The latest film releases include Karate Kid: Legends, The Phoenician Scheme, Bring Her Back, and Mountainhead. Weighing in are Alison Willmore, film critic for NY Magazine and Vulture, and Tim Grierson, senior U.S. critic for Screen International and author of This Is How You Make a Movie.
Karate Kid: Legends
A kung fu prodigy tries to settle into a new school, then enters a karate competition. This stars Jackie Chan, Ralph Macchio, Ben Wang, and Sadie Stanley.
Grierson: “Whether it's the first Karate Kid or the ones that have come since then, we know what this template is going to be. There's going to be training montages … wisdom about violence and all that stuff. But it doesn't have the stuff that actually made the 1984 movie good. This idea of bullies at school, the idea of moving across the country in the 1984 movie. … It very much feels like a lot of films these days, unfortunately … it's just extending the brand, extending the franchise, but as a movie itself, it's not very special.”
Willmore: “As a half Chinese kid who grew up in the 80s, these movies have always been really interesting to me. Mr. Miyagi is this really complicated place in terms of Asian representation. He's both this really complex figure, but also really cloaked in Orientalism, but also has brought up the Japanese internment, something that is still not even taught in a lot of American high schools. … So I have complicated feelings about it. But these movies are always interesting to me as this glimpse of what Hollywood is thinking about Asianness. But yeah, it feels like something that's really guided by IP more than anything.”
The Phoenician Scheme
A wealthy businessman appoints his daughter as the sole heir to his estate. They embark on a new business venture and are targeted by tycoons, terrorists, and assassins. This is written and directed by Wes Anderson, and stars Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton, and Michael Cera.
Willmore: “It's a very dense example of Wes Andersonia. It's also basically another of Wes Anderson's movies about a charismatic, absentee father, in the style of The Royal Tenenbaums. … With these later films of Wes Anderson's … they’re even more dense with detail and with the style that he's known for. This movie has so many spaces where you just want to pause it just so you can appreciate all of the things that are on screen flashing by. … It's very droll, it's very funny. It has some bigger ideas about redemption and morality and mortality. And at the same time, it left me cold emotionally.”
Grierson: “This movie has a huge cast, even by Wes Anderson's standards, and most of the actors that we meet along the way don't have a lot to do. … We're going to meet a lot of these people, and they play the colorful characters you’ve come to expect from a Wes Anderson movie, but very few of them resonate. … I find that his movies are visually dense and only getting denser. But I don't mind that because often the emotions are buried underneath there, and if you just pay attention, they will start to emerge. Well, I don't think that they emerge so much. Of all the performances, I actually think Michael Cera, who's a newcomer to the Wes Anderson world, is the best.”
Bring Her Back
In this horror, two siblings witness a frightening ritual at their new foster mom’s isolated home. The cast includes Sally Hawkins, Sora Wong, and Billy Barratt. Directors Danny and Michael Philippou got their start on YouTube, then burst onto the scene with Talk to Me.
Grierson: “Sally Hawkins creates a portrait of legitimate evil. … There is something very specific and even grounded in the way that she plays a woman who is very, very, very troubled. … That's the pleasure of the film — is letting Sally Hawkins be our guide into this house where she lives, and the house is also spooky, and it's out in the middle of nowhere in Australia. And we are basically going through the movie as these two siblings are trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Sally Hawkins’ commitment to playing somebody who is a bit mentally unwell but so completely believes in the rightness of the mission that she is trying to follow — is really, really compelling. … The movie itself loses some momentum as it goes along. I think, almost inevitably, with a film like this, the mysteries are more fun than some of the reveals. But Sally Hawkins is so good that it didn't matter to me.”
Willmore: “Sally Hawkins … does, I think, wonderful work here as this character who has this almost kindergarten teacher vibe of chunky jewelry and a slightly hippie-ish tone, and then just starts doing sinister things on the sly to the main teenage male character … in ways that no one else seems to perceive. Something that I liked about this film, and wish actually had been tugged out a little more, is that there is this undercurrent about who is allowed to be believed in terms of being mistreated.”
Mountainhead
From Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, a group of billionaires vacation during an international crisis.
Willmore: “This is a movie that is very much just aiming daggers at the technocrats and oligarchs. It is just about how they are all increasingly isolated from the rest of the world. … These characters are, for the most part, just awful from the beginning, just nightmarish figures. … I found it tough to watch because it is so unpleasant to be with these characters.”
Grierson: “I like that none of the four leads are supposed to obviously be a specific billionaire that we know in the real world. Jesse Armstrong, I think, smartly gave himself permission to just come up with brand new, horrible rich people. … That was liberating, in a way, because he can then focus on the dynamics between these four guys. … In general, the movie does feel like a less good version of Succession, but I also think it's good enough. … What's really effective in Mountainhead is that when these international crises start to unfold on their smartphones and on cable news, as these guys are watching, they are completely convinced that is up to them and only them to not only solve these problems, but essentially rewrite the rules of the world.”