Director: Osgood Perkins
Writer: Osgood Perkins
Stars: Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt

Synopsis: When FBI Agent Lee Harker is assigned to an unsolved serial killer case that takes an unexpected turn, revealing evidence of the occult, Harker discovers a personal connection to the killer and must stop him before he strikes again.

Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) struggles with eye contact. Fresh out of the academy, the green, stoic, “semi psychic” FBI prodigy tends to glue her peepers to the ground as opposed to resting them on her fellow agents, let alone the killers she spends her long days and nights hunting. The only time she seems capable of staring straight ahead is when she’s peering down the barrel of a gun, aiming it towards an unarmed suspect whose propensity for unimaginable violence is more dangerous than they are in the moment. She’s troubled and muted, but brilliant, able to determine that a vicious murderer is hiding in house no. 3525 based on nothing but a feeling she describes as a tap on her shoulder telling her to look there. 

If only solving the crimes of a serial killer known only to the FBI as “Longlegs” were so simple. Over three decades, he has murdered close to 40 people in the Pacific Northwest, somehow managing to make each crime look like a murder-suicide in which a church-going father goes on a sudden rampage, viciously killing his wife and children before turning the gun on himself. This “Longlegs” leaves behind but one thing at each crime scene, a birthday card with a coded message delicately jotted out above his signature. And by one thing, I mean one thing: Each crime scene is barren of forensic evidence pointing toward the presence of an outsider at any time while the murders took place. Apart from general demographic similarities, these cards are the sole thing connecting each crime scene to the next. How he’s delivering them and disappearing without a trace is one mystery; how he’s convincing these fathers to kill, given that he isn’t physically present for the deaths, is another.

So goes the general set-up for Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs, a nightmarish flick about an elusive, menacing madman with a reputation that feels in lockstep with the film’s own renown, one that has long-preceded its release, let alone the first audiences who set eyes on it. Thanks almost entirely to a brilliant, cagey marketing campaign, Neon’s latest horror offering became number one with a bullet on “most anticipated” lists aplenty, with prospective viewers itching to know what the face of the creepy, high-pitched voice that accompanied its increasingly reticent trailers and promotional voicemail recordings looked like, despite knowing full-well that Nicolas Cage was set to appear in the titular role. Adding fuel to the fire, there is thebirthdaymurders.net, the film’s unofficial website that documents the history of this “Satan-worshiping psycho’s” crimes with a warning for visitors to “buckle up and hold on tight.” Finally, came the lofty praise from those who saw the film in advanced screenings, calling it the best serial killer film since masterpieces including The Silence of the Lambs, Se7en, and Zodiac. The opportunity to temper expectations was rendered hopeless; aloft they were, aloft they would stay.

These advertising stunts, if you will, are almost impossible to avoid when talking about Longlegs itself because of how well done they all were, and how disappointing the film initially felt in comparison to the work its studio had done to prop it up as this generation’s answer to a horrifying hypothetical Make-A-Wish in which Jeffrey Dahmer comes to your home for dinner. But in retrospect, that Longlegs fails to live up to its hype doesn’t make it a lesser film, but perhaps a more interesting one to discuss. A film is to its marketing campaign as a team is to its trash talk; you can make threats all you want, but what matters is whether or not they can deliver. Neon and, less so, Perkins pledged to provide revelations in horror cinema. But, as Lee corrects a fellow agent when referencing the New Testament chapter of the same name, it’s actually just “Revelation.” Not many, just one. That still counts for something, if not the exact feat that was promised.

Split into three chapters – “His Letters,” “All Your Little Things,” and “Birthday Girls” – Perkins’ fourth directorial effort unfolds like a police procedural in that we begin with a conundrum, follow it up with a slew of questions, and ultimately arrive at a solution, a frustrating structure for a movie that otherwise operates as a perfect enigma in and of itself. It’s clear from the moment we meet Lee that she’s different, a mind that sees cases through a different lens than her counterparts, making her methods and deductions complex in execution and explanation alike. It’s also evident that she has some sort of connection to Longlegs in relation to her complicated upbringing – a freakish, frantic Alicia Witt turns in the film’s best performance as Lee’s twisted mother – and it’s hinted at for much of the film’s runtime, until its startling conclusion rips the Band-Aid off with the brute force of an axe to the collarbone. 

Because Perkins is adeptly unwilling to reveal too much of his hand until the perfect moment presents itself, he keeps Longlegs at an arm’s length, not just from Lee, but from the audience. Rest assured, you do get to see Cage in all his pale-faced, spine-chilling glory, but his presence comes in fits and starts; he only ever comes face-to-face with Lee once – fittingly, it’s in the film’s best scene – leaving a certain level of ambiguity to the horror he represents, much like the murderous maze he lays out for the FBI with every passing kill. Lee and her boss, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), steadily uncover his clues, all of which he intentionally leads them to, and with every answer comes another puzzle. Longlegs (and Longlegs) loves its friendly game of cat-and-mouse, but who’s who in this particular duel lies in your interpretation of which party is in control.

Whether or not you’re patient enough to mull that over could spell your fate in regards to appreciating Longlegs for what it is, or clamoring for it to be what you wanted it to be. Frankly, that internal battle could apply to any of its many tricks and scares, or lack thereof. Which is not to say it isn’t scary, just that it doesn’t quite crawl under your skin and chew on your tendons the way many have implied it will. But perhaps that lies in the eye and stomach of the beholder just as much as the importance of the riddles Longlegs leaves in those terrifying birthday cards depends on your ability to decipher their meaning, not to mention whether you believe they have a meaning at all. 

Sound designer Eugenio Battaglia and composer Zilgi supply a haunting, methodical atmosphere to the film, taking scenes that feel as though they could be bright in an alternate world and clouding them with an incomparable darkness, the sort that not even a night light could alleviate. Visually, everything feels a bit distant, with Andrés Arochi’s camera capturing an abundance of wide shots that provide viewers with a setting’s full scope. The distance feels comforting at times, until suddenly, you’re wrenched from the hallway to the heart of the living room, a brutal discovery suddenly lying inches from our gaze. While it all feels a bit literal, there is narrative and thematic depth throughout the film these shots and sounds surround, two attributes that allow for a bit of breathing room in a work that is hell-bent on being claustrophobic, if not suffocating. 

Such an achievement in technicality and tension deserves a far better ending than what Perkins provides in the film’s final act, an exposition dump that threatens to undo everything that made Longlegs so cryptic from the start. When Longlegs himself refers to “the man downstairs” and/or “a friend of a friend of a friend,” it’s not all that difficult to deduce who (or what) he’s referring to, making his perplexing cryptograms feel like red herrings rather than pivotal devices in his devious game. But not every mysterious fright needs to be all that intricate in order to be considered a success, even if it’s a milder one than advertised. Longlegs is, indeed, a tale in which terror is ever-present. It just doesn’t manage to lurk in the shadows as long nor as subtly as we convinced ourselves it would.

Grade: B

Director: Lee Jong-pil
Writers: Kwon Seong-hwi, Kim Woo-geun
Stars: Lee Je-hoon, Koo Kyo-hwan, Hong Xa-bin

Synopsis: Follows the struggles of a North Korean sergeant who is chased by a ruthless major after he defects.

Lee Jong-pil’s Escape contains a premise that should be treated with the utmost seriousness, focusing on a North Korean sergeant who longs for a better life and attempts to flee the country to move to the South. In the North, their militarized future is already predetermined, no matter if they will be discharged soon. Sergeant Lim Gyu-nam (Lee Je-hoon) knows he can attain a better life if he crosses the border and, as a result, has planned his escape meticulously. 

However, when Kim Dong-hyuk (Hong Xa-bin), a low-ranking soldier, finds Lim’s escape plans and decides to flee, he threatens to expose the sergeant’s intentions. The two are quickly apprehended and imprisoned. Lim is freed after Kim confesses to drawing the map, and the sergeant is awarded a distinction for apprehending the defector. On the day of his discharge, however, security officer Lee Hyun-sang (Koo Kyo-hwan) promotes him, thereby preventing his chance of another life away from North Korea. 

There, he sets his plan of escape in motion, freeing Kim and setting a course to the South. Of course, none of it goes as planned, and he soon makes it onto Lee’s radar. A cat-and-mouse game ensues between the two as Lee closes in on Lim, who, in turn, closes in on the border between the North and South, hopefully setting a course for freedom. 

The tension between the sergeant who wakes up from the radicalization of living in such a repressive country and understands that the only way he can live a fulfilling life is by escaping and the radicalized security officer who will stop at nothing to capture and kill his friend should be at the front and center of the picture. Unfortunately, Jong-pil frequently distracts himself with sub-arcs that go virtually nowhere and attempts to add comedy to the situation when Lim’s path to freedom is a literal matter of life and death. 

Yes, there’s a slapstick sequence in which Lim steals the car of a drunk general, whom he pretends to carry home, only for him to leave the general stranded. Or when he has his ‘Tom Cruise’ moment, putting on Ray Ban sunglasses to convince another general he’s on a classified mission. Perhaps adding levity to the proceedings would be appropriate if we weren’t talking about North Korea and treated the story in a fictionalized country. But the comedy here feels misplaced and dilutes the emotional impact of Lim’s plea for freedom. 

Then there’s the attempt to add more depth to the protagonists through fragmented flashback scenes that serve very little to feed into the internal conflict boiling into Lim or a past relationship between Lee and Seon Woo-min (Song Kang) when the two were in Russia. While this piece of information adds a layer to our understanding of Lee’s repressed emotions (as he tries to keep his sexual orientation a secret), it belongs in a completely different movie since this flashback isn’t about the two friends, whose arc seems far more queer-coded than the actual queer relationship between Lee and another male character who only appears in three brief scenes, never to be seen again beyond a not-so-subtle hint to confirm something going on within Lee’s psyche. 

These two distractions undermine the story’s seriousness. Still, it isn’t helped when the film contains underwritten and underdeveloped protagonists (whether leading or supporting the film) and antagonists. At some point, Lim and Kim meet a group of nomads looking for a prisoner. A massive action set piece ensues, which looks great but is nowhere near as impressive as it should be, and the characters who help them out disappear from the picture almost as soon as they are introduced, with little to no resolution in their arc. 

It should be worth mentioning that the film’s cinematography loves to play with light and subdued colors, which gives it a striking palette during its action sequences. However, the cat-and-mouse scenario quickly becomes mind-numbing since Jong-pil never fills in the gaps on the characters beyond fragmented flashbacks that feel misplaced and add unneeded layers to the protagonists instead of focusing on Lim’s quest for freedom and Lee furthering down the rabbit hole of radicalization to repress his innate feelings. This should be at the film’s heart, especially when Je-hoon and Kyo-hwan give gripping turns, even if their characters aren’t fully realized on screen. 

As a result, Escape can’t impress, even if Jong-pil tries to visually dazzle with a fast-paced and almost relentless barrage of action. However, barely anything works since the characters are poorly written and severely misguided. Attempts at making its story serious fall flat when Jong-pil adds comedy to the mix, even if its ending leaves room for a more hopeful and free future. Perhaps it could’ve been worthwhile if it cared about its protagonists beyond the limited flashbacks it gave them and would begin to develop their arc in the present moment. Unfortunately, Escape fails their characters and, in turn, the audience into investing their time into a thrilling game of cat-and-mouse that is truthfully hollow and tiresome. 

Grade: D

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