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The new films this week are about as varied as can be and, look at the ratings. There are no duds among them. So, no delay, let’s get right to them …
Sinners: 4 stars
One To One: John & Yoko: 4
The Wedding Banquet: 3
Psycho Therapy: 3
Elli and her Monster Team 3 ½
SINNERS: If you’re able to accept a sudden shift from one type of movie into a completely different one you’ll get one of the best films of the year so far, and possibly for weeks to come. Ryan Coogler, the writer-director, called it “genre-fluid,” starting it out as a beautifully-rendered sociological portrait of Black lives in the US south in the early 1930s (cotton picking, sharecropping, church going, blues music and Jim Crow looming). Also mythology (musicians can attract evil) and dire warnings (“You keep dancing with the Devil and one day he’s going to follow you home.”). Then suddenly it becomes a vampire film. That’s startling at first and even more so when it gets violent but also prods you to try and make sense of it. Blacks aren’t safe, it says. The threats can and do erupt suddenly.
Twin brothers experience all that when they return from Chicago to Mississippi to start up a juke joint. They’re named Smoke and Stack, both played by Michael B. Jordan who is a Coogler regular having starred in two Black Panthers, three Creeds (the Rocky spin offs) and the superb early film, Fruitvale Station. One is seeing a black woman (a traditional healer); the other sees a white woman (Hailee Steinfeld) who says she’s really half-black. Two different approaches to unspoken rules.
Their juke joint is a big success; the loud thumping and vibrant dancing scenes show that. The brother’s protégé, Sammie (played by backup singer Miles Caton) is a big hit with his original blues songs. But a new threat arrives. A group of Irish musicians (led by Jack O’Connell) want in but are refused. They’re victims of discrimination too, by the British, and turn out to be the villains here. They’ll have to be fought off. Coogler’s Black society of the time is fragile. He celebrates it and wants it protected. A lot of different themes come out and he manages to keep them all in sync and the film moving fast. And adorned with a lot of Delta blues and even, if you stay for the end credits, a brief acting role by a Chicago blues icon, Buddy Guy. (In theaters) 4 out of 5
ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO: The latest Beatles film takes place after the band broke up. John and Yoko have moved to New York and they both watch and appear on a lot of television shows there. You’ll see them talking to Mike Douglas, Dick Cavett and others, and associating with activists like Jerry Rubin and poet Allen Ginsberg and planning a charity concert. TV spurred their passion to protest the war in Viet Nam, prison conditions in the US and the treatment of special needs children. The concert would raise money for two of those causes and speak out on all three.
We get several strong excerpts, crisply restored in both look and sound. Imagine is a treat, as is Come Together and Mother (very emotional after John explains the background in an interview clip). Often there’s a montage of archival and news clips wrapped around a song. The bombing of Cambodia is part of it when John sings Instant Karma. Richard Nixon is stirring a crowd during You Ain’t Nothin But A Hound Dog. There are TV commercials, show excerpts, more clips of Nixon, Gov. George Wallace, Shirley Chisholm and others that take us back to the time, the early 1970s. We also get John and Yoko’s daily lives through recorded phone calls to their associates as they deal with business and planning that concert. It by the way was the only full-length one he performed after leaving the Beatles. The film, directed by Kevin Macdonald Sam Rice-Edwards, stays away from some unflattering parts of his life there but does create a moving and positive portrait. It doesn't refer to what happened eight years later but it'll be on your mind, especially after John says in a phone call: "I'm not going to get myself shot. I'm an artist". (In theaters) 4 out of 5
THE WEDDING BANQUET: This re-make doubles the 1993 film, which was Ang Lee’s second and the one that brought him to the world’s attention. Remember, a gay New Yorker arranged a marriage of convenience because his Green Card was about to expire? Andrew Ahn has added to that story with now two gay couples needing marriages. Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone) need money to pay for more IVF treatment so they can have a baby. Previous attempts have failed. Angela decides to marry her best-friend’s very rich boyfriend Min (Han Gi-chan), who agrees to cover up that he’s gay and because his education visa in the US is about to expire. He doesn’t want to have to go back to Korea to work for the family company although his grandmother insists: “You are the company.”
Min’s boyfriend Chris (Bowen Yang, SNL, Wicked) won’t commit to gay marriage to help with Min’s visa problem but does agree to a traditional one to Lee (Gladstone).
Plans are advanced and like in the original film a relative from back home gets involved. That’s Min’s grandmother (Youn Yuh-jung). She travels from Korea to Seattle (played here by Vancouver) expecting a major celebration. The two couples wanted only small events, paperwork at city hall, that sort of thing. Some awkward, some funny, interchanges follow in this breezy script, with its endorsement of gay love, good vibes by the end, but a largely predictable path to get there. (In theaters) 3 out of 5
PSYCHO THERAPY: This small movie, with the title add The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write About a Serial Killer, is fun because it is good and absurd. But also clear-eyed about a marriage relationship that is in danger. It’s a film based on misunderstandings, common in movies, and sharply advanced here in the writing and direction of Tolga Karaçelik. It’ll resonate with married couples despite the odd plotline that develops.
John Magaro plays a writer who has been working on his second novel for four years, much to the considerable exasperation of his wife (Britt Lower). He can’t quite get his story idea—a love affair in Neanderthal times—to work properly. She thinks it’s boring and the same time chafes under what she says is pressure on her to be right all the time. She’s not a good backseat driver, for instance. His agent says write about what he knows. He doesn’t listen but then runs into a fan (Steve Buscemi) who loved his first book and has a good idea for his next. Serial killers, what they do, how they escape, how police track them. Why? Because he is one, now retired, but willing to advise. Like a counsellor? Yes. The wife, fearing that a divorce may be coming, misinterprits that as “marriage counsellor” and the husband, as a cover, goes along with it. And with that logic, a serial killer does become their marriage counsellor. The plot kicks on from there with amusing therapy sessions, pursuit and surveillance, a kidnap plot and a run-in with some Albanians. Par for the course for this inventive and droll film. (In theaters) 3 out of 5
ELLI AND HER MONSTER TEAM: Here's a charming animated film based on a German children's book and brought to life by animaters there, in Canada and in India. The colors are extra bright and vibrant and the story is about a movie staple, family, or in this case association with characters you might think of as family. And finally, a story line that seems to warn against the over-use of technology. Kids might not get that angle, but they'll definitely get the rest.
Elli is a ghost who is not interested in scaring people in the mansion where she and her uncle haunt. She wants to find a family. Ghosts don't have families, the uncle says. Then "how can you be my uncle?" she asks. Questions aside: let the action begin. Elli enters a ghost ride in a midway and learns that characters are being taken away, digitized for their own good, so that they will last forever. Elli objects and with a diverse group of friends sets out for a big city and an imposing tower where an entity called the Quadrex is in charge and even has her uncle confined. Three flying space ships chase after her producing wild scenes inside a spooky ride and on a fast highway and a lot of loud, ruffled voices proclaiming. The directors, Jesper Møller, Piet de Rycker and Jens Møller are experienced hands in the European animation scene and they've made an exciting adventure that also has plenty of heart. (In theaters) 3 ½ out of 5
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