THE WEEKEND WARRIOR (“Print Edition”) for 2/13/26
Reviews: Crime 101, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, Nirvanna: The Band - The Show - The Movie, Cold Storage
Most of what I had to say about this week’s movies were in this week’s episode of The Weekend Warrior Show, which includes my special guest David Poland of The Hot Button, but I didn’t include any reviews, so I’m going to get those out of the way now. Oh, and you can watch this week’s episode below, too:
CRIME 101 (MGM Amazon)
While I wasn’t as big a fan of Bart Layton’s American Animals as others, I was interested in seeing him step up to a bigger-budget studio movie with more of an A-list cast. Fortunately, he was working from his own adaptation of a Don Winslow novella for this one, and you can really tell that he mostly has the storytelling chops to make it work as a film.
We meet Chris Hemsworth’s “Davis,” as he’s pulling off a diamond heist for $3 million in jewels, and we learn from the investigating detective, a weary vet named Lou (Mark Ruffalo), that this robbery is part of a streak where the perpetrator commits no acts of violence and leaves no clues to their part in the robbery. At the same time, we meet Halle Berry’s Sharon, a high-powered exec at an insurance company that insures the belongings of the wealthiest of billionaires . She’s currently trying to convince one such billionaire to sign a policy, but she’s also hoping to be made a partner. Instead, she’s essentially demoted to investigate what really happened with the diamonds their company has insured.
Hemsworth’s character is the type of quiet criminal protagonist we’ve seen in so many prior movies, and he has trouble communicating with women, something we learn from an earlier encounter with an escort. When he meets a pretty young woman named Maya (Monica Barbaro from A Complete Unknown) who rear-ends his car, he uses it as an opportunity to get an awkward date with her. Maya’s alarm bells are ringing due to her date “Mike’s” inability to reveal anything about himself.
It’s clear that Layton’s intention was to make a Michael Mann-style L.A. crime action-thriller, and maybe it wouldn’t feel so weird if Crime 101 didn’t include two actors who have headlined previous Mann films in Hemsworth and even Nick Nolte, who plays Mike’s mentor and fence only referred to as “Money.” Thinking that Mike might be losing his nerve, Money puts Barry Keoghan’s motorcycle-riding thief on the job, but the much younger thief is also far more violent, and he starts going after Mike’s contacts to poach his big scores.
There are so many elements in play here to try and keep track of, and while comparisons to Mann’s Heat may abound, it really has more in common with Thief or Collateral, as Crime 101 languishes in the slow, methodical way it introduces its characters and situations. This includes many scenes with just two characters having encounters, but not all of those moments add much to the overall story.
At a certain point, it feels like Hemsworth’s character is almost forgotten to focus more on Ruffalo’s detective. As solid as Ruffalo is for this task, at a certain point, it’s Berry who delivers some of the film’s best scenes, as she is a feisty no BS person. Even. Jennifer Jason Leigh even has a single “encounter” with Ruffalo as his wife with whom he’s going through a trial separation, but was that scene even necessary? Nolte is long past the point of being able to give a convincing performance, so it was sadder to see him trying his best. I guess it’s nice to see him at all in anything.
Otherwise, there isn’t a ton of action, but when there is, it’s a couple solid L.A. chase sequences that help get the viewer excited about what’s to come. If Crime 101 didn’t pay off as well as it does in its final act, it might have been considered a loss, but Layton proves he was the right filmmaker to bring Winslow’s crime thriller to life, and his screenplay and cast do deliver and make it worth getting through the slower moments leading up to a great last act.
Rating: 7.5/10
GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE (Briarcliff)
There’s nothing that’s gotten me more excited this year than the return of filmmaker Gore Verbinski, best known for directing the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies; as well as The Ring, easily one of the best horror remakes ever made; an Oscar-winning animated feature in Rambo; and one of my personal faves, the oddball horror movie, A Cure for Wellness. (In fact, I wrote about how excited I was about Gore’s return during my short-lived run as a features writers at Collider.)
It’s been nine years since A Cure for Wellness, a movie that bombed so badly, it seemingly put Verbinski into the proverbial “director’s jail,” but now, he’s out with an equally oddball sci-fi action thriller starring Sam Rockwell, as a crazed man who bursts in Norm’s Diner (apparently, a real place in L.A.) looking like a homeless person, ranting that the future is fucked “because of the kids.” He needs to assemble a team from the patrons in order to put a stop to this horrible but inevitable future. Apparently, this is the 14th or 15th time he’s come back in time to do this, and he eventually does managed to convince a few patrons to join him, including Susan (Juno Temple), Mark and Janet (Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz), Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), and a few others. But first challenge is to get out of diner, which is now surrounded by armed police, and according to the nameless time traveller, some of them won’t even survive that.
Working from a script by Matthew Robinson, Good Luck, Have Fun, allows Verbinski to have fun in a way that might not have been possible while making movies for Disney. It’s hard to think that there’s a better opening for a movie than Rockwell’s opening rant-slash-monologue to the diner patrons, trying to convince them he’s not crazy, and it’s hard to imagine that the movie can get even better, though it gives Verbinski a chance to share his commentary, not only on A.I. but also young people’s obsession with their smart phones.
We learn more about some of his team as the film cuts back to show their lives leading up to convening at Norm’s. Mark and Janet work together at a high school with Mark being an awkward substitute teacher having to deal with his entire classroom of students staring at their phones and ignoring him. When he touches one of their phones, they turn into zombies prepared to kill all adults. Susan’s son was killed in a school shooting, and she discovers a company that offers to clone people’s kids, while Richardson’s Ingrid has a condition where technology causes her to have nosebleeds. Her own problems begin when here boyfriend (Tom Taylor) is sent a VR headset, and he stays in that world 24/7. Some characters don’t get this treatment, making them less interesting and more obvious as fodder to die early.
As the group continue their quest, the movie’s last act just starts getting weirder and weirder with parts of it reminding me of Kyle Mooney’s underrated recent horror-comedy Y2K, which may have been coming from a similar place even if it’s clearly meant to be a period piece set specifically in 1999.
Like Verbinski’s own cross of The Terminator and The Matrix, the results are as crazy and sardonically witty as Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, one of my all-time favorite movies. Verbinski’s latest won’t be for everyone, but once you get tuned in, it’s a crazy fun time at the movies.
Rating: 7.5/10
NIRVANNA THE BAND - THE SHOW - THE MOVIE (NEON)
I first heard about this movie when it premiered at TIFF, as part of “Midnight Madness” last September and eventually won the Audience Award for that programming track, so of course, I was immediately interested. Just not interested enough to try to learn more about the webseries on which it’s based or to seek out a trailer, since that’s just not something I do. After missing a number of screenings, I settled on watching it on a screener. Granted, this might be the type of movie that needs or deserves to be seen with a rowdy audience, but having never watched the web series on which this was based or known a single thing about it or those involved, that didn’t concern me.
In the opening, we meet Matt Johnson (also the film’s director*) and Jay McCarrol, best friends who have some sort of band, I think? It’s only two of them, and only one of them plays an instrument. Jay also seems to write all the songs, too, but maybe they’re doing musical improv or something. I don’t know, because it’s never explained to those who are watching this and learning about “Nirvanna the Band” for the first time. Apparently, their goal at the beginning is to get a gig at Toronto’s Rivoli, which is a performance venue of some kind. Not quite sure why they’re so obsessed with this idea, but 17 years later, they still haven’t succeeded, and Matt is constantly hatching up crazy plans to make it happen. Is this seriously what the webseries was about? (*And I realized later that he starred and acted in Blackberry, which I quite enjoyed.)
When one of the craziest of plans, skydiving from the CN Tower into the Blue Jays’ home arena Roger Centre (once known as the “Sky Dome”) fails to make the intended splash, Matt’s next plan is to travel back in time in an RV souped-up “Back to the Future” style. And it works, but it leaves them stranded in 2008, as they head back to their flat and get more of the “Orbitz” used to power their “time machine.” They realize they need to avoid encountering their younger selves (who look exactly the same – these guys don’t age in 17 years?) thereby making changes that might affect the future… you know… “Back to the Future” style.
That Robert Zemeckis classic acts as such an obvious North Star for Johnson and McCarol that the movie never makes much of an effort to be its own thing or even make the viewer understand why they should care about any of it. Ultimately, McCarol becomes a massive star, leaving his buddy behind, but then something happens that makes him want to use the time machine to fix things, only making things worse.
Listen, I love Toronto and cherish all the time I’ve spent there over my years, and this is very much a Toronto movie with lots of familiar locations, but (as one former editor once told me about myself), it’s JUST NOT FUNNY. I just don’t see what is so funny about this duo, essentially ripping off “Back to the Future,” giving it a Canadian spin (what the fuck is “Orbitz”?), and trying to get uninitiated Americans to laugh.
To be fair, there are some impressive “set pieces” the duo pull off, involving the CN Tower and Rogers Stadium, but that’s interspersed with a lot of goofing around, sometimes involving innocent passers-by, who bring absolutely nothing to the table. Much of Nirvanna (The Movie) reminds me of when the Impractical Jokers Movie brought some of my favorite cable improv prank comics to the big screen. In that case, I was already familiar with what they did; I already knew their individual personalities and found them to be funny. By comparison, this is just an awful introduction to this group and their M.O. for those who have never heard of them, since both characters are absolutely insufferable. Unfortunately, that’s the only way for me to make any sort of judgment on whether this works or not, and to me, this was as annoying as the Borat movie the first time I saw it, with a similar level of overhype* before I finally had a chance to see it.
In other words, there’s a far better movie involving time travel this weekend, one that’s funnier and crazier than this one, so skip Nirvanna Etc. and go see Gore Verbinski’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die instead. (*Important Note: I watched this movie and formulated my opinion before seeing this movie’s INSANE Rotten Tomatoes score, but that didn’t alter my opinion of this movie, and as always, I have to be bluntly honest when reviewing something. Sorry, Canadians!)
Rating: 5.5/10
COLD STORAGE (Samuel Goldwyn)
Another movie I knew next to nothing about before watching it is this horror-comedy (of sorts), involving a deadly fungal strain that’s been released and then contained in a facility that’s turned into a storage space before being released again. Apparently, it’s written by one of my favorite screenwriters, David Koepp, based on his own book of the same name.
It begins with the fall of the Skylab satellite in 1979 and a tank that crashes in Australia with something inside that’s investigated by the US military, including Liam Neeson’s Robert Quinn. Once there, his team, including Sosie Bacon’s Dr. Hero Martins and Lesley Manville’s Trini arrives, they find a number of bodies on a roof that have been exploded outwards, and Dr. Martins soon gets infected herself. The survivors are able to take samples, which are stored away in a facility in the American desert but many decades later, it’s been shut down and replaced by a storage facility. Staffing this place is Joe Keery’s Travis and Georgina Campbell’s Naomi, the typical storage facility staff who barely give a crap, but when the latter’s baby daddy shows up spewing some sort of green slime, things start to get weird. Word gets back to the retired Quinn that this is happening, through a younger military liaison named Abigail (Ellora Torchia), and having seen the effects of this virus, he must take the first flight to the facility to take car of things.
For whatever reason, Vanessa Redgrave shows up at the storage facility, disappears into one of the units to take a nap, then shows up armed with a gun to save the two youngsters from an infected biker, part of a gang who show up with the owner, and who all immediately get infected. Redgrave’s character than disappears, never to be seen or heard from again.
Directed by someone named Jonny Campbell, this is so obviously a first feature from someone who has mainly directed television, by the hacky way the whole thing is pulled off. It’s a movie full of horrible and ugly CG visual effects and characters with very little personality, and sadly, the screenplay by the normally great David Koepp is a large part of the problem. (Koepp is one of the film’s main producers, so he can’t even pass the buck about writing the script, then passing it off to others. I have to assume the book is better.) But the overuse of visual FX includes the way it’s used to show the fungus spreading through various characters’ bodies, plus there are a lot of gross-out gore that’s only partially effective since that, too, seems to be mostly be using visual FX.
Cold Storage tries so hard to achieve the heights of so many better horror-comedies, but it’s such an obvious cookie-cutter effort that wastes so many talented, veteran actors. This film did very little for me, and it’s a movie that has no right to be getting any sort of theatrical release, especially in such a busy weekend.
Rating: 4/10
Apparently, Mubi is releasing Akinola Davies’s Gotham Award-winning My Father’s Shadow in select cities this weekend as opposed to last weekend, but I did write about it in last week’s column.
Some of the other movies out this week (some on streaming or digital) include…
SWEETNESS (Saban Films)
BY DESIGN (Music Box Films) (I think I saw about ten minutes of this at Sundance virtual last year)
HONEY BUNCH (Shudder)
THE ROSE: COME BACK TO ME (CJ 4DPLEX)
THE REPERTORY ROUNDUP
I don’t think I’m ready to bring this back to the length I’ve been covering the local repertory stuff in the past, but I will draw attention to a couple series around town. Starting Friday, FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER, is doing “Looking for Ms. Keaton,” as in Diane Keaton, and they’re showing some of the late actress’s better movies, including Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, Interiors, and Love and Death (which I saw when I was way too young!), Bruce Beresfords’ Crimes of the Heart, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and of course, Francis Ford Coppola’s trilogy of The Godfather, Godfather Part 2, and what is now being called The Godfather Coda.
FILM FORUM is doing a cool tribute to New York City with “Tenement Stories: From Immigrants to Bohemians” for the next few weeks, showing a wide array of movies stretching across many decades from old silent films to the original 1960 West Side Story. Lots of great stuff in here.
And of course, I have to give a nod to my beloved METROGRAPH, which has a great line-up for Valentine’s Day weekend with some of my favories, Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep, PT Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love, and lots more. (Note that many of the Valentine’s Day screenings are already sold out.)
Okay, I’m easing my way back into the Repertory Roundup… you can find out what else is playing at the links below.
NITEHAWK CINEMA PROSPECT PARK & WILLIAMSBURG
BAM (BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC)
Next week is gonna be another down weekend with the strongest movie being Lionsgate’s faith-based sequel, I Can Only Imagine 2, plus A24 is releasing How to Make a Killing, starring Glenn Powell and Margaret Qualley; and 20th Century has the horror film Psycho Killer. I’ve seen none of them at the time of this writing.