A smattering of decent choices for your moviegoing pleasure this weekend helps to make up for the handful of disappointments (and the existence of marshmallow peeps). What’s your interest: Harry Potter offshoot? Marky Mark as a priest? Parisian romance or clones fighting to the death? Zombies? That and more await – let us help you choose.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
by Hope Madden
In theaters
After much delay, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore comes to big screens this weekend. The film is the needless third installment in a five-part series based on a single 2001 guidebook that walked readers through the various magical animals of the Harry Potter universe. The guidebook’s “author” is Newt Scamander, and Harry Potter has jotted notes throughout it.
That’s it. No narrative, no characters, really. It’s like a little, pretend textbook from Hogwarts.
The book was a semi-adorable cash grab — one additional little scrap to throw the hungry Harry-heads at the height of Pottermania — meant to raise money for charity. And now it’s a planned five-part series, each installment thus far clocking in at well over two hours.
Oof.
The new adventure catches up with Newt (Eddie Redmayne) assembling a ragtag band of witches, wizards and muggles to help mentor Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) fight the dark magic of Gellert Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen).
Grindelwald hates muggles (non-magical losers like us) and wants a war. He’ll deceive, bully, appeal to baser instincts, and when it comes down to it, cheat the election to take over the wizarding world.
It’s a good guys versus bad guys tale with loads of Trumpian nods (keep an eye on that newspaper), but that feels hollow given creator/co-writer J.K. Rowling’s history of bullying vulnerable populations. A main role for the recently shameful Ezra Miller (who plays forlorn baddie Credence Barebone) doesn’t help those optics, either.
As superficial spin goes, though, it is nice to have Mikkelsen on board. He replaces Johnny Depp (easily the best thing about the previous installment) as the film’s villain. Where Depp embraced the magical elements and leaned into camp, Mikkelsen is all elegant, understated menace.
The cast boasts a lot of solid, wasted talent. Law continues to charm as the unflappable Dumbledore, Redmayne’s quirk tests patience, Dan Fogler’s a bright spot.
Director David Yates — who directed four HP movies as well as the previous two installments in this franchise — struggles this go-round to even conjure much visual panache to distract from the bloated, overpopulated and underdeveloped script.
Rowling co-writes for the screen again with Steve Kloves, her scripting partner for every Potter and Fantastic Beasts installment. The Potter films often suffered from unimaginative adaptation, which could be chalked up to the writers’ tough time pruning the source material.
No idea what’s to blame here, but these movies are not getting any better.
Grade: C-
Father Stu
In theaters
by George Wolf
It shouldn’t be surprising to hear Mark Wahlberg was so committed to bringing the story of Father Stu to the screen that he funded much of it himself. Wahlberg’s own rough-and-tumble, sometimes unsavory past is hardly a secret. But now, as a devout Catholic, Wahlberg seems drawn to these stories of restless souls finding their way to the straight and narrow.
Stuart Long was a Montana native from a dysfunctional family who found some success as a Golden Gloves boxer in the mid 1980s before he decided California was the place he ought to be. Stu’s quest for movie stardom never got beyond a few commercials and bit parts, but his quest to win over a girlfriend (here named Carmen) got him a Catholic baptism and a surprising calling.
In her feature debut, writer/director Rosalind Ross frames Stu’s journey around the tenet that suffering brings one closer to God. Grief and disappointment have turned his father (Mel Gibson, effectively dialing down the SOB cartoonishness) into a bitter drunk and his mother (Jacki Weaver, always a pleasure) into a woman too afraid to be hopeful.
Wahlberg is natural and affecting as the Stu who responds to it all by forging ahead, always looking for the next angle to work or the next person to charm with an R-rated quip. As committed as he is though, Wahlberg has more trouble making Stu’s conversion feel like a true change of heart, instead of just his latest obsession.
Stu’s journey to the priesthood is interrupted by a tragic medical diagnosis, but the setback never lands as forcefully as it should. And while Ross rightly doesn’t shy away from Stu’s moral conflicts, his rivalry with a fellow seminarian (Cody Fern) often feels forced and manipulative.
Too profane to land in the “faith-based” stable, the film’s treatment of the sacred nonetheless manages moments that are nuanced and sincere. Ross juxtaposes Stu’s baptism with a wonderfully ironic soundtrack choice, while bringing a layered tenderness to the moments when Stu breaks the news to Carmen (Teresa Ruiz, terrific) that he will leave her behind for the priesthood.
The true story of Stuart Long is indeed a compelling one, and there are stretches of Father Stu that do him justice. But even with its embellished treatment, the film feels dramatically slight. It’s a sturdy and proficient testament to faith, but short of truly rousing.
Grade: B-
Dual
In theaters
by George Wolf
We’ve been grappling with the falseness of our social media identities long enough now that we should have expected this attack of the movie clones. Dual takes the premise of last year’s Swan Song and filters it through the high concept lens of The Lobster for an absurdist comedy that – as my grandpa used to say – is as black as the inside of your hat.
Karen Gillan is Sarah, who coughs up a great amount of blood and learns she is going to die. Sarah is told what she has is “painless…but killing you,” as writer/director Riley Stearns begins taking direct aim at our current state of anxiety.
To save her boyfriend (Beulah Koale) and mother (Maija Paunio) from the pain of losing her, Sarah signs up for clone replacement. But as Sarah2 arrives and starts the assimilation process, the original Sarah’s diagnosis is reversed, and now we have a problem.
“We can’t have two of you walking around forever. That would be ridiculous.”
Sarah2 has been in the world long enough to invoke her right to request a “stay,” which means that in one year’s time, a duel to the death will leave only one Sarah bathing in the cheers from both a stadium and broadcast audience.
So Sarah1 gets to work, in an effort to prove to her battle trainer Trent (Aaron Paul) that she really wants to live, and win back her mom and her man who already like Sarah2 better.
Stearns trades his thriller vibe from 2019’s The Art of Self-Defense for a near-future sci-fi landscape and finds delightfully organic ways to bring us up to speed on the rules of the game. And with Gillan (Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers and Jumanji franchises), Stearns has the perfect partner to set the humor level on deadpan and never budge. The laughs come with a cynical, satirical bite, and while some may be a bit obvious, Stearns scatters other hilarious breadcrumbs just out of focus (don’t miss the title of the video Sarah is watching early on).
Dual doesn’t shy away from the absurdity of navigating a culture of death and winning Instagram posts. In fact, that’s where it lives, fully committed to finding out who really believes laughter is the best medicine.
Grade: B+
Paris, 13th District
At Drexel Theatre and Gateway Film Center
by Christie Robb
Director Jacques Audiard’s Paris, 13th District is slow. Languorously slow. Like honey oozing off a comb. Like a flower unfurling. Like a relationship evolving over time.
Audiard’s film, which he co-wrote with Nicholas Livecchi and Lea Mysius based on stories by graphic novelist Adrian Tomine, follows the intertwined lives of Emilie, Camille, Nora, and Amber over the course of a year, give or take. Friendships develop and wane. Love affairs start and end.
All is shot in gorgeous black and white except for a bit that’s rather startling and in color.
The cast members are stunning (Lucie Zhang as Emilie, Makita Samba as Camille, Noemie Merlant as Nora, and Jehnny Beth as Amber) and the camera delights in lingering over their often naked bodies. Their characters are complex and the actors play them with a realism and vulnerability that is frankly impressive.
It’s a realistic portrayal of a set of modern relationships with all the ecstasy and ugliness that makes them complicated and exciting and worth having.
The plot features dating apps, cam girls, death, real estate, cyberbullying, and MDMA. To say more about the story would wreck the experience of watching it and trying to anticipate how the characters’ lives will interconnect.
Grade: A-
Wyrmwood: Apocalypse
On VOD
by Hope Madden
Back in 2014, co-writer/director/Aussie Kiah Roache-Turner brought new life to tired ideas. Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead took an old-school Australian road movie and littered it with some undead. The two went well together. The result was a novel, often funny, action-packed splatter fest.
The original braided ideas from Romero and others, but somehow the amalgamation felt fresh. Zombie movies are rarely fresh. Same can be said for sequels. Zombie sequels — very hard to say something new.
For his sequel, Wyrmwood: Apocalypse, Roach-Turner writes again with brother Tristan. They return to the post-apocalyptic Outback to catch up with zombie/human hybrid Brooke (Bianca Bradey), her scruffy brother Barry (Jay Gallagher), and whatever’s going on at those military outposts.
As this is a zombie movie, assume the worst about those outposts.
Roache-Turner leans a little more heavily on dark humor for this one. The previous installment was brighter with its laughs, while this go-round finds comedy mainly inside the viscous filth of the laboratories.
Nicholas Boshier, returning as The Surgeon, gets to even wink and nod toward the Evil Dead franchise.
Meanwhile, outside the barracks, brothers and sisters are duking it out with everyone and everything to save or avenge one another.
Bradey and Gallagher take a backseat this time to Rhys (Luke McKenzie), a skeptical soldier whose twin was slain in the last film. He teams up, somewhat reluctantly, with Maxi (Shantae Barnes-Cowan), whose sister is inside one of those nasty labs.
A couple of intriguing kills (or near-kills), a little loose-end tying, and a few laughs keep this one from disappearing completely from memory. The inspired lunacy of Roache-Turner’s original is gone, replaced with entertaining if forgettable fun.
Grade: C+
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