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Reviews of movies showing in theaters or streaming online
‘AMERICAN FICTION’:
Former journalist and Emmy-winning TV writer Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut “American Fiction” is a social satire that wields a deceptively sharp shiv, not a cleaving broadsword, as it surgically slices through the many hypocrisies of the culture industry at large. In adapting Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure,” Jefferson assigns himself and his film the doubleedged task of both critiquing popular representations of African American life, while simultaneously serving a representation that is otherwise lacking. It’s a lot to juggle, but he pulls it off, thanks to a wildly talented cast and plenty of good humor that still allows for well-placed jabs to the gut of Hollywood and the publishing industry. Jeffrey Wright stars as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, an academic and novelist who has grown weary of campus politics, but hasn’t managed to find stardom in publishing. After an incident with a student, he’s asked to take a leave of absence, and he heads to a book festival in his hometown of Boston. “American Fiction” is a lot like Monk’s drink of choice: Chenin blanc. Dry, bracing, elegant and a bit unexpected. It’s a thoughtful and complex film that unfolds under repeat viewings and signals the arrival of an exciting new filmmaker. 1:57. 3 stars. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
‘THE BOY AND THE HERON’:
Legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki has released his first film in a decade, the enchanting “The Boy and the Heron.” Based on the 1937 book “How Do You Live?” by Genzaburo Yoshino, which was given to Miyazaki in his youth by his mother, “The Boy and the Heron” is a deeply personal project from the animation auteur.
Like his other work, it is a fantastical and wildly imaginative film that straddles the spirit and human worlds, with a story rooted in deeply relatable emotion, threaded with an enduring sense of hope for the future despite the harshness of everyday reality. Set in the waning days of World War II in a rural village outside Tokyo, “The Boy and the Heron” follows the story of Mahito, a young boy grieving the loss of his mother, who has been killed in a fire. He and his father move away from the city, where Mahito gets to know his strange new home and a pesky heron won’t leave him alone. “The Boy and the Heron,” yet another masterpiece from Miyazaki, helps us to see the beauty of life around us and contemplate the future of the universe more profoundly. 2:04. 4 stars.
— Katie Walsh
‘GODZILLA MINUS ONE’:
Back in 1954, just nine years out from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese filmmaker Ishiro Honda and special effects designer Eiji Tsuburaya dreamed up a giant dinosaur-like creature that came from the depths of the ocean, mutated by nuclear radiation, a “kaiju” named Godzilla. The monster was a metaphor for Japanese atomic trauma, and the film, produced and distributed by Toho, was a hit, spawning the longest running film franchise of all time. Some 70 years later, the 33rd Toho Godzilla film (the 37th in the franchise), “Godzilla Minus One,” written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, brings
Godzilla back to its Japanese roots (it’s the first Toho Godzilla film since 2016’s “Shin Godzilla”), as well as its World War II roots. Taking place in the immediate post-war period in 1945, the film reckons with more than just the metaphorically monstrous nuclear fallout of the war, but also the devastatingly human emotional effects. When this monster surfaces, glowing neon blue from the nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll, it unearths all of the repressed shame and trauma of Japanese veterans, specifically a failed kamikaze pilot, Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki). 2:05. 3 stars. — Katie Walsh
‘THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES’:
It has been eight years since the release of the last “Hunger Games” film, a franchise that produced big boxoffice dollars for Lionsgate, and made star Jennifer Lawrence a household name. “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” based on a prequel novel author Suzanne Collins released in 2020, explores the young
adult life of Coriolanus Snow, the tyrannical president of Panem played by Donald Sutherland in the prior films. “The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” invites viewers to learn more about the background of Coriolanus, played here by Tom Blyth, and to witness the early days of the Hunger Games, in which the game-makers figure out how to wield the spectacle of children killing each other for sport as a tool of propaganda. There’s so much that works about the film, but it’s unfortunate that it has all been crammed into one overly long film. 2:37. 2 ½ stars. — Katie Walsh
‘POOR THINGS’: In the middle of the new film “Poor Things,” an adaptation of the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray from Oscar-nominated auteur Yorgos Lanthimos, our heroine Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) toddles off on a solo adventure for the first time. Wandering the streets of a pastel storybook Lisbon in silky shorts and a blouse with enormous puff sleeves, her long mane of raven hair swaying down back, Bella heads for a
pastry stand, where she crams as many custard tarts as she can into her mouth. Later, she vomits them up on a balcony overlooking a picturesque vista of the city. Cause, meet effect. Bella observes this bit of data and reports it back to her scientist father figure, Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) in a crudely scrawled postcard home. This kind of selfexperimentation is the backbone of “Poor Things,” Lanthimos’ strange and ravishing masterpiece about a young woman who receives one of life’s rare gifts: a chance to start over, from scratch. What will Bella do with her new lease on life? She’ll devour every last crumb, without an ounce of shame. This film may be fantastical, outré, at times bizarre, and sexually frank. But ultimately, “Poor Things” is a traditional heroine’s journey forging its own singular path.
That Bella achieves a fully embodied sense of personal liberation makes it a truly radical — and feminist — fairy tale. 2:21. 4 stars.
— Katie Walsh
‘WONKA’: The new “Wonka” works considerably better than its reasons for existence would suggest. It exists because, why not? It’s one more brand-familiar origin story, the easiest thing in the movie world to get made. It exists because it’s one more musicalization of nonmusical source material, adding seven original songs to a project attached to Roald Dahl’s 1964 novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” The 1971 film version of that novel, with Gene Wilder as secretive candy magnate Willy Wonka, was likewise a musical; two of its more enduring tunes, “Pure Imagination” and the “Oompa Loompa” song, turn up in the latest screen addition to Wonkalore. Director Paul King and co-writer Simon Farnaby manage this little chunk of intellectual property quite well. And as Wonka, Timothée Chalamet lightens the load, delivering the majority of his lines in a style (to swipe a line from Cole Porter) classifiable as “murmuring low” and taking it easy. Neither script nor actor have much interest in capturing hints of Wonka’s callous, misanthropic streak as imagined by Dahl and the earlier films’ interpretations. Chalamet handles the musical demands with a sincere light tenor and some simple but nimble dance moves. And somehow, “Wonka” solves one of the sternest design challenges in all of cinema: Making a chocolate river look like something other than a wastewater treatment plant’s worst day ever. 1:56. 3 stars.
RATINGS: The movies listed are rated according to the following key: 4 stars, excellent; 3 stars, good; 2 stars, fair; 1 star, poor.