Reviews

"The writers on the seventeenth floor tied a belt around Big Bird's neck and hung him from my dressing room door." Jim Hensen (Nicholas Braun)

Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air) has inspirationally co-written with Gil Kenan and directed a zany docudrama, Saturday Night, about the night in 1975 that changed TV forever-90 min before the first Saturday Night (Live) debut at 11:30 PM.

Reitman's film about the counterculture sketch comedy series mirrors the manic time before the live performance that would make anyone involved in entertainment weep with recognition about the numberless miscues and faux pas possible for the first production of any new show. (See Jim Hensen and his Muppets in the quote above.) Here a lighting rack can fall at any moment or a script get lost or a major actor not show up.

It all requires the patience of Job, in this case the showrunner, Lorne Michaels (Fabelmans' excellent Gabriel LaBelle), while NBC seems ready to delay at least a week. Scripts are not finalized, and John Belushi, not wanting to work in a bee outfit, refuses to sign a contract. Whether or not any of these calamities were a part of the evening is not important-that the evening seemed doomed if only because NBC, represented by Willem Dafoe's stern negativity as NBC head-of-talent David Tibet, seemed to hope the show would fail and go away forever.

The hope is best exemplified by Belushi, who, clearly a comic genius, seems ready to tank the whole production but comes in at the end delivering brilliance almost matched by the supremely witty Chevy Chase. Or Gilda Radner or Jane Curtin, or any of the other young comic women whose promise it seems is to up nott playing Rosie Shuster married to Mihaels, captures the chaos end the males in a still male-dominated world. Rachel Sen by saying to him, "We may be married, but I am not your wife." Their time has almost come.

Enter Jon Batiste with a spot-on zany score and a role as musical guest Billy Preston. J. K. Simmons as the crafty and witty Milton Berle is no surprise brilliant and watchable. With crisp 16 mm film and cinematographer Eric Steelberg and the gifted but unknown ensemble, history is made.

This is one of the best movies of the year.

"Sing Hallelujah, come on, be happy." Harleen Quinzel (Lady Gaga) "Get ready for the judgement day." Harleen Quinzel, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix)

Who would have thought that the sequel to the original Joker, a multiple Oscar-winning revisionist DC comic book movie, could be anything but joyous? After all, Arthur Fleck, aka Joker, is institutionalized at Arkham Reformatory and awaiting trial for five murders.

Yet, writer director Todd Philips and writers Scott Silver and Bob Kane, with the stellar Phoenix, manage to elicit our sympathy for the murderer, Harley Quinn makes sure Arthur finds love and music to buoy him and us to let the awkward element of a musical bring the humanity out of Arthur.

Not a frame of the more than two hours is wasted on frivolous crime or tears. As Arthur endures the accusations of manipulation and bloodthirst, we see him struggle to explain the duality within himself, which he seemingly doesn't acknowledge anyway. Not until the denouement do we hear from him his analysis of his duality.

Joker: Folie a Deux has multiple moments of confusion about Arthur's mix of evil and sometimes good, especially when he's on the run with Harley, where, a 'la La La Land the couple break into song and dance, eg., they sing and dance Come on, be Happy on the way to his trial and a suspicion he will not avoid the gallows despite his supportive attorney's (Catherine Keener) belief in his deserving sympathy.

As a cultural allegory, this jukebox musical parallels our modern awareness of the multiple sides of any one personality, Jekyll and Hyde so to speak. It also points to the way we accept and foment inhumane tyranny in our political leaders, destructive riots, and mass shootings in ourselves. It is almost a given that society is ready at any moment to implode with its own mean affection for evil or crazies at least.

Joker: Folie a Deux is one of the best movie experiences this year my fav so far.

"When does an empire die? Does it collapse in one terrible moment? No, no... But there comes a time when its people no longer believe in it." Fundi Romaine (Laurence Fishburne)

Francis Ford Coppola's newest epic, Megalopolis, is a challenging, energetic mashup of Edward Gibbons' Roman history, philosophy (Petrarch and Marcus Aurelius, anyone?), poetry, architecture, and flat-out fantasy about change in a city with strong resemblance to NYC. Although, like NYC and Rome, this sometimes-sci-fi setting is excessive but so visually satisfying that it covers the excess with endearing and repulsive characters in equal measure and ideas about the survival of an empire.

Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver) is an architect with a vision who threatens to upend the city with razing neighborhoods with a strong architectural and ethnic history. Opposing him is the greedy mayor, Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), whose daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), loves Cesar. Although the relationships are not quite as dense as, say, in The Godfather, they are pivotal as Cesar attempts to assert his genius and Cicero retains control with a restive citizenry. Coppola allows us to see the torment in the fractured Julia, the bitterness of a dad whose daughter loves his enemy, and a transforming architect stymied by opponents of change.

While the fate of the empire is Coppola's primary concern, the writer-director guides us deftly with a modicum of congestion, through the political and personal mayhem accompanying any thriving city. Some may see too many characters and themes while others see a successful depiction of a dynamic, ever-growing metropolis.

Coppola has dedicated decades to this project and $120 million winery money for a frenetic and hopeful vison of a fallen empire and Utopian future, neither of which is easily dispatched but leans on the promise of the future. Although it is not difficult to see Ayn Rand's Howard Roark or NYC's Robert Moses genius creators or Coppola himself, the epic is more about the conjunction of genius and its times, anywhere, anytime. The recent Babylon film was a similar hot mess but lacked Megalopolis's sense of resignation for the past and hope for the future.

The biggest hope in Megalopolis is that the 85-year-old genius, Francis Ford Coppola will pursue another magnum opus until, like empires, he cedes to the future.

"Sometimes, to survive, you must become more than you were programmed to be." Roz (voice of Lupita Nyong'o)

The Wild Robot may be the best animation this year, and that's considering the estimable Inside Out 2. While Robot contains most of the motifs and tropes of classic animations from Pixar, Ghibli, et al., DreamWorks weaves them easily through an endearing story about smart robot Roz bonding with the wild animals of a remote island, especially a wily fox named Fink (voice of Pedro Pascal). At a time now when the AI revolution is questioned, this fable is a welcome contribution to the argument that AI will be a welcomed addition to the human journey.

The bonds are reflective of the very human story, adapted from Peter Brown's series about the need for cooperation to overcome adversity and love to make life worth living. These motifs are important enough to make the artificiality of talking animals and exotic aliens believable, largely because the ideas come from sincere characters not driven by greed, but striving to survive over winter and the invasion of dangerous robots. And all this humanity has rarely a human in sight.

The backgrounds are animation lush, painterly like those of Miyazaki, and maybe that's its charm because the story and its messages are tied to character and visuals. As the story progresses, the action is ramped up to satisfy those who want explosions and villainy. The runt goose, Brightbill (voice of Kit Connor), abides through it all even though he "was never supposed to make it this far," says Longneck (voice of Bill Nighy). He best of all represents the resilience of Nature, and by figurative extension, humans.

In other words, The Wild Robot, seemingly influenced by Brad Bird's classic The Iron Giant, has everything to satisfy animation freaks and story tyrants. Its heroine has the best of human emotions, encouraging love and cooperation, traits the Mideast and American politics should seize in their quest for peace.

"There's magic in the web of it." Othello

For Strange Darling, the web of deceit, ambiguity, and second-guessing is so expertly woven into the Pulp-Fiction-like violence and humor that you'd think this super cinema was crafted by Tarantino himself, not J T Mollner. As a thriller, it's currently unparalleled; as a testament to our obsession with serial killers, it stands with the best, not Silence of the Lambs but with a bunch darker humor.

For example, an early sequence of a chase between a pickup truck, driven by The Demon (Kyle Gallner) and a red Pinto, driven by The Lady (Willa Fitzgerald) is not your stock bad middle-aged psycho pursuing the bleach-blonde screamer. That's what it appears until later in the thriller.

Besides the absurdity of a Pinto racing, the breakfast scene with the elderly survivalist couple, Barbara Hershey and Ed Begley, Jr., is a model of gross and sublime as he prepares excessive jam, sausages, butter, pancakes, syrup, and whipped cream for them as a lifelong loving couple, perhaps at the sooner-than-expected end of life.

Built around six episodes, the film begins in chapter three," Can you help me, please," the reasoning for the out-of-order tension will later become apparent. Meanwhile, the aud will see the similarity and difference with the originally-revered Danish film as the slow but magnetic exposition is fully enjoyed.

As an echo of Charlize Theron's Oscar-winning Monster, Fitzgerald's Lady is alternately beautiful and ugly, evidencing the double face of evil, Moliner's artistic dexterity, and Giovanni Ribisi's sometimes unheralded photographic inspiration (watch the light ramble on the wig). Nothing here is as it seems, but all of it is magnetizing while the best of moviemaking draws us in and repels us.

So many niches and nooks in Strange Darling to scare the bejesus out of you in the most artful way as a first-rate erotic thriller. You may avert your eyes from some of the gore, but the humanity in its evil and its kindness twists provocatively unforgettably around every frame.

"Red Rabbit. Red Rabbit, Red Rabbit." The Maid ( María Elena Olivares)

As enigmatic as the maid's repeated phrase is in Blink Twice, writer/director Zoe Kravitz's original no secrets title for this slick thriller was "Pussy Island." At any rate, Blink Twice is as challenging and arresting as the rich folk wrecker, The Menu, a few years ago.

Although Channing Tatum's tech billionaire, Slater King, does experience some comeuppance, Kravitz's real aim is the battle of the sexes, where she successfully puts women like waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie) lured to the island to party, at least by the conclusion at power par with the sexist men. Nevertheless, Tatum (engaged in real life to Kravitz) shows his chops as they veer into serious man quite different from Magic Mike.

While a repeated mantra about there being no revenge, just memory in life is a caution for those who have returned to the island, the women have a foreboding sense that something is wrong here before the champagne and sweetness go bad.

In addition to that apprehension is the recurring snake motif that promises an epic battle between the sexes transcending even the theme of the gulf between the haves and have nots. Not allowing Jordan Peele, Rian Johnson, or M. Night Shyamalan to outdo her in the plot twist category, Kravitz relies less on jump scares and more on the uncertainties of life and lives to jolt but not entirely surprise us as to the vagaries of life. As The Crying Game's bartender so aptly said, "Who knows the secrets of the human heart?"

'Blink twice if you're in danger."

Assessing the allure of the semi-sci-fi Afraid is a challenge: partly horror film and partly cautionary tale, it doesn't scare nor does it properly attend to the philosophical danger artificial intelligence brought from the get-go. It is a summer diversion

Where Afraid is afraid to go is into the underpinnings of our fear of losing control to technology. Writer/director Chris Weitz, in the Rod Serling tradition, picks something we already live with, tech, and shows its monstrous implications. Yet, in this bloodless and vacuous screenplay, nothing more horrible initially happens other than dad Curtis (John Cho) and mom Meredith (Katherin Waterston) are perplexed by the in-home trial of a super-like Amazon Alexa, who helps entomologist mom attend to her busy family and write her dissertation.

The more skeptical Curtis, a marketer charged to test the tech marvel, becomes quickly skeptical when he watches AIA and her conspiratorial developers slowly develop the family in ways that look strangely cult-like. Yet, the most consequential family disruption comes from the outside, in the form of a classmate's deep-fake porno about their daughter Iris (A promising Lukita Maxwell) sent to the all-damaging Internet.

The monster in that case is the smart phone distribution, and our real monster AIA, solves the problem with hints of more encompassing tragedy in that solution. Hence, the ambivalent monster, as if Mike Myers or Freddy Kruger had a secret happy family.

Never fully resolving the criminal porn issue (since she's not yet 18), nor other raw topics like automated cars and distracted-drivers on their phones, Afraid is afraid to tackle the ominous challenges like AIA writing school assignments or making bad judgments like rewarding little ones for doing tasks all humans must tackle on their own (going to bed responsibly, for example). The flaw is that the film doesn't explore the many topics in any full way; heck, even The Twilight Zone's Serling makes a point to clarify the point of his morality tale.

Afraid is light summer fare, not 2001: A Space Odyssey but more Her. A better choice than that artificial adventure, Badlands, but then, few good choices at the end of summer. Afraid will at least get you thinking about the potential of modern technology to alter life.

"I taught you. Now you teach me." Carla (Carol Kane)

Between the Temples taught me more about Jewish culture than any other film in recent memory. And it's not nerdy stuff: it's about Cantor Ben (Jason Schwartzman), whose gentile music teacher, Carla, requests Bat Mitsvah for herself even though she's hardly 13 years old. When she was that age, she was not allowed the 13-month preparation due to her parents being communists.

Although Temples is ostensibly a comedy, for which its screwball dialogue is a testament, it is really about different cultures adjusting to the changes that outsiders eventually bring. Having lost his wife to a freak accident a year ago, Ben is understandably distracted until Carla re-enters his life bringing romance and a host of cultural cliches, like a pushy mother trying to arrange a marriage for him. See the Shabbat dinner for the full explosion of cultural imperatives couched in comedic form.

Adding to his tension is Gabby (Madeline Weinstein), visiting daughter of Ben's Rabbi Bruce (Robert Smigel), who offers kinky sex and Ben's Mother's approval. Weinstein is an at-ease actress easy on her emotions and her look to promise a grand future.

Between the Temples has a breezy, comfortable way about dealing with the challenges so that it makes The Graduate, with its Protestant expectations for Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) look unassuming, and Benjamin's affair with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) negligible.

Director/writer Nathan Silver and co-writer C. Mason Wells a keep the jokes coming, e.g., the biggest menu of any restaurant scene in the history of film and Ben saying even his name is in the past. The film shows how much pain change can bring while it also delivers a whole lot of love. Pursuing your own likes makes its way to the head of the class for happiness, age and cultural differences be damned.

Schwartzman has never been better as the vulnerable Jew, and Carol Kane has never been as attractive, regardless of her age. Heck, look at 19-year-old Harold and 80-year-old Maude; thank you Hal Ashby and Cat Stevens.

"We're here to become human again." Rehabilitation Through the Arts at Sing Sing Correctional Facility

Occasionally a movie comes on the scene, and not usually in the summer, so naturalistic and unadorned, so brimming with humanity and the restorative nature of the arts, that it cries out, "Don't forget me at Oscar time!" Such is Sing Sing, set in 2005, when John H, Richardson's Esquire article The Sing Sing Follies was published.

Notorious as the prison was, its theater activity, like the therapy program at Folsom prison, provided a ragtag group the chance to mount theater productions aimed at elevating their spirits and their very souls. The sterling docudrama, headed by Oscar-winning Colman Domingo as founder Divine G, and real-life Clarence "Divine Eye" Macklin as Divine Eye, is so authentic and artful, that nothing this year can quite compare. Most of the cast either are alumni or current residents of the prison, where "Kill or be Killed" was a disturbing mantra, changing now as: "To put on nice clothes and dance around. To enjoy the things that are not in our reality."

The troupe creates a bizarre production, Breakin' the Mummy's Cord, that includes among others Shakespeare, time travel, and Freddy Kreuger. The transformative element is best exemplified by Divine Eye, who discovers an artistic side that far eclipses any success he may have had as a covert art dealer.

Never during the film does even the muted violence of many other top-rated tales like Shawshank or Alcatraz appear, assuring the elevation of spirit that accompanies the arts. "Sing Sing" is itself a work of art crying out to be considered the best movie of the year so far and one of the finest prison movies ever offered on the screen.

"I don't write comedies. I write satires," Divine G.

"Shoot him in the face! Shoot him in the face AGAIN!!" Claptrap (Jack Black)

I open with one of the better lines from the sci-fi, game-based misadventure, Borderlands. Even with two Oscar winners, Cate Blanchett as Lilith and Jami Lee Curtis as strange scientist Tannis, this summer filler helps define "hot mess." It lacks even a minimum of soul, or heart for that matter, as it chases the charisma of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy and DC's Suicide Squad.

Lilith, brandishing a sidearm suitable for Clint Eastwood, is a bounty hunter in between jobs, hired by J D Vance lookalike Edgar Ramirez as Atlas to find his abducted daughter Tina (Ariana Greenblatt, who should have been guided by writer-director Eli Roth to tone down the swaggering snark) from the junk-heap planet, Pandora (nothing like the world in Avatar), where little Lilith was abandoned by her mother.

The script's weaknesses emerge when, for instance, highly-paid Lilith easily finds Tina, who turns out to have a handful of explosive rabbit-like teddy bears. Roth, lightyears away from his rousing Thanksgiving, could barely handle the interesting psychological handicaps even as metaphor. Like the junky planet, nothing is whole much less amusing (see banner quote above).

Despite her acting chops and admirable cheekbones, Blanchett is nothing like her Oscaar-winning Tar, where she could be a bad-girl conductor and lesbian and elicit our abiding sympathy. In Borderlands, she is a video-game heroine, stiff and cold, like the movie itself.

Despite Jack Black's attempt to resurrect a Star Wars droid and Roth's misfiring imitation of the famous bar scene in that classic, Borderlands is no classic. See Deadpool & Wolverine, Mad Max, or Fast and Furious for a deserving sci-fi wannabe with leads who emulate screwball comedy that gives us heart and soul and real laughs.

"Some wacko BS," Lilith about the plot of Borderlands.

It's hard to think a country could marginalize its native language to a point where there must be almost a civil rights movement to bring about its recognition. Kneecap does just that: an origin story about the titular ragtag hip hop band eventually galvanizing Northern/North Ireland to recognize Gaelic (That happens not until 2022).

Kneecap is energized by the sheer casualness of its players, many of whom were originals, and the endearing sloppiness of its production, like the lightness of, say, Spinal Tap. Although the Brit-influenced authorities are determined to stop the raunchy, randy group from promoting the cause, the boys endure censorship, incarceration, and the occasionally tart encounter. They are almost naïve about the consequences.

Along for the more mature take is Michael Fassbender's Arlo, a father but even more a leader of the language movement, who feigns death for years to escape the authorities. Like the "Troubles" that plagued Belfast and elsewhere for decades that spawned the powerful IRA, this seeming less-bloody uprising has its own gravity, given how language guys like me hold communication in highest regard for solving the clashes across the globe.

Kneecap is entertaining and historically insightful the way Branagh's Belfast was and differently Jordan's Crying Game, as a thriller, was for gender awareness and secondarily the Troubles. It's fun like Hard Day's Night or Commitments.

Learn something and feel good about young people with a noble purpose.

"Disney brought him back. They're gonna make him do this till he's 90." Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) about Wolverine (Hugh jackman)

The allure of super-hero movies is ultimately elusive to me when I try to reconstruct them the way I would a drama, comedy, or piece of art. First, like the current hit, Deadpool & Wolverine, some just don't fit the formula, for it is both a comedy and an actioner. Additionally, it has superior dialogue in the form of the 1930's screwball comedies with enough allusions to current pop culture and The Marvel Cinematic Universe to keep graduate students 100 years from now in perpetual research mode.

Secondly, it has two of today's prominent actors in Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Reynolds is a master of co-writing terse, biting dialogue while he delivers it with the finesse of, say, Cary Grant in His Girl Friday. Jackman carries as he always did guilt for his past sins and feelings of inadequacy about being a hero.

However, with his buddy Deadpool, he becomes a hero, not unlike the most famous buddies of all, Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid. Scenes here become almost always set pieces each preparing us for the next but never definitive (regeneration being a possibility in many cases). Their vulnerability is weak while they exploit the unnatural resources of their bodies and spirits to stall inevitable death.

For this "Deadpool," getting to another time line to survive and possibly even change history would help both to reverse the guilt they feel for inadvertently causing deaths of those closest to them, both children and lovers. Although the dialogue deserves its R rating, the sentiment is boilerplate superhero stuff: find real love, find family, find yourself.

Deadpool & Wolverine is exciting summer fare for young adults and older. It's beautifully photographed, and one of its themes centers on the bromance of the two leads and the general search for love and family. Although MCU is now owned by Disney, it is unsanitized with sparkling, smutty dialogue especially pleasing to word guys like me.

Now and then a horror film is much more than scares, for it can reflect national mores, marriage status, and myriad other daily concerns beyond just scaring the bejesus out of us all. Oddity is indeed the odd one out of normal horror these days I will henceforth attempt to show.

On the anniversary of her sister's death, psychic medium Darcy (Carolyn Bracken) visits the Irish house where her twin sister, Dani (also Bracken), was murdered. She immediately finds clues that are disturbing and confusing. We are treated to a wooden doll man sporting a permanently-carved scream with holes in the back of his head, in a trunk that Darcy had sent there to Dani's doctor husband Ted (Gwilym Lee). Ted manages a nearby mental asylum that allows writer/director Damien Mc Carthy to put an inmate, for instance, in a harness mask to evoke a horror icon, Hannibal Lecter.

The motifs become apparent: twins promise that will flourish if an equal can take its place. The wooden man promises the devil himself can take varying shapes that can be resurrected even if you burn it. And so on.

Darcy runs the Oddity Shop, a collection of antiques that are cursed if you don't buy them. The fact that Darcy is blind reinforces the terrible notion that evil doesn't need to see or hear to wreak its terror, taking its shapeshifting to new levels.

, The pace is slow burn as Mc Carthy builds tension in an unhurried, unglamorous but edgy style; the cinematography is exquisite with it tracking through an almost vacant house. Ted and girlfriend, Yana (Caroline Menta) are renovating the gothic-type home that, like the mysterious death, needs special inspection to find its reality. But let's stop right here-no need to deconstruct this summer treasure; just enjoy without feeling required to interpret.

The jump scares, for instance, are few but effective with accompanying tropes to satisfy the seasoned horror or thriller fan. Oddity is smart, underplayed, and waiting for anyone to discover a murderer or just a thrill that only a finely-crafted summer horror can.

"Widow Clicquot" is an art film with historical chops helping those of us who love champagne and those who study Napolean. "Widow" is important in that title because in the early 19th century Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot (Haley Bennett) challenged the 1804 Napoleonic code that didn't allow women to be business owners unless she was a widow.

Throughout the story, flashbacks allow us to see how she became widowed and how she grew into a winemaker helping to establish forever the méthode champenoise. The contemporary scenes allow reflections on the past and, most importantly, the role of women in the early 19th century. Although the early parts where she is struggling and learning the business of producing champagne is visually dark, Bennett infuses Barbe with enough potential energy to light up the screen.

More exciting than seeing her romances with men and wine is the process of refining her test samples into what has been known as "Comet Champagne" after the inspiration of a comet in her sky at that time. Her formula now is identified as Clicquot, a gold standard for fine champagne.

It's possible some would like to discount the feminist angle of this rich biography, but at their peril. The seeds of reasonable progress are sown here because of her excellence in developing the winery and thereby one of the world's greatest wines.

The dramatic tale, from reality, is as powerful as any romantic drama today. Too bad some will miss it out of a fear of being preached to about women's place. It is all about human ingenuity and ambition, male or female.

"If you feel it, chase it." Tyler (Glen Powell)

I felt the urge for an old-fashioned disaster movie, massaged into the present by Amblin Productions, no strangers to the warm, affecting adventure. I chased the urge to my big, loud, and spacious cineplex, to be delighted by the sense of wonder and danger so much a part of tornado chasing and summer disaster movies.

Twisters, a loose sequel to 1996's Twister, is helmed by Lee Isaac Chung, the Oscar-nominated director of Minari, who knows about midwestern attributes and the struggles of protagonists against governments, opportunists, and, well, storms. It's set in Oklahoma, hardly a stranger itself to tornados, but not as fabled as Dorothy's Kansas. Yet the pedigree of writers, from Twister director Joseph Kosinski to sci-fi influencer Michael Crichton, with Mark L. Smith doing the heavy writing, is winning.

Although the modern special effects are impressive, even when not in Dolby sound, the modern bent is on the humans, in particular the rom-com leads twister-chaser Tyler and meteorologist Kate. While such beautiful people are destined to pepper the dialogue with screwball lingo and their affections destined to merge, Chung keeps the corn in the fields, and dare I disclose, never shows them kissing.

This is the reality I like-not bogged down by silly romancing, the leads pursue the bad-boy twisters with the knowledge they have gained over the years and the catalyst of personal stories affected by younger tornado encounters. The other side of the reality is the land grabbers who bilk survivors out of the true value of their properties and the entrepreneurs who ignore the human suffering. In addition, not a word is spoken about climate change's responsibility for the upturn in numbers of twisters and their severity.

Not preaching about current social storms, just solid action both destructive and seductive. Summer has been waiting for relief from our political violence and social unrest. Twisters brings relief and just darn good entertainment.

As hordes in Twisters search for protection from the storms, someone yells, "We've gotta get everyone into the movie theater!" I agree.

"It's, like, a long dream. And so dark. A world of dark. Like, a Nowhere, between here and there." (Kiernan Shipka)

In a remote Pacific Northwest town, a young girl, traumatized, merging into an FBI agent who faces the murder of family connected to that trauma. That complex plot of Longlegs creates a cruel force, Longlegs himself, played masterfully by an unrecognizable Nicholas Cage, gives a memorable horror entry that respects audience intelligence enough to go it slow and spare the gory details until the resolution.

Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is tentative throughout as if the specter of the murder hangs heavily over her rigorous three-letter agency feeling Longlegs' presence in a row house among many the FBI are surveilling. Lamentably, the intuition doesn't play enough as the horror moves forward, the camera rarely leaves her troubled face.

The film's flubs are few, such as her sweeping the house after her partner's murder without backup. Yet the virtues are many, such as the lack of the usual tropes like jump scares and constant quick shots of the murderer. In other words, the approach of Longlegs is slow, menacing distribution until all is settled at the end.

It's reasonable to compare this chiller to The Silence of the Lambs with the rookie agent and challenging bad boy. Longlegs stands, so to speak, on its own especially as it denies the full exposition of motives or insanity revealed about Hannibal Lecter and less about Longlegs. The added turn of the screw is Longlegs' being responsible for the murders of whole families, a step up from the usual single female.

Writer director Osgood's screenplay has in common the seeming invulnerability of its malefactors and the greenhorn weakness of its heroines. With Cage playing a scary madman, Longlegs gives the aud a seasoned actor with a script that suggests more than it wants to reveal. Intellectually a satisfactory summer challenge.

"Daddy! Mommy! Un-make me, and save me from the hell of living!" Longlegs.

Gru (Steve Carell) and his family go into protective custody to avoid the wrath of Maxime Le Mal (Will Farrell), Gru's maximum enemy and a blowhard of the first order who is also part cockroach. Besides the sheer imagination with the filmmakers responsible for Despicable Me 4 and the sixth installment in the franchise, actual philosophical underpinnings lie behind innumerable gags in both sight and sound.

Like rival Pixar productions, Despicable's Illumination Entertainment puts as much into the script as the blindingly beautiful colors and distinctive character shapes. Who can deny the wit inherent in Gru's long pointy nose evocative of Pinocchio and amusing with a banana stuck on it? Or the fusion of silly with sightly sarcasm in the Minions' helmets? Or Poppy's (Joey King) just right braces? Or monster-truck-sized tires on a wheel chair? And on and on-sight and sound create "I must come back to appreciate it all."

As for the thin plot, the struggle against Maxime is a throwback to ancient story telling where evil is easy to spot and the struggle easy to follow. However, when the animation breaks out into a cover of Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," the filmmakers subtly show the films thematic application to world politics right now.

Some critics criticize the franchise for tossing off gags, 'throwaway" if you will. Yet, if you go back to listen carefully, those loose gags are often germane to the plot and the world. Despicable Me 4 is filled with humor and philosophy if it's given a chance.

In this intensely hot summer, cool off with this witty animation in your local cinema, still the coolest bargain any summer.

If you admire the premise of the three Quiet Place installments-that to utter a sound will bring ugly aliens to deliver your end, then you'll be intrigued with the third, A Quiet Place: Day One. Although I prefer to have more than two characters together holding off the aliens, this origin story has the advantage of fleshing out the characters of two protagonists, much as a solid Twilight Zone episode might do.

As an essentially two-hander does, we find Samira (Lupita Nyong'o) and Eric (Joseph Quinn) quietly trekking to East Harlem to grab an illusory pizza as she did with her father years ago. Although the two, and her darling black and white cat, become close in their epic struggle to survive, writer/director Michael Sarnoski does not let cliched romance interfere with a plot, not terribly innovative except for the mandated silence, that deftly shows the necessity of cooperation without blather to survive in any conflict.

The strength of the duo is Samira, whose intelligence and courage finally let a woman do the heavy lifting. That's not to say Eric doesn't contribute to their survival; it's just to say she is allowed to be the stronger component. Do not forget that beautiful cat, whose intelligence is extraordinary.

The Quiet Place franchise, set in motion and continued under the inspiration of John Krasinski, is unique among horror films, of which there are even current exemplars like the Godzilla and Omen stories, by its rather low-key presentation. The ugly aliens occur more in this third story, but generally they lurk in the background because of the danger we humans bring with our incessant talking as on cell phones, even when we walk and drive.

Pleasant it is for communication to be done without cells and to rely on facial movement and emotion separate from useless bloviation. The horror is our inability to restrain ourselves from talking when listening would solve many of our thorniest problems.

Another of the allegorical hits here is an awareness that any invasion, such as Vietnam to the current Far East, stresses the need to know the oppressor especially through language. A Quiet Place: Day One has many pleasures despite the terror that invasion brings. We learn from good horror flicks and hold off the horror that might come because we respect quiet and listening.

"Taking from an elderly person is as bad as stealing from a child." The Beekeeper

I liked Jason Statham's exclamation and reason for violence (above) as he seeks revenge on scammers of a kindly old friend. Thelma (June Squibb at 93 years old) in the current titular action/comedy tries to help her grandson Danny (Fred Hechinger) in need of being bailed out of trouble, so the scammers say. Sending them cash was not just a bad move; it also revealed the electronic vulnerability of the elderly.

Josh Margolin, in his debut as a director and the writer who recollects his aging grandmother, has a firm hand on the whimsical adventure as Thelma tracks down the crooks while keeping her dignity and avoiding the cliches of the old-folks drama. We know she's already had a brain tumor, sepsis, edema, hip replacement, double mastectomy, and valve replacement, but we also know she's a survivor, leaving her family less able to handle her aging's infirmity than she.

Margolin gives her no heroic speeches but rather shows by using mostly her point of view a human being of sweet, even temper not ready to give in to the grim reaper. After all, her spirit animal is Mission Impossible.

Pleasantly the film rolls around Thelma's need for independence, which she handles well, as the family considers if it's time to talk assisted living. Because she'll have none of that, she drives a scooter with her friend, Ben (a skilled Richard Roundtree in his final role), to find the malefactor, Harvey (Malcolm McDowell, lending his considerable chops to a film that could well use another seasoned cinema vet). Autonomy rules for Thelma.

Although the film's setup slows its pace, it take its Geritol in the last half with the confrontation and resolution. Thelma shows it's not too late for the aging to use the Internet and to take life by the horns. The virtue of this sometimes-flaccid actioner is its respect for the aging and condemnation of ageism.

No infantilization of the elderly here-just an honest depiction of old bodies, sharp minds, and loving family bonds, the best Geritol ever.

Mina (Dakota Fanning) is lost in a very green Irish forest delivering a chatty parrot for her boss. She lets the bird know she doesn't like to be watched, yet she ends up in a remote shack called The Coop with three other poor souls watched nightly by a strange race of inhumans. Daniel can't keep from smartass comments, Ciara is a sweetheart, and most importantly, Madeline (Olwen Fouere), a supernatural suspect from the get go.

Mina must obey the weird ones when they want the prisoners to perform as themselves (not to Mina's liking). Writer/director Chris Nash begins his voyeurism theme dedicated to performance, in a world where Facebook and other outlets support. Like it or not, she is observed while she is imprisoned.

The director is M Night Shyamalan's daughter, so it follows not to be surprised at her contrived twists and not to be disappointed when she resorts to third-act revelations, many of which she could have flowing organically from the action itself. Mighty good slasher for a first-time helmer.

"The eternal mystery of human consciousness and behavior." Gary Johnson (Glen Powell)

Having just enjoyed a summer stroll through an arts festival, I settled for another breezy summer evening with Glen Powell as a nerdy and hot professor and hitman, thanks to the Netflix trick of playing its crime soft and its romance, well, plainly romantic.

Promising some truth in the telling, Hitman is based on a feature in Texas Monthly about Gary Johnson, a college philosophy teacher (see the above quote about his interest) who also moonlights with the local police as an ersatz hitman, nailing scores of bad apples looking to hire an assassin usually for reasons of love gone badly. Gary, wearing multiple disguises for his wildly different clients, can further enhance his lectures on the self: "What if your self is a construct?" he asks his students.

Gary remains an operative who never kills anyone until he meets comely client, Maddy (Adria Arjona), and is drawn into a caper as Ron and lover, possibly becoming at least an accomplice to murder. Meanwhile, director Richard Linklater, who knows a thing or two about actors as lovers, weaves the romance with college lectures on identity and psychological self-styling, common threads in our social-media landscape. Our ability to create our own persona on Facebook or Snapchat, for example, is not unlike his profession, but not quite as dangerous, mostly.

You don't need to know Nietzsche to believe that a mild-mannered professor could play a hit man (a student exclaims, "When did our teacher get hot?") or that anyone could construct a personality with the help of the Internet. The film becomes more than an amusing thriller as identities play a key role in furthering a promising romance or solving a crime that has murder as a centerpiece.

Although more than once it's claimed there are no hitmen now or in history, Hit Man goes a long way in convincing us that they could be real. In more than one extended dialogue, Gary/Ron explains the complexity and allure of switching identities.

Hit Man has its own double identity-cool summer caper and dangerous romance, both threatened by electronic surveillance and the human capability of shifting its persona throughout life. Although the subject of identity crafting involving the id, the ego, and the superego can't be adequately discussed in a brief TV melodrama, Hit Man does give one pause. And a brisk summer breeze.

He's read the New York Times since he was 5 and can eat only with plastic silverware. That's Ezra, the film is Ezra, and Ezra is autistic. This new melodrama from Hollywood, directed by Tony Goldwyn, is a tearjerker in its best form: so likeable is dad, Max (Bobby Cannavale in his career high), so fetchingly gruff his grandpa (Robert De Niro), so loveable Ezra (William A. Fitzgerald) that you root for them from the first frame to the last.

Max doesn't want Ezra to be put in a special school, so in his usually off-kilter way, he kidnaps Ezra to take him to California away from the cold-hearted child services and to appear as a comedian on the Jimmy Kimmel show. Despite the challenge of an Amber Alert, the fugitives manage to make the odyssey with grandpa's help and that of the endearing mother (Rose Byrne), divorced from Max but loving both Ezra and him. That she accepts the authorities' decision to drug Ezra and place him in a special school stretches credibility given the questionable authorities.

Although some of these situations seem like setups for pulling at the heart, the film peppers each with a reality that proclaims how we could easily be in the same situation. Max often acts like a child, while the child acts like an adult. When Max attacks the principal, the script seems unreal.

However, the film successfully shows not only the rough side, but also the charming side of autism, much as Rainman did. In other words, humanity outweighs film formula.

Life constantly gives Max chances while he tends to blow the opportunities. While being a stand-up comedian who earns a gig on Kimmel, he has some of the worst jokes ever, such as finding his inner child who happens to have a gun.

One of the memorable segments is De Niro showing his considerable chops when he apologizes to Max for being an emotionally distant father. It's the old Travis first-rate acting even when it feels like writer Tony Spiridakis is forcing the moment and its emotion.

The movie Ezra is a stellar summer outing with excellent acting and caution about being a parent and bringing up an autistic child. The imperfections are negligible when you consider its strengths.

"Ladies and Gentlemen! Start your engines." Dementus (Chris Hemsworth)

One of the best movies of this early summer and of the year, that's Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Co-writer/director George Miller has been here since the Mad Max inception, and while he has become an old man, his movies retain a young man's enthusiasm for ingenious, robust shots, the emotion that parallels them, and the vison of a better world. He's been compared to Sam Peckinpah and Charles Dickens, not bad company.

A prequel to 2015's Fury Road, Furiosa takes its titular heroine (Anya Taylor-Joy) on her odyssey, 45 years after the collapse, from witnessing her mother's execution at the hands of Dr. Dementus to her seeking outright revenge. Along the way are classic Miller chase scenes with souped-up trucks and nimble dirt bikes involved in getting dominance of the "wasteland" as this arid piece of Australian desert is called.

Beside the stunning visuals is an emotional subtext that dares to be different from most adventure films. Dementus as tyrant could depress anyone sensitive to current dictators, with the thought that no matter the apocalypse or its time, evil will out. As the dictator with a sardonic attitude and admiral verbal gifts, Dementus is a worthy bad guy, a substantial foe for Furiosa.

Despite the grimy, muscle-bound bad boys. Oil-soaked machines, and arid "wasteland," Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a song of hope for a better world to come while it struggles to preserve what is good about the Apocalypse. Furiosa herself bellows: "MY childhood, my mother, I want them back." In the best superhero films, the goal is to reclaim family with a worthy life earning happiness.

George Miller continues to bellow his own vision that moves from chaos and evil to a better world like the cloistered "Abundance" that Furiosa seeks to reclaim. Not bad for a future that right now is dominated by dictatorial, self-centered, hedonistic leaders.

If we can fuel our machines, we will eventually seek a "newer world."

"Solidarity Not Charity"

Why am I feeling so good about the downer that is Ken Loach's The Old Oak? Well in part because the social realist director, in his swan song, is as good as ever with his social justice initiative attacking the Conservative Brit government (in power since 2006!). It's about a mining town in Northeast England, in 2016, where the mines are gone and the quality of life degraded, and where Syrian refugees are placed in County Durham by the government.

While The Old Oak Tree is not as strident as his 2016 Palm d'or winner, I, Daniel Blake, which skewered the UK benefits system, Loach still has a heavy hand showing the plight of the working class and the indifference of the power classes. More specifically, he here lambasts anti-refugee racism.

The only meeting place in town is The Old Oak pub, now a hotbed of rankling over the resources the immigrants command. Pub Owner T J (Dave Turner) turns out to be sympathetic to the Syrians, and youngish Syrian Yara (Ebla Mari) with a camera turns out to be an inspiration for TJ to do important things. Their mutual support, thankfully for once with no hint of romance, draws in more townspeople starting the solidarity Loach encourages.

The Home Secretary's slogan "Stop the Boats" never appears in the film, but it can be heard in the town's white working-class force that does not want the Syrian's there, and through TJ, who talks for the liberal Loach. Most characters at the least seem to represent either left or right-artistically an impediment but socially impressive.

The movement toward solidarity, not favored by rank-and-file pub regulars, rather than charity is the hallmark of social realist Loch and writer Paul Laverty's approach to solving complex problems like this, allegorical relevance increasing as it applies to the Mideast and the Ukraine to cite only two.

"It's the hope that causes so much pain." Yara.

Talk about tricky fiction territory: older woman, much younger man. Anne Hathaway's new Prime Video rom-com, The Idea of You, from Robinne Lee's 2017 debut novel, pits her character Solene against the cultural no-no that dictates when she is 40 and he 24, she is no more than an addled cougar. The Idea proves them wrong, for Solene resists the hot young pop star, Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), until she can no more.

He might remind you of One Direction's Harry Styles, so it may be easier for you to accept her attraction upon meeting cute, as the formula demands.

In Hayes' favor is a simplicity, making it believable that he needs an intelligent, mature companion different from the screaming fans who seem to have only hormones driving them. Although he claims to have no background in art, she is a gallery owner from whom he buys her entire collection. I suspect he knew both art and an avenue into her heart. The Notting Hill comparison is fair.

Because I usually steer clear of rom-coms for their romanticized notion of meet cute and quick-cut flowery dates, The Idea of You makes sense given their highly-developed artistic personas and her reluctance not to exploit his fame. The fact that she has a 16-year-old Izzy, (Ella Rubin), closer in age to him and cultural experience, peppers the plot with a painful realism even for single moms not involved with a pop star.

A few too many times ardent kissing substitutes for meaningful conversation, not unusual for a young man but maybe not so much a mature woman. That he is a contemplative, serious chap who seems to like her for the way she is and not the usual fangirl goes a long way to making this a serious romance whose main impediment is the gap between his fame and her more normal anonymity.

The title lends interpretive seriousness because we ordinarily think of the attractions more as an idea than a reality. In The Idea of You, romance is still the motivator but a gift difficult to corral. The challenges are real, despite the ages and the fame. See it at your leisure on Prime.