The latest film releases include The Marvels, Dream Scenario, It’s a Wonderful Knife, and A Still Small Voice. Weighing in are William Bibbiani, film critic and co-host of the Critically Acclaimed Network of podcasts, and Alison Willmore, film critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.
The Marvels
In this sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel, Brie Larson returns alongside Iman Vellani and Teyonah Parris. Directed by Nia DaCosta, it is the 33rd Marvel Cinematic Universe installment.
Bibbiani: “The main cast — Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, and Iman Vellani — they are just absolutely dynamite together, individually and separately. It's a really wonderful team dynamic, even better than I would say, than the team dynamic we saw in perhaps bigger team movies like The Avengers or Justice League. The problem is that the movie around them feels like an accumulation of studio notes. … But what I think the director, Nia DaCosta, is able to pull out of this giant studio project is a lot of really wonderful scenes of their performers being great together and giving you that sense of all of these cool superheroes are hanging out, and I get to hang out with them. And on that level, I enjoyed it quite a lot.”
Willmore: “I found this movie really lacking in certain basic things that I would just want from a big-budget blockbuster. It felt to me like a long episode of television, in part because the stakes felt so secondary. It exists to be a crossover episode, essentially, between these characters. … This film, as much as it has some really charismatic leads, it doesn't feel very clear that anyone knows where this franchise is going.”
Dream Scenario
This A24 film follows a tenured biology professor, Paul Matthew (Nicolas Cage), as he starts to appear in everyone’s dreams.
Willmore: “[Paul Matthew has] got a lot of envy about professional recognition. He has a book that he keeps saying he wants to write but never gets around to. And then suddenly, he is granted fame in the strangest way possible, which is that he starts turning up in the dreams of everyone. … The highlight of this movie: The dreams are rendered in really spectacular, strange fashion. And in many of the dreams at the beginning, he's just an observer walking by all of these strange dream logic scenarios.
… It's got a very dark sense of humor and a very surreal, visual sensibility. ... I wish every mention of equating this to going viral and getting canceled were cut out because I think aside from that, it works quite well as this very quirky, unpredictable film about yearning for attention and yearning for fame, and then getting your wish in the worst way possible.”
Bibbiani: “By forcing the film — with all of these unlimited possibilities — to be almost oppressively only about one thing, only about accidentally becoming a meme and having that destroy your life, it doesn't just date it, like in 20, 40 years if we look back at this film, it is very much of its moment. It also just makes it really reductive. It ultimately [gives] us all these wonderful ideas, all these wonderful dream sequences, and just says, ‘Hey, it's kind of like memes.’ And I'm like, ‘Okay and anything else?’ ‘No, that's it. That's all we got.’”
It’s a Wonderful Knife
This holiday horror-comedy plays off of the classic 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life with a murderous twist. It revolves around Winnie Carruthers, who wishes she never had been born.
Bibbiani: “It's a clever screenplay that does a lot with the material. The cast is just uniformly excellent. Jane Widdop is wonderful. … Justin Long is just becoming increasingly his generation’s Vincent Price, which I am totally fine with. You got Katharine Isabelle, who's becoming a genre legend at this point as well. It's just delightful. The only thing that really holds us back is that it's got this unfortunate, low-budget TV movie patina around it that just makes it look a little cheaper than it needs to. I suspect that's on purpose to make it feel like a Hallmark movie gone wrong. But I think maybe they take it a little bit far. But regardless, it's clever. It's fun. It's kind of romantic in a weird way.”
Willmore: “The idea of having a slasher variation on a Christmas classic like It's a Wonderful Life is wonderful. And I think there are aspects of the way that it unfolds that I really appreciated. But I found the execution just lacking. … The horror side is not especially strong, even in a fun jumpscare way. There are very few moments it manages to be frightening.”
A Still Small Voice
This documentary focuses on a hospital chaplain who’s completing her year-long residency at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital during the COVID pandemic.
Willmore: “It's … about people who are trying to be this calm, reassuring presence at this really tough time in patients’ lives. … It just feels like a real privilege to see those vulnerable moments in people's lives. But it is also about the stress of doing this job. … Two characters who are very thoughtful and patient themselves, they both end up splintering in a way that really surprised me. It's a great film, and I definitely recommend finding it.”