THE WEEKEND WARRIOR March 8, 2024
Reviews of KUNG FU PANDA 2, IMAGINARY, CABRINI, LOVE LIES BLEEDING
Well, since last weekend’s column, I took the plunge – in other words, I quit Above the Line in quite a loud and glorious way. I mean, I had already given them my notice weeks ago, but there were no signs of me or any of the writers being paid, and I finally reached my limit of how much bullshit I could take.
If you want to read more about it, you can do so here, but honestly, I just want to try to move on. My three and half years there have been extremely stressful and traumatic, even though I kept trying my best to make this work out. The simple fact is that I can’t keep working for free… except when writing this column. But at least my boss here treats me well, feeds me, gives me regular naps, etc. etc. Hopefully something else will come along, but I’ll be doing this and of course, continuing at Gold Derby, as long as I possibly can.
Note that it’s Oscar weekend (plus we have to set our clocks forward Saturday night), so diehard movie fans probably won’t be out seeing movies on Sunday night, and many of the weekend offerings may be frontloaded due to that. I’ve reviewed four very different movies, though one of the reviews is embargoed until Thursday night.
KUNG FU PANDA 4 (DreamWorks Animation/Universal)
The big release for the weekend is the fourth movie in DreamWorks Animation’s long-running animated franchise, featuring Jack Black as the voice of Po, the martial arts eschewing panda bear, who needs to find his successor as Dragon Warrior, to become a Spiritual Advisor to the Valley of Peace. Soon, Po learns that an evil sorceress known as the Chameleon (voiced by Viola Davis) threatens the Valley of Peace, so he turns to a thieving fox named Zhen, voiced by Awkwafina, as they go on a journey to stop the Chameleon.
As you can guess from the number in the title, this is the fourth installment of a franchise that seemed to peter out with the third installment in 2016 but actually has been kept alive through streaming on both Netflix and Peacock, where the original theatrical releases and a few specials and series have thrived, most recently on Netflix, but with a series leading up to the third movie that’s kept avid young fans entertained. Kung Fu Panda 4 also benefits from there not really being many other animated movies in theaters, other than Universal’s Migration, which has done quite well.
Mini-Review: It feels necessary, nae mandatory, to question whether a fourth movie in any animated franchise is something that’s really warranted or necessary. As far as Jack Black’s title character in this franchise, he’s been keeping kids entertained for 15 years, not only in the three theatrical movies but also in a number of streaming series and specials, so he might have already reached a Shrek level of popularity even without having a Broadway musical.
The premise for the fourth movie is about as simple as you can get, the biggest new addition being a character voiced by the ubiquitous (and frequently annoying) Awkwafina, who showed so much range in The Farewell, but just can’t come close to then when just providing her voice.
Directed by Mike Mitchell (Trolls, The Lego Movie 2), this installment is written by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, who wrote the previous three Kung Fu Panda movies, so it’s a little surprising how unfunny this one. It’s as if they ran out of joke ideas after writing the other movies, and that really hurts the movie, since it was always a mix of humor and frenetic action. In fact, the action is so frenetic it’s dizzyingly hard to follow at times, and it isn’t nearly as impressive as previous movies that took its cues from classic Shaw Brothers and other HK martial arts classics.
Not having Po’s colleagues in the Furious Five also hurts the movie greatly, so instead, the movie turns to a slew of lesser-developed characters, both old and new, with some used better than others. There’s a whole side-journey involving Po’s father Ping and Li (James Hong, Bryan Cranston) as they search for their son, which often provides a welcome change from the Po/Zhen bits, but again, all the characters are just following the most standard storytelling formula. Other characters voiced by Ke Huy Quan and Ronny Chieng show up, say a few lines, and then are gone, neither of their characters offering much in terms of charm, personality, or anything particularly memorable.
Viola Davis does a fine job voicing what turns out to be a sub-standard villain, as we’re reminded of some of the better villains as her Chameleon captures them to their steal their martial arts skills using Po’s Staff of Wisdom. Things basically go along as expected until a big battle finale, and the relationship between Po and Zhen goes exactly where it’s expected to go, so it doesn’t feel like anything in the movie really does much to add to the mythos set up by earlier films.
Essentially, DreamWorks has succumbed to the same thing that’s afflicted both Pixar and Disney lately in terms of their animated features, because when doing something original just doesn’t pay off, it means going back to the well of a property that’s already fairly played out. Younger kids should enjoy themselves just fine, but other than a few fun moments, Kung Fu Panda 4 is mostly dull and quite uninspired. Rating: 5.5/10
IMAGINARY (Lionsgate)
From Blumhouse comes another high-concept horror film, this one the latest PG-13 film from Jeff Wadlow (Truth or Dare, Fantasy Island), starring DeWanda Wise (Jurassic World: Dominion) as Jessica, a woman who returns to her childhood home with her husband and two stepdaughters, as the younger one starts communicating with an imaginary friend that might be connected to Jessica’s own imaginary friend from childhood. But this friend, Chauncy Bear, may have malevolent intentions for Jessica’s entire family.
After the disappointing showing for Night Swim in January, a movie that quite liked that was distributed/marketed by Universal, one wonders if these Blumhouse high concept horror films may be running their course, and how Imaginary does will certainly control that narrative.
Lionsgate has embargoed reviews until Thursday night at 8pm, so you’ll have to wait until then to find out how much I absolutely fucking loathed this movie. This was absolute garbage.
Mini-Review: While Imaginary is about as high-concept horror as you can possibly get, essentially about an imaginary friend that was deserted by a young girl and who turns out to be quite evil when the now-woman returns to the house with her new family. Maybe you’ve seen the trailer or commercial in front of far-better horror movies (or before Five Nights at Freddy’s, which sucked), but for the most part, this is exactly what’s being touted… except that it’s not scary… Nor is it very good. And yet, this is still not the worst horror movie I’ve seen this year. (That would still be Founder’s Day.)
I mentioned Night Swim above, and I believe that I reviewed it over on that site that is now gone and quite liked it, but when you watch Imaginary and realize that it uses a very similar story about a family moving into a house and weird and bad things happening to them, then you may start thinking that Blumhouse may want to take a step away from this particular horror sub-genre for a bit.
DeWanda Wise (who is also one of the film’s producers) is perfectly fine, but so much of the focus is put on her younger stepdaughter Alice, played by Pyper Braun, possibly one of the most obnoxious and annoying child actors in recent memory. l know that it’s kind of mean to pick on a child actor, but you know what? There are plenty of young actors that could have pulled this role off better, but this was a combination of bad casting and just plain old bad direction.
My biggest issue with Imaginary is that it literally rips off Insidious, another Blumhouse production – I mean, it’s fairly blatant – so besides the typical cheap jump scares Wadlow is best known for, we get so much that just isn’t particularly original either. There’s even a pesky neighbor woman, kind of taking on the Lin Shaye role, someone who knows so much about what is going on and proceeds to tell the other characters ad nauseum via ridiculous exposition about what she knows… and the whole thing just gets more ridiculous the more words that come out of her mouth.
By now, Blumhouse should realize that these sorts of movies have to be at least partially fun to keep viewers on board, and Imaginary is just grim, going down this rabbit hole that seems to point to some past abuse suffered by Jessica as a girl but never really outright stating it. There’s also her aging father who is in a home and seemingly suffering from dementia, though it ends up being something related to the house and what happened decades earlier. He’s another character that could have easily been omitted, and the movie would have been just fine. Instead, it’s a disaster that is already teetering on the edge of going over a cliff by the third act.
Imaginary isn’t scary, it’s barely entertaining, and it’s a flagrant rip-off of much better movies, including quite a few from Blumhouse. It’s likely to leave even the most casual of horror fans disappointed. This may be one of Blumhouse’s worse movies since… well… Five Nights at Freddy’s, but this one combines bad writing with absolute incompetence, making it quite a bit worse.
Rating: 4/10
CABRINI (Angel Studios)
This is quite a different movie from faith-based film specialists Angel Studios, which is actually the new film from Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Monteverde, who had such an enormous hit in 2023 with Sound of Freedom. It stars Cristiana Dell'Anna as Mother Frances Cabrini, an Italian nun who is sent to New York City in the late 19th Century by the Vatican to run an orphanage for the impoverished kids of Five Points. Once she gets to New York with a group of sisters, Mother Cabrini realizes that she needs help, so she turns to the Archbishop (David Morse) and eventually, the city’s mayor (John Lithgow), only to be rebuffed, as she realizes that the anti-immigrant sentiment goes right to the top. Still, she fights to get the money and help she needs, eventually helping the city’s Italian community achieve the respect that they’ve build upon for over a century.
Mini-Review: I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this film, which is mostly a straight-ahead biopic, but being about a nun and being from faith-based film specialists, Angel Studios, I was expecting there to be a lot more praying and God-stuff. That really isn’t the case at all, even with the primary character being a nun, and it also involving the Vatican and a New York archbishop.
Even though I live not far from the former Five Points (just a few blocks away actually), I didn’t really know much about the country and city at the time, outside of what I saw in Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. Right off the bat, I was impressed by how Monteverde and his team recreated the impoverished, crime-ridden area and then contrasted the have-notes with the much wealthier New York City inhabitants of the time, presumably with a much smaller budget than Scorsese.
Dell’Anna is fantastic as Cabrini, giving a performance that – under another studio or with the “late” not-so-great Harvey Weinstein behind the movie – could have pushed her well into the awards season. I generally get the feeling from the movies Angel Studios is releasing over the course of this year that maybe they’re trying to get themselves into the awards race, and a movie like Cabrini could certainly take them seriously in the industry if it does semi-decent business and breaks out of the faith
Being that much of the film criticism community are liberal atheists (presumably), it’s easy to understand why there’s such a pushback against the “genre,” and why many filmmakers behind these movies don’t feel the urge to screen them for critics outside the bible belt, but Cabrini could just as easily been watched as a biopic about someone famous ala Bob Marley, Maestro, except that it has the added benefit of being somewhat educational about the history of someone who was honestly trying to do something first for the city’s immigrants and impoverished, and then for the rest of the country and world.
Honestly, Cabrini is a terrific biopic about a benevolent personality that (similar to the recent Ordinary Angel) does not feel the need to hit its audience over the head with the spirituality behind the storytelling. It’s just trying to tell semi-true-ish stories about good people trying to do good things in hopes of inspiring others to do the same, and there’s nothing really wrong with that.
At times, Cabrini may be a fairly traditional biopic, but Mother Cabrini is just a fascinating and inspirational woman from history who few will know about, and for that alone, Monteverde’s ability to tell her story in such a cinematic way makes Cabrini a worthwhile endeavor with a strong moral compass.
Rating: 8/10
THE BOX OFFICE CHART
1. Kung Fu Panda 4 (DreamWorks Animation/Universal) - $43 million N/A
2. Dune: Part Two (Warner Bros.) - $38.8 million -52%
3. Imaginary (Lionsgate) - $10.7 million N/A
4. Cabrini (Angel Studios) - $9.8 million N/A
5. Bob Marley: One Love (Paramount) - $4.1 million -45%
6. Ordinary Angels (Lionsgate) - $2.3 million -39%
7. The Chosen Season 4 Eps. 7 and 8 (Angel Studios) - $1.5 million -55%
8. Madame Web (Sony) - $1.4 million -56%
9. Migration (Universal) $1.2 million -52%
10. Wonka (Warner Bros) - $900k -48%
I guess this week’s “Chosen One” by default (of it being the only limited release I’ve seen) is…
LOVE LIES BLEEDING (A24)
Saint Maud filmmaker Rose Glass returns with this thriller, starring Kristen Stewart as Lou, a manager at a gym in a small Western town where she meets drifter and bodybuilder Jackie (Katy M. O’Brian from The Mandalorian), and the two fall in love. When Lou’s sister (Jena Malone) ends up in the hospital at the hands of her husband (Dave Franco), Lou threatens to do something about it, but it’s Jackie who does something about it, putting them both at odds with Lou’s criminal father, played by Ed Harris. This will open in New York and L.A. this Friday and then expand nationwide on March 15.
Mini-Review: I don’t remember being nearly as big a fan of Saint Maud as others were, but it’s also a movie that got delayed for over a year due to the pandemic after debuting at the September festivals in 2019. I honestly can’t remember when, how or where I saw it, as I got it mixed up with The Lodge quite a bit. But at least Glass’ second movie is being released shortly after its Sundance premiere, where it received mostly rave reviews.
This is set in such a different setting for Glass, rural America, essentially a Red State where guns and homophobia are prevalent, which just makes the romance and relationship between Lou and Jackie so much more precious. We first meet Lou as she’s being pursued by a bubbly but annoying co-worker, played by Anna Baryshnikov, so we know right up front about her queerness, whereas Jackie is actually being F’ed in a car by Franco’s character when we meet her, in hope of getting a job, which she does as she is introduced to his father-in-law Lou Sr, who runs a shooting range.
This may be one of Stewart’s stronger performances, having shown some serious growth as an actor in recent years by working with great directors like Olivier Assayas and Pablo Larrain. In Glass, she may have found a filmmaker akin to Carey Mulligan with Emerald Fennell, one who cast her in a role so perfectly suited for her abilities but also a character
This is a film filled with great dark humor that often counters other parts that are just chillingly dark. In other words, this is just a perfect film for A24 to get out there to the audiences who thrive on this sort of edgy material, even if one wonders whether actual Red States would be open to the love story at the center of what is essentially a rural noir story.
While Love Lies Bleeding does veer away from the horror and supernatural elements of Saint Maud, Glass delivers a gory crime-thriller on par with Nicolas Refn’s Drive in the way the story plays out with so many unexpected twists and turns. It’s a rare case where a sophomore effort far exceeds a filmmaker’s debut, since it shows far more range and makes you wonder what Ms. Glass might be able to do with an even larger budget.
Rating: 8/10
AMERICAN DREAMER (Vertical)
Peter Dinklage, Shirley MacLaine, and Matt Dillon star in this dramedy written by Theodore Melfi, which I saw at Tribeca way back in 2022, and it’s finally getting a limited release this weekend. It’s been so long since I’ve seen the movie, and I don’t think I liked it very much, so I decided not to rewatch again to write an actual review. In the film, Dinklage plays Phil Loder, a divorced economics professor hoping someday to own his own home, leading to him striking a dal with MacLaine’s Astrid Finnelli, a lonely widow who is near death who offers her estate for pennies, but under specific circumstances. This is actually based on a true story that was told on Chicago Public Radio’s “The American Life,” and I remember when I saw it thinking that there were so many ridiculous subplots that it made it hard to believe any of it was true. It’s a little amusing that this is being released the week after Problemista, which has a similar awkward relationship between a dreamer and an awful older woman.
ACCIDENTAL TEXAN (Roadside Attractions)
Mark Bristols’ dramedy, based on the novel “Chocolate Lizards” by Cole Thompson, stars Rudy Pankow as Erwin, a Harvard student whose first professional acting job in New Orleans goes so poorly that he runs away, only to have his car break down in the middle of Texas oil country with no phone service. He turns to diner waitress Faye (Carrie-Anne Moss) who offers to help him find a mechanic to fix his car but with no money, he turns to local oil driller Merle (Thomas Haden Church), who is also nearly bankrupt. This sounds like it could be fun, especially with Church, who is such an underrated comedic actor we haven’t seen that much of in recent years. Just didn’t find the time to watch for review.
NIGHT SHIFT (Quiver Distribution)
This haunted hotel movie comes from the China Brothers, making their directorial debut, with Phoebe Tonkin as Gwen Taylor, a young woman working her first night shift at a hotel when she begins to think she’s being followed by a dangerous person from her past, but then realizes the hotel might actually be haunted.
RICKY STANICKY (Prime Video)
Hitting Prime Video this Thursday is the new comedy from Peter Farrelly, who seems to be returning to his high-concept comedies after a brief foray into Oscar territory with his Best Picture winning, Green Book. It stars Zac Efron, Andrew Santino, and Jermaine Fowler (The Blackness) as childhood friend who pull a prank by creating an imaginary guy named Ricky Stanicky out of trouble, and decades later, they still use him as an alibi until their partners get suspicious. They hire a washed-up actor named “Rock Hard” Rod, played by John Cena, to pretend to be Stanicky, but his raunchy behavior makes him wonder if that was the best move. This sounds like it could go either way, and I’m a little bummed I wasn’t able to watch this to review, because I do enjoy some of Farrelly’s sillier comedies, but this will be readily available to stream this weekend, so there’s no rush on seeing it.
NYC REPERTORY
The single new series this weekend is “A Touch of Wang Hongwei,” focusing on the Chinese actor, screening Jia Zhanke’s A Touch of Sin (2013) and Chao Yang’s Crosscurrent (2016).
“Bad Actress” has one more screening of Robert Aldrich’s classic thriller, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, as well as two screenings of Fassbinder’s Veronika Voss (1982).
“Forever Young” will once again screen La Haine and Ghost World, as well as Tsia Ming-Liang’s Rebels of the Neon God (1992) and Roger Kumble’s thriller Cruel Intentions (1999).
Just in time for Oscar weekend (you can go to the Metrograph and watch the Oscars on the big screen!), “Mad House or Mad World” will be showing Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
“Animal Farm: Pigs” will screen Chris Noonan’s Babe (1995), co-written and produced by George Miller, this weekend.,
“Also Starring… John Cazale” will follow the sad tale of Fredo Corleone in The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, which will both screen again on Thursday, as will Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 thriller, The Conversation.
“Remember Every Frame: Edited by Dede Allen” will screen Warren Beatty’s Reds (1981) on Saturday and Sunday.
I’m quite bummed that I was out of town last weekend and haven’t been able to get to this excellent “Japanese Horror” series, which apparently, has been selling out most of its screenings, but there are more screenings this weekend, including some repeat showings. House, Godzilla, Dark Water, and Cure will screen on Friday, as well as much more over the weekend.
It’s strange to see MOMA doing a series on “Fleischer Cartoons,” just a week or so after I went out to Bushwick to see Tommy Stathes’ latest Cartoon Carnival, which focused on Fleischer cartoons, but that’s running from this coming Thursday through March 14. Again, it’s nice to see MOMA getting involved with celebrating these great vintage cartoons, but anyone who has seen Stathes’ programs, knows that he’s the real deal.
“Snubbed 2: The Performances” continues through Oscar weekend with screenings of Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls (2018), The Heartbreak Kid (1972), and the Carl Reiner-directed All of Me (1984). There will also be a 10th Anniversary screening of Muppets Most Wanted (2014) on Saturday and Sunday.
This weekend’s “Late Night Favorites” include David Fincher’s Fight Club and the 1988 doc about the New York avant-garde scene, Mondo New York.
Bette Gordon’s Variety will screen in 35mm on Thursday, and Clint Eastwood’s The Bridges of Madison County (1995), co-starring Meryl Streep (one of her 21 Oscar nominations), will screen on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, also in 35mm
My #1 movie OF ALL TIME, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil will play three times on Monday, March 11. Sadly, I’m not sure I can get over there since I have other things to see that day.
That’s it for this week. Next week, there’s Mark Wahlberg in Arthur the King and Sir Anthony Hopkins in One Life, The American Society of Magical Negroes, plus other things expanding wider, mostly.
Two Zimmer releases in a row! #FilmBlessed