I’m still figuring things out in terms of time-management and how much of that little time I want to put into this column, especially with two other perfectly fine box office columns I’m writing each week. Anyway, enough of my kvetching. Let’s get to some reviews.
MAGIC MIKE’S LAST DANCE (Warner Bros.)
I wasn’t really a fan of the previous two “Magic Mike” movies, so I wasn’t sure what Channing Tatum and Steven Soderbergh can bring by reuniting five years after their last movie, “Logan Lucky.” The answer? Bring in Salma Hayek Pinault as a wealthy woman who brings Tatum’s Mike Lang to London to help spice up a bland play at a theater she owns, to get back at her ex-husband.
But we’ll get more into the plot in a second, because it opens up with a rather strange (but short) monologue about dogs before we’re introduced to Tatum’s Mike Lane, now working as a bartender at a Miami party thrown by Hayek’s pseudo trophy wife Maxandra Mendoza, who is in the middle of a messy separation with her wealthy husband. She finds out about Mike’s past as a dancer, and she offers him $6,000 for one of his laptops, which leads to an incredibly sexy dance between the duo that leads to a bit of dry-humping and more. Max decides to make Mike an offer he can’t refuse, to bring his dance and choreography skills to London where she wants to disrupt a stodgy play at her husband’s historical theater. Mike will get $60,000 for his time, which can help with his financial issues. Once there, they put together an impressive array of breakdancers and more prestigious male dancers to goose up the show while dealing with all sorts of obstacles on the way.
First of all, I was quite surprised not only by how much I appreciate this movie having more of a plot, rather than just cutting to half-naked buff guys dancing every few minutes. In fact, Tatum doesn’t even do the majority of the sexy dancing this time around, instead working with the troupe they put together for what will turn out to be a one-night-only event.
I’m definitely not the best candidate to comment on all the mostly-clothed erotica in Magic Mike’s Last Dance, although most of it is relatively mild and shouldn’t offend anyone, even any guys who get dragged to see this on date night or Valentine’s Day.
Hayek Pinault’s character brings a lot to the movie, not just a foil and love interest for Tatum, but also a role that allows her to continue to flex her comedy muscles, but also thrown in some drama. I’m not sure how women might feel about her character, who seems fairly wishy-washy at times despite her aggressiveness when she first meets Mike. There are other characters like Max’s daughter Zadie (Jemelia George) and her man-servant Victor (Ayub Khan-Din), who is very funny.
Sure, a lot of it is quite ludicrous. I mean, even the idea of throwing a stripper show in the middle of a serious historic play just doesn’t seem to work that well, although it does show off the movie’s fantastic (Oscar-worthy!) choreography by Alison Falk and Luke Broadlick, and I generally dug some of the musical choices, too.
More than anything else, it’s nice to see Soderbergh returning to theaters with his movies, which I had to remind myself that he shoots himself, because his camerawork is almost as impressive as the dancing he’s capturing on camera.
There is no question that more time and effort was put into this conclusion (?) for the Magic Mike trilogy, but the key takeaway is that giving Mike a strong woman counterpart like Hayek Pinault elevates the storytelling immeasurably. While previous Magic Mike movies were rather painful to watch, this one is actually quite enjoyable and entertaining from begining to end.
Rating: 8/10
CONSECRATION (IFC Films)
Also opening fairly wide in an unknown number of theaters is this religious thriller from Christopher Smith (Severance), starring Jena Malone as Grace, who learns that her younger brother’s body was found at a convent where he was staying, so she goes there to find out whether he really killed himself, as has been claimed.
I like horror movies based around Catholicism as much as the next guy, but I have to imagine Smith has quite a bit of horror from his own spiritual past based on what Grace goes through once she starts dealing with the Mother Superior and Danny Huston’s Father Romero, who has gone to the convent from the Vatican to learn the truth himself.
Mind you, I love Jena Malone as an actor and have for a long time but when she first starts speaking and you hear her horrid British accent, you’ll immediately wonder why Smith didn’t get a better British actor for the role. Other than the accent – which really falters when she’s in scenes with actual Scottish actors – Malone’s performance is fine compared to the over-the-top delivery by the rest of the cast, including Huston.
The problem is that while you’re following Grace on her quest to solve this mystery, you watch a lot of random events that seemingly have no connection, like why all these nuns keep killing themselves in Grace’s presence. The police wonder that, too, and it eventually turns out that her brother either was looking or had soe sort of relic that ties back to their childhood when they were abused by a horrible, murderous father. (In fact, the flashbacks were generally better than the present-day story.)
The movie attains almost a Monty Python level of silliness at times like when the nuns are torturing Grace’s brother by jumping on him, and other images that may have some sort of significance, though they come off as strange the way they’re shoehorned into the movie. Smith also seems to be stuck in the Middle Ages from his earlier film Black Death, since we also get all sorts of RenFair flashbacks related to this relic, though it’s not that obvious how or why.
Despite some decent gore and kills in the last act (including an obvious homage to The Omen), Consecration just doesn’t offer enough horror to really be taken seriously beyond its pretentious imagery and attempts at decrying religion as evil. But most of all, it’s just plain boring until it gets to the bonkers last act where everything is explained… kind of?
Rating: 5/10
The other wide release is the 25th Anniversary of James Cameron’s Titanic, and though that originally came out before I was writing about or reviewing movies, so no review from me.
This is what the Top 10 should look like:
1. Magic Mike’s Last Dance (Warner Bros.) - $10.8 million N/A*
*Note: There is some question on whether this is going to be in just 1,500 theaters or closer to 2,000, but that will likely change my prediction, even if it’s in the same general ballpark.
2. Titanic 25th Anniversary (Paramount) - $8 million N/A
3. 80 for Brady (Paramount) - $7.4 million -41%
4. Knock at the Door (Universal) - $7 million -49%
5. Avatar: The Way of Water (20th Century/Disney) - $6.2 million -45%
6. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (DWA/Universal) - $5.1 million -35%
7. A Man Called Otto (Sony) - $2.5 million -42%
8. BTS: Yet to Come (Trafalgar Releasing) - $2.4 million -53%
9. M3GAN (Universal) - $2 million -48%
10. MISSING (Sony/Screen Gems) - $1.9 million -49%
If I were still doing the “Chosen One,” this week’s would definitely be…
SHARPER (Apple TV+)
The feature film debut directed by Ben Carron, who has directed episodes of The Crown and Andor, stars Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan, John Lithgow, Justice Smith, and Brianne Middleton. It begins with the latter two, Smith’s Tom and Middleton’s Sandra meeting at the bookstore run by the former, and after a bit of playful flirting, they end up going out, and things generally go well. We then cut back in time and meet “Sandy” when she first meets Sebastian Stan’s Max, a con man who wants to train Sandy in his craft. The next segment goes back even further where we learn more about Max and his relationship with his mother, played by Julianne Moore. She’s married to a wealthy politician (Lithgow), although Max doesn’t seem too happy about that.
It’s so hard to talk about why I liked Sharper without fully spoiling what I liked about it so much, and that’s the many twists and turns. It’s definitely a movie that will be much more effective if you don’t know much about the movie or where it’s going. At first, it just seems like some sort of romantic drama surrounding Tom and Sandra, but there’s much more to that and pretty much to everything we see as the film progresses.
Although Moore is really good, as is the rest of the cast, the film seems more of a spotlight on Carron’s talents for juggling various characters within the non-linear storytelling quite well, making this another fantastic transition to filmmaking by a television/theater director, similar to last year with Mark Mylod’s The Menu.
Hopefully that’s enough to get you interested, but if not, I will say that this is a suitably twisty drama, which reminded me a bit of Stephen Frears’ The Grifters, but given a modern-day New York spin that really kept me invested.
Stronger offers enough intriguing characters and twist-filled storytelling that the layers it keeps piling on leads to a satisfying finale that truly pays off on what was set-up earlier.
Rating: 8.5/10
Sharper is opening in New York and L.A. on Friday and then will be on Apple TV+ a week from Friday on Feb. 17, and I’ll have an interview with Ben Carron over at Above the Line soon.
Some more genre films out this weekend, which unfortunately I didn’t have time to watch/review in time for this week’s column…
THE OUTWATERS (Cinedigm)
Robbie Banfitch’s found footage horror film (in which he wrote, directed and stars) revolves around four travellers in the Mojave Desert who experience strange phenomena. I saw the trailer for this in front of Terrifier 2, and I hope to get to this soon.
ATTACHMENT (Shudder)
Hitting the streamer on Thursday is this horror-comedy from Gabriel Bier Gislason about the love affair between two women, Danish actress Maja and Leah, a Jewish academic from London who suffers a seizure, so the two women return to London where Maja meets Leah’s mother, Chana.
HUESERA: THE BONE WOMAN (XYZ Fims)
Michelle Garza Cervera’s has played a number of festivals including last year’s Tribeca where Cervera won two awards as the “Best New Narrative Director” and the “Nora Ephron Prize” which goes a woman filmmaker. It stars Natalia Solián as Valeria, a woman who has always wanted to be a mother, but when she finally gets pregnant, something seems off. I actually watched a bit of this at Tribeca but never got around to watching the rest, so sadly, no review.
This will open in theaters this Friday and then on VOD starting Feb. 17
SERIOUSLY RED (Lionsgate)
Krew Boylan stars in Gracie Otto’s comedy as Red, an unemployed real estate agent who dreams of being the world’s greatest Dolly Parton impersonator, getting attention from an “amorous Elvis impersonator” (played by Rose Byrne) and a big-time booking agent, played by her hubby Bobby Cannavale.
MOON GIRL AND DEVIL DINOSAUR (Disney+)
The next Marvel animated series will launch on Disney+ this week. I haven’t seen it.
Beginning this weekend is the “Handmade Horror” series, which includes screenings of The Quay Brothers’ stop-motion animated shorts; Anna Biller’s The Love Witch (2016), which will have a special reception and costume contest on Friday! Also screening is David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977) and the 2018 animated The Wolf House.
“Live by the Sword, Die by the Gun” is proving to be one of the repertory series of the year, even though it’s only February. This weekend we get Sergio Leone’s classic Once Upon a Time in the West (1968); Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff (2010), which I can argue doesn’t belong here; and the samurai film, Sword of Doom (1966).
“Filmcraft: Bradford Young, ASC” continues this weekend with screenings of James Gray’s The Yards (2000), which was an influence on Young shooting J.C Chandor’s A Most Violent Year (2014), which also screens. Also, Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (which Young shot) will be shown over the weekend. .
As part of “Folktales, Ghosts & Parallel Realities,” there’s also Masaki Kobayashi’s three-hour Kaidan (1965), centered around Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria (which will screen next week). Brandon Harris’ “Strange Fruit” commemorates Black History Month, this weekend showing Gordon Parks’ The Learning Tree (1969), and Larry Clark’s Passing Through (1977).
“Metrograph Presents A to Z” will show Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) over the weekend (Sat. and Sun are already sold out), while “Metrograph Selects” Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) in 35mm on Thursday night.
On Tuesday, Metrograph offers special Valentine’s Day programming that includes The Lobster, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), as well as Wong Kar-wai’s 2000 classic In the Mood for Love (which is already sold out) and Happy Together (1996).
Starting Friday is FilmLinc’s annual “Dance on Camera Festival,” which runs through Tuesday, though this is not a program I’m particularly well-acquainted with, although it will close on Monday with a screening of Adrian Lyne’s Flashdance starring the recently-departed Irene Cara. Continuing this week is ‘Verse Jumping with Daniels with a 35mm double feature of Drunken Master II and Fight Club tonight (I’ll be there!) and a 35mm double feature of Kung Fu Hustle and The Matrix on Thursday night.
Starting on Friday is the “ACA Cinema Project: New Film from Japan 2023” series which runs through next Thursday, showing five films as advertised (and I guess this isn’t exactly repertory).
“Good Witch/Bad Witch” continues this weekend with Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and I Married a Witch (1942). This weekend’s “Late Night Favorites” offering is the Anime classic, Akira (1988).
The new 4k restoration of Italian filmmaker Dino Risi’s Una Vita Difficile (1961) continues through the weekend, and Sunday’s “Film Forum Jr.” is Barbara Streisand’s Funny Girl from 1968.
The Roxy is on a Todd Solonz kick and this weekend, it will show 35mm print of his 2001 film, Storytelling, as well as Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 sci-fi drama, Stalker. Also showing Solonz’s Dark Horse (2011) on Sunday.
I’ve probably been neglecting the great repertory content from this terrific venue for too long. They’re currently running Seijun Suzuki Centennial, celebrating one of Japan’s most iconoclastic filmmakers with 35 screenings this weekend of Carmen from Kawachi (1966) and A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness (1977).
Other movies out this week including a couple streaming rom-coms…
YOUR PLACE OR MINE (Netflix)
SOMEBODY I USED TO KNOW (Prime Video)
DAUGHTER (Dark Star Pictures)
AMONG THE BEASTS (Gravitas Ventures)
HANNAH HA HA (Cinedigm/Fandor)
Next week is Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which I’ll review separately from any prospective column.