The film, which premiered Thursday at Sundance, begins with a car accident occurring offscreen. Putting its darkly comedic tone on immediate display, we get the most jarring cut to a funeral since “Hereditary” and see Rocky is having to be the person everyone else gets support from, even as he has just lost his twin brother.

Left adrift and angry at the loss without any real way of processing it, Rocky begins to attend the aforementioned support group. It’s there we get the first of many great dark jokes and O’Brien makes each that much funnier through his reactions alone. That’s also when we meet Dennis (Sweeney) who is attending the group as well. The two bond over their loss with Rocky calling up his new bud at all hours to help him do menial tasks like going grocery shopping because he likes the company. They couldn’t be more different in sexuality and disposition — Rocky is bro-ish and a bit dim while Dennis is quick-witted and dryly funny — but they still begin to just be present for the other. We see this all unfolding from Rocky’s perspective as he clings to the relationship like a life raft in the hope that he can move forward.

But this is just the beginning. Once the title card drops unexpectedly late into the film, everything changes. Just when you think the movie is teetering on the edge of falling into repetition, or even worse, running out of steam, the perspective shifts to Dennis and Sweeney’s master plan clicks into place. It is not a spoiler to say that nothing is exactly what it seems, but the precise details of how this soon takes shape would be a crime to give away. What can be said is that both of these young men are about to find that their lives will be forever changed. As each goes about their days in the pointedly bustling yet isolating big city of Portland, we spend much of our time with Dennis as he is the one driving almost all the significant events and yet is increasingly having a hard time holding everything together. He despises his job, his coworkers, and much of his life. When he’s with Rocky, he seems more joyful. There is a sweetness to their interactions.

The film morphs into something else, and what fun Sweeney has contorting his characters into a whole host of hilarious, yet still uncomfortable, situations. It isn’t a mystery, as the audience is clued in quite early, though “Twinless” still gets plenty of mileage from watching certain characters begin to piece together what is happening. The film could be mistaken as cringe comedy, but it’s much more than that, and Sweeney never lets the film’s delightful twists overtake the emotion at the root of the movie.

On a formal level, there are also some fun uses of split screen that show the diverging paths of characters before they come back together again. Sweeney excels at marrying style with character.

When the film reaches its inevitable breaking point, the movie that started coming to mind most was the late, great Lynn Shelton’s Sundance classic “Humpday.” Even as “Twinless” is not quite as simultaneously audacious and thoughtful as that, the scenes in the confines of Seattle hotel rooms where the two men finally begin to open up to each other shares a similar unpredictable, intimate energy.

The film never gets bogged down in its more starkly depressing elements, with Sweeney remaining light on his comedic feet in everything from a goofy movie he has his character watch to a killer final gag involving the cover of a children’s book. But it also hits on something bittersweet in the last lines that provide a cathartic little button to the whole affair.

“Twinless” is a sales title at Sundance.  

Check out all our Sundance coverage here

The post ‘Twinless’ Review: Dylan O’Brien and James Sweeney Are a Great Duo in Delightfully Diabolical Dramedy appeared first on TheWrap.

“Jimpa,” the latest film from “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” director Sophie Hyde, does this about as fully as one could ever hope to do. In a script Hyde wrote with her “52 Tuesdays” co-writer Matthew Cormack, we are taken fully into the world of Jim (aka Jimpa), played by John Lithgow, and his daughter Hannah, played by Olivia Colman, as they try to navigate their respective lives. Jim is a gay man who left Hannah and her mother when she was a child and she is now attempting to make a film about him while also raising her own child Frances (Aud Mason-Hyde), who is nonbinary.

As they all spend time together in the beauty of Amsterdam, the love they have for each other comes crashing into the lingering tension that Hannah has spent most of her adult life attempting to not just process, but speak openly about. 

The result is a film that’s not just incisive and compassionate, but fully attuned to the rhythms of this modern family. Conversations around queerness, polyamory and sexuality take place throughout in ways that embrace their complexity rather than shy away from them. In a world that seeks not just to repress such conversations but target those who have them, it is as refreshing as it is essential to see a film tackling them with such frankness.

As we hear them talk with radical openness about some things, Hyde pulls off a delicate balancing act where we come to see that there is also much that they are not yet fully able to talk through. It’s a film built around such conversations and our desire for connection that may be a little fragmented at times but cuts deep all the same.

Just as last year’s Sundance saw the excellent film “A Real Pain” capture the delicate relationship between two cousins, this one sees its own messy family trying to open up to each other and make sense of the pain they’re feeling before it’s all too late. It earns every emotion and then some, breaking the heart open with such breathtaking truthfulness that you get bowled over just before you land softly in its final frames. That it is also a film partly about its very construction only makes it all the more wonderfully rich to experience. 

Premiering Thursday at Sundance, “Jimpa” begins with Hannah and Frances talking about Jim. The former is doing so as part of a pitch about the film she wants to make about her father, and the latter is doing so for a class presentation. Both are earnestly passionate and clearly love him, though there is still a sense that we are hearing a possibly rosy portrait of the man. Critically, this earnestness must not be mistaken for complete honesty.

Instead, as Hyde gently teases out, we realize that Hannah in particular is invested in not expressing anger or even conflict about her father. This results in a humorous opening conversation about how all dramas must contain some element of conflict, but “Jimpa” doesn’t just use this for jokes. It is also flagging up to us that the film we are watching is about someone attempting to reckon with their past and the challenges of making art that can do full justice to this. That it does so within some of the familiar narrative beats of the family dramedy is part of its potency. Not only does Hyde remain aware of how the overly saccharine version of this film could go, she holds it up to the light in order to see all the ways the narratives we fall back on may actually be hiding critical parts of the lives we lead. 

You see, Jim is a flawed man as well as a caring one. He fought for the civil rights of others, speaking out after being diagnosed with AIDS even as the world was fighting him at every turn. And he has tried to continue doing so even in his older age. He is also egotistical, selfish and occasionally cruel, especially when he doesn’t always listen to others.

Lithgow, all tattooed up and often bearing his body in addition to his soul, is terrific at capturing all the seemingly contradictory yet completely authentic layers of the man. He is capable of turning a scene on its head with such withering charm and conviction that you go along with it until you realize just how hurtful he can be to the others around him. Alongside Colman, whose eyes contain entire worlds of tumultuous emotion in these scenes, we feel how it is the family has settled into this comfortable uncomfortableness. 

However, if there is a breakout star in the film, it is Aud Mason-Hyde. That they are the child of director Hyde only makes it all the more engaging as we can feel an extra sense of natural lived-in emotion in the way the scenes unfold. Even alongside heavy-hitters like Lithgow and Colman, it is remarkable how effortlessly Mason-Hyde holds their own. In many ways, their scenes are what bring everything out that the adults are looking away from. Even when there are some conversations amongst the older generation that can feel a little clunky in how they underline what they are saying, it is Mason-Hyde who brings us into the more complicated gray areas that are necessary to understanding what “Jimpa” is attempting to grapple with. For all the joy that Frances discovers in the city and the desire they have to move away from home in order to find community, we see in their eyes how life is not always so simple. When tragedy does inevitably arise, it makes the quiet and often unspoken details of their performance all the more impactful.  

As we see in the hands of cinematographer Matthew Chuang, who previously shot the gorgeous “You Won’t Be Alone,” the past and present are always crashing together. It is in these striking juxtapositions that the lives of all the characters come into greater focus. There is pain in how they are intercut into the present, but there is also a captivating quality to them that only cinema can provide. At times, it even recalls the shattering way director Barry Jenkins captured the various characters in his astounding adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk.”

With that being said, there is still much that Hyde uncovers that she can call her own in her directing. The way moments will linger and intersect takes the breath away just as they never feel like they are overdone. It’s all one would hope a film like this to be: honest, bittersweet and true. In the end, whether Hannah the character is able to make her film, Hyde has done so herself in beautiful fashion.

The post ‘Jimpa’ Review: Olivia Colman and John Lithgow Soar in Beautiful, Bittersweet Drama appeared first on TheWrap.

“My goodness, that chair is gorgeous,” we hear via playful, often poetic, narration by Melanie Griffith before we cut to a sad little meal being shared by Camille, played by a fantastic and committed Juliette Lewis, plus her two friends. The voiceover shifts into being biting as the camera notably pulls away. Gone is Griffith’s effusive affection and in its place is a more oddly wistful sadness. 

In terms of all the memorable ways films have opened, this doesn’t sound like it would be that meaningful of a way to do so, but my goodness is it. It’s gleefully silly without overselling itself while laying the seeds for a humorous yet heartfelt juxtaposition between the life being led by Camille and the chair at the furniture showroom. If this sounds ridiculous, it’s just the wondrous beginning to the journey Kramer takes us on — one where Camille, after attempting to buy the chair, does the next best thing: become the furniture herself. Rather than serve as a shallowly classical body swap story that provides a moral lesson about her growing to appreciate the life she had, the aftermath of this decision is more thematically complicated and engaging. It’s also sincere, tapping into anxieties about being not just liked or even loved, but truly seen. 

You see, rather than despise her confinement, Camille’s lonely existence becomes infinitely better. The people around her love her far more when she is nothing but a chair. 

Premiering Thursday at Sundance, this is the first film Kramer has shown at the festival and it also feels like the one she’s spent her whole career building up to. Rather than compromise her ideas that she’s explored with spirited, if sometimes a little scattered, verve in past works, she deepens the emotions she’s tapping into just as she dives further and further into absurdity. Merging a somewhat similar visual style to “Please Baby Please” with the thorny introspective elements of the smaller-scale “Pity Me,” it’s not just her funniest film yet, but also her best. 

Set in only a handful of locations, all are shot with maximum creativity and an eye for whimsical compositions by cinematographer Patrick Meade Jones, who has worked on all of Kramer’s previous narrative features. As it traces the path Camille takes in her newfound existence as a chair, she discovers something oddly liberating in the change that is also not to last.

Initially, she is bought as a gift for Olivier, played by a magnificent Mamoudou Athie, who is living a lonely life of his own but also becomes infatuated with her in chair form. He takes her to a dinner party and must fight off the other attendees from getting their hands on her. The expressions that Athie makes in this scene and his repeated outbursts of “No!” are a riot, though the actor never descends into relying on one-note gags.

Instead, he takes part in a variety of eerie dance numbers, both with others that seem to come from his subconscious and by himself with Camille/the chair being rapidly cut between, as well as an uproarious sequence surrounding an awkward photo shoot being done for a magazine. It’s strange in an intentionally stilted fashion. Critically, the cast approaches their parts with the seriousness necessary to pull the cocktail of silliness and sincerity off. It will alienate some, but that’s also what makes it work. 

At the center of this is Lewis, whose every rhythmic line delivery, desperate expression, and eventual scream is operating on the precise wavelength that the film needs. It’s all ludicrous in snapshots, but the full picture that lurks underneath is one of discontentment. The film lays this out in both the narration that interjects throughout and the commitment that Lewis brings to the part. This includes her spending a significant portion of the film playing the chair as Camille, as the swap involves the furniture taking over her body, meaning she doesn’t move or speak. If this sounds like it’d distance you from her character, the opposite that ends up happening. Even as there is one darker scene in the middle that sends the film teetering a bit, it’s everything that surrounds it which proves to be unexpectedly yet richly saddening and silly to sort through. 

While she has never been one to shy away from what are often impenetrable narratives about troubled people struggling to connect, “By Design” is the one that brings it all together in the most potent package. The film’s final fleeting lines underline this perfectly, making it land with an unexpected gut punch as you get one last look at Camille, back alone all over again.

We feel all the pieces Kramer has been designing for us falling into place one last dreamlike and despairing time, echoing where we began in a lonely showroom with the spotlights coming down. All you need do is pull up a chair and take it all in.    

The post ‘By Design’ Review: Juliette Lewis and Mamoudou Athie Are a Joy in This Bold Body Swap Comedy appeared first on TheWrap.

As with some of the students in Toossi’s classroom drama, I have no talent for learning foreign languages despite all the courses taken, all the money spent. I know the fear, the awkwardness, that constant feeling of stupidity. Watching “English,” I also felt the tedium of sitting in a classroom — or Zoom class — while people struggle desperately to express themselves in a foreign language. Yes, the tedium. My classes tend to be 90 minutes. Toossi’s play is only slightly longer.

Set in Iran in 2008, the four students here (Tala Ashe, Ava Lalezarzadeh, Pooya Mohseni and Hadi Tabbal) and their teacher (Marjan Neshat) speak fluent American English when they’re supposed to be speaking Farsi, and a very accented broken English when they’re supposed to be speaking English. In other words, we in the audience can always understand what they’re saying except when the accents get a little too thick or the English gets really mangled, which is when Toossi reveals her dated sense of humor. Anyone who watched Ricky Ricardo “’splain” himself on “I Love Lucy” has heard these kinds of malapropism jokes before.

My takeaway from “English” is definitely not the message of identity and pride that Toossi has in mind. For me, the teacher Marjan (Neshat exudes extreme patience throughout) is trying hard to teach disrespectful students who don’t really want to learn. For example, when the teacher insists they speak English, a couple of the students believe she is infringing on their Arab identity and insist on speaking their native tongue so they can really “express” themselves. One student gets so incensed she plays a Farsi song in class.

For me, this is the moment I would demand my tuition back. We’re learning German, so let’s listen to Lady Gaga?

Another such tuition-refund moment comes when the students perform a language exercise and throw a small green ball at each other. When they catch it, they have to speak an English word on a given topic, such as “kitchen” or “sports.” The exercise adds action to a drama that desperately needs it, but this exercise is trauma-inducing for anyone trying to verbalize a foreign word.

But back to those recalcitrant students: They shame Marjan for having let people in England, where she lived for nine years, call her Mary. That’s a lesson learned. This week, I must remember to tell my Italian instructor to stop calling me Robertino.

Of course, there’s a difference between foreign language as a hobby and foreign language as destiny and survival. These Iranian students’ future depends on passing the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). The anxiety and fear of failure permeates the actors’ performances, and there’s something else they’re even better at communicating: resentment. “English” was conceived as Toossi’s MFA thesis, and running around the edges of her play is the inherent patriarchy of formal education. Toossi tweaks that indictment by having the teacher be female, but the subjugation of the students by an illiberal force propagating Western culture remains. They study a Ricky Martin song, watch the movie “Moonstruck” and, of course, drink Coca-Cola. That’s cultural tyranny.

The other choice is chaos — let the students run the classroom and no one learns. “English” explores the tyranny, but fudges the chaos. Left unexplained is how one incompetent student eventually aces her TOEFL. Also weakly explained is why another student, proficient in English, takes this class.

Under Knud Adams’ direction, Neshat is wise to play against the authoritarian instincts of her character. Ashe and Mohseni, unfortunately, play right into their respective character’s self-righteousness with regard to so-called students’ rights. Such entitled behavior has led to many in the United States leaving the teaching profession. It’s doubtful it has ever been tolerated in Iran, especially in 2008.

“English” is written in short snippets of scenes, and Toossi emphasizes this choppiness by concluding many of these five-minute skits with an overly pithy remark. Adams brings some connective tissue to the play by providing musical interludes as Marsha Ginsberg’s classroom set spins around to offer us a variety of viewpoints. The only thing missing is the drama.

In one respect, “English” fits perfectly into the dramatic works the Pulitzer committee likes to promote. It tells us that Western culture is bad, everything else is just great.

The post ‘English’ Broadway Review: Something Gets Lost in the Translation appeared first on TheWrap.

Nearly all of her characters are shatteringly isolated, divided even in their faltering attempts at connection. But they are bound, at minimum, through a mystical deer created by a celebrated Chinese artist before he died. The deer sits at the center of a giant painting in a seedy Chongqing club, where strangers escape into virtual reality alone and together.

The club’s most popular VR world — called Luz, which means both “Light” and “Separation” — also involves the deer, who has to evade participants hunting it. Among the players is young camgirl Fa (En Xi Deng), whose livestreams are persistently interrupted by Wei (Xiao Dong Guo), a middle-aged man claiming to be her lost father. Since she won’t agree to meet him in real life, he has to learn how to seek her out in the game.

Meanwhile, the late artist’s lonely daughter, Ren (Sandrine Pinna), is in Hong Kong, until she gets a call that her former stepmother — her father’s equally creative ex-wife, Sabine (Isabelle Huppert) — is ailing. Somewhat reluctantly, she travels to France to help Sabine, only to be shocked when the patient wants no aid at all. Sabine’s plan, in fact, is to embrace life as wholeheartedly as she can, for as long as possible. Stubbornly refusing any attempts to curtail her active existence, she instead pulls Ren into the tactile delights of a Parisian artist: galleries and dances and gardens, music and food and adventures.

Lau (“Bends”) and her talented cinematographer, Benjamin Echazarreta (“A Fantastic Woman”), treat the screen like a canvas themselves, building layer upon layer to evoke multiple mediums. An electro-eerie score is the perfect match for Chongqing’s dark, neon-lit streets, which call to mind “Blade Runner” in their futuristic alienation.

But since “Luz” is, more than anything, a study in contrasts, Sabine’s Paris is as verdant and lush as Chongqing is stark and disaffected. The people we meet in her world are older and more engaged with their senses: individuals converse rather than text; pulsing techno gives way to sentimental French pop; the palate shifts from shades of black to vibrant color. As actors, Huppert and Pinna are both luminous. But while Sabine shines as if lit from within, Ren is dimmer, visibly lacking vitality even as her dynamic stepmother is the one living with a potentially fatal aneurism.

Because Lau is so intent on drawing distinctions between their ways of life, her script can occasionally feel black-and-white in its themes, too. And her artistic perspectives are idiosyncratic enough that we do notice when she lapses into clichéd terrain. Most of the time, though, she keeps us suspended in a state of awed anticipation. Even as her intentions are to nudge us back into real life, the images flickering on screen continue to hold us rapt.

The post ‘Luz’ Review: Flora Lau Conjures a Gorgeous Drama of Technology and Isolation appeared first on TheWrap.

As a PBS American Masters portrait designed to celebrate Matlin’s accomplishments, “Not Alone Anymore” can’t really be called a traditional documentary. Matlin chose first-time director Shoshannah Stern herself (they worked together on the Sundance Now series “This Close”), and the connection between them is evident. Though this obviously precludes a lack of neutral distance, it also opens up space for Matlin to share her story with unguarded intimacy.

And what a story it turns out to be. Matlin lost her hearing as a toddler — no one knew exactly why — and her parents took the traditional approach at the time: encouraging her to live, as much as possible, as though she hadn’t.

As a result, she had one foot in two worlds but her full self in neither. She felt left out in her family, and lacked the community that other kids found in Deaf spaces. There was one exception, though, and that was in the acting program at the International Center on Deafness and the Arts. Eventually, she was cast in Randa Haines’ film “Children of a Lesser God,” about a Deaf woman and the hearing teacher (William Hurt) who pushes her to speak.

Matlin opens up in “Not Alone Anymore” (as she did in her 2009 memoir, “I’ll Scream Later”) about her on- and off-screen relationships with her late co-star, Hurt. She was 19 and he was 35, and their two-year affair was marked by his repeated emotional and physical abuse. She was both the first Deaf performer to win an Oscar and the youngest woman to win Best Actress. But when we rewatch her historic night now, annotated by her own memories, it feels palpably different than it did at the time. Today, we notice her discomfort when she hesitantly takes the trophy from Hurt, and can see how young she really is as the media immediately drops public responsibility for the Deaf community onto her slim shoulders.

Many of Matlin’s recollections take place as she sits comfortably on her couch with Stern, who is also Deaf, the two of them signing in screen-captioned American Sign Language without an interpreter. Their non-mediated ASL is so seamlessly presented that it becomes one of several elements to drive home how essential representation really is. In both contemporary interviews and past clips, we see people talking about the doors Matlin opened for them as an actor and celebrity, an award winner and an outspoken advocate of Deaf rights. (There was no closed captioning on most movies or TV shows before her public push.)

Matlin is a thoughtful, funny and intense presence, and therefore a fantastic interview. But Stern also makes excellent use of her co-workers, family and friends — including Aaron Sorkin, an inspired choice to discuss the subtleties of language; her “CODA” co-star Troy Kotsur, who looked to Matlin when he became the second Deaf actor to earn an Oscar; and longtime friend Henry Winkler, whose unshakable support from her earliest years reinforces his status as a Hollywood hero.

Stern, who is seen crying on camera more than once, makes no attempt to achieve objectivity, nor does a project like this require it. This is, in fact, the sort of celebratory personal retrospective that is often created for people much older than Matlin (who is 59, and radiates with ageless energy). Much of the structure is unsurprising; interspersed with her stories and old media clips are a lot of admirers, who enthusiastically share the many ways in which she changed the world. But their case is strong, and the stories worth telling. It’s a testament to both Stern and her subject that we leave already anticipating the chapters still to come.

The post ‘Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore’ Review: An Unguarded Portrait of a Groundbreaking Talent appeared first on TheWrap.

So it should serve as a pleasant surprise that “Star Trek: Section 31” arrives full of nuance and charm.

Viewers actually do not need to know any Section 31 lore or have watched “Star Trek: Discovery” — the “Trek” series from which the film is spun off — to understand what is happening in the film, although, if you have, some of the emotional stakes will hit harder. The film itself quickly brings viewers up to speed via a communication from Section 31 command to Alok Sahar (Omari Hardwick), the leader of a covert ops team. He is instructed to recruit Phillipa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh). Georgiou has been a character in “Discovery” since the first season: the briefing quickly recaps the reveal that she was the emperor of the Terran Empire in the Mirror Universe (you know, the evil Earth one where Spock had a beard, and Uhura had a thigh dagger), and that she was brought to the prime universe, became an agent for Section 31, saved the universe, traveled forward in time, traveled back in time and now is the owner of a nightclub (a lot happens in “Discovery”). Alok reluctantly recruits Georgiou and they, along with their team of misfits, must track down a terrifying weapon before it can be used to destroy the Federation.

It’s a simple but effective premise. Despite its title, the film is barely about Section 31, the division being more of a plot device to get all these characters together and on mission. The film —directed and written by “Discovery” alums Olatunde Osunsanmi and Craig Sweeny — is actually more about Georgiou herself.

One of the franchise’s most complicated characters, Georgiou is not traditional Starfleet material. “Discovery” established that when she was emperor in the Mirror Universe, she was a horrific dictator who committed genocide on multiple planets. This kind of character bio is typically reserved for the quintessential “Star Trek” villain. However, she became a fan favorite in Season 2 of “Discovery,” mainly because of Yeoh’s natural charisma —“evil mommy” is how I can best describe her vibe — and her chemistry with the show’s protagonist Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green). Her bond with Michael and other characters in the series caused her to begin questioning her “might makes right” Terran values and to act in more ethical, although not too ethical, ways.

“Section 31” continues Georgiou’s arc from lawful evil to chaotic neutral. For one thing, as the film’s opening flashback reveals, she became emperor of the Terran empire after decimating her opposition in a “Hunger Games”-like combat competition, poisoning her family to eliminate any potential weaknesses and subjugating her boyfriend — San (played as a teenager by James Huang and as an adult by James Hiroyuki Liao), the Peeta to her Katniss — to servitude. It’s brutal, but it is a look into why Georgiou is the way she is. In order to survive, Georgiou had to embody Nietzsche’s master morality that forms the basis of the Terran empire: “the girl I knew has been murdered,” as San laments.

The film doesn’t excuse her past actions. In fact, she grapples with the idea of what it means to “be infected with a conscience” in this new universe where more is expected of her. This mission confronts her with her own culpability: She is the one who ordered the creation of the movie’s McGuffin —the weapon of mass destruction the team is tasked to find — when she was emperor, a weapon so evil that its makers committed suicide on its completion. Can she atone for that? Or, at least, choose to be better? Underneath all that arrogant bravado (“I’m the only one I could never defeat”) is a deeply tragic figure that can no longer deny the consequences of her actions.

Despite all of this deep, philosophical exploration of character, Georgiou and the movie are also just plain fun. It’s a spy thriller, a genre not often utilized by “Star Trek,” complete with a mole hunt and the fast tempos and pulsing rhythms of a spy score, composed by Jeff Russo. While Section 31 was originally introduced as a way to foil spy fiction with a more realistic look at how spycraft works, this film leans into a more “Mission: Impossible” style fantasy, complete with gadgets and stunts. The film is divided into “chapters” with titles like “One Night in Baraam” and “The Godsend,” reminiscent of the films of Quentin Tarantino and a nod back to the spinoff series origins of the film. There are some wonderful set pieces that show off Yeoh’s formidable action chops, including a kinetic brawl in Georgiou’s night club where she wears the most magnificent cape ever seen in a “Star Trek.” It’s a “Star Wars” level cape.

The other characters on the team provide great support to Georgiou in their various shades of moral alignment. One is recognizable by name to fans as Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), future captain of the Enterprise-C from the classic “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” The uptight representative of Starfleet, she’s there to make sure the team doesn’t violate any ethical boundaries — she has to tell Georgiou multiple times not to assassinate anyone — but she clearly also struggles with following strict procedure in the face of complex situations. Other characters are original to the film, including the neurotic shapeshifter Quasi (Sam Richardson), Deltan honey trap Melle (Humberly González), himbo mech-head Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok) and a-nano-species-inside-a-robot-Vulcan Zeph (Robert Kazinsky), who inexplicably speaks with an Irish accent. Alok himself is a survivor of the often referenced Eugenics Wars; he’s genetically augmented and, thus, is not allowed to officially join Starfleet. He is suspicious of Georgiou because he’s met dictators before and is unsure if she can be redeemed, but there is also genuine connection and chemistry between them, an understanding of the horrors of being forced to be part of a paradigm that they now regret.

The group becomes, well, maybe not a family, but certainly a team that respects each other for who they are, not who they were.

The first “Star Trek” film in almost 10 years — yes, Justin Lin’s “Star Trek: Beyond” was released in 2016 – “Section 31” is under a lot of pressure, but, despite my initial reservations, it manages to stick the landing. My only critique is that I wish this was a series as originally intended as I would love to spend more time with these characters. Using Section 31 is a clever way of interrogating redemption arcs and who utopias allow to be included, but the film resists the urge to give into the cynicism that has irked fans of “Star Trek” about the organization in the past. “Star Trek: Section 31” has a distinct personality while still feeling like a “Trek” film, with characters outside of the normal scope of the franchise.

“Star Trek: Section 31” premieres Friday, Jan. 24, on Paramount+.

The post ‘Star Trek: Section 31’ Review: Michelle Yeoh Proves Skeptics Wrong in Charming Paramount+ Spinoff Film appeared first on TheWrap.

The trailers for writer/director Drew Hancock’s debut feature “Companion” are giving the audience a very good idea of the movie they’re about to watch, and that’s a little unfortunate, because the film is best viewed without any preconceived notions. Hancock’s wry and creepy screenplay sets its own expectations, inviting the audience along for a particular kind of scary thrill ride. When Hancock pulls out the rug we can see through the floor, into the movie’s mechanisms, and it’s a treat to uncover what kind of machine he’s actually built for us — all of which is harder to do if you’re 30 minutes ahead of the plot just because you saw the marketing.

So in the interest of not compounding the issue — especially since “Companion” is such a joy to discover on one’s own — this review will dance around the movie’s core premise to the best of my film critic abilities. “The Red Eye Effect” is bad enough. Let’s not make it worse.

“Companion” stars Sophie Thatcher (“Heretic”) as Iris, who was gliding through life without incident until she met Josh (Jack Quaid, “The Boys”), who is her perfect guy. He’s handsome, he’s charming and you’ve probably seen enough romantic comedies to know that any meet-cute as cute as this — there are oh, so many oranges! — means they’re destined to fall in love. To hear Iris tell it, meeting Josh was one of the two most important, eye-opening moments of her life.

The other, as she says in the film’s opening voiceover, is when she killed him.

The story kicks off when Josh and Iris drive to an isolated luxury house in the middle of a forest — yup, we’re doing one of these — where they’re planning to party with Josh’s friends and their lovers. Kat (Megan Suri, “It Lives Inside”) is Josh’s bestie, and Iris is very jealous of their connection and possible romantic (or formerly romantic) relationship. Her boyfriend, a married Russian who earned his millions the dirty way, is Sergey (Rupert Friend, “Asteroid City”), and he’s just gross. Also in attendance are Josh’s flighty friend Eli (Harvey Guillén, “What We Do in the Shadows”) and his extremely hot boyfriend Patrick (Lukas Gage, “Smile 2”).

As we wait to find out what’s going to go horribly wrong, we take note of various details that will probably be important later. Kat’s confession that Iris makes her feel “replaceable.” A mysterious item in Josh and Iris’ luggage. The fact that Josh, ostensibly the perfect guy, actually seems like a total tool. Any movie where a boyfriend rolls over and goes to sleep right after sex without saying a thing is, after all, a movie with a crappy boyfriend in it.

When violence does break out, it seems like a familiar sort of violence. Brutal and disturbing, but in a “low budget what do we do about this murder and how do we keep from killing each other now that the first domino has fallen” kind of way. And hey, it seems like a fine, albeit formulaic place for “Companion” to go, using an unexpected explosion of bloodletting to explore the repressed feelings inside a seemingly harmless person, calling into question the relationships they’ve formed, and forcing everyone to reveal who they really are.

And that’s kind of what happens, but Hancock’s twisteroos are fiendish, and “Companion” soon spirals into exciting and ingenious directions. The fundamental conceits, once finally revealed, speak volumes about the way men view women and women are conditioned to view men. An idyllic vision of love meets the commodification of love, and the commodification of love turns out to be insincere, insecure and dangerous. What’s more, Hancock has a vicious sense of humor about it. The whole thing is freaky and funny as hell.

Thatcher has a wallflower to play for the first chunk of “Companion,” but as she breaks out of her expectations, she goes on an engrossing journey and a lot of people end up dead. All the people she thought she loved, and their mostly-awful friends, drop their façades and reveal their pathetic and dangerous wretchedness. Iris and Josh are on a nonstop collision course with self-discovery, and they don’t make the discoveries they were hoping for. Thatcher captivates and Quaid proves once again that he’s one of the most charming on-screen (and voiceover) performers in the industry, and that he isn’t afraid to tear all that down and dig up the awfulness that veneer often hides.

Hancock does a fabulous job of balancing his film’s early romantic leanings and the horror (and possibly other genre) conceits that emerge as his story unfolds, and all the emotional truths that prop all those aspects up. It’s one of the better screenplays of its ilk in years, setting up ideas and rules and playing with them in every imaginable way, and repeatedly surprising the audience while always playing fair. That it evokes some familiar territory in the first act, especially, is by design, but sometimes it’s more distracting than others.

“Companion” was produced by Zach Eggers, whose own breakout horror feature “Barbarian” was a big hit in 2022 and also relied on unexpected twists and turns. It’s the “Barbarian” connection that’s touted in the trailers, along with the fact that Warner Bros. also released the schmaltzy romance classic “The Notebook.” How cheeky. But the cynicism of “Barbarian” wasn’t tempered. It was ugly — arguably to a fault — and its anger wasn’t always well-placed. Hancock’s film takes a similar approach to the storytelling but tells a more satisfying story. It’s scary, in a very different way. It’s funny, in a somewhat similar way. “Companion” is an impressively constructed mechanism that functions exactly how it’s supposed to, even when it seems like it’s not, and it never lets us down.

The post ‘Companion’ Review: Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid Star in a Wily, Well-Oiled Scary Movie Machine appeared first on TheWrap.

More actors than anyone can count — strike that, I guess there’ve been 18 bazillion — have put their stamp on this 425-year-old play about a prince and his revenge against his conspiring, murderous uncle. The words “to be or not to be” are emblazoned within the global lexicon, preserving forever Shakespeare’s complex thoughts about ending one’s own life, as generation after generation of performers and directors put their own stamp on perhaps the most well-worn dramatic material humanity has.

But I’ve never seen a “to be or not to be” speech quite like the one in “Grand Theft Hamlet.” It is now a speech about life spoken to lifeless automatons, frequently interrupted by real-life jerks who murder the actor mid-speech. Half absurd, half profound. That’s what you get for staging a Shakespearean play within the confines of “Grand Theft Auto Online,” a multiplayer game where the players undertake exciting criminal missions or, just as often, screw around and shoot each other in the face with rockets and attack jets.

The year was 2021, and like many, actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen were out of work, locked away in their homes, and going a little mad north-north-west. While living vicariously through their online avatars, they stumbled across an area of San Andreas — the game’s cheeky stand-in for Southern California — they had never seen before. A giant amphitheater, exactly the sort of venue an actor dreams of headlining. And they consider, perchance, the possibility of staging a production within the game, since live performances were no longer possible due to the lockdown and COVID precautions.

“Grand Theft Hamlet” is a plucky underdog story — a modern, cartoonishly violent version of Mickey Rooney declaring, “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” They’re not trying to save orphans from a workhouse or protect their beloved community center from being gentrified by mean Mr. Douglas; they’re just filling a void in their lives, simultaneously embracing and rejecting the options provided for them by escapist entertainment. Instead of following the expectations of Rockstar Games and unbridling their darkest ids in a seedy underworld, they use “GTA Online” as a canvas to create something powerful and beautiful. The only difference is it’s with attack jets and a badass blimp scene, because they might as well work with what they’ve got.

Directed by Sam Crane and documentarian Pinny Grylls, “Grand Theft Hamlet” can’t help but enthrall us. The film exists in an impersonal world that becomes increasingly and clumsily personal, because the film never leaves a digital environment. Crane and Grylls, who are married, have prolonged arguments over the amount of time he’s spending on this online production of “Hamlet,” occasionally accosted by annoying NPCs. At one point, Crane, extremely lonely, says he wishes he could give his wife a hug. That’s when she reminds him that he can. After all, they live in the same house. 

When you’re putting on a show, that show becomes your whole life. Especially when you didn’t have a life to begin with. There are inevitable moments when impracticalities overwhelm these actors and they debate whether to shelve the whole project, but those decisions have great weight because your actors, at least some of them, have literally nothing else in their lives right now. They have no other friends or family to interact with. They just have gaming and, now, artistic creation as their outlet.

Crane and Oosterveen are not alone. They hold auditions in San Andreas for their production, which leads to frequent accidental murders and police interventions. They enlist some first-time actors — and at least one other professional, Jen Cohn, the voice of Pharah in “Overwatch” — and gradually attract some other randos who unofficially join the team, either by quietly turning up wherever they’re scouting locations or by working as their unofficial security, murdering other nearby players before anyone can interrupt rehearsals by, again, murdering. They’re the rowdiest possible equivalent of the rabble at the old Globe Theater, chucking rotten vegetables at the players they don’t like and rushing the stage to join the sword fights.

Life, and theater, and video games — they are what we make of them. The absurd profundity of “Grand Theft Hamlet” speaks to our wonderful human ability to express ourselves. We make something out of nothing. We find meaning in that which seems meaningless. If there is one disappointing element of this moving, amusing, sad and memorable film it’s that it isn’t five hours long. Because we don’t see their final production of “Hamlet” in its entirety, just a broad overview of its highlights and its hilarious accidental tragedies.

One suspects that the play could have been a movie unto itself. The play is, after all, the thing.

The post ‘Grand Theft Hamlet’ Review: There’s Something Rousing in the State of San Andreas appeared first on TheWrap.

Why?

Why now? Why this film? What was it about this particular project that brought Cameron Diaz back in front of the camera? “Back in Action” has as generic a screenplay as it gets. It’s the same type of cut-and-paste formulaic family adventure you’d find on “The Magical World of Disney” nearly half a century ago, but a lot more expensive and a lot less endearing. It’s for films like “Back in Action” that the word “mediocre” was invented, because it’s not that this film is bad. It’s not interesting or ambitious enough to be bad. It simply “is.” The film’s baseline mainstream competence is almost as exciting as an empty screen.

Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx star as Emily and Matt, two super-spies on a mission to steal “The Key,” which can digitally manipulate any aspect of the world’s infrastructure. Right before their assignment goes south, she reveals to Matt that she’s pregnant with his child. So when their airplane crashes they take the opportunity to fake their own deaths and live a normal suburban life, raising kids and coaching soccer and selling homemade puzzles on Etsy.

Fifteen years later, Emily and Matt have a sulky teenage daughter named Alice (McKenna Roberts, “Barbie”) and a computer geek son named Leo (Rylan Jackson, “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves”), who both think their parents are boring boomers. When they have to rescue 14-year-old Alice from violent adults running a nightclub with drugs and underage drinking — a dark subplot that goes nowhere — they reveal their martial arts mastery and accidentally go viral, finally blowing their cover after a decade-and-a-half.

Soon their old handler, played by Kyle Chandler (a rhyme which is more amusing than most of this movie), arrives to say that The Key is still missing and secret agencies all over the world will stop at nothing to get it back. He’s immediately killed. Their other old handler, played by Andrew Scott (no rhymes there), is extremely super shady and probably evil. If you’ve never seen a movie before you might not be able to guess where that’s all going, but if you have, I’m sorry. Don’t buckle up. It’s not going to be a bumpy night.

You will not be surprised by anything that happens in “Back in Action.” Even the film’s big secret cameo is a beloved actor who these days seems to leave holes in their schedule just in case a streaming service calls with a last-minute gig. Emily and Matt go on the run to retrieve The Key and get their lives back, but they have to bring Alice and Leo with them. They hide that they’re spies for so long that it makes their kids seem weirdly clueless. And yes, eventually those kids will be kidnapped.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: There’s nothing wrong with a formula, so long as that formula is an excuse to deliver something else too. A formula is a skeleton, and the style, the humor, the message, the personality, or the chemistry, these are all the meat that can hang off of it. Without anything to deliver, even a tried-and-true formula will fail as a delivery system. “Back in Action” is an idea for a movie that happens to be nearly two hours long (with an eleven-minute credits sequence – yes, that’s right, eleven minutes). It’s not so much a movie as it is multimillion dollar background noise while you stare at your phone.

Even this film’s MacGuffin doesn’t MacGuff very well. The Key is a very important thingy and they need to get it. Great. You didn’t even have to tell us what it did, “Back in Action,” but now that you have — and now that you’ve failed to sufficiently distract us — we have lots of time to think about it. You’re telling us that a device which can circumnavigate the digital security of any computer system in the world fifteen years ago is still effective? Nothing about computers has changed, at all, since the first iPad came out? We solved Y2K with nary a hitch but in 15 years of knowing a universal computer key was out there somewhere and bad guys were looking for it, nobody came out with a security patch? I know our trust in government is at an all-time low but sheesh, at least give their I.T. department some credit.

What “Back in Action” has that no other movie has had in more than a decade is, you guessed it, Cameron Diaz. It’s the exact kind of film that she’s easily elevated time and again, and she is just as charming today as she was when the otherwise forgettable “Sex Tape” came out. If you missed her, good news! She’s back, and that’s very nice. Now does anyone have a movie that actually deserves her?

The post ‘Back in Action’ Review: Cameron Diaz Is Finally Back (but She Deserves a Better Movie) appeared first on TheWrap.