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I am wearing my new stylish and colorful Film Critics pants to review another week's worth of new film releases.
Five new movies are featured in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, January 17, 2025.
1) WOLF MAN
In the horror world, the name Leigh Whannell is positively associated with some of the more successful and, in some cases, very effective genre franchises.
Whannell not only co-wrote and appeared in "Saw," (and would go on to produce and write more chapters in that seemingly never-ending series), but he also created the "Insidious" films, wrote "Dead Silence," and wrote and directed the techno-horror thriller "Upgrade."
But his terrifying and smart 2020 reimagining of Universal's classic monster entry, "The Invisible Man," was easily the best thing he ever wrote and directed. It was truly a visionary work of the genre and a brilliant piece of filmmaking.
Anchored by a great, exhausting performance by the extraordinary Elisabeth Moss, Whannell's take on the legendary H.G. Wells story was not only effective as horror but also a devastatingly powerful examination of abusive relationships and the scars they cause.
When I heard that Whannell would be co-writing (with his wife Corbett Tuck) and directing a take on yet another Universal legend in "Wolf Man," my expectations were very high, and my excitement level was through the roof.
Unfortunately, the results are massively disappointing, confused, thematically heavy-handed, and uncomfortably derivative of the once-fresh ideas found in his fantastic version of "The Invisible Man."
Opening with an image of the Universal logo, but with loud, scary, ominous battle-like sound effects blasting over the soundtrack, Whannell cuts to a startling, microscopic close-up of a wasp surrounded by an army of ants slowly and brutally destroying the flying insect. Which literally and symbolically means...nothing.
Smash cut to a long shot of an isolated house in the middle of the Oregon woods with an on-screen text-crawl telling us the legend of a thirty-year-old story about an infected man who disappeared in those woods and became the victim of a condition known as "The Face of the Wolf."
What follows is a flashback about a young kid, his strict, slightly abusive father, and their encounter with this creature. Then we come to the present tense, where that kid is now an adult named Blake (the always-great Christopher Abbott).
Blake is an unemployed father of a young girl named Ginger (an extraordinarily annoying Matilda Firth). He is the husband of Charlotte (a solid Julia Garner), with whom his marriage is falling apart.
In an effort to fix their marriage and bring the three of them together, Blake suggests that they go to the woods to pack up his late father's house and spend time in the wilderness to refresh their lives.
But, before they even get there, they encounter a creepy man armed with a gun, who jumps in their truck just in time to be a part of a terrible accident that results in the man's death and Blake's injury and bloody wound due to an encounter with that hairy creature.
The rest of the film's events are confined in and around the farmhouse as the family fights off the creature and deals with Blake's infection, slowly (and disgustingly) transforming him into something horrifying.
Whannell has made a pretty excruciatingly dull film here, highlighted only by some truly exceptional practical makeup, gore effects, and prosthetics by the brilliant Arjen Tuiten that will thrill anyone who loves the work of Rob Bottin from Joe Dante's "The Howling," and especially, Rick Baker from John Landis' "An American Werewolf in London."
In fact, not only does the makeup remind one of Landis' 1981 classic, but the sound design of the creature's howl is taken directly from that film, and it's the best part of the movie.
The movie is not scary, the characters are underdeveloped, and the simplistic themes of "sins of the father" and "abuse is generational" are done with little depth and zero subtlety. Worse yet, Whannell is wasting two outstanding actors like Abbott and Garner on pure nonsense with nowhere to go but over-the-top.
The only things left are the scares, the gore, and the suspense sequences, some of which work (the kills, the gnawing off of limbs, and popping out of teeth are pretty awesome) and some of which don't (the "wolf-vision" stuff is particularly terrible and cheap-looking).
On the technical side, the movie is nicely photographed by Stefan Duscio (who also shot "The Invisible Man"), the score by Benjamin Wallfisch is terrific, and the extraordinary sound design by P.K. Hooker is easily the best part of the whole film.
Overall, this is a monumentally disappointing follow-up to "The Invisible Man," and I only hope that if Whannell takes on another Universal monster for his next film, he writes a better script and comes up with some more original themes than the recycled ones he slapped together here.
Speaking as a horror film freak and a lover of werewolf films, I recommend skipping this one despite the outstanding technical work...and that makes me sad. - ⭐️⭐️
This very funny, rowdy, and ultimately quite satisfying buddy comedy is a fun throwback to the urban comedies from the 90s.
Starring the great Keke Palmer and making a terrific film debut, SZA, this day-in-the-hood comedy will certainly bring back memories of "The Player's Club," "Friday," "House Party" and chunks of Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" while creating classic moments of its own.
Simple plot: Two best friends living in Los Angeles must come up with the rent money before the day ends, or they will be kicked out of their apartment complex, which is populated by some memorable tenants.
Along the way, they try to get some money at a payday loan office, donate some blood to get quick cash, and attempt to sell some vintage Air Jordans (the property of a local gangster) that were hanging from a power line.
All this while trying to get to a critical job interview, keep other appointments, eat some delicious food at Church's, start romances with great prospects, and begin getting out of the hood.
Along the way, they encounter some hilarious characters, including a nurse whose first day at the blood bank is a true disaster, a no-nonsense loan officer who tells it like it is (the unbelievably funny Keyla Monterroso Mejija), a biscuit thief who steals food at a drive-thru, the new, very white tenant in their building (a hilarious Maude Apatow), a vengeance-seeking woman who will do anything to hurt Palmer and SZA, and a sincere homeless man who wants only the best for our heroes (the incredibly charming and funny Katt Williams).
This movie is a fun romp with a great soundtrack and a refreshingly human portrait of an inner-city community that pokes fun at stereotypes while providing big, unapologetically raunchy laughs. While it certainly won't change the world, and most of this kind of humor has been done before, I had a lot of fun watching this undeniably likable film. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
3) UNSTOPPABLE
Based on the true story of Anthony Robles, a champion NCAA Division I wrestler who achieved incredible success despite having a congenitally amputated leg, this well-meaning and sincere film has some major issues that make it hard to fully recommend.
A very good Jharrel Jerome plays Robles as a determined and sensitive young man who will prove naysayers wrong, bury his insecurities, and do things that even his closest friends and family didn't think he could do.
Despite being inspired by a remarkable true story that deserves to be told, the screenplay for "Unstoppable" is loaded with sports-movie cliches, underwritten characters, and tired situations that you can find in any number of movie-of-the-week nonsense.
Directed competently by Oscar-winning editor William Goldenberg (making his directorial debut here), the film never truly comes to life. Goldenberg's attempts to overcome the script's dreariness never materialize, and the result is dead on the vine.
Despite solid work from a very, very impressive supporting cast that includes Michael Pena, Don Cheadle, Bobby Cannavale, Mykelti Williamson, Shawn Hatosy, and Jennifer Lopez, and coming from producers Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, I can't truly recommend this disappointing film. - ⭐️⭐️
A seemingly normal married couple (Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx) with two adorable kids turn out to be superspy CIA agents who are called out of a 15-year retirement in this loud, dismal, derivative, and unbelievably stupid action comedy from writer/director Seth Gordon.
Gordon, whose nauseating resume includes "Pixels," "Baywatch," "Identity Thief," "Four Christmases," and shockingly - a good movie - "Horrible Bosses," does his usual ham-fisted, subtle-as-a-heart-attack job of slamming the jokes down your throat and staging action scenes like they are part of a 1986 Bon Jovi video.
We are only a couple of weeks into the new year, and we already have a candidate for one of the worst films of 2025. There isn't an original moment in the entire film. From the plot taken from at least five other, better movies to the poorly staged fight scenes to the wacky comedy about marriage, raising children, being international spies, and dealing with mistaken identity, nothing about this junk works!
Why Cameron Diaz chose to come out of a self-imposed 10-year film hiatus to do this crap is the most interesting thing about the entire project. But then again, judging by most of the nonsense she's made for most of her career, it might not be that shocking.
The always-annoying Foxx (who has zero chemistry with Diaz despite having worked with her in "Any Given Sunday" and "Annie") proves again what a limited and predictable actor he truly is. He is only slightly less irritating than Diaz and the obnoxious kid actors he has to work with in this thing.
The shockingly talented supporting cast includes Glenn Close, Jamie Demetriou, Kyle Chandler, and Andrew Scott. They are given nothing special to do except spout idiotic dialogue, scream a lot, and partake in "funny" action tropes. Close, who plays Diaz's mother, is particularly embarrassing, while everyone else just seems to be aching to get to the bank to cash their paychecks.
This Netflix production is truly as bad as it gets and isn't even worth watching after you've scrolled through the menu screen for six hours trying to figure out how to kill two hours of your life. It's also playing in a few movie theaters, in case you would like it to be louder, bigger, and dumber. - ⭐️
This painfully well-intentioned and preachy adventure movie is from French director and journalist Gilles de Maistre, who specializes in family nature films that exist to raise awareness for wild animal protection and environmental issues.
His latest is this film, which is a companion piece to his other similarly titled movies, like "The Wolf and the Lion" and "Mia and the White Lion, " and it adds nothing new to the mix.
Lumi Pollack plays Autumn, a young girl who returns to the Amazon after years of living in New York City with her father to be reunited with a jaguar she wants to save from poachers.
Along for the ride is her biology teacher (an incredibly annoying Emily Bett Rickards), who helps Autumn with her adventures in the jungle, fighting the poachers and saving her jaguar named Hope.
This is very amateurishly made and barely exists as a piece of cinema. It is also poorly directed and acted with the delicateness of a sledgehammer, but it does have a very positive message.
There is no way I can recommend it, but if you want to see some cool animals and support a film with its heart in the right place, you could do worse than this, but it's not good. - ⭐️1/2
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