Director: J.C. Chandor
Writers: Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway
Stars: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Fred Hechinger, Russell Crowe

Synopsis: Kraven’s complex relationship with his ruthless father, Nikolai Kravinoff, starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared.

There are two reasons I was excited about Sony’s latest (and likely final) entry in the Sony Spider-Man Universe: Kraven the Hunter has Aaron Taylor-Johnson and J.C. Chandor. Taylor-Johnson has always been a versatile, dynamic performer known for his emotional and physical commitment, which can be awe-inspiring. Chandor, on the other hand, had an extraordinary first three-film run with Margin Call, All Is Lost, and A Most Violent Year, though he stumbled slightly with the star-studded Triple Frontier.

Surely, a respected heartthrob and critical darling like Taylor-Johnson, paired with a director known for introspection, could bring a fresh perspective to a tired genre and transcend the tropes and clichés that often plague it. Sadly, Kraven the Hunter falls short. The film suffers from cringe-worthy dialogue, occasionally hysterically bad special effects (Kraven’s friends, the water buffaloes, have the look of a Lindt Milk Chocolate Holiday Bunny), and even some embarrassingly poor performances from Academy Award-winning and otherwise respected actors.

The story follows Sergei Kravinoff, aka Kraven (Bullet Train’s Taylor-Johnson), a conservationist who sees it as his duty to protect wildlife rather than hunt it. This mindset likely stems from his father, Nikolai (Academy Award winner Russell Crowe), a ruthless Russian crime lord and big-game hunter. While Nikolai takes lives for selfish gain, Kraven takes them to serve the greater good. It’s a tale of overcoming circumstances—faith versus free will—harnessing a brutal nature and a thirst for vengeance. 

However, Kraven’s resolve is tested when he faces Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola), a Russian mercenary who has become a human-rhino hybrid. Sytsevich possesses the comedic style of Michael Scott, the temperament of the Hulk, and an impenetrable hide. Eventually, Aleksei abducts his brother, Dimitri (Fred Hechinger), sending Kraven on the, well, hunt. He enlists the help of London’s very best “investigative” lawyer, Calypso Ezili (Ariana DeBose), who has a connection to Sergei’s past to help track down Dimitri, which is strange since Johnson’s character states how it is “undeniable” he’s the greatest hunter/tracker on the planet.

Johnson is one of the most talented actors in the world, but the film and sound editors do him no favors, allowing him to ham it up here. His performance is so over the top, it’s almost laughable. The same goes for Alessandro Nivola, who was excellent in The Art of Self-Defense and The Many Saints of Newark but plays the Rhino so inconsistently that his portrayal feels disjointed. Yes, he’s playing a psychopathic villain, but the character’s uneven shifts are so erratic they come off as practically schizophrenic. Even Ariana DeBose is left standing awkwardly in one scene, showing no fear, shock, or even surprise when a leopard attacks Sergei, as if such events are an everyday occurrence in a courtroom.

And don’t get me started on Christopher Abbott’s “Foreigner.” The script has his character undergo a series of repetitive minor assassinations, leaving the audience wanting to scream, “For God’s sake, we get it!” These so-called “iconic” characters—Kraven, Calypso, Rhino, Foreigner, and Chameleon—are so paper-thin, it’s a blatant misuse of the source material. The writing team seems uninterested in understanding these characters, reducing them to glorified cameos. It’s as if they’re mere action figures with a pull-string, endlessly repeating the same scenes or one-liners repeatedly.

The main issue with the film is that it juggles too many perspectives, a clear sign of repeated rewrites. Richard Wenk is credited as the primary screenwriter, with additional contributions from Art Marcum and Matt Holloway. The first 45 minutes drag under the weight of exposition, unfolding as slowly as thawing permafrost. Predictably, the film relies on the same tired tropes and clichés you’d expect from the genre. For example, lion blood and some magic voodoo medicine give Kraven the animal powers of a lion. 

However, did you know a lion can jump off a fifty story building without breaking a bone and spot a cigarette butt a mile away? What I find particularly amusing about environmental superhero films is their tendency to preach against animal cruelty only to fall into hypocrisy. Case in point: while Kraven fights for vengeance over the killing of animals, he seems perfectly fine catching a fish and then ripping the flesh off for his own enjoyment and nourishment. I mean, fish are animals, too, right? 

This should have been fun, but the gory, tedious, and laughable final product should hopefully hammer the final nail in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU) for good.

You can watch Kraven the Hunter only in theaters on December 13th!

Grade: D

Director: Mélanie Laurent
Writers: Mélanie Laurent, Christophe Desplandes
Stars: Lucas Bravo, Léa Luce Busato, Yvan Attal

Synopsis: Inspired by real events, the story of Bruno Sulak, a true Arsène Lupin of the 20th century.

In a movie about a Bonnie and Clyde-esque couple, director, Mélanie Laurent, chooses a breathtaking, opening shot. In an extreme closeup of Léa Luce Busato’s face, her lips are lustrous, her freckles prominent, and the smoke from her mouth forms faint clouds of hazy dreams. Then a reverse dolly camera movement reveals that it’s not a girl lying lazily on a beach, but waiting in her care for her lover to finish a heist. As we realize we’ve been played carefully by the tactful Laurent, we also surrender that the female gaze can make a whole difference in a particular genre like biographical crime dramas.

Freedom stars the enigmatic Lucas Bravo fresh off his Emily in Paris fame, alongside Busato -her first time in front of a film camera- and Yvan Attal. It’s a fictionalized biopic of Bruno Sulak’s life; the modern Arsène Lupin, the handsome gentleman thief with ideals and principles. Instead of focusing on the robberies and the crime element of the film, Lauernt takes a different approach to telling the story.

The film benefits from Laurent behind the screen, a sensitive, passionate woman who knows her directorial tools. Her montages of footage between Bruno and his lover Annie take center stage, even amidst all the intense heists. Laurent benefits immensely from the chemistry between Bravo and Busato, but her keen direction and nurturing of their talents allow her to explore the characters more deeply. In comparison, Sulak is a messed up, crazed version of a social activist and an anarchist. He believes he is doing the world a favor by stealing from the rich. The lovestruck Annie is mesmerized by him, living the dream that many women before her have only dared to envision.

Annie is a delusional young girl, infatuated by a dream of a nonexistent breed of machismo, the sexy, strong, and kind outlaw. In one scene, she talks about him rollerblading, and it’s like she’s using him as her muse and object of fascination. In a brave flip of POV, Laurent makes Annie a creator in the story, as if she is not simply the young silly girl dragged around with a criminal mastermind, but a creator of her narrative, someone who wants to live the bohemian French life of no work but sex, games, danger, and fun. Annie is the rogue version of Jane Birkin following around a hot and unbothered Serge Gainsbourg, the young girl in love with a soon-to-be-extinct breed of heterosexual masculinity, one that is not sexually confused or uncomfortable. He lives to be her icon of desire, and she is comfortable in her femininity to hide in his presence, while secretly manipulating the situation to her favor, so that she can live as this imaginary French lover for as long as she can.

It could be that nostalgic Laurent is romanticizing the gangster genre. For good reason, she brings a colorful, very French exploration of love, crime, and sacrifice. Cinema hasn’t had that brave narrative where (hetero) love intersects with violence in a long time. Admittedly, the violent scenes are toned down, but then again, brutality is not part of Sulak’s philosophy of a boho life. It’s not a critique of Laurent’s directing style for turning a crime movie, a hot outlaw’s biopic into a sun-drenched dream.

Laurent makes great use of handheld cameras and during intense, action-packed scenes. Her DOP Stéphane Vallée knows how to work his cameras, and the action-packed scenes differ from the lovers on a run scenes. Laurent defies all the crime/noir aesthetics by creating a colorful, vibrant feature. That may not work in her favor at most times, because people —especially critics— expect more. They expect a reason for making this film, a rationale behind bringing Bruno Sulak’s story to life, but there is no reasoning because the dreamer in Laurent wanted to make a movie about love and crime walking hand in hand, and the result is as fresh and poetic as can be.

Freedom is truly a passion project, a swan song from Laurent’s creative mind about a French tale that she misses watching unfold on screen. In it, she enjoys creating the world she dreams about, and through her eyes, we witness her inner thoughts and feelings about a timeless tale like Bruno Sulak’s life.

Grade: A-

Director: James Mangold
Writers: James Mangold, Jay Cocks, Elijah Wald
Stars: Timothée Chalamet, Monica Barbaro, Scoot McNairy

Synopsis: At the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, a young Bob Dylan shakes up his act on the folk music scene by going electric and siring rock as the voice of a generation – defining one of the most transformative moments in 20th century music.

It is 1961 and the Village in New York City is buzzing alive with the folk music revival led by Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), carrying on the tradition of his very sick friend, folk legend Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy). Coming from Minnesota is Robert Zimmerman, better known as Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet), only with a backpack and guitar looking to break into the business. After making his pilgrimage to visit Guthrie, who is suffering from Huntington’s disease, Dylan meets Seeger who quickly introduces him to his family and the rest of the musicians, with manager Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler) immediately realizing Dylan’s talents and signs him to a record deal.

In a few years, Dylan is no longer a complete unknown, and fame rages onward, sweeping him and his girlfriend, Sylvie (Elle Fanning). Dylan, still somewhat guarding his life as his fans swarm him and ask him to keep playing the political hits (“Blowin’ In The Wind”), wants to change all of that but feels chained by the base, demanding he stick to the traditional folk tradition like his counterpart, Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). Looking for that radical change, he considers going electric – the enemy of folk music traditionalists – and shaking up the status quo with what music can be without being shackled by expectations and rules. 

For Chalamet, this is the best performance he’s given since Call Me By Your Name and is Oscar-worthy. This isn’t just playing a real-life musician and lip-syncing, this is Chalamet singing Dylan’s songs in his near-perfect Minnesotian dialect and becoming the Nobel Prize winner (as noted in the end credits). From the opening moment featuring him in the back of a car looking ahead to the Manhattan skyline to the final shot of Dylan riding his motorcycle, Chalamet converts himself into an American icon that blasts out of the screen with every note picked on his guitar and every stirring lyric sung. Tour-de-force is too common to describe the performance, but no other tern matches the height he’s accomplished as a folk-rock star. Chalamet doesn’t just play Dylan, he is Dylan.  

Norton’s Seeger fulfills the real-life persona with the ultimate grace and softness of the real-life singer and activist; Fanning portrays the loneliness of being the lover of a superstar and enduring Dylan’s tinges of narcissism. Barbaro as Baez, the Barefoot Madonna (because of her natural beauty while performing without shoes on) is radiant while Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash comes in with a more nuanced portrayal as the Man In Black during his hard-drinking period. The scenes at the Newport Folk Festival with the live audience and at the recording studio make us feel as if we are there in person and part of music-making history with the cornerstone songs of this period being played. Being immersed in the Village during the ’60s is a surround sound experience that never feels out of place. 

Director James Mangold, who knows a thing or two about making a musical biopic, effortlessly guides this consequential chapter in music history. He washes off that foul taste of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny with influential music that swoons us back into the 1960s when the world was changing rapidly. So much of that aesthetic looks good on screen and gets us in with its hook from the beginning. It isn’t flashy, but A Complete Unknown doesn’t have to be when telling this section of Dylan’s life and fills the story with the amazing songs that changed the world. 

Grade: A

Director: Armani Ortiz, Tyler Perry
Writer: Kevin Hymel, Tyler Perry
Stars: Kerry Washington, Ebony Obsidian, Milauna Jackson

Synopsis: 855 women joined the war to fix the three-year backlog of undelivered mail. Faced with discrimination and a country devastated by war, they managed to sort more than 17 million pieces of mail ahead of time.

There are many examples of directors who primarily work in one field or genre moving successfully into another. Usually, these creatives have understood the nuances of what makes their chosen genre great and applying those to the next. Tyler Perry is not one of those directors. The Six Triple Eight, his attempt at a prestige historical drama bringing to light the efforts of the first and only battalion of Black Women soldiers deployed in Europe during WWII is ham-fisted, exasperating, filled with lines no one could imagine any human being delivering, and entirely surface level. 

The film opens in 1943 on the Italian front line. Young American soldiers attack and are beaten back. An infantry man encounters a pilot who has been shot from the sky. He’s dead. He pulls a blood-stained letter from his pocket and places it in a sack. Letters from families and soldiers echo. No one has heard from the front lines. Without word from home or afar, the stasis of anxiety is causing morale issues. This much is told clearly and concisely in two scenes. However, Perry will continue to reiterate how important the mail is because it was what the WAC group was begrudgingly sent to Scotland to oversee. Perry will also reiterate every basic theme in the film to the point where one wonders if he’s so used to telling a gag six times in his comedy work hoping repetition hits the mark, that he has no idea that audiences might not know about the work of Charity Adams (Kerry Washington) and her troops, but they have heard of racism and misogyny before.

Flashback to Bloomfield, Pennsylvania and we meet our focus heroine, soon to graduate schoolgirl Lena Derriecott (Ebony Obsidian). Her childhood friend Abram David (Gregg Sulkin) arrives at her high school to drive her home. A White teen stands between them telling him he shouldn’t be seen spending time with a Black woman – it’s improper. But, of course, the friends are inseparable and in love. “She’s so horrible for treating you that way for the color of your skin,” says Abram at his going away party. The bright-eyed Jewish boy is off to fight Hitler. He declares his love for Miss Lena that very night: Her: “You know this is not right in the eyes of many people.”  Him: “The only eyes that matter are ours.” He declares his intention to court and marry her on his return. He will write to her. 

Lena is an intelligent and sensitive young woman. Her aunt Susie (Baadja-Lyne Odums) wants her to go to college. Her mother, Emma (Donna Biscoe) doesn’t want Lena to have any pie-in-the-sky ideas. Struggling as essentially a single mother, as her husband has vanished, there is no money and experience has shown her that being a woman and Black is about keeping your head down to survive. Nevertheless, she wishes her daughter the best. Susie and Emma are ridiculously thinly drawn characters. Often, they exist simply to deliver exposition in a scene where none is needed. Lena is getting letters from Abram which is shown by Lena going to the door and not getting letters from Abram and placing the other mail on a tray with disappointment. “I guess she don’t get no letters,” says one. Yes – that was the scene we just watched. When the news comes that Abram has died and Lena takes to her bed in grief (again, shown) the voice over from the women below is, “She’s not getting out of bed.” 

Lena makes the decision to enlist. There is no money for college. “There ain’t no way they’re going to let you fight Hitler,” says one of them. “You will just be cooking and cleaning for White folks and you can do that here.” Lena is firm. She needs to find a trace of the life she might have lived with Abram, and she must find a way to fight.

Once on the train to basic training, segregation happens almost immediately. The White women are sent to a different compartment. The audience meets the women who will be the core characters they follow through their journey from training camp in Georgia through to deployment in Europe. A Black-Latina, Delores Washington and history buff (Sarah Jeffrey), her cousin and math genius Elaine White (Pepi Sonuga), a Harlem woman looking for an education, Bernice Baker (Kylie Jefferson), and a rural woman who worked in the cotton fields escaping her violent husband, Johnnie Mae (Shanice Shantay). Elaine tells them that she and Delores were told they failed the entry exam, but they wrote to esteemed African American Women’s leader Mary McLeod Bethune (played in a cameo by Oprah Winfrey) and she ensured they were admitted. Mary McLeod Bethune is a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt (who turns up played by Susan Sarandon and a set of false teeth). Johnnie Mae’s response boils down, “Ooh ain’t you all fancy pants,” as she’s there for men, adventure, and her own version of liberation. 

At training camp in Georgia, the women encounter the reality of military life as delivered by Captain Charity Adams, the exacting head of training and the highest-ranking Black woman in the WAC. “We have the burden to be better,” she says again and again. The military is still segregated, no one wants women fighting to begin with, and the last thing anyone wants is Black women fighting and succeeding. It is the war on two fronts. Every small personal failure from one of her soldiers is an indelible failure for Black women. 

While Lena, who is not physically strong, struggles through boot camp supported by Delores, Bernice, and Elaine but often antagonized by the buxom wildcard Johnnie Mae, Captain Adams along with her 2IC Noël Campbell (Milauna Jackson) struggle with a racist command system that refuses to deploy any of the soldiers she has trained. Adams’ Captain’s rank means nothing to White men from Private through to Major. It seems they will be going nowhere until Eleanor Roosevelt is made aware of the issue of the lack of post getting through to families and soldiers. Alerting her husband FDR (Sam Waterson), he sets up a meeting with one dimensional racist General Halt (Dean Norris, sweating, growling, and Southern drawling through the role) who insists that no one has been able to deal with the problem because all transports have been diverted to the fighting. “We even put the women on it,” he says. Not the Negro women, Mary McLeod Bethune points out. Charity Adams and her division, the 855 women strong WAC 688th have their mission regardless of if Major Halt likes it or not – and he most certainly does not.

The ludicrous cliched dialogue and set-ups break apart almost every point Perry and co-director Armani Ortiz try to make. The second half of the film in which the women come up with ingenious systems to identify the mail and sort what ended up being over seventeen million pieces is overshadowed by clunky character work, cheap visuals, melodrama, and stagey acting. Asking the question is Kerry Washington, good in her role. who becomes excruciating because the script rarely lets her act. All that can be said is she does her best with sub-par material. Ebony Obsidian delivers lines like she’s in a first stage rehearsal community theatre play. We are supposed to believe in character development for Johnnie Mae but as she is the rough-hewn foil to the accomplished, serious, and polite characters in the group she’s ironically tokenized. 

The 688th did something incredible for the war effort in connecting families and soldiers during the later parts of the war in Europe. They were asked to achieve the near impossible with no support and active interference from a command that would prefer their men go without mail and morale than to allow Black women to succeed. Yet, apart from a handful of scenes, Tyler Perry reduces the enterprise to badly written, visually cheap, amateurly acted schmaltz. Even a postscript with the real Lena falls flat because the audience has long since stopped being invested in her if they ever really were. “You put a human face on to what we are doing,” Major Adams tells Lena after it is revealed what motivated Lena to keep going in the army. As if it is some kind of revelation that caring about the dog tags of deceased soldiers being mailed home is something a woman with an MA in psychology couldn’t work out for herself without a visual representation from a distressed Private under her command.

Audiences are well enough acquainted with narratives about World War II, sexism, and racism that they don’t need the issues spelled out as if they are children encountering these ideas for the first time. For many people it will be the first time they’ve heard of the WAC 688th – women who deserve to be celebrated. Tyler Perry’s film is an object lesson in how not to tell a story of adversity, dignity, service, and fortitude. The Six Triple Eight is cheap when it should be rich, hollow when it should be deep, and fundamentally bad narrative storytelling.

Grade: F