Patrick Redmond/Universal Pictures
MOVIE REVIEW
The Turning (2020)
It’s difficult to imagine “The Turning,” Universal Pictures’s newest throwaway in the January trash heap following the dismally reviewed “Cats” and “Dolittle,” being worse than those two debacles. Indeed, music video auteur Floria Sigismondi’s first film since indie gem “The Runaways” a decade ago could pass as respectable if not for its utterly impenetrable final minutes.
Twentieth Century Fox
MOVIE REVIEW
Underwater (2020)
A remarkably late addition to Fox’s 1980s sci-fi canon, “Underwater” finally surfaces some three years since the completion of principal photography. To be sure, the studio has never gotten out of the B-picture business entirely, but for the past few decades its niche pipeline has been mostly outsourced to Eurotrashy outfits like Luc Besson’s EuropaCorp, resulting in more bargain actioners like “Taken” while the low-budget sci-fi well ran dry in favor of . . . James Cameron’s other preoccupations.
Eli Joshua Ade/Paramount Pictures
MOVIE REVIEW
Like a Boss (2020)
Miguel Arteta’s distinctive directorial style could, depending on the film, be seen as either auteuristic or indicative of a limited range. He is at his most memorable, for better or worse, when his characters walk the line of childlike naiveté and mental imbalance à la “Chuck & Buck” and the recent “Duck Butter.” “Like a Boss,” only the second studio film in Mr. Arteta’s two-decades-plus career, retains this intangible indie/sitcomesque sensibility in spite of the raunchiness promised by his star Tiffany Haddish.
François Duhamel/Universal Pictures
MOVIE REVIEW
1917 (2019)
Alfred Hitchcock pulled it off in 1948 with “Rope.” Regarding “1917,” Paul Schrader wrote on Facebook: “The ‘one shot film’ is no longer an innovation. It has its own Wikipedia entry. The question is no longer ‘how did they do that shot?’ but ‘why did they do that shot?’ ”
Universal Pictures
MOVIE REVIEW
Cats (2019)
There is nothing wrong per se with musicals, but Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh have been rubbish. With that out of the way, any big-screen adaptions of their work can be afforded some leeway to be judged independently of flaws inherent in the source materials. Regardless of what one thinks of Mr. Webber’s 1981 West End production, “Cats,” Tom Hooper’s expensive version feels like belling the cat. A musical of course necessitates the suspension of disbelief, but Mr. Hooper seems never to have quite made up his mind on whether to approach the material with theatrics or realism and winds up with something the cat dragged in.
Claire Folger/Warner Brothers Pictures
MOVIE REVIEW
Richard Jewell (2019)
There are at least three aspiring heroes in Clint Eastwood’s “Richard Jewell”: Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser), the security guard turned suspect at the 1996 Summer Olympics bombing in Atlanta; Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm), an F.B.I. agent investigating; and Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde), an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter covering the story. How the three disparate attempts at heroism parallel and intersect might have made an interesting movie in expert hands, but “Richard Jewell” isn’t it. The film focuses on the demonization of Jewell by law enforcement and media, while itself hypocritically vilifying Shaw and Scruggs in the exact same fashion.
Claire Folger/Lionsgate
MOVIE REVIEW
Knives Out (2019)
As one would expect from a whodunit, “Knives Out” is rife with false leads and misdirection. But it’s not so slick as to warrant or withstand repeat viewings. Without spoiling who did it here, the film's big reveal replays a couple of clues, in case you miss them early on, and intersperses those with previously unseen footage and information withheld from the characters and the viewers. The film never shrewdly pulls the wool over our eyes, because its ending isn’t so much a twist as it is context to facts we’ve already gathered.
Neon; top right, Focus Features; bottom left, Jaap Buitendijk/Focus Features
MOVIE REVIEW
Parasite/Downton Abbey (2019)
With “Parasite,” Bong Joon-ho gives the “Upstairs, Downstairs” premise a long-overdue update. Although the film is unmistakably current and relevant, the myriad uncanny parallels between it and the contemporaneous big-screen installment of “Downton Abbey” are impossible to ignore. So glaring are their similarities, the fact that no one has pointed them out already must have something to do with the racial cognitive dissonance of the critical mass failing to see Asians in this context.
IFC Films
MOVIE REVIEW
Charlie Says (2019)
Director Mary Harron and screenwriter Guinevere Turner explore the Manson family lore through a couple of literary entry points, namely “The Family” by Ed Sanders and “The Long Prison Journey of Leslie Van Houten” by Karlene Faith, who as a graduate student worked in the California Institute for Women with Manson women Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Ms. Van Houten. Having grown up in a cult herself, Ms. Turner’s firsthand experience also promises to imbue the film with insight.
2019 Tribeca Film Festival
MOVIE REVIEW
Wild Rose (2019)
Concerning a Scot with country music aspirations, “Wild Rose” is predictable and just as predictably crowd-pleasing. Drug-trafficking ex-con? Check. Unemployable? Check. Broke? Check. Irresponsible single parent? Check. Long-suffering grandmother (played by Julie Walters)? Check. Resentful kids? Check. Mamas and prison and getting drunk? Check. Impossible dream? Check. Talent? Check. By merely connecting the dots, the screenplay practically writes itself.
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