Director: Marco Petry
Writers: Claudius Pläging, Andrej Sorin
Stars: Dennis Mojen, Janina Uhse, Anna Maria Mühe

Synopsis: A young man meets his new girlfriend’s friends for the first time at their regular game night, putting him under pressure to make a good impression. But then suddenly, her ex shows up as well.

We can all relate to the all-encompassing nature of new romance depicted in the German Netflix comedy Blame the Game (Spieleabend). That desire for connection is now fulfilled by all the positive attention. The novelty of a new relationship is exciting and brings an intense focus. Soon, hormones like dopamine and adrenaline begin to release.

All the intense, all-consuming affection makes everything around you fade away. Oh, and you also feel that instant connection when each of your best friends, two adorable pooches, meet each other in a park and begin to hump each other with no shame at your favorite local dog park. At least, that’s what the filmmakers of Blame the Game want us to think.

This makes it one of the more disingenuous comedies in recent streaming memory.

Written by Claudius Pläging (It’s Your Turn, Honey), the film is somewhat of a rip-off of one of the more overrated comedies of the past decade, Game Night. Here, after those delightful pups get together in the park, a local bike shop owner, Jan (Dennis Mojen), and a local canine photographer, Pia (Janine Uhse), reach that point in their blossoming romance where it’s time to meet her friends.

And what better way to do that than during the annual game night? Pia has an eclectic group of friends, to say the least. Her best friend, who lives with her, Karo (Anna Maria Mühe), is wealthy and owns a business that brings in over six figures annually. She and her husband, Oliver (Axel Stein), an emasculated man who loves to cosplay, hit on their maid, Gabriela (Alfonsina Bencosme). 

Rounding out the group is Sheila (Taneshia Abt), who cannot get over a breakup with her ex-girlfriend. The same goes for Mathias (Stephan Luca), who is still in love with Pia and wants her back. Sheila’s brother, Kurt (Maximilian Bretschneider), playing the role akin to Jesse Plemons’s Gary, is a freeloader who continuously makes Jan uncomfortable. I will say that Bretschneider is by far the most amusing of the bunch, but the script needed more of him.

Directed by Marco Petry (How to Be Really Bad), Blame the Game is a cheap imitation of better ensemble comedies because the film lacks proper structure and moves the plot along with dozens of filler scenes that add nothing to the experience and just waste time. This means there was plenty of time to take bigger swings and risks. The experience feels cheap and forced when comedy should feel natural.

Then, when Netflix’s Blame the Game does take a big swing, the film doesn’t track or make sense. For example, the film takes a big jump by having two rivals play ping pong naked with little promotion and no explanation. There is simply nothing modern or new about the film or even the dating experience that the movie tries to portray. 

Then, you have the ridiculous scene where Jan brings a game that is used to antagonize and torment characters and create tension within the group. That would all be fine and even acceptable, if Blame the Game’s script is funny, which it is not. The humor is south of average, even mediocre, and while the characters are likable, Mojen and Ushe do have a flirty energy, that’s not enough to recommend a stale comedy that feels too long at a sparse 90 minutes.

Grade: D+

Director: William Wages
Writers: Phillip Bellury, William Wages
Stars: Beau Bridges, Rob Mayes, Sam Hennings

Synopsis: Wayne, a singer, meets washed-up legend Claude Allen. Together they go to Nashville to pitch a song, but the industry rejects them. Wayne figures out how to release the song publicly, not for himself but for Claude.

The real star of the film The Neon Highway, finally finding a home on the streaming giant Netflix after debuting with a minimal release on video on demand and a theatrical release in Nashville last spring, is the country music and the performance of Beau Bridges, who makes the most of his supporting screen time.

The film plays like an unintentional sequel to Beau’s older and more successful brother Jeff Bridges’s film, Crazy Heart, where Bad Blake now mentors a younger generation after no one else will have him and finds happiness in mentoring. The final product is like a classic country song, filled with haunting memories, a few dashes of nostalgia, and, most importantly, a few honest moments of reflection.

Though, The Neon Highway cannot help itself from tripping into country cliches more than most.

Directed by William Wages, who wrote the script along with Phillip Rob Bellury, The Neon Highway stars real-life country music star and actor Rob Mayes (John Dies at the End, Thor: Ragnarok), who plays Wayne Collins, a down-on-his-luck, nine-to-five family man struggling to make ends meet for his family. Desperate to buy his family a new washer and dryer, he asks for an overtime shift.

However, Wayne’s boss politely reminds him that if he stopped playing around on his guitar, he would take him more seriously. Wayne was an up-and-coming country music star in Nashville who was about to be offered a solo deal from a major label, which would mean leaving his brother, Lloyd (Eat Pray Love’s T.J. Power), behind. However, all of that changes when Lloyd is killed in a tragic accident on a highway, altering Wayne’s life forever.

Fast forward two decades later, while on a job, he meets a weathered country legend, Claude Allen (Dreamin’ Wilds’s Beau Bridges), living in his deceased parents’ home. He may explode if he stands too close to an open flame, considering he looks like he has been soaking in some backwoods moonshine. As they talk, they realize they need each other. Claude needs Wayne for his songwriting ability, and Wayne needs Claude for his star potential to earn a big payday.

If you think you have heard this plot before, it’s not just from that very special episode of the Saturday morning Saved by the Bell wannabe, California Dreams, or any time Kris Kristofferson holds a guitar to scream. The one where the crusty, grizzled old timer works with a younger version of himself, trying to right the wrongs of their pasts.

Bridges’ performance is good, even funny at times, especially when young people come up to him and tell him how much their grandmothers adored him. Still, the script never lives up to the authentic and refreshing performance of the aging actor, who comes from a legendary acting family.

However, if you are a fan of the genre and country music in general, the film takes some chances with its script. It is not perfect and sometimes misses its mark, but it is refreshing enough to separate itself from the usual country drama fare. Not to mention, the film’s core from Cuban-American Jazz musician Arturo Sandoval and the soundtrack performed by Lee Brice, sets the tone for the film that works harmoniously with the setting. 

While I appreciate the thought and authenticity put into The Neon Highway, the whole could be better than the sum of its parts. The story feels stale and old. A country retread if there ever was one. Besides Bridges and a slightly above-average performance from Mayes, the film struggles to find its footing in a narrow genre with about the same broad appeal as a Kevin Costner western.
For a much better film about a real country music star, seek out Ethan Hawke’sBlaze on Tubi. Otherwise, The Neon Highway is for diehards of the genre and the music it tries to lose itself in.

Grade: C-

Director: Renato De Maria
Writers: Patxi Amezcua, Alejo Flah, Luca Infascelli
Stars: Annabelle Wallis, Riccardo Scamarcio, Massimiiano Gallo

Synopsis: A father, immersed in a difficult divorce process, embarks on a dangerous mission when his children disappear from their isolated country house.

Vanished Into the Night is the equivalent of a bad Lifetime movie with better packaging. The film is visually stunning, set in Italian villas, villages, and seaside towns. The actors are strikingly handsome and beautiful, and it’s easy to get lost in the eyes of each lead. However, the plot is paper-thin, and the script is as shallow as the Trevi Fountain. 

Too bad no one made a wish to make a more competent film experience. 

There is no depth to the story or themes, zero subtext, and the film needs a second act. Netflix’s Vanished Into the Night is the cinematic streaming equivalent of a storyboard put to digital cinema. I cannot believe anyone would recommend it, and if they did, they should never review the medium again. They are not just wasting your time but stealing it, not to mention your sanity. 

The Italian Netflix thriller has some decent stars for such a poorly executed endeavor, and you have to feel bad for them landing in this lazy, contrived film. John Wick: Chapter 2’s Riccardo Scamarcio and Malignant’s Annabelle Wallis star in the Renato De Maria (Robbing Mussolini) film. Working from a script written by Francesca Marciano and Luca Infascelli with a thin plot, it’s hard to believe anyone would want their name attached to it.

Wallis plays Elena, an American psychotherapist who left her practice to help her husband Pietro (Scamarcio) follow his dream of opening a bed and breakfast in a sunny seaside town in Italy. However, the home they invested in, mainly with Elena’s investment, is a money pit.

To make matters worse, Pietro has accumulated over 250,000 euros in gambling debts. 

Elena is not perfect either; as Pietro’s lawyer brings up, she was addicted to opioids for years, making Pietro the primary caretaker of their children. Yes, it’s sufficient to say this marriage seems beyond recovery. 

However, after a tense divorce mediation, Pietro has custody of the kids for the week while Elena returns to the States. His son, Giovanni, wakes up with bad dreams and mistakes the shadows of tree branches for monsters. Pietro soothes him back to sleep, where his adolescent daughter Bianca rests.

He closes the door, sips his drink, and watches a football game, only to discover that his children are missing from their room hours later. When Elena returns, she blames Pietro, and they receive a call from the kidnappers demanding 150,000 euros for their children’s safe return. This means he must consort with an old friend, Nicola (Massimiliano Gallo), in his shady dealings to find the means to get them back.

De Maria wants the audience to feel tension and suspense because of how far these characters, in particular Pietro, will go to ensure their children will come back safely and unharmed. The problem is that there is little suspense derived because it’s rather obvious who the villain is from the beginning and that he is the only one with true motivation.

The handful of red herrings, like the shady childhood friends and mobsters looking for their money, are nothing but fodder. The character decisions need to be more explicit, such as not calling the police for hours when your children go missing from home. Not to mention this lack of clarity persists when another character asks why this wasn’t done, and their response is, ‘You told me to stay and not do anything.’

Then, there is the issue of the second act—there is none. There is one compilation, and as soon as you become aware of it, you know who the real villain is. Pietro experiences no tension, plot complications, conflict development, or turning point. Frankly, it’s an extended version of the first-act setup that doesn’t work and gives away the plot immediately because it is so painfully transparent.

When the movie reaches the big reveal in Vanished into the Night, the resolution is so matter-of-fact and clean that it insults the audience. The twist here is disappointingly conventional and expected, lacking the unsettling and bizarre nature the genre thrives on and fans crave. Regrettably, the story lacks the visceral impact and tense elements needed to create a truly memorable and gripping audience experience.

Grade: D

Director: Niclas Larsson
Writer: Niclas Larsson
Stars: Ewan McGregor, Rhys Ifans, Taylor Russell

Synopsis: Three children are brought together when their mother refuses to move from a couch in a furniture store.

Family dynamics tend to be messy. It’s essentially a group of people you have no choice but to love unconditionally. It’s a difficult circumstance; if there is any faltering, it could turn into something you can’t let go of. These themes in films have been discussed for years, but more recently, thanks to filmmakers like Ari Aster, a new approach has been taken, highlighting the weirdness and absurdities of the entire situation. In his feature debut, Mother, Couch, Niclas Larsson attempts to find the weirdness in family struggles and relationships. While some moments stand out, he ultimately comes up short with little characterization, a lack of focus, and a genuine emptiness.

Mother, Couch starts with David (Ewan McGregor) walking towards a furniture store across an empty parking lot. The emptiness here is palpable and can be seen as a look into the psyche of David, but as the film continues, it becomes a significant issue for the film as a whole. In the store, he finds Bella (Taylor Russell), who works the store, and his brother Gruffudd (Rhys Ifans) as they are looking for a dresser for their elderly mother. However, their mother (Ellyn Burstyn) is upstairs on a couch, refusing to move. David attempts to remove her from the couch and the store while also dealing with issues in his family and the struggle of holding onto his mom, who is slowly fading away, all while discovering his childhood relationships might not have been what he thought.

As mentioned, this is Niclas Larsson’s first feature film. A director with only a few shorts under his belt took on a project with a hefty subject and a loaded cast. The ambition of Mother, Couch was there as the similarities to Beau is Afraid are apparent, and the influences of directors such as Ari Aster and Charlie Kaufmann are all over this film. Larsson attempts to tell this story with the same zany, confusing, and sometimes horrifying style that the previous directors have spent so much time perfecting over their careers. The issue is that those other directors have made a career on confusing and wacky styles while always keeping the focus clear and concise. Even in their most eccentric work, there is an understanding and a journey; where Mother, Couch falters the most is in telling that journey. Most of the film felt odd for the sake of being weird; there wasn’t much to grasp, and even the film’s main character, David, wasn’t provided enough depth to stick out.

Not sticking out seemed impossible when you look at the cast’s star power, including Ewan McGregor, Rhys Ifans, Ellyn Burstyn, Taylor Russell, and F. Murray Abraham (playing two roles). All these performers have proven how much of a presence they can be on screen over their long or short careers. However, aside from brief moments from Ewan McGregor in this film, all actors seemingly give one-note performances. I don’t think it is the actors themselves, but the script does not allow any of them the chance to bring any sort of emotional depth. One of the significant throughlines of the film is the lack of relationship between the siblings, and the significant emotional payoff in the end comes from that lack of relationship. However, this theme is only referenced throughout and, like most of the performances, is never given the time to flesh it out into a real thought-provoking idea.

In the third act, Mother, Couch finally shines, and Larsson’s script and directing feel most comfortable in its weirdness. The moments make sense, and the performance given by Ewan McGregor becomes highly emotional and deep. The film’s themes are realized and explored in highly original and thought-provoking ways. David’s relationship with his mother has been a strain on him for his entire life and is now affecting the relationship he has with his wife and children. This sense of letting go that he must endure is nuanced, and the subtle choices that Larsson makes might be on the nose, but they finally work within the film. There is a good film from this director, maybe great, but it would be better if he continues to learn from the highs of Mother, Couch, as they just sadly came too late in the film.

Ewan McGregor’s performance and Christopher Bear’s score highlight what could have been original and worthwhile. I appreciate Niclas Larsson’s ambition in his debut feature, while Mother, Couch falls just short due to its lack of focus and emptiness in terms of themes. The solid third act saved this film from being an utter mess. This potential for greatness in Larsson’s work excites me and leaves me hopeful and optimistic for what’s to come.

Grade: D+

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