THE INNOCENTS

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B
Special Effecs: B+

When we first meet Ida, the little blonde girl at the center of the Norwegian horror film The Innocents, it’s tempting to think she’s vaguely reminiscent of one of the Children of the Corn. That would be an oversimplification, though; there are no mindless monsters here. This film is unsettling in how its young children discover their supernatural powers, don’t quite understand them, an feel guilt about the damage done during what amounts to subtle tantrums. Well, sometimes they feel guilt.

Ida is a fascinating character, though, in that at first she seems like she might be the villain. She has an older, autistic sister named Anna, who appears not to feel pain and so Ida will pinch her just to amuse herself. Then, in the large apartment complex development their parents have moved them into, Ida befriends a boy named Ben, who is just discovering a telekinetic ability. Another little girl, Aisha, finds she can read the other kids’ minds.

The discovery and exploration of all these abilities is relatively innocent—hence the title—as they all also discover their abilities are somehow stronger in the presence of Anna. But, Ben soon discovers other abilities, and well, let’s just say he doesn’t tend to use them for good. This is where The Innocents really diverges from other films even remotely similar: Ida, who seems a little creepy in her own right at first, gradually discovers that she is in over her head with her relationship with Ben. What they do to a neighborhood cat together should on its own merit a severe warning to animal lovers who might want to watch this movie.

Writer-director Eskil Vogt—who also co-wrote last year’s widely acclaimed The Worst Person in the World—really takes the concept of a “slow burn” seriously. There is a couple of jump-scares, but not in the way you might expect; and the first third of the film in particular really takes its time, with quiet, extended cuts. If you come to this film with open-minded patience, then it has its rewards. If you’re into the kinds of rewards they are, anyway.

What I like most about The Innocents is how the story remains within the worlds of the children. The adults in their lives are mostly oblivious, whether or not they’re subjected to a child’s mind-control. None of these kids’ parents have any idea what’s going on between the kids themselves, which is typically the case even in the real world. This is less a point Vogt is making than it is something he takes advantage of in his storytelling.

There are some special effects in The Innocents, but to say they are used sparingly is an understatement. Whether or not this is the result of budget limitations, it’s ultimately effective. Even when effects are used, they are always subtle and brief. The purpose of this film seems to be less spectacle than it is sustained tension, of which there is plenty. And in another sign of different rules than a typical Hollywood movie, both adults and children alike—in addition to animals—can be potential victims.

The Innocents is not excessively disturbed, but it is unafraid to go in disturbing directions. I’ve seen scarier films and I have seen more deeply unsettling films, and yet this one is unsettling in a way, somewhat vague, but unlike any other. It took quite a while for it to really hook me in, but its ability to sustain a consistent tone is something I can respect.

Choose your friends wisely, kids.

Overall: B

ON THE COUNT OF THREE

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

On the Count of Three may surprise you with how it handles multiple sensitive issues, from gun control, to mental health, to race. It surprised me, anyway. Opinions may vary, but on all fronts, from my point of view, the surprises were good.

Which is not to say this movie is fun, in spite of it being sold as a dark comedy. You deserve to be warned about this, especially as the movie comes recommended: it’s more of a tragedy, which happens to have a few chuckles. But, it’s a very good one.

I can’t help but compare it to Blindspotting (2018), which is both more accomplished and more assured in execution, a better example of a nuanced portrayal of a Black man and a white man who are best friends. (That film is also better shot, better edited, and funnier.) The great thing about On the Count of Three is that it offers a different example of such a relationship. We’re actually moving into an era of cinema where we have more than one example of how specific kinds of representation matter, with varying levels of quality.

Mind you, On the Count of Three competently holds its own, itself an impressive directorial debut by standup comedian and actor Jerrod Carmichael, who also plays one of the two leads, Val. And in this movie, instead of two guys struggling to elevate themselves from the mistakes in their lives, these best friends spend a day under the agreement that, at the end of it, they will end their lives.

The other best friend is Kevin (Christopher Abbott), the one with the lifelong struggle with mental health issues, who we meet in a psychiatric facility three days after a suicide attempt. As is becoming a trope, the opening shot is of a scene we will return to again later, with Val and Kevin holding their guns to each other’s heads, counting to three, and before it reaches three we’re taken back to the beginning of the day. I’m not spoiling much to say that we get back to this countdown moment surprisingly quickly, when Kevin decides he’s not ready just yet: he wants to live out one last day, with the knowledge that there will ultimately be no consequences. It’s the rest of their day together that makes up the bulk of, and is the point of, this movie.

There’s a moment when Kevin decides they are going to kill a man, the therapist who further damaged him as a child. (This character is played by Henry Winkler, always a welcome screen presence, even though he wears a wig in a couple of flashback scenes that fails miserably at the clear aim of making him look younger. This choice is the only clearly bad one made in the making of this movie.) Kevin’s plan creates a new sense of tension that Carmichael handles deftly, as it sets up a clear question: will this movie take these characters past a tragic point of no return?

That is the key element that I will not spoil, except to say that, quite satisfyingly, things don’t go in a direction you’re quite able to predict. I will say it’s refreshing to see mental health, and in particular suicidal ideation, handled with empathy and without condescension. When Val decides he also wants to die, it’s clear from the start that it does not come from the same, deeply seeded well of mental illness as Kevin.

In the midst of this, I found myself wondering whether this movie, co-written by Ari Katcher and Ryan Welch (oddly, two former Alaskans who previously co-created the Hulu series Rami, with Rami Youssef), would even address race. It gets about halfway through before it does, and only after Kevin starts drinking and starts spewing odd platitudes clearly borne of white guilt. I can only assume (and hope) Carmichael had a lot to contribute, particularly when it comes to things like Val’s penchant for calling Kevin the N-word, a bit of subtle irony.

In any case, the focus stays on the close relationship between these friends. Even the depiction of intimacy between two straight men is of an unusual sort here—not unusual for real life, but usual for cinema. There’s a casual comfort between them, both physically and emotionally, that feels genuine in a way rarely seen. As a side note, Carmichael recently made headlines by coming out as gay in his brilliant standup special Rothaniel, which can be streamed on HBO Max. This shouldn’t be relevant but it is, after years of Hollywood patting straight actors on the back for “sensitively” playing gay parts but not giving gay actors any of the parts at all. Then, gay actors starting getting the gay parts . . . but here, we have a gay actor playing a straight lead character, and no one is calling it “not believable.” (Incidentally, this film was shot in late 2019, more than two years before the release of Rothaniel.)

The plot of On the Count of Three feels patterned on a formula, but one that works: there’s some action and excitement in the third act, even including a car chase. Carmichael unfolds this otherwise unique story within those parameters with a finesse that’s all his own. I won’t reveal the fate of these characters, except to say the conclusion is both surprising and satisfying. This film’s approach to mental illness, in the writing, the direction, and especially Christopher Abbott’s performance, is done with an integrity you can’t help but respect.

“2 Guns” for the depressed set.

Overall: B+

THE BAD GUYS

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B
Animation: B+

The Bad Guys may be the most “kids’ movie” movie I’ve watched and still managed to enjoy with adult eyes. It’s about as silly as it gets, but still fits in a few clever gags that fly over kids’ heads and right into the comic sensibilities of grownups. It’s clever enough, I was very much entertained, and the animation is fairly impressive, particularly its detailed urban backgrounds that seem to render Los Angeles as though it had more of a New York City density.

I say all this even though I’m still the dipshit sitting there confused by the inconsistent rules of the movie’s universe. Mind you, this movie is aimed squarely at children, and they don’t care about this stuff, like: how do characters that are a piranha and a shark (voiced by Anthony Ramos and Craig Robinson, respectively) able to survive without water? They exist as two-legged land animals! I guess I shouldn’t be stuck on this; there’s also a humanoid shark in The Suicide Squad and I didn’t have any hang-ups about that; in fact I was delighted by that demented movie.

I suppose a key difference is that The Bad Guys is the farthest thing from demented—although there are subtle moments of dark humor, particularly when it comes to Snake, who is easily distracted by all the guinea pigs he wants to eat.

That said, I still couldn’t help but to be distracted by the fact that, in the world of this movie, only the principal characters are animal characters, and everyone else in this world seems to be human. There is the quasi-butch Chief of Police, Misty Luggins (Alex Borstein), who is human, but otherwise the five “Bad Guys” are a wolf, a snake, a spider, a shark and a piranha; then there’s Governor Diane Foxington (Zazie Beets), a fox; and Professor Marmalade (Richard Ayoade), a guinea pig.

No other intelligent being in this universe is a talking animal, though. There’s even a massive army of guinea pigs at one point, and all of them are like regular animals. How do they become like that, but Professor Marmalade becomes an intelligent being with a British accent? There’s also a kitten who gets stuck in a tree and all it does is meow. What’s with all these inconsistencies? I want answers!

To be fair, the same sort of thing happens in old fairy tales. Little Red Riding Hood happens upon a talking wolf, after all. And a big plot point in The Bad Guys is that all of these animals are species that people are automatically afraid of, without even giving them the chance at being perceived as “good.” As a band of thieves and bank robbers, they are just meeting the fate society has created for them. But then Wolf gets an unexpected bit of appreciation when he saves an old lady from falling down the stairs, and gets a taste of what if feels like to be appreciated for goodness, and thus the plot is set into motion.

As already indicated, I’m the only one obsessing on the inconsistent rules of this universe. It still would have made a lot more sense if every character in this world were an animal (as in Zootopia, a similarly themed but better movie), but whatever. I’ll get over it! The voice talents alone go a long way, with Sam Rockwell as Wolf; Awkwafina as Tarantula; and Marc Maron as Snake, taking an unusual turn for his career, and one that’s a great fit.

The Bad Guys is almost pointedly over-the-top ridiculous, something that can really work against a film regardless of its target audience. But here, it somehow works, and I found myself charmed by it. They can’t all be classics, but they can be at least as entertaining as this. If nothing else, it seems obvious that kids love it, which is all a movie like this needs. It’s a bonus that I also enjoyed it.

You can’t help but love them all, in spite of an unnecessarily extensive running gag about piranha farts.

Overall: B

DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Slipping back into the world of Downton Abbey is the cinematic equivalent of slipping into a cozy, warm blanket—specifically an old, beloved one you’ve had for years. It’s a bit worn and tired, a lot of threads are coming loose, but the familiarity alone brings a heartening comfort.

This feeling is arguably even more pronounced with Downton Abbey: A New Era than it was with the release of the 2019 original Downton Abbey film, which itself came along three years after the six-season television series aired its last season on PBS. Now, it’s been three years we last saw all these beloved characters on the big screen, and six since we saw them on the small screen. (Granted, the lines between “big screen” and “small screen” are increasingly blurred, both with shorter windows of release between the two, and literal sizes of home TV sets. But, this cast of characters fits comfortably in all combinations.)

Beyond that, I can’t say there’s anything particularly special, or particularly disappointing, about A New Era. It’s made for the fans, and it brings them just what they want. I enjoyed the film precisely as much as I was hoping to. The key difference between the two films, I think, is that the first came a year prior to the start of a pandemic that severely hastened a lot of inevitable changes in the film industry. As such, the 2019 film felt a lot more like an essential moviegoing event, at least for Downton fans, than this one could ever hope to. The official release date is today, but I went to an earliest screening possible, at 7:00 last night, and was one of maybe ten people in the theater. Had the pandemic never happened, this absolutely would not be the case. But, as it is, presumably there are plenty of people very much looking forward to watching this film, but also fine with waiting all of 45 days to see it at home on Peacock 4th of July weekend.

I might have been too, really. I just love going to the movies, and am one of those nerds who despair at the erosion of moviegoing as a tenet of American culture. Marvel blockbusters are singlehandedly saving the theater industry, largely with extraordinarily expensive testaments to mediocrity, but I must begrudgingly appreciate them, at least for now while they keep multiplexes open, and allow for movies like this to play on other screens while the blockbusters make all the money. Still having the monthly membership available through AMC (which other chains now offer too) does make it easier, so I can see Downton Abbey in the theater and not feel like it’s more expensive than it’s worth.

Because this movie is . . . let’s face it: fine. For true fans of the series, it’s good. Not great, but good—something that could be said of every iteration of this property from the start, really. It’s just another <i>Upstairs Downstairs</i>  concept effectively designed for addictive watching, a sanitized view of extreme wealth in period costumes (in this case as they shift into the 1930s), conveniently gleaning over the true horrors and oppressions of class and British colonialism while basically ignoring race altogether. (There’s a scene in this film in which a Black woman singer is highlighted at a party. You can practically hear writer Julian Fellowes desperately saying, “Look, I included a Black person!”)

As for the plot, just like the previous film, it feels very much like just another extended episode of the series—albeit one in which some key plot turns occur. I won’t lie, this movie did make me cry a little, but I’m just going to blame that on the relatively recent death of my mother making me soft, or at least softer than I was before. A New Era begins with a wedding (between Tom Branson and Lucy Smith, a woman introduced in the first film who I did not remember), and ends with a death—I won’t spoil whose, except to say that it hardly qualifies as tragic. There are sad turns, but nothing truly horrible happens in Downton Abbey, particularly in the film iterations, which exist solely to trade on fan nostalgia. This is a key difference between the films and the series, which was much more of a soap opera, whereas these films might make you wistful at the very worst.

Ultimately, Downton Abbey is pure fantasy. This is something Fellowes, as directed by Simon Curtis, kicks up a notch in A New Era, what with Lady Grantham (Maggie Smith, even at age 87 arguably the biggest star of this huge-ensemble film) suddenly inheriting a villa in the South of France, from a man with whom she had a weekend fling in her youth. Half the cast goes to this villa for a visit, meeting the bitter widow (Nathalie Baye) and her shockingly agreeable son (Jonathan Zaccaï) who invited them all. In an extraordinary coincidence of timing, at the same time a film crew has asked for permission to shoot a movie (starring actors played by Laura Haddock and Dominic West; West gets involved in a subtle almost-romantic subplot with Robert James-Collier’s Barrow, who is now running the downstairs staff after the butler Carson’s retirement).

There are many subplots, of course, and they all get tied up tidily by the end, as is the formula for Downton, and precisely what all of its fans come for. This movie exists just to keep us all satiated for just a little bit longer, but with that at its mandate, it succeeds on all fronts.

What’s old is still the same, ironically.

Overall: B

DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIIVERSE OF MADNESS

Directing: C+
Acting: B-
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B
Editing: C+
Special Effects: B

There are people genuinely convinced that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a truly great film, and that makes me despair of humanity. Not because this movie is particularly bad, but because audiences are so conditioned by the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” that they can no longer distinguish between that which is quality cinema, and that which is average.

The thing is, this movie isn’t even all that great by MCU standards. I largely gave up on superhero movies over a decade ago, actively avoiding then for several years—because they were nearly all just like this one: rushing through expositional interludes between overly busy action sequences drenched in CGI that looked dated within a year, all in the service of the same story beats as the last film just like it, over and over again. But, over the past five or ten years, Marvel found better directors and better writers, and slowly but surely began to offer movies more worthy of regaining attention. This movie feels like a throwback to that earlier time.

The greatest disappointment about that is the fact that it was directed by the legendary Sam Raimi, of Army of Darkness (1992) fame, who directed the original Tobey MaGuire Spider-Man in 2002, and who has not directed a feature film in nine years (there’s nothing better to say about the equally mediocre Oz the Great and Powerful). It’s true that Multiverse of Madness gets better in its second half, and eventually it even gets genuinely weird, with quasi-horror elements that are only novel by MCU standards, but are still presented with recognizable Raimi flair. Alas, it doesn’t get sufficiently weird until at least three quarters of the way through, at which point it’s really too little, too late.

Multiverse of Madness comes up short by every measure. Even compared to other MCU movies, it’s not nearly as much quirky fun as Thor: Ragnarok (2017); it certainly has nothing of anywhere near as much substance to say as Black Panther (2018); it’s not even as interesting as the original Doctor Strange (2016). What it does do is rehash every concept imaginable, most of all the idea of a “multiverse,” something introduced brilliantly in the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018, arguably the best year for Marvel) but which has already been revisited in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), a live action film that was better than anyone could have expected. But, here we are again, with fully expected diminishing returns.

And this Doctor Strange sequel is not helped at all by its very direct narrative ties to the Disney+ series WandaVision. I won’t say anyone who hasn’t seen the show will be lost in the plot here, but they’d certainly understand it a lot more having seen it. And what good does that do the movie itself? This is the twenty-eighth movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, all presented by a studio that increasingly expects its audiences not only to have seen but have remembered them all, plus increasing numbers of TV series. There comes a point when it’s just all too much, and that point arguably came and went a decade ago.

Elizabeth Olsen does a fairly impressive job as the villain, the Scarlet Witch, but it’s not as easy to recognize without having seen WandaVisison, which was itself, frankly, a bit overrated. Such is the case with a great majority of MCU films, with occasionally notable exceptions. Benedict Cumberbatch as the title character is . . . fine. The same could be said of the entire cast, none of who are given any room to breathe their performances in the overstuffed plot. This movie is 126 minutes long, almost “short” compared to many MCU movies, and too much is happening too quickly, whether it’s CGI spectacle action sequences or the rare quiet conversations between characters.

It just feels like a wildly missed opportunity, like a movie dictated by committee (it having only one writer notwithstanding; it should also be noted that this is Michael Waldron’s first feature film script), beholden to a multitude of strictures as part of the broader cinematic universe. That very much limits a filmmaker’s ability to put their own stamp on it—Chloé Zhao’s Eternals (2021) suffered from the same problem. If the studio could have loosened their evident grip, the uniquely dark and macabre Sam Raimi style could have permeated more than just the final quarter of the movie. With that alone, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness would have been much improved.

To be fair, this particular movie was never going to be a masterpiece, no matter who wrote or directed it. It still had massively unrealized potential, and instead stuck with well-worn storytelling tropes that renders it the same shit in a different movie. I’d probably have enjoyed this exact same movie more had it been released seven or eight years ago, but time is not always kind to a decades-old franchise (consider what a challenge it has been for ages for anyone to make a truly great James Bond movie). Now, we’ve spent far too much time, year after year, with rushed storytelling wrapped in subpar special effects. Too few of these movies get any finessing, and are instead churned out as from an assembly line, all using a well worn template. Even well worn templates are tolerable if they can be given a novel enough spin, but Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is convinced it’s taking a huge swing without realizing it’s stepping up to bat when the game is already nearly over.

I’d tell you more about the plot but it was so forgettable I forgot it.

Overall: C+