When Glen Powell decided to take up the Tom Cruise mantle, I didn’t think he’d be so literal with it. 
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Tonal inconsistencies are the last thing one expects from an Edgar Wright experience, yet “The Running Man,” in large part due to the persona its star has already carved out, never lands on whether it desires to be a cynical satire, an alternative actioner, or a balance of the two, resulting in a mess of blurred intentions. No surprise, Scott Pilgrim is the highlight of the film; Michael Cera’s brief diversion provides a glimpse of what could have been had Wright wielded more confidence with the material. The ideas and analogies aren’t lost on 2025 America, yet none of it feels especially biting or as specific in its commentary as Wright’s riffs on other genres. Instead, this is the filmmaker’s least distinct effort to date. The casino with the neon crosses on the front was a nice touch. I also miss the days when Jansky would have been played by Andy Samberg. Crucially, this features one of the most secure towels in cinema history, and even if he doesn’t feel completely settled in the part, Powell is one hell of a legitimate screen presence

Typically, I’m a big fan of whatever director David Michôd decides to try his hand at, but despite this sports drama feeling like a "movie" movie, there is a distinct lack of passion behind the eyes. “Christy” begins in 1989 and spans 23 years, meaning the titular character, as played by 28-year-old Sydney Sweeney, is expected to play 21 to 44 yet she is hardly aged besides looking a little worse for wear around the eyes thanks to her physically and mentally abusive husband played like a caricature of a person by the (again) typically reliable Ben Foster. Further, the production design sustains its ‘90s atmosphere despite moving well into the 2010s - or maybe that's just West Virginia?

Say what you will about Sweeney, but between “Americana,” “Immaculate,” “Eden,” this, and her upcoming “The Housemaid,” she's not exactly playing it safe and is clearly interested in making interesting and ambitious - if not always successful - projects. She's not the reason “Christy” falls short either, somehow even overcoming this hairstyle choice to turn in a credible, weighted performance.

Four stars purely for the screenplay, though Richard Linklater's nimble direction guides this sometimes obnoxiously character-driven piece from one conversation to the next with a pace he makes appear effortless, while Ethan Hawke's performance as the grandstanding Lorenz Hart is somehow endearing despite the character's multiple attempts at intolerability.
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My favorite Linklater films and films about artists in general are those that seem to both admire their subjects while also not necessarily mocking but carry an air of self-awareness that the characters never know. “Blue Moon” largely does this through its exhibitions of Hart's interactions with other bar patrons. Whether this be Patrick Kennedy's E.B. White, Bobby Cannavale's Eddie, Andrew Scott's Richard Rodgers, or - most critically - Margaret Qualley's Elizabeth Weiland, the film layers in Hart's own quirks and pain without ever becoming as intolerable as its own protagonist.

The best way to watch “The Godfather: Part 2” isn’t 15+ years after watching “The Godfather,” but that’s exactly how I did it. I realize “The Godfather: Part 3” isn’t as high a priority for a classic film buff, but stick around and I might tell ya what I think of it sometime in the 2040s.

Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather: Part 2” wasn’t the highest ranked film on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest American films ever made that I’d never seen entering this project – that would’ve been Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” which I watched earlier this year – but it’s probably the one of the 12 films on my list I felt guiltiest having not seen.

“The Godfather: Part 2” picks up a few years after “The Godfather” left off, and things seem to be going fairly well for Don Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), who now lives in Nevada and is trying to control gambling and casinos. The film interjects Michael’s ongoings with the younger life of his father, Vito Corleone, first played as a child and then for much of the movie by Robert De Niro, in the role that won him his first Oscar.

The film goes back and forth between these two characters, telling Michael’s story in the present, and showing how Vito wound up in America and crawled his way from a nobody to a feared mob boss.

I found the Vito storyline to be the more intriguing of the two in ‘Part 2,’ whereas Michael’s ascent from a son who’s probably never going to run the family business to being thrust into control of it was the most intriguing part of ‘Part 1’ for me.

I think the problem with the Michael storyline in ‘Part 2’ for me, while intriguing and performed brilliantly by Pacino, is that it moves around quite a lot and quickly – the crux of it is trying to figure out who put a hit out on Michael and his family at the beginning of the family – but it sees us jumping around from Nevada, to New York, to Cuba to Washington, D.C. and all around, and let’s face it running the everyday business of the Corleone family just isn’t as interesting as an underdog story, which is what Michael was in ‘Part 1’ and Vito is in ‘Part 2.’

I’m surprised Pacino didn’t win the Academy Award for his performance in this film – just the rage he’s able to portray in the scene where his wife admits to having an abortion and wanting to take his children and leave him could’ve been enough for most voters. I say this, however, knowing that if I had a vote on this more than 50 years ago, I would’ve voted for Jack Nicholson in “Chinatown” instead. They both lost to Art Carney in “Harry and Tonto,” a film I have yet to see.

By the way, De Niro winning for Best Supporting Actor is fair, but you could certainly make the argument that he and Pacino were co-leads in ‘Part 2.’

In ‘Godfather’ style, there are some great kills in the film, my favorite being the comeuppance Don Ciccio receives in Sicily once Vito is old enough to avenge the deaths of his entire family when he was a young child. You know from the first minutes of the film that this is eventually going to take place, so it had to be good, and, boy, was it ever.  

Director: Jon M. Chu
Starring: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande & Jeff Goldblum 
Rated: PG (action/violence, some suggestive material & thematic material)
Runtime: 2 hours & 18 minutes 

 
Let’s set the stage: 30 years after the original Gregory Maguire revisionist novel was released and just over 20 years after it was adapted into a musical stage play we have the conclusion of the two-part film adaptation of the musical that frames the Wicked Witch of the West in a more sympathetic if not less cynical light than was created by original Wonderful Wizard of Oz author Frank L. Baum and made infamous in the 1939 film, “The Wizard of Oz.” The Wicked Witch of the West, known as Elphaba Thropp in the world of Wicked and portrayed by Cynthia Erivo in the films, is as complex a character as any story might hope to have at the center of it. She is made an outcast, a revolutionary, along with clearly being one of the most inherently powerful beings to exist in her fictional world … why not use such an arc to explore multiple themes or craft it as a metaphor for any point in history - or period to come - in which shallow dictators weaponize our differences in order to ostracize those deemed as threats when simply different than the preferences of those with power? Especially poignant now, yes?
Such timeless ideas and such ongoing debates will seemingly never lose their potency but this was also the chief challenge presented to director Jon M. Chu, who was not only tasked with bringing this story and these hugely revered songs to life through the medium of film but with finding a new way into this story that had been seen by millions the world over. Chu never lost the strong point of view instilled in Maguire’s work, but the main point of contention with ‘Part I’ is that it didn’t consist of a strong directorial voice; it created a world, built the foundation of this central relationship yet none of it felt especially personal or powerful (or tangible) despite the dispersal of several totemic tunes. Whether more invested in the second half of the story himself or simply a result of finding his footing and becoming more comfortable/confident as production went on (assuming they shot somewhat chronologically), Chu’s flourishes as a filmmaker help make “Wicked: For Good” not simply the more interesting act from a narrative perspective but the more compelling and impressive case for said themes and ideas that will obviously (and unfortunately) never lose said potency.
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Picking up four years after the events of the first film, the yellow brick road has been completed, and Elphaba has fled the city of Oz. The newly labeled “Wicked Witch” has holed up on the outskirts while formulating both how she might expose Jeff Goldblum’s The Wizard and how to free the sapient animals that have been forced from their homes and jobs due to whatever allegorical form of prejudice you’d like to map onto The Wizard and Madame Morrible’s (Michelle Yeoh) reasoning. The quibbles with how the film conveys the amalgamation of Maguire’s original source material with Stephen Schwartz’s music and Winnie Holzman’s book begin with the lack of clarity in the Wizard and Morrible’s motivations and continue into trying to contort both the justification of Ariana Grande's Glinda’s conflicting feelings, along with the original Wizard of Oz story. This struck me as strange, considering I’ve seen the stage production and can recall reading about the differences in the novel and what changed when it was adapted as a musical, yet never have so many of the multiple reveals in this second half felt as rushed or convoluted as they do at certain points in the film version. Conversely, there are moments where the betrayal and sought-after vindication really work both thematically and dramatically. For instance, it’s almost a shame how little time is devoted to the dynamic between Boq (Ethan Slater) and Nessarose (Marissa Bode), whose mountains of unhappiness, inadequacies and the combination of anger and hate that comes as a result are kind of the keystone in just how easy it is for relationships and systems to devolve. There are moments, though, really powerful moments that make one want to forgive the leaps and twists too often required to credibly get from one plot point to the next.

As is known, this is obviously Elphaba and Glinda’s story and ultimately Elphaba’s, even if the friendship between these two women is at the heart of what makes the life and times of the Wicked Witch worth exploring. While the first film, which is very much the first half of this single story, showed cracks of who these characters would become in ‘For Good’ , both Elphaba and Glinda become more fully fleshed out in what are surprisingly unexpected ways. Whereas Erivo played things closer to the chest in the school-based portion of the story, the Elphaba character is given much more rein here to explore the power she actually has over her own life. Beyond the love triangle that involves Jonathan Bailey's Fiyero, Elphaba is largely attempting to correct the spell she cast to create the army of flying monkeys. As per the mythology of this world, no spell cast from the "Grimmerie' - a powerful, ancient spellbook of unknown origin, can be reversed. Elphaba's hope is that she might at least set the monkeys free, as they are being utilized by the Wizard to inflict violence and carry out his totalitarian agenda. Elphaba confronts both Glinda and the Wizard in multiple instances to combat the authoritarianism he seeks to impose, calling both of them out on how they've complicated her intentions with their blame game and how their manipulations of her public perception is nothing short of straight-up propaganda; again, themes that were only hinted at in the first half that have higher stakes this time around and are therefore more meaningful. This is what the whole of Wicked seeks to address: the making of Elphaba as an outcast solely due to the color of her skin, despite the interesting wrinkle that she is of noble birth. Her further exile due to her political beliefs that conflict with those seeking to maintain their unearned positions of power shows how the film stands firm in its beliefs, even as it does not always effectively convey that nuance is where the heartache lies.

On the other end of this relationship is Grande's Glinda, who is more restrained but just as effective in her performance this time around. Glinda is torn between fulfilling the aspirations she has held her whole life for status and authority and her obligation to her friend, who she knows is in a more honorable position, no matter how difficult it is to face and accept. I don't know that the screenplay gives Glinda the right leverage or a complete enough arc to really garner any audience sympathy, but Grande continues to exhibit her comic timing and incredible voice in such a fashion we want to continue to believe Glinda is earnest in her intent even though the aforementioned cynicism found laced in the source material would suggest not all is as it seems with the “good” witch either. Again, these are depths to the characters that go largely unexplored due to the obligation of the original Baum narrative where instead of further exploring whether Glinda is simply weak or conniving in deeper ways than thought capable we are instead introduced to a cowardly CGI lion who has the smallest of links to Elphaba’s past but whose testimony more or less shifts the entirety of those left on her side towards abandoning her. It’s not that these links aren’t cool and fun to put together - the young moviegoers sitting in front of me who clearly had no prior knowledge of how things unfolded certainly loved doing exactly that - it’s more that some of the high stakes of the relationships between core characters are too often undercut by extraneous facets that are more cute than critical.

Speaking of cute, one might be facetious enough to drill down on the silliness of this whole thing - is there a mandate that all women must wear green eye shadow in Oz? - but while ‘For Good’ still suffers from some of the initial installments biggest causes for complaints a la the zapped out color grading, the overabundance (and reliance) on CGI, and the bad lighting to try and counter balance each of those other issues these are technical quibbles with a film that has a built-in audience already immersed in this world and these characters ready to see this story brought to life in a way they’ve not experienced before. While these technical failings are certainly disappointing, what was more disappointing about the first film was that Chu offered very little by way of making Oz, and more importantly, the musical numbers, feel cinematic. Do these shortcomings still plague ‘Part II’ at times? Sure, especially considering that not only are there fewer musical numbers, but also fewer of the iconic film tunes to anchor its structure. While building toward the admittedly powerful titular track, Chu uses musical numbers to integrate camera techniques and shot selections that not only enhance the music but also complement the lyrics. This is most apparent during a new song titled “The Girl in the Bubble,” in which Chu utilizes a sequence of mirrors to emphasize Glinda’s feelings of wanting to be seen and respected while simultaneously feeling trapped. It is a sequence such as this, where different departments come together to create a singular vision, with every element doing some work at the story level that justifies a film adaptation of this already hugely successful Broadway show. Of course, I wish these sparks of inspiration and sheer creativity might have shown up more frequently throughout both films, yet ‘For Good’ manages to find its footing often enough with a more critical look at its themes and by simply being a more substantial artistic endeavor. These growing pains give this conclusion a measure of success as the version of this story that will now be the most known and most referenced for years and generations to come, even if it doesn't necessarily reach the heights to which it was capable. 

Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Starring: Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba & Gabriel Basso 
Rated: R (language)
Runtime: 1 hour & 52 minutes

Director Kathryn Bigelow’s latest film, “A House of Dynamite,” her first in eight years, is the story of what happens when the U.S. Government realizes it’s about to be attacked with a nuclear weapon but doesn’t know its origin and must decide how to respond.

The film is told from three different perspectives in a non-linear fashion, showing the same sequence of events through the eyes of different characters, with differing results as far as storytelling and entertainment go.

The story opens with Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), the duty officer in charge of the White House Situation Room, and Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos), the commander of missile defenses at Fort Greely, Alaska. We meet other characters during this segment, including Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso), United States Strategic Command leader Gen. Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts), White House Situation Room director Admiral Mark Miller (Jason Clarke) and Secretary of Defense Reid Baker (Jared Harris), but the first 30 minutes or so is mostly through the eyes of Walker and Gonzalez with the nuke being found on radar, its trajectory being narrowed down to somewhere in the American Midwest and the missile defenses attempt to shoot it down, which evidently only has a 60% success rate.

The first segment, where we don’t yet know how the end result of the nuke is going to play out, is the most thrilling of “A House Full of Dynamite,” with the viewers getting to see how the events would play out – and supposedly the film is quite accurate with this – in real time.

And then we get the answer as to what happens with the nuke. And we get a perspective switch to where the main characters in the story are now: Gen. Brady, Baerington, and, to a lesser extent, Admiral Miller.

It was likely due to finding the performances of Letts, Basso and Clarke to be engaging that the second segment of the film – again lasting about 30 minutes in length – still worked for me. You see the incident from their point of view, and you see how a certain lucky few on the White House staff are whisked away to a safer, more secure location – sorry, Capt. Walker – and you see how they try to decide what comes next if the nuke does, indeed, wipe out a major U.S. city.

That leads to the third segment of the film, which is the most problematic and not what you want from the ending of your film, but I also didn’t mind it as much as many viewers and critics seemed to. This is where we finally get to lay eyes on the President of the United States (Idris Elba), who’s been out at an event and has only now been reachable by a satellite phone, which is why he’s the one character never seen during the first two segments.

Throughout the first two segments, we saw a bunch of people who knew exactly what they were doing, even if it didn’t always work out. But here, we have the leader of the free world seemingly not knowing what to do. Some viewers have an issue with this, but I ask you to look at who has been in the real White House over the last decade and tell me if you think they’d be in a great position if a similar situation were to happen.

I’m willing to give directors and screenwriters, Noah Oppenheim wrote this one, the benefit of the doubt when it comes to making movies in ways outside of the norm, but I do wonder if “A House of Dynamite” might have been a better film, or at least more entertaining, had it been told in a linear fashion.

Despite that question, I did mostly enjoy the film, and my issues had more to do with certain things that didn’t need to be in the script, but were, and by this I mean entire characters like Moses Ingram as a FEMA official and Willa Fitzgerald as a journalist, who seemingly had zero reasoning for being included, and made me wonder if things had been left on the cutting room floor.

“A House of Dynamite” is streaming on Netflix.

Director: Derek Cianfrance
Starring: Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst & Peter Dinklage 
Rated: R (language, nudity & brief sexuality) 
Runtime: 2 hours & 6 minutes

 
Director Derek Cianfrance’s “Roofman” is the incredible true tale of Jeffrey Manchester, a man who broke into McDonald’s in North Carolina via the roof in the late ‘90s, was caught, escaped from prison, and then hid out in a Toys “R” Us store.
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Jeffrey was a U.S. Army veteran struggling to get by with three kids and an ex-wife, and he turned to crime to get by and provide for his family.

As played by Channing Tatum in “Roofman,” Jeffrey comes off as a likable heroic figure just trying to survive tough times, which makes the character somewhat of a Robin Hood character to viewers. McDonald’s and Toys “R” Us as stand-ins for world leaders and billionaires in today’s country, throwing Gatsby parties while common folk lose their SNAP benefits.  

Tatum’s charm and everyman demeanor work perfectly for such a character, and we’ve seen Tatum pull this act off terrifically before in Steven Soderbergh’s underrated 2017 film “Logan Lucky.” “Roofman” is more of a dramatic tale of an individual pushed to steal through life’s downfalls, but Tatum once again knocks the role out of the park.

Hiding out at Toys “R” Us is where we truly get to see Jeffrey’s humanity, as he watches the employees do their jobs, including the hard-working, single mother Leigh (Kirsten Dunst), and how they’re treated by their uncaring boss, Mitch (Peter Dinklage). When Mitch refuses to donate toys to Leigh’s church toy drive, Jeffrey takes matters into his own hands, stealing a bag of toys and delivering them to the church himself – risking his safety in the process. At the church, he is introduced to Leigh, and the two quickly form a relationship, with Jeffrey taking over the alias of John Zorn, a government employee with classified status.

Tatum and Dunst have good chemistry that makes you root for their characters’ relationship, even though you know it could crumble at any moment. Jeffrey and Leigh are meant for each other, but ever since the days of Shakespeare, we know not all “meant to be” come to fruition.

“Roofman” has a talented supporting cast that includes LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Ben Mendelsohn and Uzo Aduba, but the main focus is on Jeffrey’s ordeal and his relationship with Leigh. Only Dinklage’s character really has a chance to stand out, outside of those two.

If you dig too much into the real-life story of Manchester, you’ll find out how this movie is going to end, as Cianfrance and co-writer Kirt Gunn stick to the real-life tale, when they easily could’ve taken creative liberties. I’d suggest watching the film and later reading up on the true story.