Kill to what it says on the label, or to what it appears to be in its earliest stages, would be to disregard its complexities and thus its brilliance. Bhat sets his ultra-violent thriller apart by providing every character with just a little extra narrative juice to give each a reason to live, no matter if their last-seen act was bludgeoning an innocent occupant of Car A1 with a cleaver. Of course, Amrit’s motivations are easy enough to root for, but even Fani’s bandits have redeemable arcs, so to speak. These hungry, hungry henchmen aren’t simply soldiers in search of bloodshed, but an extended family of sorts; though Fani is helming the operation from inside the train, his father (Ashish Vidyarthi) is its mastermind, and many of the men within his troop are brothers, cousins, fathers, and uncles to one another. 

It’s a development that complicates matters, not merely for the characters themselves, but for viewers. Sure, we want Amrit to defeat a particularly hulkish opponent with thumbs that could crush a skull like a Cheerio, but we can understand the anguish this big lug feels when he discovers that his uncle has been viciously murdered by Kill’s ostensible hero. Misdirections of this ilk keep us wary, not of cheering on Amrit, but about where we’re supposed to stand in regards to his adversaries. It’s only when the film reaches its shocking halfway point – which is marked by a belated title card that lands like an adrenaline shot straight to the aorta – that the opposition becomes truly irredeemable. 

From this point forward, Amrit’s revenge tour travels from the conductor’s car to the caboose, fueled by the promise he made Tulika and her family at the film’s start: To keep them safe, no matter what. Along the way, he delivers another promise, this one to Viresh: “They are getting off this train, for sure,” he says of the bandits, “But only for their funeral.” Lines like these give Kill necessary moments of reprieve, for the violence it depicts truly strays into borderline stomach-churning territory, though the foot never comes off the gas for very long. A masterclass in choreography, this is a movie that manages to turn the most cramped corridors into battlegrounds, fire extinguishers into deadly weapons, and t-shirts into tourniquets, just like any good action film should, if not better. That Lakshya makes a dark horse bid for being the next James Bond with his performance as Amrit is all gravy.

It might have to be a package deal with Juyal, though; these nemeses pair almost too well to ever break up. Frankly, you might as well throw Bhat in that ring, too, but what this cast and crew have cooked up feels too singular to be placed in a Bond-like box, or any box for that matter, regardless of the fact that their thriller unfolds almost entirely within the confines of a high-speed rectangle. Kill is a film about retribution, yes, but also the Indian class system, the complications that come with having one true love in a culture where love is arranged for you based on a litany of factors, and familial politics. It’s more layered than any Wick-esque title has ever been. It also features plenty of broken bones and severed heads. However you meet Kill, its terms are etched in stone. That the stone is stained with blood is a beautiful, brutal bonus.

Grade: B+