IF

My View:  IF  (2024)  PG  Bea (Cailey Fleming) has gone through some tough times but has discovered a secret power: She can see everyone’s imaginary friends. With help from Cal (Ryan Reynolds), Bea embarks on a magical journey to reconnect forgotten ‘IFs’ with their long-lost kids. I was excited for this film. John Krasinski has given us a funny family film in The Hollars (2016), a great horror film in A Quiet Place (2018), and a good, if not quite great, follow-up film in A Quiet Place Part II (2020). So I had high hopes for this film, especially hearing that he had lined up a stellar voice cast for the Imaginary Friends, including Steve Carell, Louis Gossett Jr., Phoebe Waller-Bridge, George Clooney, Awkwafina, Bradley Cooper, Matt Damon, and more. Unfortunately, a stellar cast can’t overcome a script that doesn’t know who its audience is and a cast of animated characters that no kid in his right mind would have as an imaginary friend. IF is a film that young kids will be bored with, and the only IF character they will enjoy is Blue, a giant fuzzy purple muppet-like monster voiced by Steve Carell. Pre-teen girls may enjoy this film since the main character is Bea (played by Cailey Fleming), a twelve-year-old who has to have grown up fast, losing her mother to cancer and now her father (played by John Krasinski) and is about to go in for heart surgery. So Bea starts seeing the imaginary friends and decides to help Cal (Ryan Reynolds), who lives in her grandmother’s apartment building, find the IF gang, their long-lost kids who have grown up and forgotten them. First, it’s a little creepy that a twelve-year-old is hanging out with a grown man who doesn’t seem to have a job and sees the same IF characters she does. Then half of the IF characters are just strange, like an ice cube in a glass of water or a bubble that pops when excited. What kid would come up with these as their imaginary friends? If you hoped this would be a Toy Story or The Lego Movie, this isn’t it. Despite a spirited performance by Cailey Fleming, including a rousing musical number to a Tina Turner classic, the film falls flat and never hits the heartstrings as it should. IF isn’t a bad film, just disappointing. Be sure to stay through the credits for a lovely tribute to the late Louis Gossett Jr.  My Rating: Bargain Matinee IF Website Now playing in theatres. 

My View:  Back to Black  (2024)  R  Back to Black tells the story of the life and music of Amy Winehouse (Marisa Abela), who went from unknown singer to Grammy-winning best-selling artist. Amy burned bright, but that light died much too soon. I was not a fan of Amy Winehouse until I saw the Oscar-winning documentary Amy, and then I fell in love with Amy and her music. Now we get a bio-pic on her life, told from Amy’s point of view. I will say that Marisa Abela does a fantastic job of singing Amy’s songs, though I thought her midrange was a little off, but no one can do vocals like Amy could. We see why Amy got involved with Blake (played by Jack O’Connell), that man that she fell madly in love with and is the person who got Amy into drugs (though she was already an alcoholic by the time she met him). The film shows how thunderstruck she was by Blake and how he was the love of her life (as evident in her many songs about their relationship). I had trouble with how the film showed Amy’s relationship with her father (played by Eddie Marsan). The film whitewashes their relationship and shows how he was her hero and great supporter, which is not something I remember from the documentary about her life. Marisa Abela does an admirable job of portraying Amy. Still, it’s hard to capture the stage presence and charisma of Amy, and I never felt the power that Amy Winehouse had over her audience through her voice and mannerisms. I was heartbroken by the end of the documentary, but I didn’t have that same feeling at the end of this film. I loved the music but wanted more from this film, never connecting with the character that Abela was performing. Unlike Amy’s songs, this film felt lacking in any connection with the audience. And that’s too bad because Amy deserves more.    My Rating: Bargain Matinee  Back to Black Website  Now playing in theaters.

My View:  The Strangers: Chapter 1  (2024)  R  The Strangers: Chapter 1 takes place when Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and her boyfriend, Ryan (Froy Gutierrez), are on a road trip in the Pacific Northwest. Along the way, their car breaks down, forcing them to spend the night in an isolated Airbnb. Maya and Ryan are about to be visited by three masked strangers. This is a remake of the 2008 film The Strangers, written and directed by Bryan Bertino, with Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler starring. The original was a very cool and scary horror film that made horror fans squeal with delight as they were scared out of their seats. Unfortunately, this version isn’t. One of the great things about the first film was that there were a lot of scares, which were the kind that you questioned if you saw that or not. Not so in this film, which bases all its scares on ‘jump out of the dark scares’ that make the film feel very repetitive. The original was just that, original. This ‘Chapter 1’ just feels like a badly done copy. If you do make it to the end, stay through the first part of credits for a bonus scene that sets up ‘Chapter 2.’   My Rating: Cable  The Strangers: Chapter 1 Website  Now playing in theaters. 

Indiefest:  Power  (2024)  R  The documentary Power explores policing in modern American society, as its grown, originally to contain threats to social order to exploding in scope and scale. I saw this film at the 2024 Atlanta Film Festival and was riveted by a film that commands your attention from the start and brings up points that make you sad and infuriated simultaneously. This is a history lesson on how we have let police departments become militarized and given almost complete carte blanche to do anything they want, including trample on people’s rights. This is a documentary that raises a lot of questions that are direct from the headlines of today’s papers, including the right to protest without the threat of violence by police. To the film’s credit, it brings in a lot of experts to discuss and give us background into both the history of police departments and how they are set up today. This is a film that doesn’t give answers but opens the door to invite discussion and challenge what is happening in today’s America.   My Rating: Full Price  Power Website  Now playing on the Netflix platform.

Sorry I Missed it (A film that has been out a while, and I’m just now seeing it):  Downtown Owl  (2023) R  Julia (Lily Rabe) moves from a big city to Owl, North Dakota, in 1984 to teach high school for just a semester while her husband is finishing up his doctorate. The town she has moved to would make any soap opera on TV weep with shame. The reason to see this film is Lily Rabe, as the woman who has moved to nowhere and must start her life over again, surrounded by people who know everyone’s business. Rabe is hilarious as a fish out of water, unhappy in her life and wanting more, but will this small town give her what she craves? The film is aided by an outstanding supporting cast, including Vanessa Hudgens as the town floozy who is stuck re-living her high school memories, Henry Golding as a cowboy that Julia develops a crush on, Finn Wittrock as the high school football coach who is having an affair with one of his students and Ed Harris as the one person in town who seems sane. The film meanders a bit in the middle and sometimes tries a little too hard at being strange, but the film has a sweet and funny core that makes you want to root for Julia. By the way, the film has a wonderful music track that includes a few of my favorite Elvis Costello songs.  My Rating: Bargain Matinee  Downtown Owl Info  Now available for rent on streaming services.

Forgotten Film: Alamo Bay  (1985) R  A fishing community on the Gulf of Mexico is torn when Vietnamese immigrants move into the area and begin fishing for shrimp, threatening the local fishermen’s way of life with the possibility of overfishing and taking away their livelihood. One of the leaders of the Texas fishermen is Shang (Ed Harris), a troubled Vietnam vet who is barely hanging on. Shang has an unhappy home life and is having an affair with Glory (Amy Madigan). To complicate things further, Glory’s father is the one who is supplying the boats to the newcomers. Directed by Louis Malle (Pretty Baby, Atlantic City) and written by Alice Arlen (Silkwood), the film works when it focuses on the relationship between Glory and Shang, buoyed by outstanding performances by Harris and Madigan. The film begins to fall apart a bit near the end when the KKK comes to town, and the ending is disappointing. But it’s worth a watch to see two actors work together so well on the screen.   My Rating: Bargain Matinee  Alamo Bay Info  Now available to rent on streaming services.

Weird Credits: From the credits of IF:  Lens Mapping Grip Operator

Coming Soon to a Screen Near You:  It Ends With Us  (2024)  R  Lily (Blake Lively) has overcome a traumatic childhood and has moved to Boston to open her flower shop. There, she meets the man of her dreams, a neurosurgeon, Kyle (Justin Baldoni), and falls in love. However, she starts seeing a pattern in Kyle that brings up the mistakes of her childhood. Then Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), Lily’s first love, reenters her life and Lily will have to rely on her own strength to make some tough decisions. Based on the best-selling book by Colleen Hoover and starring Blake Lively, this could be a hit.  It Ends with Us Website  The film is scheduled to be released in early August.