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TOP PICK OF THE WEEK
The Boss Baby: Family Business
*** The Boss Baby was about a talking baby in a business suit and a conspiracy to create the world’s cutest puppy. Improbable as it may seem, the story of The Boss Baby: Family Business is even more bizarre. DreamWorks Animation may have adapted it from a children’s book, but the innocent days when the studio chronicled the exploits of a gassy, lovelorn ogre are over. Family Business reintroduces the Templeton brothers (voiced by James Marsden and Alec Baldwin), who are de-aged by the enigmatic cabal known as Baby Corp. so they can spy on Dr. Armstrong (Jeff Goldblum), a baby prodigy plotting to usurp the reign of parents worldwide. “Unfortunately, the world isn’t ready for a baby in a position of power—yet,” Armstrong drawls. Goldblum revels in the role so palpably that you practically see his sly smirk projected across the screen. He knows that the movie is ridiculous, and so does director Tom McGrath, who loads the plot with hallucinogenic reveries, like musical notes inexplicably floating through the cosmos. Far out! Some parents may worry Family Business is priming their kids to light a joint and a lava lamp, but moviegoers of all ages should enjoy basking in the film’s sheer strangeness. PG. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Cascade, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Classic Mill Plain, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Division, Eastport Plaza, Evergreen Parkway, Lloyd Center, Peacock, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza, Wunderland Milwaukie.
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Luca
**** Luca (Jacob Tremblay) is a sea monster, but there’s nothing monstrous about him. That’s the premise of this buoyant adventure from Pixar Animation, a studio that specializes in telling profoundly human stories about nonhuman characters, from the tormented toys in the Toy Story films to the lovestruck robots in WALL-E. Like those movies, Luca is an allegory for kids. When Luca first emerges from the sea and sets foot on the Italian coast, he is horrified to find that coming ashore has physically transformed him into a human (his soul remains the same). If the ocean embodies the oppressive coziness of childhood, the land represents the seductive liberation of adulthood. When Luca becomes human, he protests, “I’m a good kid,” sounding like a boy taught to be ashamed of his sexuality. The ideal audience for the film will be interested in both the hints that Luca is gay and the kinetic pleasures of the plot, which include Luca and his best friend, Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), teaming up with a valorous human girl (Emma Berman) for a bicycle race. There is a winner, but the real winners are the young moviegoers who will learn that Luca respects and cares about them enough to challenge them while also delivering a good time. PG. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Disney +.
F9
*** Vin Diesel is a lovably goofy badass, but he isn’t the hero of the Fast & Furious franchise. That honor belongs to Justin Lin, the hotshot director who solidified the series’ brand: deranged automotive action and devotion to the belief that if all of humanity could barbecue with Diesel, the world would know peace. Lin keeps the faith in F9, a sequel that satisfies despite signs of wear and tear that have multiplied during the franchise’s 20-year reign at the multiplexes. Dom Toretto (Diesel) returns to battle his grouchy brother Jakob (John Cena), a rogue government agent hunting for a MacGuffin best described as a fancy soccer ball with apocalyptic potential. The action isn’t so clever or coherent as the merry mayhem Lin unleashed on Tokyo and Rio in previous Fast & Furious films, but the sweet camaraderie between Dom and his loyal cronies (including Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson and Christopher Bridges) endures. Best of all, F9 brings back Han (Sung Kang), an avatar of superhuman coolness who was apparently killed in an exploding Mazda several movies ago. When someone wonders how Han survived, he politely tells them to shut the fuck up and live in the moment. That’s good advice for anyone who goes to see F9. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, Regal Movies On TV, Sherwood, St. Johns Twin Cinemas, Studio One, Tigard, Wunderland Beaverton, Wunderland Milwaukie.
Summer of Soul
*** Someone who attended the Harlem Cultural Festival, a series of free concerts held in Mount Morris Park in the summer of 1969, referred to it as “the ultimate Black barbecue.” That’s as good a description as any considering the celebratory vibe created by organizer Tony Lawrence and the more than two dozen artists—Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Nina Simone, Moms Mabley and former Temptation David Ruffin, among them—who performed at the event. Despite the estimated 300,000 attendees, the festival has been all but ignored in the wake of Woodstock, which went down weeks later. Questlove, founder of hip-hop ensemble the Roots, is jogging the world’s collective cultural memory with his directorial debut, Summer of Soul. Built from a wealth of footage captured at the Harlem Cultural Festival for a New York television station, this documentary perfectly contextualizes the event by weaving in news clips from the time and contemporary interviews with attendees and performers. But the true draw is seeing the kings and queens of R&B, funk, jazz and gospel, all of them at the peak of their considerable careers. They poured every ounce of themselves into their performances that summer and will be blowing minds anew thanks to this fantastic film. PG-13. ROBERT HAM. Cinema 21, Hollywood, Hulu, Vancouver Mall.
Black Widow
** Scarlett Johansson plays a Marvel superhero in Black Widow, but she’s fiercer by far in spandex-free films like Lost in Translation and Marriage Story. She doesn’t seem to get a kick out of being an action star, and Black Widow isn’t much of an action movie—it exists mostly to fill the narrative gap between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, two similarly mediocre Marvel films. Black Widow unites Natasha Romanoff (Johansson) with her punkish sister, Yelena (Florence Pugh). They want to annihilate the Red Room—the Russian brainwashing program that tried to turn them into soulless assassins—but they can’t succeed without the help of Melina and Alexei (Rachel Weisz and David Harbour), the sinister agents who once posed as their parents during an undercover operation. Director Cate Shortland’s poor pacing strips the story of suspense, but the most troubling thing about Black Widow is its eagerness to forgive Melina and Alexei, who condemned Natasha and Yelena to become child soldiers. Black Widow may be a feminist film, but its brand is diet feminism for moviegoers who thought the complete overthrow of the patriarchy in Mad Max: Fury Road was overkill. Maybe that’s why Johansson looks bored—she knows Black Widow isn’t worth believing in. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bagdad, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Disney+, Division, Eastport Plaza, Fox Tower, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, St. Johns Theater & Pub, St. Johns Twin Cinemas, Studio One, Tigard.
The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard
** With a title resembling an SAT question on the possessive form, this sequel to 2017′s The Hitman’s Bodyguard follows up one of the least-discussed studio hits of the past five years. This round again pairs Ryan Reynolds, a rule-abiding bodyguard, with Samuel L. Jackson, a hitman who loves to yell “motherfucker,” this time on a mission to save that little old world. Reynolds, we’re reminded, is one of Hollywood’s most reliable stars in any context, with a comedic bounce that bolsters this chaotic sequel’s surprisingly strong bones. The delight of Reynolds’ relentless thwarting, drugging and battering from hyperactive and hyperviolent Jackson and Selma Hayek (the hitman’s wife who was foretold) is so thorough that the rest of the movie can mostly be as loud, crass and ridiculous as it likes. That said, director Patrick Hughes’ action is dreadfully incompetent. Frank Grillo and Antonio Banderas spearhead a nonsensical world-domination plot that delivers some of the shoddiest visual effects in recent memory. Though placating 2021 attention spans might explain the film’s needlessly panicked clip, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard looks warmer through the lens of action-comedy ancestors like Midnight Run and The In-Laws. God knows why it’s shot and edited like a drunken Bourne movie. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Eastport Plaza, Evergreen Parkway, Lloyd Center, Regal Movies On TV, Sherwood, Tigard.
La Dosis
** Like a giant shouldering the weight of the planet, Marcos (Carlos Portaluppi) lumbers through this Argentine thriller, which is simultaneously sinister and lethargic. Marcos is a nurse in an intensive care unit, but he doesn’t just heal the sick—he quietly puts them out of their misery when he believes it is necessary. He’s a murderer, but not like Gabriel (Ignacio Rogers), a slick nurse who kills not out of compassion, but for kicks. La Dosis is essentially a morbid duet performed by these two men. One considers taking lives to be a solemn duty, and one revels in the unholy thrill of playing God, but they are both symbols in writer-director Martín Kraut’s medical parable. La Dosis is a portrait of health care workers who are so brutally demeaned and exploited that they can’t feel in control unless they shatter their most sacred oath. It’s a perverse and audacious idea, but the film built around it is punishingly slow and lacks conviction. Kraut seems afraid to decide whether the psychological battle between Marcos and Gabriel is a showdown between good and evil or if they are just devils in slightly different disguises. Despite its impressively dark premise, La Dosis doesn’t end with a shock. It ends with a shrug. NR. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. On Demand.