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TOP PICK OF THE WEEK
Top Gun: Maverick
**** Top Gun: Maverick is a jingoistic tribute to America, the Navy and the delightfully demented charisma of Tom Cruise. But above all, it is a monument to the power of big-budget cinema—to thrill, to move, and to unleash images so sweeping that they nearly shatter the screen. Directed by Joseph Kosinski (TRON: Legacy), the film chronicles the frantic efforts of Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise) to train a squadron of Navy aviators for a mission to obliterate a uranium enrichment facility. “You think up there and you’re dead!” Maverick rants. Fair enough, but there’s nothing thoughtless about Kosinski’s direction. He sends planes soaring over sand and snow, making them twist through the air with the force of heavyweight boxers and the grace of prima ballerinas. After the airless thrills of recent superhero films, Top Gun: Maverick is like a lungful of oxygen, but it has soul to go with its spectacle. Unlike Ethan Hunt, the semi-celibate spy Cruise plays in the Mission: Impossible series, Maverick lives for more than the mission. Watching his plane hang in the heavens is bliss, but so is watching him embrace the woman he loves (Jennifer Connelly) on a beach as waves gently lap against the shore. Top Gun: Maverick’s glamorized portrait of military service may be morally irresponsible, but the film reminds us what movies—and life—can be. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Academy, Bagdad, Cedar Hills, Cinemagic, City Center, Eastport, Fox Tower, Laurelhurst, Living Room Theaters, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, Roseway, St. Johns, St. Johns Twin, Studio One.
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The Bob’s Burgers Movie
*** In a prime-time landscape that has relegated the graying dreams of drearily washed-out American families to animation (see The Simpsons, South Park and Family Guy), Bob’s Burgers has quietly thrived over 12 seasons detailing the hum-drummiest of all prole-toon heroes. Save for glimpses inside the vivid inferiority of daughters Tina (the libidinal mope voiced by Dan Mintz) and bunny-ears-topped firebrand Louise (Kristen Schaal), most every Sunday with Bob Belcher (H. Jon Benjamin) revolves around desperate, doomed efforts to maintain a failing eatery amid trad-familial upheavals and the sort of show tune-laden melancholia more apt to spawn box sets than feature films. From The Bob’s Burgers Movie’s start, when our hero finds a burst water main (soon to become police line once Louise discovers a corpse) blocking access to the restaurant’s door, there’s a familiar sense of desperation beneath the burbling farce—but left to bounce long enough, the creative team reaches unforeseen heights. Stretched out to just a shade over 100 minutes, the film’s interwoven narratives breathe and nestle, allowing the sentimental beats to flourish organically. Best of all, series founder and co-writer/co-director Loren Bouchard orchestrates the manic riffs of Bob’s wife, Linda (John Roberts), and the non sequitur fusillade of son Gene (Eugene Mirman) for the best possible version of a comfort staple rendered fresh, flavorful and well done. PG-13. JAY HORTON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Laurelhurst, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Progress Ridge, Studio One, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza.
Men
*** Let’s talk about the dress. It’s pale pink, it’s long sleeved, and it’s worn by Jessie Buckley, star of Alex Garland’s dreamy and blood-chilling thriller Men. An archetypal symbol of femininity, the dress is the first of many clues that Buckley is playing not just a woman, but all women—just as her co-star, Rory Kinnear, is playing all men. Haunted by the death of her husband (Paapa Essiedu), Harper (Buckley) flees to an English country estate to recuperate. Almost the moment she arrives, she’s tormented by seemingly everyone in the area with a Y chromosome, including a little boy who calls her a “stupid bitch,” a silent stalker who appears in her garden naked, and a priest who hides his predatory nature behind courtly manners and long locks. All of these men are played by Kinnear, but it doesn’t seem strange to Harper that they have the same face. Why would it? The idea of a woman being persecuted by males who represent a single malevolent force feels sickeningly real. It could be argued that Men’s points about gender are obvious—and that its attitude toward topics like race and mental health is offensively glib—but like Garland’s previous films, Ex Machina and Annihilation, it digs impressively deep under your skin and into your psyche. Harper may be afraid, but she isn’t powerless. And as she goes from fleeing to fighting, the film solidifies its power over you. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Academy, Cedar Hills, Cinema 21, City Center, Clackamas. Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Hollywood, Laurelhurst, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Studio One, Tigard.
Montana Story
*** The horizon may stretch romantically in this family drama from directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel (The Deep End, What Maisie Knew), but the film doesn’t revise the Western so much as trap two characters inside one. Owen Teague and Haley Lu Richardson star as estranged siblings Cal and Erin, who reunite on their family’s Montana ranch when their dad suffers a stroke. Because the plot finds its skeleton key in off-screen family history, the dialogue suffers from lead-weighted exposition that challenges Teague (It). But as the family outcast who’s unafraid to speak viciously, Richardson (Support the Girls, After Yang) fares better as the siblings tread on eggshells toward reconciliation. Past trauma aside, the film works best when observing banal yet loaded interactions touching on class, race and rural authenticity, like Cal giving a property tour or Erin buying a truck on a nearby reservation. Here, the film lets us see the kids for who they are—the embarrassed offspring of cowboy tourists. They’ve been molded by Big Sky Country, but they’re also hoping for a redemptive exit. Despite its genre trappings, Montana Story is ultimately an anti-Western: an ode to stunning, rugged country best left and loved. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Bridgeport, Fox Tower, Living Room.