Inspired in part by 1970s experimental filmmaker Nikos Nikolaidis and jumpstarted in earnest in 2009 by Yorgos Lanthimos with “Dogtooth,” and perhaps to a lesser extent Panos H. Koutras’ “A Woman’s Way,” the so-called Greek Weird Wave movement quickly spread like wildfire in the country. “Attenberg” soon followed in 2010, and the proliferating genre soon gave everyone in the country permission— maybe even actively encouraged all filmmakers—to fly their freak flag. And fly it they did, but of course, often remotely, unusually, and with deadpan, comedically inscrutable sensibilities nearly being a prerequisite.

Two decades later, the movement is still going strong and receives an extra dose of bizarro weirdness, body horror, and surreal eerie beauty in director Yannis Veslemes’ (“Norway”) odd, and yes, deadpan, po-faced meditation on grief in “She Loved Blossoms More.”

“Mom used to love horror movies,” one of three brothers trying to bring their long-gone mother back from the dead using a lo-fi analog time travel closet they’ve created says softly, wistfully to the others, referencing, “Exorcist II,” nodding to its colorful hysteria and bananas grotesqueries. Yep, it’s that kind of film, and it’s clearly borrowing some of its outlandishly grisly queues (not to mention some arty European ’70s giallo and horrorsploitation from the likes of Mario Bava and Jesús Franco).

Imaginative and claustrophobic, “She Loved Blossoms More” centers on three stoner, slacker-like, but inventive brothers (Panos Papadopoulos, Julio Giorgos Katsis, Aris Balis) living in a dour family mansion of dank squalor trying to reconfigure the time-travel machine they’re currently working on to bring back their dearly departed mom.

But the device’s various imperfections cause myriad horrors: a pig that returns as revolting melted mince meat, half alive, a chicken with its head cut off that still seems to thrive (and grow teeth from its neck), and later on, something even more horrendous when jealousy means a flirtatious paramour is thrown into the gruesome mix. “We beam little animals into alternate dimensions beyond the edges of space and time,” they explain matter-of-factly about their abnormal experimentations replete with Atari-like 1980s in-the-garage-like scrappy technology. Think a warped version of Amblin or Shane Carruth’s lo-fi, lo-budget, “Primer” sci-fi movie if it were more of a deliriously ghastly and darkly comedic acid trip.

Things become more fraught and tense because their overbearing and delusional father (Dominique Pinon, from Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro’s dark fantasy absurdities, yet another clue of the film’s eccentric visionary influences) gives them a deadline. They’re bringing Mom back before Christmas, and just a couple of days, or else.

Sandra Abuelghanam Sarafanova plays a coquette-ish minx who entrances the brothers and gets caught up in their horrific experiment to visually outlandish degrees. The film and this section are moody, atmospheric, and deeply unsettling, but super imaginative, at least.

Produced in part by Christos V. Konstantakopoulos (“The Lobster”), edited by Yorgos Mavropsaridis (“The Favorite,” “Poor Things”), and strikingly shot by cinematographer Christos Karamanis (“Chevalier”), Greek Weird Wave fingerprints are all over the bizarre movie. Still, Veslemes clearly takes things in a more surreal hellscape horror direction— shocking Mario Bava bathed-in-color vibrance by way of phantastic early David Cronenberg—that feels very singular and distinct.

Mind-bendingly perverse, profoundly strange but at least memorable—though a little monotone and too deadpan for its own good at times—“She Loved Blossoms More” is part dark comedy, part freakshow horror, and part plaintive and sad meditation on grief with freakish and deranged sci-fi flourishes.

Arguably stronger for its striking visuals and inventively hideous practical effects than its plot or actors—the droning intonation technique of the genre perhaps a little tedious—“She Loved Blossoms” is a little slow to gel at first with the brothers moping around their home, trying to solve their problem, but then “the space-time continuum is disrupted.” Things take on a comically phantasmagorical bad trip detour, which becomes disturbingly amusing and outrageously wild.

Decidedly low-budget and sparse, but seriously making the most of its crazy, gory effects and nightmarishly psychedelic rapture, one can only imagine what Veslemes could pull off with top-shelf actors and a tighter script, but he should 100% hold onto some of these inventive, creative collaborators, the DP, and editor in particular.

Grief evolves, or as one great man said, “Grief changes shape, but it never ends.” To that end, in “She Loved Blossoms More,” it mutates horribly, vomits, explodes, catches fire, goes on the fritz, and turns into a vivid hallucination that’s discerning enough to pause for moments of odd poetry and dolorous melancholy. Honestly, it’s all vibes and mood—further bolstered by Veslemes’ wonderfully uncanny and supernatural score, with its elements of peculiar synth-wave, ghostly cries, and abstract musique concrète. Enchanting and delirious—with some unconventional Guy Maddin-ish vibrations too— “She Loved Blossoms More” is so peculiar and sometimes atypically hilarious that it may only attract adventurous Capital C cinephiles, but the daring Veslemes probably wouldn’t want it any other way. At the very least, you can’t wait to see what this audacious filmmaker does next. [B]

The post ‘She Loved Blossoms More’ Review: Grief Takes Audaciously Bizarro Shape In Greek Weird Wave Horror Oddity [Tribeca] appeared first on We Are Actors.

When I was a kid, my mom steered us toward toys that looked like G.I. Joe or Transformers action figures, but weren’t. Their faces were wack, the joints all wrong, such that the limbs didn’t move right, or else they popped out altogether. Sure, these off-brand imitations cost less than the real thing — that made a difference on my meager allowance — but no amount of imagination could turn my busted GoBots into Optimus Prime.

Now, if 10-year-old me could’ve predicted the future (the way Cassie Webb can), he would’ve seen this disappointment as valuable practice for a movie like “Madame Web,” a hollow Sony-made Spider-Man spinoff with none of the charm you expect from even the most basic superhero movie. The title mutant — who’s never actually identified by that name — hails from the margins of the Marvel multiverse, which suggests that, much as Sony did with “Morbius” and “Venom,” the studio is scrounging to find additional fringe characters to exploit.

In her original pulp form, Madame Web was an elderly, blind wheelchair user with uncanny psychic powers. Here, she’s an athletic Gen X ambulance driver who experiences vivid visions of terrible things that are about to happen, early enough to prevent them. She can also “be in more than one place at the same time.” Not the worst abilities to have, but hardly deserving of a standalone origin story. Her powers prove pretty boring once the pattern establishes itself. The premonitions are freaky, like “Final Destination” flashes, but Cassie’s “let’s try that again” do-overs render each situation less interesting.

Even with an actor as clever as Dakota Johnson (who seems to suspect she could be caught in the next “Catwoman,” covering her bets with eccentric line readings), “Madame Web” was never going to touch the relatively high-concept, Disney-made Avengers movies. The script is confusing, the action stale and the visual effects cheap. A recurring device that places Cassie at the center of what looks like a giant plasma ball, surrounded by static tendrils, is downright embarrassing. But guess what? Tickets still cost just as much as they would for a more canonical Marvel movie. So why settle for the knock-off?

For reasons it would spoil the film’s Spider-adjacent agenda to reveal, most of “Madame Web” unfolds in 2003 New York City — all but the opening, which takes place on one of those staged “Amazon jungle” sets you see in films like “Dora and the Lost City of Gold.” Weeks away from giving birth, Cassie’s pregnant mother Constance (Kerry Bishé) travels all the way to Peru to find a rare spider with healing abilities. She’s a scientist who doesn’t believe in legends of Las Arañas, “mythical spider people who run across the treetops.” But maybe she should.

Betrayed by expedition sponsor Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), Constance dies in the jungle, but not before being bitten by one of the elusive spiders, who passes its powers on to her unborn daughter. Now, I know this is a comic book movie, but if you break down the plot, it sounds a lot more like Greek mythology: Cassie (short for Cassandra) grows up an orphan in New York, unlocking her future-forecasting abilities after a near-death experience at age 30. Unlike with her namesake, people tend to believe her.

Ezekiel also lives in Manhattan, obsessing over a recurring vision of his own (he stole a spider and got a slightly different set of hazily defined powers for his trouble). The monomaniacal bore has but one goal, and that’s to stop the three young women he sees killing him from carrying out that prophecy. Before Ezekiel can break their necks on a train, Cassie anticipates the attack and saves their lives. Ezekiel’s would-be victims are just teenagers — Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced) and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor) — but they possess the potential to become Spider-Women, and he’s threatened by that.

Frankly, the world already seems a little overcrowded with arachnid-related superheroes, what with the seemingly infinite swarm of variations introduced by Sony’s recent Spider-Verse movies. Instead of clarifying all that confusion, Clarkson’s movie (co-written with three others) merely widens the web, teasing a future vigilante trio, plus whatever Cassie’s supposed to be by the end.

Future crossover potential aside, Clarkson’s approach feels like a throwback to the kind of unimaginative superhero movies Hollywood produced before Marvel got its act together over at Disney. But this was made at another studio altogether. Even when shooting on location, the movie feels like a backlot stunt show. While the ambulance driving scenes are decent, taking advantage of a certain practical quality, vfx-heavy interactions with Ezekiel (whom the girls call “ceiling guy” because he crawls upside-down) look laughably unconvincing. Even his costume is an embarrassment, though the mask does serves to cover Rahim’s mouth — it’s a shame to hide the gifted French actor, though his lips never seem to be in sync with what he’s saying, suggesting the performance didn’t go as planned.

By contrast, Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney bring an endearing irreverence to their characters that could be read as camp, if needed. There are signs (loose ends, really) that “Madame Web” wanted to be more ambitious and eccentric than it turned out. One can imagine a version where the character was romantically interested in fellow paramedic — and future uncle — Ben (Adam Scott), which might have strengthened her connection to you-know-who.

Instead, Cassie spends most of the film babysitting the three young ladies, surrounded by less-than-sly nods to year-2003 consumerism: vintage Pepsi products, a classic Calvin Klein ad, plus a table dance to Britney Spears’ “Toxic.” In the end, “Madame Web” feels like a cross between an extended soda commercial and a teaser trailer for still more spinoffs. “Whatever the future holds, we’ll be ready,” Cassie promises. But you don’t have to be a soothsayer to see this particular franchise is D.O.A. — or a snob to expect better.

The post ‘Madame Web’ Review: Any Way You Spin It, Dakota Johnson’s Marvel Entry Feels Superfluous appeared first on We Are Actors.

It seems like only yesterday that we were all ragging on the millennial cohort for youthful foibles like excess avocado consumption and crushing student debt accrual. But time, with its trademark humorlessness, has marched on and suddenly, the self-same kids who coined “adulting” to hashtag their Insta stories about that time they put up a shelf, are discovering how much less fun it is to be adult-ed — ready or not.

In the enjoyably salty-till-it-gets-too-sweet “Scrambled,” Nellie (Leah McKendrick, also writer and debut director) is definitely in the “not” category, but that doesn’t matter to her ovaries. At 34, they’re starting to slow down their egg production, forcing hard-partying, sexually adventurous Nellie, whose journey to date has been an exercise in life-decision-making avoidance, to consider her options. When exactly should you let go of the child inside you, in order to embrace the possibility of having a child inside you?

This is fertile territory into which McKendrick implants a zingy, quippy, R-rated comedy, inseminated by a TMI sense of humor which is as unapologetic about Nellie’s horny-but-directionless lifestyle as the mid-aughts comedies of Judd Apatow were about her manchild equivalents. But here, the sheer injustice that is men having a much longer fertility window than women gives Nellie’s wising-up a sharper, more urgent edge.

This sets “Scrambled,” in its best moments, apart from spiritual predecessors like “Bridesmaids” and “Trainwreck,” which also mined the comic potential of women with a 20-something mindset hurtling into their mid-30s, but didn’t get quite so biological about it. In McKendrick’s screenplay, inspired by her own experiences, the antagonist is not so much society, with its coupling-up expectations, as the female reproductive system itself, which knows how to kill a party vibe by standing at the edge of the dance floor disapprovingly tapping its watch.

Every generation has a tendency to approach each life-stage crisis as though they were the first to ever experience it. But in Nellie’s case, there really is a difference: It’s only relatively recently that fertility clinics have offered accessible, if hardly inexpensive, egg-freezing services that allow the unready woman to kick the motherhood decision down the road a bit. After a needling exchange with her gruff father (Clancy Brown) and an encounter with an old friend (June Diane Raphael, essentially reprising her blunt-spoken OB-GYN role from “New Girl”), Nellie, a newly single, Etsy jewelry seller who’s been further impoverished by the endless round of wedding gifts, baby presents and bridesmaids’ dresses she has had to buy, borrows some money from her smug financier brother (Andrew Santino, “Dave”) and signs up. Belly injections, hormonal shifts and a fair bit of soul-searching ensue.

Also: soulmate searching. In parallel, Nellie decides to reconnect with a series of former hookups, to see if among them there is a potential longterm partner that she hadn’t noticed at the time. The dates, titled “The Prom King” “The Nice Guy,” “The Peter Pan” etc., are neatly scathing little cringe-comedy sketches that bring out the best in McKendrick’s acidic observational skills. But their episodic nature also feels like it would be better suited to a TV format.

That impression is enhanced by Julia Swain’s glossy, close-up camerawork, McKendrick’s own gamely down-to-earth performance and a deep bench of supporting characters who are written and cast well enough to warrant their own expanded storylines. Ego Nwodim as Nellie’s best friend Sheila is a case in point: Her apparent bafflement at her own pregnant-and-married status (we first meet Nellie while Sheila is begging her for drugs at her own wedding) is a funny note to play that deserves more than her truncated screen time.

Despite the low-budget, autobiographical indie credentials, “Scrambled” also functions as a Hollywood calling card, and given that McKendrick is slated to script a couple of high-profile IP projects in “Grease” prequel “Summer Lovin’” and the legacy sequel in the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” franchise, it works like a charm in that regard. But perhaps that’s also the reason that, after finding fresh, enjoyably dirty-minded material in clichéd situations in the early going, McKendrick’s film eventually succumbs to formula, contriving increasingly credulity-stretching scenarios to get Nellie’s self-empowerment and strength-through-sisterhood arcs where they need to go.

In particular, there’s an awkwardly over-earnest monologue delivered to the remarkably forgiving miscarriage support group that Nellie accidentally crashes, a patronizing plotline involving a judgy older next-door neighbor (Vee Kumari) and a frankly grisly ending which features voiceover narration of such breathless, new-dawn optimism that it might have been scripted as a commercial for the oocyte cryopreservation lobby. “Scrambled” is a lot of fun when it’s not trying to also deliver uplift, but it ultimately proves that white, middle-class American women in their 30s can can defeat any obstacle that stands between them and the unfettered life they want, except screenwriting convention.

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For those who know, the true story of Bass Reeves has long been one of those elusive properties that felt made for film or television treatment. Born in slavery. Conscripted into the Confederate Army. Escaped and sheltered among Indigenous people. Deputized as a U.S. Marshal and so famous he’s the alleged inspiration for the Lone Ranger. Not to mention one of the all-time great historical mustaches.

Every detail in Reeves’ biography is wild, but for reasons — or “reasons,” since we all know the reason — a filmed recounting of that biography has been restricted to fleeting episodic TV mentions in places like Drunk History and Timeless. So there’s no question that executive producer Taylor Sheridan deserves some credit for using his bottomless reservoir of Paramount+ clout to get a Bass Reeves limited series out of development hell and onto the air. I put “Letting more people know about Bass Reeves” in the “Absolute good” category.

Unfortunately, I put Paramount+’s Lawmen: Bass Reeves in the “Inoffensively mediocre” category. An oddly disjointed series with very little voice or perspective, Lawmen: Bass Reeves benefits tremendously from David Oyelowo‘s central performance and from Sheridan’s impressive ability to attract high-profile guest stars for underwritten non-roles. But its answer to the question, “Why tell Bass Reeves’ story?” is basically, “Because he has a very busy Wikipedia entry.” It isn’t bad, but it’s very dry and inexcusably bland.

Lawmen: Bass Reeves — the title suggests an ongoing anthology series — was developed for TV by Chad Feehan and based, in some way, around the first two books in a trilogy by Sidney Thompson. Presented, at least through the first four episodes, as something closer to Bass Reeves: A Life in Paper-Thin Anecdotes, the series begins with Reeves (Oyelowo) still a slave and fighting alongside his owner George R. Reeves (Shea Whigham) in Arkansas. The latter Reeves is an aspiring politician and a drunkard and he and Bass fall out over poker and emancipation.

Subsequent episodes jump forward initially by days, then by a couple of years and then by a decade as the series follows Bass’ escape out onto the prairie, his acquisition of certain important skills — reading, expert marksmanship, apparent fluency in every single possible Native language — and his eventual ascension in the world of law enforcement with the help of those aforementioned guest stars.

First, he’s a posse-man for Sherrill Lynn (Dennis Quaid), a Deputy U.S. Marshall with very little compassion for his criminal prey. Then he’s deputized by Judge Isaac Parker (Donald Sutherland), whose own lack of compassion for defendants earned him the historical nickname “Hanging Judge,” though he’s perfectly kind to Bass. Then he’s off on his own, catching fugitives and whatnot, first with the assistance of Garrett (Garrett Hedlund), a posse-man with a gambling addiction, and then with small-time crook Billy Crow (Forrest Goodluck), a Cherokee who is inspired by Bass to follow the straight-and-narrow.

Meanwhile, occasionally Bass goes home to his wife Jennie (Lauren E. Banks), who births his children and, in the subplots of various episodes, purchases a piano despite having no particular financial means and no particular narrative use for a piano. Neither Jennie, nor Demi Singleton’s Sally, the only one of Bass’ many kids gifted with dialogue, has much of a part, nor do the domestic aspects of the story do much to advance the idea of Bass as a character.

But what does Lawmen: Bass Reeves understand about Bass Reeves as a man to begin with? Almost nothing. He is — and I’ve been repeating this word purposefully — compassionate. At the same time, he’s devoted to the idea of law and order. Does he believe in law and order because of the injustices he faced under slavery? Dunno. Does he believe in equal application of the law because despite earning his freedom, much of 1870s America still treats him as less than a second-class citizen? I haven’t the faintest.

I get, to some small degree, why Feehan and Sheridan want to treat Bass Reeves as a man, rather than as the symbolically progressive idea of a man, but it wasn’t insignificant for a Black man to be in law enforcement in 1875. Lawmen gives precious little illustration of what it meant or what it felt like for Bass, who is defined by his compassion and his love for Jennie, who is defined only by her love for Bass and her desire for Sally not to date, and almost nothing else.

If, in 2023, you’ve made a show that offers less insight on what it meant to be a Black man in law enforcement in the 1870s than Blazing Saddles did in 1974, you’re not digging particularly deep.

In lieu of actual character development or growth, the show just has Bass on a different job each week, all set against the brutality of the American frontier, which Sheridan’s series only know how to illustrate through graphic scalping scenes in their opening episodes. And while Billy Crow is possibly my favorite character in the series, because he’s got a personality, to say that Lawmen: Bass Reeves conflates every Indigenous group that once occupied the plains into a single amorphous foreign blob is an insult to the nuance of your basic amorphous foreign blob. Cherokee? Seminole? Creek? Not much matters in terms of specificity.

Director Christina Alexandra Voros, also a frequent cinematographer here, makes Lawmen: Bass Reeves look handsome, but small. Part of that — possibly all of that — is intentional. Despite the reliance on scenic tableaus of Bass and other characters riding their horses across wide-open vistas, usually at sundown or sunrise, there’s presumably a desire to treat Bass Reeves as grounded, as human. He isn’t engaging in epic shootouts — the action is consistently sturdy, but forgettable — and even the one Civil War battle we see barely reaches the level of a skirmish. But if you aren’t making Reeves iconic or giving him much by way of character development, something is missing somewhere.

Through the four episodes I’ve seen, nothing builds, either in Bass’ sense of himself or in a bigger adversarial sense. The first episode suggests Whigham or Barry Pepper, whose Esau Pierce claims outsider kinship with Bass, might be key villains and then they vanish. Quaid’s boozy and gruff Sherrill gives Bass somebody to butt heads with for one episode and then he vanishes. Hedlund’s Garrett has a sloppiness that is at odds with Bass’ fastidious nature — right down to the mustache that’s also somewhat underplayed — but then he vanishes.

Some of these actors and characters may return in later episodes and others won’t. I guess the show figures it’s enough of an asset to have Whigham, Quaid, Hedlund and Pepper, along with the effectively avuncular Sutherland, around here and there, instead of focusing on just one or two of them and giving them real parts to play.

Oyelowo has a steadying presence, and that may be ultimately where the show thinks Bass’ heroism resides. He comes from a horrible background, but doesn’t let it shape him. Even if some of the criminals with whom he interacts border on monstrous, he believes they deserve their day in court, not frontier justice. Oyelowo’s accent wanders, but that charismatic decency he projects does not. The question of how a man can maintain that decency in an indecent world has an answer that viewers are left to guess.

Maybe the answer is provocative and maybe it’s simple and maybe it’ll be dealt with in future episodes. Or maybe Bass will just keep catching one or two bad guys per week and Jennie will eventually play that piano. Either way, it’s about damn time Bass Reeves got a TV show. He remains a man deserving of a good one.

The post ‘Lawmen: Bass Reeves’ Review: A Commanding David Oyelowo Can’t Mask the Blandness of Paramount+’s History Lesson appeared first on We Are Actors.

Meg Ryan not only dazzles before the camera in “What Happens Later,” but behind it as well, as director and co-writer. Through the prism of one former couple’s relationship woes, this effervescent, enlightened romantic comedy explores our innate need for reconciliation within ourselves and with each other. It’s a delight to welcome Ryan back to the silver screen after an extended hiatus, and in the genre she helped rejuvenate alongside filmmakers like Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron (to whom this film is touchingly dedicated).

Adapting Steven Dietz’s play “Shooting Stars” with Dietz and Kirk Lynn, Ryan delivers her own assured spin on the formula, subverting it while highlighting the characters’ witty repartee and poignant sorrow. Perhaps she learned a thing or two from Reiner and Ephron through creative osmosis.

Our story starts with a metaphor: two snowflakes falling from the sky, twirling and comingling in a sometimes harsh dance, descending upon a tiny regional airport. Bill (David Duchovny) is on his way to Austin when he spots his Boston-bound ex-girlfriend Willa (Ryan) while both are searching for a power outlet. Their re-meet-cute — after 25 years apart — is strained, as small talk quickly devolves into discussing the superficial particulars of their split, and insecurities and resentment set in once again. The widescreen format stresses their cavernous rift, with Willa on one side of the frame and Bill on the far opposite end.

Their unspoken wish to part as friends, not foes, looks unlikely. That is until the storm of the century rolls in, forcing the pair together for the night. Their heated conversations ebb and flow, oscillating from the state of the world to the state of their lives. Bill, a practical-minded man suffering from self-diagnosed anticipatory anxiety, is going through a split from his wife, and is eager to mend a disagreement with his daughter. Willa, a free-spirited wannabe wellness guru, is also grappling with secretive difficulties of her own. As the former flames sort through their feelings on the past and present, they reveal unforgotten, uncomfortable truths and reignite a spark that never fully fizzled.

Ripping a page from “Destination Wedding,” the film compels its audience to focus on two people’s chatter rather than the background noise and extras — which aren’t without merit, adding to the tangibility of the setting. Considering this is based on a play, it blessedly never feels stagey and instead has a crisp, vibrant energy. Because the set pieces change in form, broadening the scope of their function in a manner similar to “Prelude to a Kiss” (another Ryan-led romcom adapted from the stage), the dialogue flows freely, never feeling rehearsed. The sound design increases the claustrophobic anxiety, specifically when juxtaposing Willa and Bill’s argument with the storm raging in the background, or the soundtrack’s plastic covers of ’90s pop hits.

Themes of connection and the transitory, delicate nature of love reverberate brilliantly throughout — not solely in the narrative, but also through the production design, with its giant metallic heart sculpture and paper plane installation. Costume designer Kiley Ogle outfits everyone from the leads to the extras in shades of black and white — a subtle irony when Willa and Bill are dealing in gray areas when it comes to their viewpoints on the dissolution of their romance. Ryan and cinematographer Bartosz Nalazek also illuminate the couple’s darker, more introspective facets.

The announcer (voiced by Hal Liggett, a pseudonym for a yet-to-be-revealed actor) acts as a God-like voice booming from the PA system, while video boards, displaying double-sided commentary like “everything is pending” and “check your connections,” further hammer the script’s points home. And when it gets to the inevitable — a montage where the pair tool around the darkened empty terminals in a golf cart and dance to The Lighting Seeds’ “Pure” in a warmly lit hallway as snow falls softy outside — the charm factor is upped tremendously.

Duchovny gives a nicely textured performance, blending comedy with disarming vulnerability, turning in different notes of sincere and sweet than in his previous outing “Return To Me.” Ryan digs deeper into her character’s pathos than she has in previous films of this ilk, specifically the sour that’s masked by sunshine. It’s significant when Willa alternates between calling her ex Bill, W or William, revealing a lot about her fleeting feelings: playful, honest, or at arm’s length. Ryan imbues her with depth and dimension, at once adorable and tender.

It’s heartening to see the woman who elevated the rom-com game continuing her quest with “What Happens Later.” Innovatively eschewing genre tropes like the “you lied to me” moment, the grandiose gesture and the chase to the boarding gate, Ryan favors authentic character drive — with just a little twee magic sprinkled in.

The post ‘What Happens Later’ Review: Meg Ryan and David Duchovny’s Welcome Return to Rom-Coms appeared first on We Are Actors.

“Not everything is about money!” exclaims bride-to-be Darcy at the rehearsal dinner for her idyllic-looking island wedding in the Philippines — a rebuke to her multi-millionaire father Robert, who wishes she’d let him pay to make the whole affair even more luxe. Perhaps she means it. Darcy claims she wanted to elope to avoid the whole foofaraw, while her “groomzilla” Tom, in a pleasing reversal of gender stereotypes, obsesses over table settings. When their elegant nuptials are crashed by a gang of ransom-seeking pirates, her instincts are proven correct — though as played by a typically immaculate Jennifer Lopez, she doesn’t seem like someone who craves the simple life. “Shotgun Wedding” may begin by separating rich from rich, though as the body count mounts in this oddly unpalatable romantic comedy, such distinctions fall away: In the face of impoverished, gun-toting Asian criminals, well-off Americans must mostly prevail.

If the once-ubiquitous romcom has lately become something of a legacy genre — upheld by seasoned queens of the form, like Julia Roberts in “Ticket to Paradise” and now Lopez, immediately following last year’s “Marry Me” with another wed-com variation — director Jason Moore (“Pitch Perfect”) looks to update matters with a dose of brawny, bloody action hijinks. Yet it’s not the film’s cornball romantic trappings that feel out of step with the moment so much as its inadvertent class politics: Sometimes feeling like an episode of “The White Lotus” directed by Sylvester Stallone, “Shotgun Wedding” reverses the eat-the-rich sentiment recently popularized by that TV phenomenon, along with last year’s caustic One Percent satires “Triangle of Sadness” and “The Menu.” This time, the rich folks fight back. Perhaps some viewers will cheer them on.

For the rest of us, “Shotgun Wedding” is a curious viewing experience: an ostensibly easy-breezy J.Lo vehicle that’s only a hair more pleasant to watch than Michel Franco’s nihilistic both-sidesy hostage thriller “New Order.” Indeed, it could barely be more disconcerting if originally cast leading man Armie Hammer had stayed the course. His replacement, Josh Duhamel, may have scant chemistry with his onscreen fiancée, but his affable blandness at least acts as a sort of balm in proceedings otherwise heavy on cognitive dissonance: The usual rules of romantic comedy dictate that it’s hard to focus on the central couple’s minor relationship hitches when they’re busy taking the boots off the baby-faced gunman they’ve just slain.

It’s Darcy and Tom’s cold-feet conflict on the morning of the wedding that saves them from the pirates’ clutches in the first place. While they’re off squabbling elsewhere in the resort — triggered by the unexpected arrival of her dishy old flame Sean (Lenny Kravitz) at the event — the waiting guests are captured by the seaborne marauders, who will release them only in exchange for the eight-figure fortune that Robert (Cheech Marin) initially denies he has. It’s left to the unhappy couple to stage a rescue, stalking the island and taking down the pirates one by one with a mixture of grenades and gumption — all while respectively wearing a blush-pink tux and a floaty goddess gown the approximate size of a beach hut.

Not a world away from the urbanites-out-of-range setup for last year’s delightful Sandra Bullock-Channing Tatum starrer “The Lost City,” this all yields some lightly amusing physical comedy, but neither Moore’s direction nor Mark Hammer’s script lean enough into the absurdity of the situation for the film to take flight. Minus any satirical streak in the writing, meanwhile, the story’s more violent turns don’t play as darkly comic, but merely distasteful: A key twist in the film hinges on Westerners’ inability to distinguish between different southeast Asian nationalities, and passes entirely without comment.

When it sticks to the trivial stuff, “Shotgun Wedding” is at least capably mediocre, coasting on its coastal scenery — actually the Dominican Republic, and brightly shot by David Lynch collaborator Peter Deming, not that you’d ever guess — and Lopez’s reliably sparky screen presence. It’s intermittently stolen, however, by everyone’s favorite Jennifer of the moment, Coolidge, as the gaffe-prone mother of the groom. Not handed great lines by Hammer, J.Cool has the gift, shared by few in this ensemble, of making them funny anyway: Her instruction to a search party to “check all ditches” gains a laugh purely on the strength of her dizzy, mushmouthed delivery, as does her self-introduction as “Realtor of the Year, 1998 and 2007.”

Would that such spry comic performers as Marin and D’Arcy Carden had such moments, or that the great Sonia Braga, as Darcy’s chilly Brazilian mom, were as generously used — though she at least lends the most lilting vocal to the weirdest of many weird setpieces, a group singalong to Edwin McCain’s mawkish ’90s hit “I’ll Be.” “I’ll be love’s suicide,” never a great lyric to begin with, hardly seems appropriate here: In this grisly, tonally wayward exercise, love appears to be out for everyone else’s blood.

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“Barbarian,” a horror movie that may have audiences thinking twice about booking that next Airbnb, scared up a better-than-expected $10 million in its domestic debut.

Since the box office has been a wasteland for some weeks now, those ticket sales were enough to lead domestic charts, despite barely reaching double digits. This weekend’s other new nationwide release, “Brahmastra Part One: Shiva,” opened in second place with $4.4 million from 810 North American theaters. Both films are backed by Disney.

Though “Barbarian” landed a tepid “C+” CinemaScore, the twisty thriller is benefitting from word-of-mouth, given the film’s zany and flat-out terrifying turns. Variety’s Peter Debruge gave “Barbarian” high praise, calling it “a ratched new horror classic,” one that gets “downright demented as it goes along.” If “Barbarian,” which stars Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård and Justin Long, keeps people talking, the movie is likely to keep filling seats during a creaky September at the box office.

For an original horror story, David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research, refers to the debut as “a good opening.”

“The weekend figure is somewhat above average and reviews are sensational,” he said. “These are relatively inexpensive and profitable movies that are enjoyed best on a big screen.”

For “Brahmāstra,” the first in a three-part Bollywood film franchise, landing in second place isn’t too shabby since it’s only playing in 800 theaters, far fewer venues than most movies currently in wide release.

“Brahmāstra: Part One” takes place in modern-day India and follows Shiva — a young man on the brink of an epic love, with a girl named Isha. But their world is turned upside down when Shiva learns that he has a mysterious connection to a secret society called Brahmāstra.

In Variety’s review, Courtney Howard called the movie “special and innovative,” as well as a “wildly entertaining jump start to a planned trilogy – touted as Bollywood’s first original cinematic universe, the ‘Astraverse.’”

Sony’s “Bullet Train” landed in third place with $3.2 million from 3,056 North American theaters, bringing its domestic tally to $92.5 million.

At No. 4, Paramount’s enduring blockbuster “Top Gun: Maverick” nabbed $3.17 million in its 16th week on the big screen. For those keeping score at home, Tom Cruise’s blockbuster sequel has remained in the top five on domestic box office charts for 15 weeks of the past 16 weeks. So far, “Top Gun 2” has grossed an astounding $705.6 million in North America and $747.8 million overseas.

“The Invitation” took the fifth slot with $2.6 from 3,117 venues. After three weeks of release, Sony’s creepy thriller film has generated $18 million.

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Even the most solidly founded of marriages can be strained and shattered by the death of a child. For handsome, wholesome Japanese couple Taeko and Jiro, however, that tragedy shows up all the fault lines that were already in their young relationship, and that’s before living ghosts of the past show up for both partners. Koji Fukada’s “Love Life” unabashedly embraces melodramatic contrivance in its examination of modern middle-class love tested as much by social prejudices as by personal demons; it just does so with such pallid, polite reserve that its sentimentality never becomes transcendently moving. As such, this agreeable but overlong pic finds the Japanese writer-director still struggling to regain the form of his jolting 2016 Cannes prizewinner “Harmonium.”

That film was an exercise in disorienting tonal contrast and conflict, with a vein of blood-dark comedy running through severely tragic events. “Love Life,” on the other hand, is an earnest, largely humorless affair: While it’s impossible not to be affected at some level by its characters’ hellish plight, the predominant softness of tone here tends toward the wispy. Dignified performances and assured, restrained craftsmanship see the film through to a satisfying enough resolution, but this Venice competition entry may not have the necessary impact to secure widespread arthouse distribution.

The opening scenes establish an early sense of the domestic placidity and faint emotional distance that marks relations between Taeko (Fumino Kimura) and Jiro (Kento Nagayama) in the small, neat apartment they share in a Japanese coastal town. Their respective routines tend to converge over six-year-old Keita (Tetta Shimada), Taeka’s bright, chipper son from a previous relationship: Though Jiro is a kind father to the lad, the matter of his parentage feels like one more territorial division between spouses who don’t share their lives entirely.

Jiro’s parents Makoto (Tomorowo Taguchi) and Akie (Misuzu Kanno) live in the same building, but that too isn’t quite the cozy arrangement it outwardly appears to be: Makoto has never approved of his son’s marrying a divorced mother, and the limits of their cordiality begin to show over the course of the family birthday party that begins proceedings. The day will turn far worse, however, when Keita suddenly dies in an all-too-conceivable household mishap — one that plays out, only part-visibly, in the space of a single static shot judiciously framed by Fukada and DP Hideo Yamamoto. In the space of a few minutes, the family’s most binding tie is severed, casting the living and grieving immediately adrift.

Fukada dramatizes the immediate aftermath of the event with credible, suitably mundane delicacy: “Love Life” is best at negotiating periods of strained, not quite simpatico silence, as when Jiro tries to intuit whether or not to take down the party decorations that now accidentally mark Keita’s death, or a shellshocked Taeko attempts to choose photos for a memorial slideshow. Things take a less convincing turn with the arrival of Taeko’s deaf Korean ex Park (Atom Sunada), who crashes the funeral to strike her across the face.

It’s a rare abrasive action in a film of quiet words and deeds; it also never rings entirely true, either in the moment or as we learn more about the relationship and rift between Taeko and Park, who has been homeless for some time. Charitably remedying his misfortune becomes Taeko’s healing distraction from her mourning, while Jiro, in a somewhat over-symmetrical turn of events, rekindles his acquaintance with an ex of his own. (Always hovering just shy of his partner’s feelings, and never quite asserting his own, Nagayama deftly essays the trickiest role here.) While Kimura and Sunada both give suitably bruised individual performances, collaboratively they never exactly convince us that Taeko and Park once shared a soul connection.

That seems less intentional than the figurative glass wall separating Taeko and Jiro — which at least gives the slightly wan love triangle that ensues a tremor of uncertainty. No pair of characters seems quite on the same page until the film’s elegantly sustained closing shot, as two people take a simple walk across suburban streets and squares before disappearing into the middle distance, the opalescent strains of Akiko Yano’s English-language tune “Love Life” standing in for their inaudible, far-away dialogue. “Whatever the distance between us, nothing can stop me loving you,” she sings — if Fukada’s film is occasionally as mawkish as this lyric, it nonetheless suggests the love here may be a little more conditional and complicated than that.

The post ‘Love Life’ Review: Koji Fukada’s Life-After-Loss Drama is Full of Tragedy But Strangely Lightweight appeared first on We Are Actors.

In a recent interview, Peele claimed Daniel Kaluuya as his “DeNiro.” The promise of these two working on more projects is exhilarating, but something about the label also attests to Kaluuya’s strengths. His focus, complex interiority and ability to make the smallest beats loom large is a quality he shares with his nickname. Yet, as proven here, Kaluuya is one of the most transformative and compelling actors on the modern screen. His work is complimented well by Keke Palmer, who makes a true firecracker out of Emerald Haywood. She dazzles, delights and commands each line in her arsenal. The sibling dynamic between her and Kaluuya is authentic and endearing.

The supporting cast serve their roles with excellence. Steven Yeun brings a sense of unnerving calm while Michael Wincott provides a familiar Hollywood cynicis, but it is Brandon Perea – in a breakout role rewritten for him because of his audition – who steals every scene he’s in. I hope we’re about to see him in a lot more films.

The film is broken into distinct chapters, each dealing with a certain character in the story – I’ll leave the category of character to your discovery. This is Peele’s most balanced screenplay, combining the intelligence of Get Out with the visual storytelling of Us into satisfying measurements of both. Michael Abel returns with a classic-sounding score in the theme of John Williams. Nicholas Monsour brings his cutting expertise from Us to greater heights, pacing the film to near perfection. Hoyte Van Hoytema is the star of the show, shooting with massive scope and highlighting the ominous mystery of shadows and clouds. The night sequences are one of a kind. Also, kudos to the VFX team for designing some of the most beautiful extraterrestrial concepts I’ve ever seen.

I’ve read a lot of reviews complaining about the film either not adding up or becoming too simple. It’s the same argument lodged at Us – which is albeit a more ambiguous film. Point is, Peele is evolving and as his ideas and visual language grow, we should too. Get Out was great, but the meaning was easy to swallow. With Nope, Peele has asked us to consider the price of spectacle, the promise of fame, tokenism and all mammals’ innate desire for dominance. In conclusion, it’s just a bloody good time at the movies with lots of great laughs and messed up themes, one I will not soon forget. See it on the big screen!

NOPE is now playing in Theaters Everywhere

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At first, Malcolm’s List lacks the charm and pace of a period outing. The characters are rather muted and the cuts are slow, indicating a sort of warm up phase for director Emma Holly Jones. Once Selina (a marvelous Freida Pinto) is brought into the game, the intrigue begins. As Julia, Zawe Ashton manages to draw ire, pity and admiration in a complicated and complex arc. Oliver Jackson-Cohen again shows off his chameleon skills in a comedic turn far off from his roles in Netflix’s “The Haunting” series, and Theo James is strong as The Captain. Sope Dirisu is an actor of great specificity and depth – just look to his chilling performance in His House – and he does not disappoint here as Malcolm (I would love to see him as Mr. Darcy). The scenes between him and his mother, an effective Doña Croll, are memorable and moving.

Pam Downe and Ray Ball’s one-two punch of costume and production design stand out with vibrancy. Tony Miller’s camera work settles for stable framings. It could use more creativity but it works. Amelia Warner’s music is lovely and playful, always adding a layer of innocent wanting. Here is one of her selections:

All in all, Mr. Malcolm’s List is a fine entry into the genre. Its dialogue is crisp and effective, its world is well thought out and the story takes some unexpected turns even while arriving at a familiar destination. The gossip culture which prevails in Bridgerton is proven narrow here, allowing for honesty and personal connections to break through. There is always more to mine within this genre and I hope as casting expands so too do the stories and perspectives.

Mr. Malcolm’s List is now playing in Theaters

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