The Tomorrow War (2021)

 Score: 2.5 / 5

Soldiers from 2051 materialize through a wormhole in the middle of the World Cup late next year. Their message to the world is urgent: in the future, an alien invasion has driven the human population to near-extinction. Desperate as they are to continue their failing war against the aliens, which has lasted approximately three years, scientists have developed a "Jumplink" to connect them to, roughly, the present. Using this technology, they bring military aid back for a series of seven-day deployments to fight. Each time, less than thirty percent of the volunteers return. The soldiers won't say much about their enemy, referring to the aliens as Whitespikes and darkly hinting that too much description would prevent anyone from willingly joining the fight.

Selected by the international draft, Dan Forester (Chris Pratt) is taken from his humdrum, dead-end job as a suburban high school science teacher and launched into an impossible scenario. Namely, he's briefly trained -- thank goodness he is an Iraq war vet -- and tossed into the future in the middle of a battlefield of what was once Miami Beach. Actually, something is wrong with the Jumplink, so in fact he materializes mid-air high above the skyline. Miraculously surviving the fall with a small squadron, they embark on their mission: to rescue scientists and their research working to find a Whitespike weakness. Before long, they are attacked by the aliens, and carnage ensues.

It's a really interesting premise, one that unfortunately predicates its clever ideas about time and sacrifice with violence and action. Forester seems upset to have to leave his wife (Betty Gilpin) and young daughter, but he's also upset in his current situation; he strikes the viewer as a sort of mediocre, dispossessed and disillusioned middle-aged middle-class white man who says almost immediately in the screenplay, "I am meant to do something special with my life." It's a little unnerving to see Pratt like this, partly because we've gotten used to seeing him as a macho man kicking ass in recent blockbusters. But mostly it's because the movie tries really hard to balance his character's rediscovered badassery with his apparently deeply emotional garbage as a man who lost his way. Pratt doesn't have those acting chops, and the film's attempts at emotional dialogue are, at best, clumsy. So when he learns that he was selected for service in 2051 because he dies before then, so as to avoid a paradox, we immediately expect him to run into his bereaved family. And he does, though his now-adult daughter Muri (Yvonne Strahovski) is in fact a not-very-sad scientist working to save humanity by developing a toxin to kill the Whitespikes. Melodrama doesn't end there, and I should have mentioned the sentiment dripping from Forester's pre-Jumplink scene with his estranged father (J.K. Simmons), which sets up, briefly, the otherwise bizarre final half-hour or so of the film.

Speaking of the Whitespikes, though, leads me to what I really liked about this movie apart from the basic conceit. The design of these aliens may not be inspired, but it's still horrifyingly effective. Albino monsters with long claws, rows of teeth, and tentacles that shoot -- you guessed it -- bony spikes like giant bullets. They move quickly, like the voracious monsters of A Quiet Place or even, perhaps more appropriately, Edge of Tomorrow, with a frenzied movement the camera tries to reproduce. The action scenes are almost exhausting in their attempt to recreate the mania inspired by these monsters, with story and effects battling each other for screen time amidst some mind-numbingly frenetic editing.

And despite the obvious loads of money poured into this movie, which looks fantastic, it's hard to skip past the mismatched cast, the groaningly exposition-heavy dialogue, and the otherwise rote nature of the film's execution. A clever idea and lots of money don't make an otherwise typical movie shine; as someone who doesn't even like Independence Day very much, I at least appreciate its tongue-in-cheek attitude toward its more ridiculous moments. Here, the underlying sentiments about fatherhood and sacrifice aren't matched up with the tone of the film, making this decidedly un-silly science fiction without novelty. Even its final sequence, which is something between The Thing and Aliens, is so blatantly undercooked that the fluids splattering the scene shouldn't have been surprising. And yet it was the most fun scene of the whole movie. Not a good thing to say about something well over two hours in length.

Black Widow (2021)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

Too late? Maybe, but certainly not too little. After a decade starring in various MCU feature films, Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanoff finally gets her own top billing. Heaven knows we wanted -- and she deserved -- Black Widow ages ago. There is more than enough character development and backstory for her alone to have carried a movie series back in the first phase, to say nothing of the richly detailed, mysterious characters in her world of espionage. And then, after 20th Century Fox released Red Sparrow in 2018, I figured all hope was lost for a solo Romanoff movie; it's not the same, but it's damn close. Now that her character has been sacrificed in Endgame, I fully expected this movie to wallow in sentiment, forcing tears out for the star finally getting to shine under her own marquee. But instead, we're given a miraculous movie out of time, one that feels like that first Iron Man but infinitely better: a complex standalone feature woven with a surprisingly fresh origin story that reminds us of what we loved about the MCU in its opening stages.

Nat, having recently fled the authorities -- William Hurt as General Ross -- during her change of allegiance in Civil War, moves from one family in turmoil to another. This time, it's her own. Living off the grid, she receives a package from her sister Yelena; Yelena was also forced on the run from the other Widows after discovering a cure for their chemical mind-control by secret Soviet power players. She journeys to find her sister, and the two embark on a quest to save the Widows and the world from the head of the Widow program, the presumed-dead Dreykov and his legendary Red Room. It's an interesting reversal of the other MCU stories led by men actively seeking to become super soldiers; here, the women seek freedom from these chemically-altered human weapons.

It's a dazzling movie, and frankly each new development took me by happy surprise. I had no real idea the direction in which this plot would go, or even when in the timeline it would take place. Director Cate Shortland and writer Eric Pearson (Agent Carter, Thor: Ragnarok, Godzilla vs. Kong) craft a very '70s spy movie with a very contemporary sensibility, loaded with references to the genre (The Manchurian Candidate and Mission: Impossible come to mind right away for specific, obvious reasons) but, amazingly, never feeling derivative or uninspired. In fact, this movie makes me want to go back and rewatch one of my favorite MCU movies, The Winter Soldier, because its content and kinetic energy are equally matched. Also like that picture, Black Widow centers its energy on two main thrusts of subversive theming for superhero movies: secret government conspiracies undermining traditional American interests, and heroes needing community rather than independence.

This is the kind of movie that makes me want to go back and watch Johansson in the other MCU films she's graced, not because it fits in so well (although it does indeed), but because it just reminds me of what a quiet powerhouse she is in everything she touches. Even in this movie, which she deftly and magnificently leads, she generously gives major time to her co-stars, notably her family. Florence Pugh steals the entire movie as Yelena, a role that's great on its own but clearly designed to be the next iteration of the character, as she will certainly continue in Hawkeye and future projects. At once impossibly strong and critically vulnerable, her richly developed character and pitch-perfect performance rank among the franchise's very best. David Harbour has his share of quality scenes as the sisters' father-figure, the Russian version of Captain America, Red Guardian. Sadly, Rachel Weisz is not given comparable scenes as Melina, the mother-figure, but she is reliably wonderful nevertheless. I was worried initially about the family being part of the tragedy of this movie -- after all, since we haven't seen or heard of them before, I reasonably assumed they would die by movie's end -- but the film's opening sequence (very The Americans, by the by) establishes the family as fraudulent, spies thrust together in Ohio before the "parents" completed their intelligence mission and the girls would be taken and trained as the world's best assassins.

Even when things get a little more familiar in the film's third act, Black Widow has a few surprises up its sleeve. While its villain isn't as iconic or compelling as we've had from the MCU lately, the sheer menace of the Red Room makes up for a lot of heavy exposition or world-building. Ray Winstone's Dreykov is hate-able, and that's more than enough for this story, despite the screenwriter's attempts to make him extra deplorable: in his climactic villain speech with Nat, he reveals that he has preyed on orphaned girls to become his Widows because "With you, an Avenger under my control, I can finally come out of the shadows using the only natural resource that the world has too much of: girls." A didactic howler of a line, it nevertheless earns some credit in the film's final sequence, as the group of Widows wonder aloud what they can do with their newfound free will.

And then there's Taskmaster, a much scarier threat than Crossbones or other similar villains, a killing machine in blue and silver whose silence and possibly mechanized body are the stuff of action figures and terror. Taskmaster features as part of the movie's shocking twist, and while not central to the film, manages to carve out a niche unvisited by Phase One or any phase since. During the final action sequence -- less a climax than a literal denouement -- as the characters fly through the sky in an acrobatic free fall, I briefly found myself annoyed by the overly familiar concept. Then, however, much as with Taskmaster, I realized the film was doing something remarkable yet again: turning the staple scene into an original, fresh, and relentlessly urgent new version of itself. Black Widow recycles and reimagines standard tropes from other spy thrillers, as we've noted, and here it does the same for superhero flicks this same franchise made trite over a decade ago. Even during her confrontation with Dreykov, I found myself thinking of the endless monologues of Bond villains and how and why the MCU was parodying and repurposing that very device.

It's still sad to remember that this will likely be the last we see of Johansson's Romanoff, at least in any measurable content. But it's a damn good way for her to go, and a safe, brilliant way for the franchise to launch us into Phase Four.

Pig (2021)

Score: 2 / 5

Nicolas Cage has been making a lot of crap his whole career, and never more than the last couple of years with an onslaught of VOD releases, each looking as horrendous as the last. Now solidly out of his blockbuster phase, he occasionally does something right; so do at least a few of the movies he chooses to be part of. Mandy, for example, and Color Out of Space are stunning pieces that deserved much wider audiences. Then there's Pig, his latest and perhaps most nuanced work yet as an actor. Not because he's doing his Nicolas Cage thing, but because he's not, and the movie is smart enough to steer us away from anything like his oeuvre.

Cage plays Robin Feld, opening the film as a sort of Henry David Thoreau (or, rather, Christopher Thomas Knight), a recluse alone in the deep woods living off the land. He has apparently no companion apart from the titular pig, appropriately named Pig. Together, they hunt truffles in the dank forests of the Pacific Northwest, somewhere near Portland; Pig has quite a nose for scrumptious fungi, and we see Rob cooking some up in a rudimentary pan. The two get along grandly, only interrupted on occasion by a young man who sells Rob's truffles in the city and brings him any necessities that allow Rob to continue living off the grid. We're given only the barest of information about Rob, but his introductory sequence reveals he's harboring debilitating grief over a woman whose cassette tape he's unwilling or unable to endure hearing.

Rob is suddenly assaulted in the middle of the night and his beloved porcine pal is stolen, screaming helplessly. Waking bloody and battered in the morning light, Rob gets in his hidden emergency car and drives to find Amir, his seller. With the young man's help connecting suppliers with buyers, Rob follows his intuition into Portland, climbing the surprisingly seedy ladder of truffle connoisseurs to locate Pig. He's pretty sure he knows where she is, and he has a good idea who has her; this is not made clear by his limited dialogue but by his actions, which are silently determined and few in number. He keeps moving, forcing Amir (and us) to seek the logic behind and through his behavior. Cage plays Rob close to his chest, an inspired move from one of the most unhinged and anti-instinctual actors working today, and no matter how abused he gets, he never cracks open his cringiest, Cage-iest fount of performative hooey.

Unfortunately, that's one of the only things the movie is smart enough to do. Don't mistake me: I'm grateful this didn't turn into a violent revenge-thriller that further demonized rural men as piggy brutes (looking at you, Deliverance). I was almost certain that's where it was going, especially given the bleak aesthetic established immediately by stoic cinematography, Gothic-Romantic in scope and style, and the droning symphonic score. It felt like a burgeoning Robert Eggers horror movie more than once in its early scenes. Then, of course, there's the plot, which began just like John Wick: man loves animal, man loses animal, man goes on hunt for animal, man becomes animal on hunt. Major differences, apart from the animal itself, include Cage looking like Leo in The Revenant and an utter lack of stylization in any choreography, stunt work, production design, costuming, or much of anything else. Conversely, the world of Pig is the real world, albeit an impressionistic one.

And I think that's what I hated most about this movie. It's deeply impressionistic, both in content and in delivery. Its entire focus is the interior world of Rob -- a dark, brooding man who internalizes everything around him -- even as it takes that perspective as its presentation of the world around him. Shot in entirely natural lighting, the film is so chromatically dark that it is draining to watch, especially as the visuals move from graceful pans and tracking shots to nausea-inducing extreme close-ups by handheld camera. But, locked as it is within Rob's mind, the movie hamstrings itself by never granting us access to him, both because of Cage's cagey performance and because of the screenplay's unwillingness to round out his character.

Rob's vapid existence on screen is only slightly disguised by occasional fiery moments as he attempts to interrogate potential pignappers. First it's Amir, then a rival truffle-supplier, then two strung-out junkies who admit to taking the pig for a mysterious wealthy man. At this point, if you don't suspect the villain is Amir's father, you might be asleep. We learn that his father, played by Adam Arkin, is in a similar business to his son, and the two had made an arrangement not to step on each other's toes; apparently the successes of Rob and Pig violated that, although that crucial detail is the most ambiguous part of the whole understated movie. Rob, still searching, ends up confronting a chef who used to work for him in a restaurant (yes, Rob was apparently a master chef before his partner and wife died). In what might be the most revealing scene of the movie, Rob uses an incisive yet softly-spoken verbal barrage to devastate his former employee, forcing him to admit that his life is a lie and a sham, and that his dream of owning a classic pub would be more fulfilling than the high-end success story he's eked out for himself. It's not abuse, and not really even an attack, but it leaves the other man badly shaken, apparently on the verge of a breakdown.

The heavyhanded screenplay and direction leave much to be desired, as well. Impressionism is a good key to understanding how and why the movie tries to work, as it locks us into Rob's limited experience and grounds our senses in his physical presence. Similarly, its seeming obsession with symbolism and shorthand appear to do the work of creating a fully-fleshed world, even as the meaning or even accessible interpretive lenses are disregarded, if not completely absent. There are no women of consequence; the only females that matter are the pig (taken), Rob's deceased wife (whose death destroyed his life), and Amir's mother, who he says committed suicide, and so the absence of women arguably mobilizes the film. What about the absurdly on-the-nose name of the restaurant wherein Rob finally learns who stole Pig: Eurydice, where too the chef's dreams went to die? And then there are the truffles themselves, delectable fungi sought after for consumerist bourgeois masses, literally life from death becoming capital in a world bereft of love. It's all just a little too groaningly obvious; I wondered often if there would be a final-act twist of the knife, something nasty and unexpected to justify the gloom and weight of this unbearably melancholic drama. No such luck.

On the other hand, Alex Wolff is transcendental to watch as Amir, and the only reason I didn't totally detest this flick. Much like Robert Pattinson in The Devil All the Time and some now-character actors who were once great and are now just a lot of fun (Richard Dreyfuss, Paul Giamatti, Jeff Goldblum), Wolff leans heavily into his greasy yuppie-type salesman. Clearly too young for his yellow hot rod and the thin moustache he grooms fastidiously, Amir likes having money and wants to make his own at any cost. As he accompanies the grizzled mess that is Rob around Portland, Amir's neurotic anxieties bleed through his freshly pressed armor. Apart from Wolff's attention to posture and gesture, his nervousness seeps into his dialogue, as when he describes Rob variously as a Buddhist, a clown, and a Christ figure. Amir is keenly self-aware, though, and he knows he lacks substance in every metric; we most frequently see him slicking back his hair in any available reflective surface and sitting in his car obsessively listening to classical music and educational lessons. He's trying far too hard -- using the easiest path to self-improvement -- to gain the class and culture he feels he deserves. Or, perhaps, needs, although that suspicion is foiled when we finally meet his father.

Some people may like Pig, with its vague messaging about picking the things you love carefully and guarding them. Its themes of overcoming isolation and engaging with the wider world, however, are notably nihilistic, something we don't normally see in straight melodramas. Despite what we might consider its primary journey (Rob learning to accept his grief and deal with the loss of his love), this is a profoundly ugly movie about misery and miserable people. On one side, we have a misanthrope who can't function in society after his bereavement; on the other, a man in almost the same situation who decides to prey on others and become the best he can be at any cost. Is it a critique of capitalism, or of men? Either way, it's not pretty. It's also incredibly boring, much like Nomadland, Roma, and a slew of other awards darlings that have never much captured this viewer's attention.

At least this one has a hilarious Alex Wolff to rely on, if only in small doses.

The Forever Purge (2021)

 Score: 4 / 5

They say it'll be the last entry in the franchise, but we have serious doubts about that.

Finally, we get the Purge movie that the series has been leading up to, a pot of racial and class warfare boiling over into chaos. The bitter memory of an Ethan Hawke-led home invasion yawner is long gone, thankfully, and the threads of racist genocidal design spin together into a thick cord of violence snapping at the heels of the last presidential administration. We've hopped from downtown Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., and Staten Island in the last few movies, and now we're plopped right at the border with Mexico. The heat only exacerbates the overt political tensions, and the violence is appropriately more visceral and alarming than we've yet seen in this series.

Set after the events of Election Year (still my favorite in the series, but now barely), which saw the ultraconservative New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA) politically overthrown, we now move to rural south. As Texas was one of the last places to learn about the abolition of slaves, it is now one of the last holdouts of violent "forever Purgers," in the midst of rebelling against the end of their annual bloodbath. Determined to reinstate the Purge night, they also want it to be continuous, a means of life for the purpose of death, so that they may exterminate minority groups, immigrants, and basically anyone who isn't white (and/or other identifiers left implicit). To be fair, there is also at least one depiction of a radical left-wing group seeking class reduction by slaughtering the one-percenters, but it feels empty if not rational, mostly because the preceding installments have established the one-percenters as the driving force of the NFFA. And then, as we've seen all along, there are regular psychos and criminals and wannabe rebels who just want an excuse to behave badly and/or watch the world burn. But there is a definite focus regarding the evildoers in this installment.

Specifically, The Forever Purge takes as its story the journey of several Mexican immigrants who have come to the U.S. escaping cartel violence. Ana de la Reguera and Tenoch Huerta (both are acting on levels this franchise does not deserve) lead the film as a couple who work in a meatpacking plant and a cowboy, respectively. It's the sort of labor that wealthy, educated white folk don't like to sully their hands with, and so each of them is shown early on battling racism from angry, disenfranchised white folks working alongside them. It's hard to imagine life being so bad back home that they'd move to a country in which Nativists are actively seeking dystopian control, but then again... look at the last four years of our real political landscape! This movie anchors its horror in remarkably arresting specifics, notably a border wall that becomes a barrier for traffic going both ways, rather than just one. During the riots and urban warfare, the Mexican president offers sanctuary for any U.S. citizen wanting to flee the sudden uprisings in all fifty states; it's a wickedly brilliant moment on the filmmakers' behalf, to so quickly flip real-life conservative headlines about Mexican immigration.

As the heroes escape an initial onslaught brought on by vengeful farmhands and racist laborers in town, they find help from an unlikely source: Will Patton, playing a wealthy white ranch owner who is socially and politically liberal. Helpful as he is, he quickly becomes a target of the Purgers, and the heroes go on the run, aided by his son, played by Josh Lucas doing his usual shtick of being handsome and creepy at the same time. Here playing a seemingly one-note racist (not hateful, but just wanting people to stick with their own kind, not mix), the film loosely considers that he's really not all bad, and certainly better than the "let's kill 'em all" bands of neo-Nazis. After all, he's actually helping the brown people he's been foisted upon, whereas one street over we hear masked cowboys shooting people who don't speak English while entire buildings are ablaze behind them.

James DeMonaco, creator of the series and writer of this one, teams well with Mexican-American director Everardo Gout to make this entry grounded in a more realistic reality than we've yet seen from the franchise. Importantly, it also has the most urgent messages about real life than we've yet heard, with the possible exception of The First Purge, although that was less thematically focused and more interested in a "decent people trying to survive an impossible situation" story. And for most of the movies so far, that method has worked to bring in audiences of a different political mindset and, hopefully, show them the error of their ways. I suspect, though, it's been mostly carnage-porn for those demographics, rather than the suggestive cautionary tale its liberal audiences immediately recognized. This movie does not even try to disguise its intentions, its design, or its critique of America right now, and I loved that about it.

I did not, however, love its final act. Despite some virtuoso filmmaking -- including at least one Children of Men or Atonement-style long take in war-torn streets -- the film chooses a safe way out at the end. Maybe it's a balm for the nation, maybe a desire to let entertainment and sentiment win over hatred and violence. But the series is firmly within the horror genre, and its tendency toward happy (or, at least, not dismal) endings makes for a weak sendoff each time. This time, the daring messages fizzle out into a weak sort of "we're all in this together" whimper at the end, as the characters come together in a refugee camp in Mexico, aiming to get along in a new world, once the NFFA is disbanded and the U.S. is all but destroyed.

Because this is apparently the end of the series -- again, we'll believe that when we see it -- permit me a moment of retrospection. I really do like the Purge movies, and DeMonaco was very clever in complicating it with each new story. While the first is by far my least favorite, each entry not only develops the world he created but also draws from other subgenres of horror. In this way, he has effectively created a story not just about his fiction but about our reality, sharply pitting his ideas against current events in our sociopolitical timeline. More brilliantly, in this reviewer's mind, he has created a series that works best by similarly mapping trends in modern horror sensibilities. What started as an overly simplistic home invasion thriller has become a dumpster fire about American paranoia and class warfare. The first was about a white family's fear when a black man enters their home; the last is about a Mexican family fleeing the horrors of nativist violence. The series has always been about the love/lust Americans have for violence, and how that manifests in class, race, and exploitation. But by overtly ritualizing that violence, turning it into a spectacle and even, I'd argue, a campy catharsis, DeMonaco has shown us the genesis, the truth, and the result of our love of violence. That's an amazing legacy, even if the movies themselves aren't everyone's cuppa.

In the Heights (2021)

 Score: 5 / 5

It's an overwhelming experience determined to shoot you up to cloud nine. Floating along up there, you'll be privy to the wash of sensations in this joyous, impossibly massive celebration of life, love, and belonging. For two and a half hours -- but feeling like a hurried walk through the park -- you'll be taken in by a thickly populated section of diverse Latinx community in Upper Manhattan, the titular neighborhood of Washington Heights. And for the love letter Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote to this specific locale, the film speaks to anyone who feels the pull of nostalgia for their home, the sense of loss as its integrity is threatened, and the desire to escape even as they settle in for life.

Firmly fitting within the grand tradition of "New York movies," In the Heights nevertheless glories in the unique flavors of its particular community: one that definitively makes up the city but is so often left out of major cultural products about the city. And, interestingly, the film begins with its leading character, Usnavi de la Vega, on a remote tropical beach; as he recounts his memories of one fateful summer to the kids around him -- and to us -- throughout the film, we cannot help but feel a sense of displacement. He no longer lives in the city, and so we're primed for a cathartic moment of him leaving in some emotional climax. This is made all the more dramatic by infrequent on-screen text reminders that a blackout is about to strike the city in the middle of a particularly hot summer.

"The streets were made of music," Usnavi begins his tale before we're launched into one of the most peripatetic and complex opening numbers in all of musical theatre. Played by Anthony Ramos, who is certainly preparing himself to be Hollywood's newest leading man, Usnavi is an immigrant orphan from the Dominican Republic who watches his community through his store window with a mixture of awe, love, reflection, and wishing for something else. His sueñito, his little dream, is indicative of everyone else's in the movie: less tangible, but not unique, he longs to return to his Caribbean island home, and to ask the beautiful and intimidating Vanessa on a date. Vanessa (Melissa Barrera) wants to leave her job in a salon and move downtown to pursue fashion; the gossipy and show-stealing salon women want an upgrade, too. Disillusioned college student Nina (Leslie Grace) wants to drop out of white-dominated Stanford, much to the disappointment of her self-sacrificing and demanding father (Jimmy Smits) and her crush Benny (Corey Hawkins) who works for him. And then there's Sonny, Usnavi's cousin (Gregory Diaz IV), whose dream is the most tangible and timely of all: he is a Dreamer, the kind of undocumented child so vilified by the recent presidential administration.

There is less story than character development, but that doesn't mean there's no substance. Screenwriter Quiara Alegria Hudes, who also wrote the book for the stage musical that launched creator/composer/lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda to fame, changed a fair bit of her own material in the transition to screen. I confess not being knowledgeable at all about the musical before having seen the film, but others will surely debate the efficacy and implications of these changes. I am of the opinion that if the creator adapts their own work, the changes they make should be celebrated rather than decried. And it's hard to want to criticize this film because of director Jon M. Chu's work. Seemingly determined to make the biggest movie musical ever, he helms this jubilant movie with an eye for kinetics, excess, color and light, and fantasy. Of course, he's no stranger to sophisticated, fun storytelling (Crazy Rich Asians) or intense choreography (the Step Up movies and Justin Bieber filmed concerts). His assembled team of artists -- including choreographer Christopher Scott, cinematographer Alice Brooks -- create a dazzling world that is sure to seduce even audiences who don't usually like musicals. Glorious costumes and an utterly transcendent production design are captured by swooping, swirling cameras that make you feel weightlessly free and transported to another time and place. Everyone works in tandem, through the tiniest details to the largest ensemble numbers, to realize the apparent dream of Chu: honoring self-worth and love of community in any and every way you can.

I can't wait for Chu's next movie. But in the meantime, I'm going to go watch this one again.

Army of the Dead (2021)

 Score: 2.5 / 5

The latest zombie movie opens with an odd, funny little scene of two vehicles heading toward each other on a remote desert highway. One is a convertible driven by two drunken newlyweds; the other is a military transport from Area 51 to destinations unknown. When the vehicles inevitably crash, the convoy's payload turns out to be a zombie, which quickly kills and turns each of the soldiers into his burgeoning, titular army. They walk toward the nearest hill to behold their glowing hunting ground. Then, as "Viva Las Vegas" plays loudly, we're treated to a montage of the zombie carnage that led to the U.S. military evacuating the city as much as possible before walling it off. Stuck inside, the initial zombie becomes a sort of king, lording over his domain from a casino called Olympus.

Zack Snyder always goes a bit gonzo, and sometimes it works in his favor. Heaven knows his masterpiece earlier this year, Justice League, wasn't exactly subtle. Here, he seems determined to go above and beyond the style of his previous postmortem outing -- in fact, his first film -- his 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, and in that he mostly succeeds. Whereas that film was a pretty straightforward remake of the George A. Romero classic, Snyder's newest release only loosely tips its hat to its predecessors; we might call it a spiritual successor or evolution of typical zombie fare. Its title is certainly meant to connect them generically, if not aesthetically.

The opening sequence also visually introduces us to several of the film's major characters, badass soldiers who survived Las Vegas and now work in blue-collar jobs, disillusioned and world-weary. These include Dave Bautista, Ana de la Reguera, and Omari Hardwick; characters have names, but there are too many to remember. And it's not like character names mean much in movies like this. They're all thinly written, with brief moments of sentiment shoehorned in amidst the bloody action. But this isn't meant to be character-driven drama. It's meant to be a hot mess of action, violence, humor, gore, and style. Snyder knows his audience.

In a plot that combines his earlier film with Ocean's 11, Bautista's character learns from Hiroyuki Sanada that there is $200 million locked in a vault under the Olympus casino, of no use to the zombies running the city. He also learns that the government plans to drop a nuclear bomb on the city in the next couple of days. Quickly assembling a team of safecrackers, coyotes, a pilot, an abusive cop, and ex-soldiers, Bautista leads them into hell to get rich. Once inside, they run into a zombified tiger -- yes, an undead tiger, which is one of the coolest things I've seen since ghost sharks in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. The tiger suggests to them that things inside have gotten much worse since the last time they entered the city of sin.

And while the tiger -- the tiger! -- and the race of hyper-zombies called Alphas are really cool, the movie continues in a remarkably typical pace on familiar paths. I felt that the plot, which is truly a clever conceit, served only to allow for action sequences. And the action is really wonderful in this movie, make no mistake. But I kept waiting for a twist, a complication, even a subplot, and none came. You can't think too much about this movie, or you'll become disappointed. I should have gone in a little buzzed on something, tired from a day's work, looking for action and music and fun, because that's what I would have gotten.

Snyder doesn't even seem to have anything to say about the concepts he introduces, which is possibly the greater sin. A walled-off American city under occupation, threatened with nuclear weapons? Needing a coyote to steal money from undesirables? Quarantining and temperature-checking people before they are allowed to travel? Snyder tosses these considerably hefty images and ideas into the film, but does absolutely nothing with them; maybe that's not a "bad" thing in itself, but it feels intellectually lazy to not follow through on any of the hot topics presented.

But when you have a few really, really great scenes, and a hell of a lot of fun along the way, does it matter that the plot is as shallow as they come? Snyder knows how to make breathtaking action, and  handful of riveting scares. Plus, his style is always fabulous to see, perhaps nowhere more so in this picture than when the zombie queen appears. Oh, and of course, we can all be thankful he has chosen the fast-zombie route of 28 Days Later and World War Z rather than The Walking Dead. It just adds an urgency and danger to what is often otherwise shambling yet overwhelming doom. This isn't a jewel in Snyder's crown, or in our lists of favorite zombie flicks, but it's got a modest reward for its viewers, if they are willing to join the crew.