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Todd - movie review.

There’s something wrong with Todd ( Hans Hernke ).  What it is - or more like what Todd does with it - will unnerve you and leave you wounded.  This is what happens when Todd, not taking his doctor’s advice, decides to withdraw from his family and set his sites on an aspiring young actress. 

And, no, the drugs don’t work anymore.  Be warned, TODD has arrived!

Directed Aaron Warren, TODD might be thriller about a man on the verge of a raging breakdown but it’s biggest achievement is just how shocking it manages to be thanks to the time Warren takes in building characterization as Todd, ultimately, turns his back on wife Kate ( Rhonda Cusumano ) and daughter Ashley ( Savannah Grace Elmer ) and his doctor, psychiatrist Dr. Miller ( Aaron Jackson ), who is a constant thorn in his side.  

From Jackson ’s solid performance to a surprising turn from Police Academy ’s Michael Winslow as Jake, the owner of the bar that Todd regrettably visits when he feels the drugs and Dr. Miller’s treatments aren’t working, this movie works in building earned believability due to the actors combined talents creating the suspense that leads to a finale that you won’t soon shake off.  

Don’t start the pity party now, ladies and gents, because Todd is about to do something . . . absolutely insane.  He walks away from treatment and walks straight into carnage when he bumps into waitress Amy ( Laura Stetman ), who desperately wants to be an actress.  Her ambition leads her to a seduction with another actor ( Jason Menz ) and the results couldn’t be more frustrating . . . for Todd!

Terrifying and highly unexpected, TODD arrives on DVD and Digital March  16 from BayView Entertainment and Shoreline Entertainment .  Enter into the mind of a budding madman if you dare!

Home Video Distributor: Available on Blu-ray Screen Formats: Subtitles : Audio: Discs: Region Encoding:

MPAA Rating: Unrated Runtime: 91 mins Director : Aaron Warren Writer: James Catizone, Aaron Warren Cast: Michael Winslow, Eliana Ghen, Aaron Jackson Genre : Drama | Thriller Tagline: The Odd man out. Memorable Movie Quote: Theatrical Distributor: BayView Entertainment Official Site: https://www.facebook.com/ToddMovie/?modal=admin_todo_tour Release Date: March 16, 2021 DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: March 16, 2021 Synopsis : “TODD” is the story of a man who has always felt like the “odd man out”.  From a young age, Todd is shunned and ridiculed by his peers. Over time his pain and anger turns into rage and despair. When psychoanalysis and depression drugs don’t work, the young eccentric becomes a morbid introvert, withdrawing from society in a downward spiral to insanity. He not only sets his sites on an aspiring young actress, but on his psychiatrist and the doctor's family too. "TODD" takes you on a nail biting, edge of your seat journey into the mind of a budding madman.

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Throughout the new film written and directed by Todd Field , its title character, a person of exceptionally sensitive hearing and possibly perfect pitch, is almost constantly distracted from her vital activities by extraneous noise. The noises include a doorbell, or something like a doorbell, dinging—our title character, Lydia Tár, almost absently reproduces its two notes on her piano after being ruffled by them—a metronome ticking, people pounding on doors, and more. And the noises are rendered via an audio design that is often disturbingly precise in its directional placement—we are as startled by them as Lydia is.

I was reminded of a recording made in the 1980s by the Dadaist sample-based music group Negativland, in which they bemoaned: “Is there any escape from noise?” In our world, as in the world of this film, as it happens, the answer is "No." Or perhaps “Not entirely.” Lydia Tár’s world—conjured with incredible agility and grace and mystery by Field in his first feature film in 16 years—is one in which the near-impossible escape is attempted via music. Specifically classical music, and more specifically classical music that aspires to sublimity.

Played with fierce and seamless commitment by Cate Blanchett , Lydia Tár is one of the wonders of the classical realm. She is a virtuoso pianist, an earnest ethnomusicologist, and a purposeful popularizer—she is apparently a member of the EGOT club, which isn’t a common achievement for a classical person. And as a protean conductor about to conclude recording a cycle of Mahler symphonies, Lydia needs to get away from noise to do the work to which she almost stridently commits herself.

Is applause noise? In the movie’s opening scene, a nervous Lydia walks out onto the stage of a concert hall to rapturous tribute. She’s not there to perform, but to be interviewed, as a feature of one of those culture festivals major metropolitan centers hold every so often. Her interviewer is New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, who plays himself in a performance possibly lacking in self-awareness—the gleam in his eye as he interviews Lydia is one of an inveterate, serenely self-satisfied know-it-all. The exposition here sets Lydia’s cultural status in a kind of stone, so the viewer looks forward to a film that will show how the sausage, so to speak, is made.

Lydia is a busy person. She has a quiet, glum, efficient assistant named Francesca ( Noémie Merlant ) whom Lydia addresses with less warmth than most humans would apply to Siri or Alexa. Francesca watches from a distance as Lydia, in an advanced conducting seminar at Juilliard, passionately and profanely riffs against aspects of identity culture after one of her students proclaims with flat banal arrogance that as a queer BIPOC they can’t get with Bach, on account of the composer’s patriarchal lifestyle. As she prepares to leave New York for her base in Berlin, where she’ll be recording the last symphony in her Mahler cycle, the Fifth, she lunches with a fellow conductor, Elliot Kaplan ( Mark Strong ), who gossips with her like a peer but who clearly envies her. She tells him of her plans for the Berlin orchestra, including “rotating” an older colleague whose ear isn’t what it used to be.

The conductor also has a pursuer, or maybe more than one pursuer. We see the back of one’s head during the Gopnik interview. We see an iPhone screen recording Lydia and texting snarky comments to someone on the FaceTime call. She is not universally beloved.

Nor is she particularly lovable. On returning home, she upbraids her wife, Sharon ( Nina Hoss ) for keeping too many lights on in their elaborate, in sections bunker-like, Berlin apartment. Is Sharon subsidizing the power utility? There’s some business with Lydia hoarding pills that are supposed to belong to Sharon. The couple has a daughter, Petra; Lydia dotes on the little girl constantly, and late in the movie, as Lydia’s world is flying apart, Sharon (who is also the orchestra’s concertmaster, as it happens) notes that Lydia’s relationship with Petra is the only non-transactional one in her life.

And, in a sense, this is true. As an artist, she is a constant interrogator. This is the means by which she achieves what she considers the only worthwhile end: serving the composer. She has a slightly reactionary aesthetic. While Gopnik introduces her as a champion of female composers, including Julia Wolfe, she disses the Icelandic musician Anna Thorvaldsdottir as a sexy flash-in-the-pan guilty of what Lydia considers the greatest artistic crime, that of vague intentions. (All of the musicians referenced in the film, and there are a lot of them, are real; this is, among other things, a meticulously researched work.)

But as a person, she’s selfish by default and without hesitation. She serves Lydia Tár. And Lydia has a lot of appetites. In Berlin, she is knocked sideways by news of the suicide of a former protégé. And even as she’s trying to cover her tracks in this affair, erasing emails and pressing Francesca to do same, Lydia sets her sights on Olga ( Sophie Kauer ) a promising young cellist, playing games with senior orchestra members to promote the rookie. Who is, as an audition scene takes pains to convey, a superb player. But still. The look Lydia gives Olga at their first lunch is almost literally wolfish.

“TÁR” is that rarest of items: a prestige awards contender that’s also a genuine art film. The narrative unspools in an insinuating, sometimes enigmatic way; Field is quite a distance from the bluntness of his last feature, 2006’s “ Little Children .” Certain shots and sequences show compositional affinities with Stanley Kubrick (for whom Field worked, as an actor, in 1999’s “ Eyes Wide Shut ,” Kubrick’s final film) and Tarkovsky. But the formal virtuosity on display here is in a quieter register than in many other such films. That’s true for the note-perfect acting as well.

Much has already been written about how the film’s narrative draws from emerging stories of abusive and exploitative behavior by powerful people in the arts. Are the sublime aspirations and achievements of a Lydia Tár vitiated by her problem-person behavior, or is she finally In The Right Anyway? As it happens, Field’s film is almost equally skeptical of the culture from which a figure like Tár arose as it is of the contemporary strain in culture that seeks to debunk her. In the end, "TÁR" is not a diatribe or parable, but an interrogation, one that seeks to draw the viewers in, and compel them to consider their own place in the question.  

Opens in New York and Los Angeles on October 7th.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Rated R for some language and brief nudity.

158 minutes

Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár

Nina Hoss as Sharon Goodnow

Noémie Merlant as Francesca Lentini

Mark Strong as Eliot Kaplan

Julian Glover as Andris Davis

Allan Corduner as Sebastian Goodnow

Sophie Kauer as Olga Metkina

Sylvia Flote as Krista Taylor

Vincent Riotta as Cory Berg

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• Florian Hoffmeister
• Monika Willi
• Hildur Guðnadóttir

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‘tár’ review: cate blanchett astounds in todd field’s blistering character study.

The two-time Oscar winner plays a composer-conductor whose reputation is suddenly shattered by revelations of her personal life in this caustic dissection of power dynamics playing in Venice competition.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Any review that discusses Tár in depth needs to address those plot points, but in truth this is a film that benefits from knowing as little as possible in advance. That said, the clues to the difficulties for which Blanchett’s character, Lydia Tár, is headed, and the reckless behavior that has landed her there are present almost from the outset. And being aware of where it’s going in no way diminishes the gut-wrenching impact of her fall from grace.

We first observe Lydia waiting in the wings, dressed in a stylishly androgynous black suit and crisp white shirt, her long hair pulled back from her face in chic severity. She does breathing exercises before taking the stage in Manhattan for a New Yorker talk with staff writer Adam Gopnik (playing himself). This provides a brisk bio of her lofty achievements in the field since emerging as a protégée of Leonard Bernstein, culminating with her becoming the first female principal conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker in 2013.

Having broken that glass ceiling while also racking up distinctions as a composer, she claims never to have encountered gender bias. She speaks fondly of the radicalism and joy of Bernstein’s conducting, and clearly shares that passion in her anticipation of the discovery process of rehearsal as she prepares to dig into the mysteries of Mahler’s intentions with No. 5.

Lydia’s time is closely managed by her dutiful assistant, Francesca (Noémie Merlant), an aspiring conductor whom she has mentored. Francesca steers her to a lunch with Eliot Kaplan (Mark Strong), the investor behind her Accordion Conducting Fellowship, designed to provide opportunities for promising young women in the field. A minor conductor himself, Eliot begs for a peek at her score notations. “Do your own thing,” Lydia tells him dismissively. “There’s no glory in being a robot.”

The spikiness of that encounter remains in the air even as they head by private plane back to Berlin, where Lydia lives with her partner, orchestra concertmaster and first violin Sharon (Nina Hoss), and their troubled adopted daughter, Petra (Mila Bogojevic). Lydia still maintains her old apartment, ostensibly to work in peace but also seemingly to keep one foot unattached.

Vague allusions are made to sexual relationships Lydia has had with some of the younger women taken under her wing, likely including Francesca, and to Sharon’s tolerance of them, despite her own anxiety issues.

When Francesca mentions a desperate email from former Accordion fellow Krista (Sylvia Flote), begging to see Lydia, it’s clearly not the first. Developments with Krista, while initially seeming like something Lydia can manage, gradually pierce her painstakingly constructed veneer. The fallout, along with her special attention for gifted Russian cellist Olga (Sophie Kauer), ruptures both her home life and her career. She also makes an enemy of Sebastian (Allan Corduner), the longtime assistant conductor whom she decides to “rotate out” of the position, with Francesca among possible candidates to take his place.

Blanchett is not interested in the kind of concessions that might make us warm to Lydia. But she demands, with ample justification, that we respect this enigmatic, ethically flawed perfectionist, even when her handling of personal matters is highly questionable. In the same way, the musicians revere her despite a manner that often swings more autocratic than the orchestra’s democratic principles.

Watching her thrash her limbs and whip her hair with electric physicality as she conducts (there are visual echoes of Bernstein’s flamboyant style), stopping frequently to pick apart every emphasis and tonality, we witness her consumed by her art, to a degree that at times seems almost sexual. We also get a sense of the hubris that makes her feel elevated by that passion, perhaps rendered untouchable. The ferocious commitment of the performance is even more staggering when the end credits reveal that Blanchett — who studied German and piano for the role — did all her own playing.

The Juilliard scene in which she sits down at the keyboard and walks Max through the surge of feelings that Bach can engender — conveyed through Blanchett’s ecstatically expressive features, as well as her body language — is just one of many bracing insights into the ageless power of the classical canon to connect, emotionally and psychologically.

Blanchett is given invaluable support in the key secondary roles. Merlant registers more strongly than in any film since Portrait of a Lady on Fire . Francesca keeps her cards close to her chest, appearing almost monastic in her dedication to Lydia and perhaps more than a little in love with her. But she’s also savvy and watchful, quietly readying a contingency plan that may be driven by a sense of morality or by resentment over her unfulfilled ambitions. Or both.

Hoss’ Sharon shows the strength that helped Lydia consolidate her position and the backbone required to steer them through their public coming out years earlier as a high-profile lesbian couple in a male-dominated sphere. The tiny flickers of hurt, anger or betrayal that play across her face, alert to every nuance of her partner’s behavior, point painfully to a relationship in which the balance of trust is unequal.

Just as Hoss brings her skills as a violinist to the part, young cellist Sophie Kauer adds authenticity in her impressive first acting role as the rough-edged but preternaturally poised Olga. In fact, casting actual orchestra members through the ranks makes this an illuminating depiction of a rarely examined arts milieu. And having seasoned pros on hand like Corduner, Strong and Julian Glover as Lydia’s predecessor in Berlin makes even the smaller roles incisive.

Tár marks yet another career peak for Blanchett — many are likely to argue her greatest — and a fervent reason to hope it’s not 16 more years before Field gives us another feature. It’s a work of genius.

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Review/Film; 'Poison,' Three Stories Inspired by Jean Genet

By Vincent Canby

• April 5, 1991

"Who is Richie Beacon and where is he now?" asks the narrator of the mock-documentary titled "Hero," one of the three stories that make up Todd Haynes's "Poison," opening today at the Angelika Film Center.

Richie, the unseen 7-year-old hero of "Hero," has been a bad little boy. He has shot his father to death and then, as his mother later reports, climbed onto a window sill and flown away. Just like that. Will wonders never cease?

"Horror," the second story, is a mock 1950's horror film about the brilliant scientist Dr. Tom Graves, known for his work on the molecular coagulation theory. When Tom accidentally drinks the liquid sex-drive he has so painstakingly isolated, he turns into a ghoul whom the tabloids call "The Leper Killer."

With his face a mass of oozing pustules, desperate Tom roams the city spreading contagion and panic.

"Homo," the third story, is more easily seen to be derived from the work of Jean Genet, whom Mr. Haynes, the writer as well as the director of "Poison," credits with having inspired all three stories.

"Homo" is set in a French prison in the 1940's and is about John Broom, a handsome young thief, and his erotic obsession with Jack Bolton, a fellow prisoner. Like so many figures in Genet's writing, especially in "Our Lady of the Flowers" and "Querelle of Brest," Jack appears to be both John's mirror image and a creature of his masturbatory fantasies.

"Poison," which won the grand prize as the best fiction work at this year's Sundance Film Festival, is an imaginative film that, like the infectious Tom Graves, is eventually overwhelmed by its ambitions. The movie needs to evoke more than the ghost of Genet to give it resonance.

"Poison" is tricky in form but commonplace in substance. It definitely is not an occasion of sin as has been charged by some critics of the National Endowment for the Arts, which contributed to its financing.

Neither is it much of an expose of prison conditions, which has been lamely offered as the excuse for a couple of scenes of homosexual coupling in the "Homo" segment.

Like "Our Lady of the Flowers," the film accepts the prison world as a perfect inversion of the world outside. And, like Genet, Mr. Haynes couldn't care less about making pleas for prison reform. As an artist, he isn't required to.

"Poison" is not pornographic. Neither the film nor the endowment should have to answer such complaints. It is a work of original aspirations, just the kind of project the endowment should support.

Uniting the film's three stories, which are intercut with each other as they proceed, and each of which is done in a different style, is the grim if fuzzily defined triumph of a Genet-like social outcast.

This character is portrayed with some humor in "Hero" and "Horror." In "Homo," he is a reminder of Genet's doomily romantic figures who have a terrible compulsion to kill the one who is beloved.

For all of the talk of Genet, though, the "Hero" segment of "Poison" owes far more to Woody Allen and "Take the Money and Run" than it does to the dreamy misanthrope of French literature.

In trying to get at the truth of Richie Beacon's terrible act, an interviewer talks to his nutty mother, his teacher, a social worker, a policeman and a schoolmate. Richie, they find, was a pint-sized manipulator, somewhat more deeply into fancy sadomasochistic games than the average 7-year-old suburbanite.

The problem with "Hero" is that the interviews are never as off-the-wall funny as they are supposed to be.

"Horror," told in the grainy black-and-white images associated with B-pictures of the 1950's, is a parable about AIDS. The absurd 50's horror-movie manners are quite cleverly re-created by Mr. Haynes and his cast, but the film doesn't illuminate anything more than contemporary paranoia. It's a thin joke.

There is no attempt at humor in "Homo," which effectively reflects the tangled obsessions of the thieving hero, John. Yet "Homo" is less about John than it is a sketchy tribute to a quintessential Genet character. It may not make a lot of sense to anyone who hasn't read Genet or even Jean-Paul Sartre's essay "St. Genet."

The film looks remarkably good, considering its modest budget, and is nicely acted, especially by Larry Maxwell and Susan Norman, who play Tom Graves and his bewildered girlfriend in "Horror," and by Scott Renderer, who appears as John Broom in "Homo." Poison Written and directed by Todd Haynes; director of photography, Maryse Alberti; edited by James Lyons and Mr. Haynes; music by James Bennett; production designer, Sarah Stollman; produced by Christine Vachon; a Bronze Eye Production; a Zeitgeist Films Release. At Angelika Film Center, Mercer and Houston Streets in Manhattan. Running time: 85 minutes. This film has no rating. Felicia Beacon . . . Edith Meeks Millie Sklar . . . Millie White Gregory Lazar . . . Buck Smith Dr. Graves . . . Larry Maxwell Nancy Olsen . . . Susan Norman Deputy Hansen . . . Al Quagliata John Broom . . . Scott Renderer Jack Bolton . . . James Lyons Rass . . . John R. Lombardi

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Todd Haynes’s Masterpiece “Safe” Is Now a Tale of Two Plagues

By David Roth

“I just heard that the Statue of Liberty has AIDS ,” Bob Hope said, on July 4, 1986. It was the setup to a joke in a routine that three hundred and sixty people had paid a thousand dollars each to hear. Those donors, as well as President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, and the French President, François Mitterrand, and his wife, Danielle, were celebrating the rededication of the Statue of Liberty aboard a yacht named Princess. “Nobody knows,” Hope continued, “if she got it from the mouth of the Hudson or the Staten Island ‘fairy.’ ” Cameras caught the Mitterrands cringing and the Reagans laughing. More than fifty thousand Americans were diagnosed with AIDS between 1981 and 1987, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , and 95.5 per cent of those people died from it. The numbers of sick and dead would spike in the years that followed. The image of a President and his wife, surrounded by swells and supplicants, roaring with laughter in the face of all that suffering, at the prompting of a fossilized icon of showbiz convention and at a celebration dedicated to a monument of the nation’s greathearted inclusiveness—honestly, it is a bit much. But metaphors tend to fail in the face of a plague. Under that kind of pressure, everything just comes to look more and more uncomfortably like itself.

Todd Haynes’s 1995 masterpiece, “Safe,” begins with the camera crawling at something like the speed limit through a meticulous stretch of twilit upscale suburbia that a credit somewhat redundantly identifies as California’s San Fernando Valley, and much more helpfully as 1987. It is a specific moment that Haynes chose for a specific reason, but it is also a moment to which, in the culture’s grim and farcical process of lapping itself, everything seems to have returned. A lower-rung celebrity that no one ever really held in terribly high regard, and whom everyone had lately figured out was a crook, is somehow in charge. Joe Biden is somehow still running for President, if only he could figure out why he deserves or even wants the gig. The houses lining the road are white and proud and modern and ensconced behind tall gates; there are no pedestrians to be seen. When Haynes’s camera finally arrives at the home of Carol White, the film’s blankly afflicted heroine, it pauses while an electronic gate yields to admit the Mercedes-Benz that is carrying her back to the gracious modern living space and comfortable life that will, in short order, begin trying to kill her.

Then, as now, there is a plague haunting the premises and trying the locks. Then, as now, those in power have disclaimed any responsibility and elected to wait and see how things play out; the President is once again posturing and chuckling through a crisis that he can’t quite bring himself to take seriously. Once Carol is safely inside the home she’s made with her husband and the son from his first marriage, she is on her own, stuck fast at the shrinking center of one deep long shot after another. Her isolation is clear from the start. We first see her face, impassive and absent, under the convulsive rutting body of her husband, in bleakest missionary position. The camera, in a series of queasily patient zooms, stands in for the oppressive moment in which Carol finds herself increasingly trapped and lost. The casual lies and happy-talking denial and leering qualification of the crises gathering outside the gates by the people in power, the blithe cutting of bait when it came to the vulnerable people and politically useful cities that those crises came to claim—these are all invisible and absent in these tasteful interiors. And yet Carol seems not just lost in all those lovely rooms but surrounded by them. The comforts of home close in on her.

Carol, played by Julianne Moore in one of the great performances of her career, fits into all these luxe California rooms like a luminous furnishing or abstruse piece of art. She’s breathy and passive and somehow all the more indistinct for being so beautiful; her friends from aerobics class notice, with playful envy, that she doesn’t ever sweat. The radio is a wash of AM-band evangelical blood and thunder and prosaically dire traffic updates. Her tween stepson’s current-events essay for school is a fetishistic recitation of both the carnage wrought by gang warfare in “the black ghettos of Los Angeles” and the specific weapons used to deliver it. Her life as a homemaker, on the other hand, is a series of light errands and lighter lunches. Even before she contracts the mysterious illness that will send her reeling and shrinking away from this life, Carol floats through her days—and, in a white silken robe on sleepless nights, through her icy, Kubrickian home—like a ghost.

When Carol develops an acute and sudden sensitivity to unseen and unknown elements in her environment—toxins, fumes, chemicals, particulates—the ambient chaos of the broader world breaches the gate and leaves her weak, confused, and without any real avenue of retreat. Her doctors are helpless, baffled, and then impatient as her condition grows worse. Carol brightens into something like assertiveness after embracing her identity as a sick person, then recedes as the poisons around her (and, perhaps, her fixation on the poisons around her) begin to overwhelm her defenses. She finds Wrenwood, a community of the similarly afflicted, presided over by the spookily self-assured guru Peter Dunning (Peter Friedman), who lives high above his flock in a grandiose hilltop manse. He speaks the scattershot language of what we now call “wellness,” one rooted in self-lacerating shame, ritual, jargon, and a suffocating individualism. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Dunning tells a full house that includes Carol’s visiting husband and stepson, “I have a confession to make. I’ve stopped reading the papers. I’ve stopped watching the news on television.” Even reports of the outside world, he’s concluded, are simply too big a risk. “If I really believe that life is that devastating, that destructive, I’m afraid that my immune system will believe it, too. And I can’t afford to take that risk. Neither can you.”

At Wrenwood, Carol learns that her affliction, whatever it is, is fundamentally her fault, and can only be cured by loving herself—that is, by embracing her poisoner and tormenter—more fully. (“The only one who can make you sick is you,” Dunning tells a patient mourning the recent loss of her husband. “If your immune system is damaged, it’s because you allowed it to be.”) At the end of the film, put on the spot at an impromptu dance party by a gentle addict (James LeGros) with whom she’d enjoyed a tentative flirtation, Carol delivers a halting speech about what she’s learned at Wrenwood. “I don’t know what I’m saying,” she apologizes, “just that I really hated myself before I came here, so I’m trying to see myself hopefully more as I am, more positive, like, seeing the pluses. Like, I think it’s slowly opening up now, like, people’s minds, like, educating, like, AIDS , like, other types of diseases—and it is a disease—we just have to be more aware of it, even ourselves. Like, reading labels, and going into buildings.”

The film leaves Carol, in a rare close shot in the porcelain-lined igloo on Wrenwood’s grounds into which she’s made her last long retreat, staring into a mirror, uncertainly saying “I love you” to her own reflection. Haynes would go on to make numerous more overt nods to Douglas Sirk’s mid-century Hollywood dramas of buried domestic despair, but this inverted moment, a “happy ending” that is unmistakably a moment of abject, wrung-dry defeat, is particularly devastating because of how little Carol has left: that grim sanitized room, a place under the thumb of a smug sadist who offers only blame and calls it love, and the impossible task of healing herself. “For her to say ‘I love you’ in the mirror should feel like something has resolved,” Haynes told Film Comment , in 2015. “But all the film language in Safe should be telling you that nothing is resolved.” Anyone watching this movie in this moment, shut away in their homes for the greater good but also for their own tenuous safety, will know the feeling.

It’s a testament to the relentless command of Haynes’s filmmaking that the baffled and constricted horror of Carol’s story has so readily outlasted his original intent. “Safe” was conceived and executed as a sort of fable about a disease that landed with brutal specificity and unprecedented cruelty on marginalized communities, and which was not merely misunderstood but laughed off—quite literally laughed at—by people in power, well into its devastating peak. In his essay accompanying the film’s Criterion Collection release, Dennis Lim notes that the blame-driven denialism that rules Wrenwood echoes that of the New Age author Louise Hay, whose “ The AIDS Book: Creating a Positive Approach ” offered a similarly specious self-reliance approach to an epidemic that the state had pointedly chosen to ignore.

That particular plague was eventually brought to heel by activists and scientists, but the pervasive and implacable unease running through “Safe” has outlasted it, in large part because the dread at the heart of it—that something invisible and relentless is loose and at prey, and that anyone could become susceptible to it, at which point they would be very much on their own—has never really dispersed. The film’s vision of a culture fundamentally incapable of comprehending or countenancing illness and weakness has insured that “Safe” has stayed not just unsettling but queasily current. Carol is pursued by an “environmental illness,” and so is everyone else. The sinister plumes of exhaust and vanishing aerosol clouds and grim drips of hairdressing chemicals that Haynes foregrounds so ominously are much less metaphorical by now. The oceans rise and the earth bakes and novel viruses ride the train at rush hour. The symptoms are barely even symptoms anymore, but a broad and defiant cultural denial remains very firmly in place. What’s everyone’s problem will eventually be yours, but it will still be yours alone.

In 2014, Haynes told the critic Scott Tobias that his film “feels like this allegory about all kinds of indeterminate and imprecise notions of health, well-being, and immunity in peril.” Those notions have assumed different names and valances over the years, but the heavy sense of peril that Haynes identifies has not abated, in large part because American culture and politics are incapable of acting with empathy where there is weakness, “particularly in the way we try to attach meaning and personal responsibility to illness,” Haynes said.

On Tuesday, after reminding the public about “avoiding large gatherings and hand washing” and remarking that he’d like to “open things up” by Easter, President Trump offered a brief pep talk to the American people. “In order to defeat this virus, we must continue to be very strong,” he stated. “Your resilience and spirit has been inspiring to everyone. . . . Stay focussed and stay strong.” It is a hell of a thing to watch the country’s political and business leaders bluster about facing down a surging pandemic with the power of positive thinking—along with the sadistic coercive force of a ravening market and a state that is unwilling and unable to protect its citizenry from it—in the face of all expert advice and available evidence. But that response is also the only one that our politics and culture have offered for many years. The desperate national dedication to mistaking “strength” for an actual value, twinned with an instinct to rebuke weakness and further punish those who have been made weak, has never really wavered. We just keep on coming up with new ways to say the same things.

“Safe” is an unsettling film to watch while in quarantine from a disease that feels both everywhere and nowhere, and which is being willfully misunderstood by powerful people who can’t quite care enough to fight it. Whatever name the culture gives to the force that prises people apart at a given moment in time, it has always pushed in the same direction—back inside and further into solitude, back into blame and shame and doubt, back toward the mirror and a reflection we keep trying to trick.

“Safe” is currently available on the Criterion Channel’s streaming service and also, with contextually piquant but extremely grating commercial interruptions, on Amazon’s PlutoTV.

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Category: Todd’s Movie Reviews

Unfrosted review.

To generously take a bowl is half super approach, Jerry Seinfeld’s Unfrosted features stand-up Kyle Dunnigan doing a pretty killer Walter Cronkite impression. His anchor recounts the news with trademark authority followed by darkly amusing off the air grumblings about his love life and alcoholism. Later on, Dunnigan follows up with an impressive Johnny Carson takeoff. There’s lots of comedians and comedic performers in the legendary Mr. Seinfeld’s directorial debut for Netflix. Most of them don’t get the chance to nail their brief screen time like Mr. Dunnigan. A lot of Unfrosted, a mostly fictional account of how Pop-Tarts came to be, consists of stale humor with too many subplots competing against one another.

Even 96 minutes feels long since there’s barely enough witty material for the 22 minutes Jerry used to work in. He plays Bob Cabana, a high level exec at Kellogg’s in 1963. This is one of those screenplays (by Seinfeld and his frequent collaborators Spike Feresten, Andy Robin, and Barry Marder) that constantly reminds us it’s set during that decade in increasingly lame ways. Along with his boss Edsel Kellogg III (Jim Gaffigan) and Melissa McCarthy’s NASA scientist turned cereal conglomerate employee, they are in a race to produce the best toasted pastry treat. In Battle Creek, Michigan, the combat lines are drawn with their rival Post led by socialite Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer). Such lines are not so subtly tied to another race – the space one – of that era.

Rhythms of Unfrosted becomes familiar in short order – a joke or two that work about a given subplot (like the correlation with the nation’s trip to the moon) that get overused swiftly. There’s bursts of inspiration like Dunnigan’s grousing. Bill Burr’s take on JFK is also a delight. Most of the time I wasn’t blown away by what else the overfilled screenplay had to say.

Since this is Seinfeld we’re talking about, there’s lots of funny people popping in for a day or two on the set. Hugh Grant is the very real Thurl Ravenscroft, a true Shakespearean thespian who voiced Tony the Tiger. The Kellogg gang recruits a hodgepodge of kitschy historical figures including fitness guru Jack LaLanne (James Marsden), Sea Monkeys maker and maybe Nazi Harold von Braunhut (Thomas Lennon), and Chef Boy Ardee (Bobby Moynihan) to develop the product. I could go on and on. Mixing all these talents together is bound to produce some amusing highlights and it does on occasion, but not nearly enough. Sometimes the satire totally misses like when it attempts to connect a mascot uprising to January 6th.

A lot of Unfrosted probably sounded better while Seinfeld and crew were discussing it over Zoom. Most of it might produce more guffaws if its Cronkite impersonator were handling the delivery.

** (out of four)

Challengers Review

Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers swings and lands and swings and misses and misses and lands and repeats. Strengths become flaws as the EDM score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is a charge to hear until it isn’t. The non-linear structure of the love triangle provides glimpses of high-powered melodrama, but it’s also distractingly messy in at least equal measure. Where I find no fault was in the performances even if I wish the script from Justin Kuritzkes served them better.

Volleying between 2006 and 2019 and significant points in between, we are introduced to BFF’s Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) as tennis juniors champs at the US Open. Along with the rest of the sports world, they are smitten by highly touted prospect Tashi (Zendaya) who is biding her going pro jump until the right moment. A late night meeting at a hotel on the day of the boys’ introduction to her provides fireworks that will complicate and influence their dynamic for the next decade plus.

It is 13 years after that encounter that Art and Patrick, long estranged, hurdle toward a match at a Challenger event. Tashi’s go pro unveiling never came into focus, but she and Art have formed a potent partnership while Patrick’s career has stalled. Flashbacks fill in other pertinent details and haphazardly at times. Despite its 131 minutes of action, characterizations of the players can run frustratingly thin.

Tashi seems to hold a lot of power over the gents and Zendaya’s work sells it. She cannot impose her will on the court and strives to do so with those competing on it via other methods. Kudos to the Dune heroine for nailing this unlikable character that should have been more fleshed out. O’Connor and Faist also excel with the former perhaps more of a breakout.

There’s really no one to root for in Challengers by design as this less than holy trinity think far more about themselves than others. You may find yourself calculating who among them is the worst offender. Guadagnino turns the aforementioned score and soap opera vibes up loudly. It works often as a pure guilty pleasure. By its conclusion, however, I might’ve been laughing at the stylistic flourishes and not with it.

**1/2 (out of four)

Abigail Review

From Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (the filmmakers known as Radio Silence), Abigail sautés between a crime thriller and vampire tale. It doesn’t completely land that From Dusk til Dawn style jump off and it overstays its welcome. There are lively breaks in the gory repetition and that’s thanks to some quality casting.

The title character is a young girl (played by Alisha Weir) who we first see practicing her ballet moves in an empty theater. She’s being tailed by six criminals engaged in a snatching plot. They succeed in the abduction, at least theoretically. The mastermind behind the taking (Giancarlo Esposito) provides a creepy old house for them to hold Abigail for 24 hours until the ransom is met. The operation has a strict no real names policy (think Reservoir Dogs ), so the group is named after Rat Packers. Melissa Barrera is Joey and she’s tasked with being Abigail’s sole point of contact. We quickly figure out she kidnaps with kindness and is our heroine. She also has a drug problem and might’ve abandoned her son, but she’s rather virtuous compared to the lot.

That includes former detective Frank (Dan Stevens, clearly having a ball and looking a bit like Bradley Cooper), spoiled brat and computer hacker Sammy (Kathryn Newton), and demented getaway driver Dean (Angus Cloud). Low IQ muscleman Peter (Kevin Durand) and Marine Rickles (Will Catlett) complete the sextet.

The young captor doesn’t waste much time engaging in mind games with the unwelcome house guests. In what might have been a juicy twist if the trailer and ads hadn’t clearly spelled it out, she’s a bloodsucker who has been around much longer than her appearance suggests. As if that weren’t enough, she has a father whose name sends chills down the spine of those who hear it.

Abigail should be more of a guilty pleasure than it is. There are times when it flourishes. Stevens steals the show while Barrera is saddled with a semi-serious and boring backstory. Some of the exaggerated violence is reminiscent of Radio Silence’s Ready or Not from 2019. That can be a good thing though it’s a reminder that the pic five years ago was superior. Alisha Weir’s performance is certainly a plus as she switches up the cadence of a preteen and a centuries old devourer of souls.

Despite some clever moves, this ultimately stalls in the third act and takes a while to ramp up in the first place. Its bucket of blood falls on the half empty side a little too often.

Civil War Review

When it focuses on snapping the perfect photo, Alex Garland’s Civil War crackles and pops with a tension rivaling the best scary movies. Indeed there is horror to be found in this tale of journalists covering a nation torn apart. It is set in the near future and viewers will bring their own instincts to suss out the political landscape. Garland’s screenplay doesn’t provide the roadmap as a third-term President (Nick Offerman) and his dwindling protective units are being closed in on by separatist groups.

Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) is a veteran shutterbug who’s seen it all. Almost. Along with colleague Joel (Wagner Moura), they plan a trek to D.C. to witness and document the pending downfall of POTUS. An interview before his demise is the wished for cherry on top. Two others hitch a ride with the Reuters duo – seasoned New York Times reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and newbie cameraperson Jessie (Cailee Spaeny, fresh off her starring role as Priscilla in that biopic).

The trip to the capital is a bumpy and episodic one, filled with sudden bursts of carnage and odd and often distracting musical needle drops. Lee’s view of documenting the violence is passive in nature. She refuses (at least outwardly) to let emotion overwhelm her. Just the snaps, ma’am. Jessie has to learn that trait. Dunst and Spaeny are precise and effective in portraying the two sides of the equation.

Another noteworthy performance belongs to Dunst’s husband Jesse Plemons in a one segment role as a militia man deciding whether or not to let the road warriors continue their trip. It is the most suspenseful sequence in a picture with a few of them.

As mentioned, the details of the governmental breakdown are kept to a minimum and we are left to interpret plenty. There is one episode that frightens in a different way. The group passes through a town where the citizens are willfully uninformed of the chaos surrounding them. What doesn’t kill them makes them stronger in their estimation and it’s an eerie divergence on that particular exit.

When the action gets to D.C. in the third act, some energy is lost. The coup is exceedingly well-directed by the maker of Ex Machina and Annihilation (a shoutout especially to the sound designers on Garland’s crew). It just seems like we’ve seen the White House go down in plenty of lesser flicks. Civil War shines brightest when it dwells on the power of the photog in their darkest moments.

*** (out of four)

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Review

Unlike 2016’s ballyhooed female Ghostbusters reboot or 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife (which served as a sequel to the first two), Frozen Empire doesn’t need to burden itself with spending time introducing new characters to mix with the oldies and three-year-old newbies. The fifth franchise feature, unlike Afterlife , doesn’t have to employ a long windup before it nourishes our nostalgic hankerings. Unfortunately it still does yet I found it slightly more fulfilling than its two predecessors. That’s not sizzling praise, but I wasn’t totally cold to its charms and it’s the fresher characters that often shine.

You may recall that Afterlife introduced us to Egon Spengler’s brood that he abandoned for what turned out to be noble reasons. Granddaughter Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) is Harold Ramis’s spitting image in look, spirit, and overall nerdiness. She’s moved from Oklahoma to NYC along with mom (Carrie Coon), stepdad (Paul Rudd), and brother (Finn Wolfhard) and they’ve set up shop in that iconic firehouse where their patriarch slid down the pole with the OG ‘Busters. They are carrying on the family tradition and, yes, it makes them feel good until Mayor Walter Peck (William Atherton, returning after four decades after a memorable role in the original) sidelines Phoebe. Ray (Dan Aykroyd) and Winston (Ernie Hudson) and Janine (Annie Potts, finally getting to put on a uniform) are still around as is Venkman (Bill Murray)… sort of. One gets the impression that Murray crashes the party just long enough for the paycheck and perhaps a week on set. He still fits in a drolly satisfying one-liner or two as only he can.

There’s a lot of characters to keep up with and the script from director Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman develops juggle problems. Rudd and Coon, whose romance was a focal point three years ago, are given the short shrift. Wolfhard and Celeste O’Connor (who hit it off in Oklahoma as well) fare even worse. Same goes for Phoebe’s buddy Podcast (Logan Kim).

The most promising additions are the brand new ones that factor into the plot. Lazy Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani) sells his dead grandma’s shiny orb to Ray for a quick few bucks. It turns out to be a device that could start a new ice age while also summoning previously captured spirits back to the Big Apple. Nanjiani’s comedic spirits are a high point. Patton Oswalt’s quick work as a library employee in the New York Public Library is one of the better scenes. We have Emily Alyn Lind as a long departed apparition trying to reunite with her loved ones. In the meantime, she plays chess with Phoebe with a slight romantic undertone. Some of this material is decent enough that I wondered whether the wistful remembrances of what entertained us from 1984 is needed anymore.

Saying that Empire is the best sequel in the series is really not saying much. A more appropriate way to say it might be that it’s the least disappointing. Many of the same drawbacks of what came between 1984 and 2024 are present. I did, however, find it funnier than the schmaltzy Afterlife . Maybe there’s a little life left in this franchise after all. Frozen Empire shows that sporadically.

The Exorcist: Believer Review

It’s not just priests exorcising the demonic spirits in The Exorcist: Believer , a direct sequel to the iconic horror phenomenon from a half century ago. There’s more inclusivity when it comes to the number of faith leaders involved. We have two subjects undergoing the eventual rituals via two teenage girls. David Gordon Green recently redid the Halloween franchise with three pictures that underwhelmed this viewer. He hopes to start a fresh trilogy with Believer . Despite more characters doing the casting out and doubling those being possessed, this relaunch is far from bewitching. Instead it’s a sullen and poorly edited genre exercise that could’ve passed (or failed) as any knockoff of the original. If it weren’t for Ellen Burstyn briefly returning to her Oscar nominated role, slapping The Exorcist moniker on it seems egregious. I suppose it still does. The sixth one is not the devilish charm. Neither were the second, third, fourth, or fifth though pretending they don’t exist doesn’t help.

A prologue shows us the tragic birth of Angela (Lidya Jewett). Her father Victor (Leslie Odom Jr.) is doing photography work in Haiti with his very expectant wife. An earthquake severely injures her to the point where Victor must choose whether she or his unborn daughter live. Thirteen years later, Victor and Angela are living a seemingly normal existence in Georgia. Yet when Angela and her friend Katherine (Olivia O’Neill) try to summon the spirit of her departed mother, they end up disappearing for three days and then returning. If you don’t get the symbolism behind that, the sometimes unintentionally funny screenplay will explain it slowly and obviously.

Slowly is an appropriate word for the first half as Angela and Katherine aren’t exactly themselves upon reemergence. Believer seems to forget that so many Exorcist regurgitations have been foisted upon us. Some have worked. Just none in the official canon (though The Exorcist III has its loopy delights). We know where this is headed and Green’s restart plods along in the known directions. Except for one violent outburst, Burstyn’s return is largely forgettable and a little pointless.

The interfaith participation in saving the girls is a slightly new wrinkle. By the third act, the Catholics are sitting it out and a hodgepodge of would be saviors step in to fill the void. This includes Ann Dowd as Victor’s neighbor (who takes over for the priest because she wanted to be a nun), a Hoodoo practicer, a Baptist, and a Pentecostal preacher. If these characters had walked into a bar, maybe a more lively movie would’ve resulted. Instead they walk into a procedure we’ve seen time and again. A double exorcism does not double the thrills. This was shocking and shockingly well-made (not to mention scary as hell) in 1973. Now it’s unsurprisingly bland.

*1/2 (out of four)

Five Nights at Freddy’s Review

Let’s start with the fact with Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson), the night guard at the now abandoned entertainment center in Five Nights at Freddy’s is just bad at his job. It’s an excuse to sleep, but there’s a purpose. He’s trying to conjure up the circumstances of what happened to his kidnapped brother years ago. Mike believes his visions during the dreams will lead to finding his sibling or at least uncovering who took him. Emma Tammi’s adaptation of the wildly successful video game series that began in 2014 (which I have no familiarity with) might lead to counting sheep as well, especially in the first half. That’s instead of counting on the animatronic animals to provide worthy scares. It doesn’t happen often.

The genealogical drama doesn’t stop at the protagonist’s abduction visions. He also has a much younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio). Their aunt (Mary Stuart Masterson) wants custody for the paycheck. Mike is desperate for employment to keep little sis with him. He reluctantly accepts the graveyard shift at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Matthew Lillard of Scream distinction interviews him for the gig. The long closed pie shop with four singing critters probably would’ve been an awesome experience back in the 1980s. I could imagine Eleven and the Stranger Things gang or a Goonie hanging at it while working with a better script. Freddy’s is mysteriously not torn down. Kindly and pretty policewoman Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) tells Mike they have a tough time keeping guards on duty. Apparently security during the day is not warranted.

By night 3 of Mike’s gig that he can’t stay alert for, he is forced to bring Abby along. That’s at about the midway point when we already know the house band is capable of wreaking havoc on unwanted visitors. They befriend Abby while Mike is confounded by their existence. At least he’s awake now even if Hutcherson’s performance is missing much of a pulse. I was less groggy too after muddling through the Schmidt family misfortunes for almost an hour. The bear, rabbit, chick, and fox come from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop and they are effective creature designs.

If only the screenplay (cowritten by the game’s creator Scott Cawthorn) allowed them to play more in their venue. We have a promising setting that is underutilized. I know this is massively successful IP with millions of young diehard fans and maybe this will deliver for them. Regular old horror fans unfamiliar with the source material (like me) have to settle for infrequent PG-13 frights. I found myself hungering to see what kind of Reagan era games occurred when kiddie customers were devouring mediocre pizza instead of the overly plotted mechanics served here. That makes it hard to recommend one night in this setting so I just say no.

Barbie Review

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is never dull and it is a triumph of Dream House production design with exquisite casting. Cowriting with her partner Noah Baumbach, the screenplay is home to some great gags and eventually some emotionally inspired sections. It stumbles occasionally in sketchy territory that seems more in place as a mid-level SNL sketch (with some of the show’s vets performing the material). With Margot Robbie as the classic or “stereotypical” Barbie and Ryan Gosling as a version of Ken who believes his profession is “Beach” (where he spends his days), their chemistry clicks as they explore lands ruled by matriarchy and patriarchy.

The comedy around them can sputter in one scene and pop in the next. This is a satire of corporatism and critique of gender identities that wouldn’t exist without that Mattel cooperation. It has its own well-worn cliches present about the Venus and Mars divisions. Venus is Barbieland here while Mars is the world we know. Gerwig and Baumbach are dealing with a tricky balance and the fact that this mostly succeeds is an impressive achievement.

We meet Robbie’s Barbie in Barbieland where every night is Girls Night (!) alongside President Barbie (Issa Rae), Writer Barbie (Alexandra Shipp), and plenty of others professionals. These women rule the joint while Ken and his fellow Kens (they include Simu Liu and Kingsley Ben-Adir) beach during the day and pine for their respective Barbies at night. In one funny revelation, it is said that the women literally have no clue where the Kens stay at night (they do not own dream dwellings).

Our lead Barbie’s blissful existence ends when she starts thinking of death. Soon her perfectly perched feet fall flat and cellulite emerges. These real world problems are due to Earthly interference. She doesn’t want to become like Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), whose physical traits resemble a demented child being creative with her doll parts. Barbie must travel to the Real World which she assumes puts females in the same leadership positions as Barbieland. Gosling’s Ken sneaks along for the ride.

Their journey introduces them to single mom Gloria (America Ferrera) and teen daughter (Ariana Greenblatt). Mom works for Mattel, which is entirely run by males including Will Ferrell’s CEO. She has her own ideas for Barbie iterations and that may be causing Robbie’s imperfections. While she deals with the patriarchy ruling the land, Ken revels in it and soon brings that superior attitude back to Barbieland. A buoyant battle for the sexes follows.

Barbie improves as it goes along. It manages to mostly earn the moving moments that populate the final act. I suspect some of the broader material could’ve been cut down. For example, Ferrell and his band of execs don’t really add much. Yet I dug McKinnon as the oddly configured Weird Barbie. This is an experience where we have Gosling stealing scenes with hilarity and Ferrera doing the same with heartier stuff. Robbie is in the middle of it and she is smartly cast (narrator Helen Mirren has a moment of snarky meta fun commenting on her incredible beauty). There’s plenty to ponder in the politics of Barbie , but maybe not thinking about it too hard is the way to go. The same logic can be applied to Ken’s out of place friend Allan (Michael Cera). He doesn’t really belong, but I enjoyed him. Same goes for the movie where our central character is figuring out where she belongs.

Asteroid City Review

Wes Anderson’s mix of melancholia and quirky humor is abundant in Asteroid City with its massive cast and dueling aspect ratios. This is a stunning looking feature focused on the behind the scenes made for TV airing of a play (shot in black & white). The play itself is presented via Technicolor hues in a Western desert setting in the 1950s. Whether it’s the characters they’re playing or the actors and directors themselves, they exist in Anderson’s wheelhouse of themes. From dealing with grief to unlikely romances and coming-of-age under unique circumstances, any filmmaker would be rightly accused of ripping off Anderson if this weren’t made by him. Whether it works will depend on how into him you are. I’m not a die-hard though his signature style popped for me in The Royal Tenenbaums , The Grand Budapest Hotel , and more. It can also leave me cold. That happened in portions of his previous effort The French Dispatch while other segments were more successful. This City was lukewarm.

The play we see (which takes up the bulk of screen time) happens in the sleepy title dwelling awoken by a youth astronomy convention. One of the top outcasts competing is Woodrow (Jake Ryan), the movie’s Max Fischer from Rushmore but nicer. His father is war photojournalist Augie and he’s played by Jason Schwartzman, who played Max in Anderson’s acclaimed dramedy from 1998. He’s recently widowed and (in a gag that works throughout) hasn’t figured out how to tell his son and three young daughters who might be witches that mom has passed. Tom Hanks is his wealthy father-in-law who lives on a golf course and reluctantly is teeing up accommodations for the family.

Another competitor is Dinah, daughter of Midge (Scarlett Johansson), a sullen movie star who assumes her fate will be similar to ingenues like Marilyn Monroe. She engages in a fireworks free tryst with Augie while Woodrow develops a crush on Dinah.

We’ve seen plenty of all-star casts in his oeuvre, but Anderson outdoes himself in Asteroid City . From Steve Carell’s motel manager to Matt Dillon’s auto mechanic or Tilda Swinton’s scientist and Rupert Friend’s singing cowboy who’s sweet on Maya Hawke’s teacher, the cast is a loaded group. Some are practically blink and you’ll miss them appearances – hey there’s Jeff Goldblum! And Hong Chau! Jeffrey Wright, who gave a segment stealing performance in The French Dispatch , has a highlight scene as a General judging the convention.

Without going into spoiler territory, the plot eventually employs sci-fi elements in an idiosyncratic Wes way. While this is happening, we get monochrome interludes with Bryan Cranston’s host introducing and commenting on the teleplay, Edward Norton as its writer, and Adrien Brody as the randy director. These are great performers, but the best moments come in Asteroid City. The backstage business of meeting the performers counterparts didn’t have a deep impact with me.

Neither did Asteroid City as a whole. Schwartzman and Johansson (who really sells her considerable star magnetism) have a couple memorable scenes of courtship. The technical work, particularly the production design, is impeccable. Yet the emotional and comedic payoff that has worked in Tenenbaums and beyond feels more remote in this bright wasteland.

Maggie Moore(s) Review

At one point in Maggie Moore(s) , New Mexico police chief Sanders (Jon Hamm) tells his blunt deputy Reddy (Nick Mohammed) that he has no concept of when it’s OK to tell a joke. You could say the same with Paul Bernbaum’s screenplay. This black comedy attempts to pull off incorporating pedophilia and hate crimes as its murder mystery plays out. It doesn’t work in this aimless grim pic. Plus it’s just not very funny.

Maggie Moore (Louisa Krause) works at a diner while sleazy husband Jay (Micah Stock) is the franchisor of a sandwich shop where he buys rancid meat on the black market. When she threatens to expose his various shady business dealings, she turns up dead. A gigantic deaf hitman named Kosco (Happy Anderson) is responsible. In this small town setting, there’s another Maggie Moore (Mary Holland) and perhaps her murder will throw Hamm’s chief from the fast food potential felon.

This all goes down early in the picture and most of Moore(s) is Sanders and his partner catching up with what we already know. This unfortunate structure zaps it of any suspense and when the humor falters (which is most of the time), the mold gathers quickly.

You might think a 30 Rock reunion of Hamm and Tina Fey courting each other could save it. She plays Jay’s nosy and self-conscious neighbor who catches the lawman’s eye. Despite their easy chemistry that results in a handful of laughs, it can’t rescue the second feature length effort from the lead’s Mad Men costar John Slattery.

The aforementioned taboo subjects indicate that its makers want to bring an edge that is never earned. None of the relationships feel authentic in a script where the players are quirky without quality development. The subs aren’t the only item that are substandard.

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Planet of the Apes In Order: How to Watch the Movies Chronologically

Planet of the Apes Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

Asian-American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes First Reviews: A Thoughtful, Visually Stunning, Action-Packed Triumph

Furiosa First Reactions: Brutal, Masterful, and Absolutely Epic

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Todd Reviews

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