Blockbuster season starts earlier every year.
We had two mega-hits in April, both of which were quite bad, albeit for different reasons. And though years (if not decades) of hearing about this imperiled industry have conditioned me to feel a twinge of relief whenever any movie does boffo box office, it would have been nice if it hadn’t been The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Michael this time around. At least May is already off to a better start on that front with a certain fashion-forward legacy sequel — apparently moviegoers wear Prada, too.
The good Mario movie is in another castle. Or maybe it isn’t, since the franchise is now 0 for 3 after 1993’s live-action disappointment that’s nevertheless developed a cult following and now two visually stunning yet narratively inert animated films. Much of the responsibility rests on the shoulders of Mario himself: Chris Pratt, whose halfhearted semi-accent is still distractingly wrong for everyone’s favorite mustachioed Italian plumber. Full of barrel rolls and super scopes, this is as much a feature-length fan service as it is an actual movie, including some decades-old deep cuts that the kiddos won’t catch. (R.O.B., really?)
But what would actually serve fans is a better movie, and to make one of those you typically have to devote as much energy to pesky details like character development as you do to Easter eggs — something this franchise clearly has no interest in. The addition of characters like Star Fox, Yoshi, and Rosalina (to say nothing of the mid- and post-credits scenes) signals a clear intent to create a kind of Mario Cinematic Universe, which, sure, why not; maybe they’ll even make a new Star Fox game while they’re at it. Until box-office returns diminish, alas, this particular franchise will surely continue.
“Is this real?” was the question on the minds of anyone who saw 1978’s Faces of Death, an infamous mockumentary that purported to show real people dying in gruesome ways. It’s also the question Margot (Euphoria’s Barbie Ferreira) has to ask herself while working as a moderator for a social media company whose users upload countless videos every day, many of which are equally vile. There’s no need to wonder this time, however, as co-writer/director Daniel Goldhaber’s spiritual successor to the original video nasty comes into the world at a time when most of us are too jaded from staring at our screens all day to believe what we see on them. Not everyone, though: “I’m offline for a reason,” Margot tells her horror-obsessed roommate (Aaron Holiday) in one of the movie’s more portentous lines.
Goldhaber previously directed the similar yet far more convincing Cam, the authenticity of which is rarely on display here. If the original Faces of Death was a precursor to the viral video, this one is more like a forced attempt at a trend that never takes off. Its central idea — a killer recreating scenes from Faces of Death and eventually targeting our heroine once she figures out that his videos are real, not staged — is a fitting conceit for a 50-years-later update, but it’s undone by a forgettable villain (Dacre Montgomery) and the script’s failure to marry the film’s analog origins with its digital aspirations. Maybe the internet really was a mistake.
What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? Think carefully before you answer lest you meet the same fate as Emma (Zendaya), who jeopardizes her engagement by divulging her deepest, darkest secret to her fiancé Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and their two close friends (Alana Haim and Mamoudou Athie) days before her wedding. The Drama hinges on that moment, a before and after not only in writer/director Kristoffer Borgli’s pitch-black comedy but in the once-blissful relationship itself. What the bride-to-be reveals, and what the rest of the film is partially about, touches on one of those hot-button issues that’s notoriously tricky to tackle onscreen. Borgli succeeds where others have failed by slowly echoing what Charlie says is one of his favorite things about Emma: her ability to turn drama into comedy.
The Drama likewise morphs into a dark laugh riot after initially being presented as something closer to a rom-com. Anyone who can’t hang with the secondhand embarrassment of Curb Your Enthusiasm or I Think You Should Leave is advised to stay far, far away from the film’s third act, a Murphy’s-law disaster that’ll either make you laugh or cry. Borgli’s brand of humor won’t be for everyone, but sickos who can’t help enjoying a little cringe mixed in with their comedy will be glad they RSVP’d.
Clothes maketh the musician, but who maketh the clothes? In Mother Mary it’s Sam Anselm, acclaimed fashion designer and former bestie of the eponymous pop icon. Played by Michaela Coel and Anne Hathaway, respectively, the two artists have such electric chemistry that you’d be forgiven for wondering about the extent of their shared history when Mary shows up after years of estrangement and announces simply, “I need a dress.” Somewhere between Vox Lux and Phantom Thread with a bit of In Fabric thrown in for good measure, David Lowery’s talky chamber drama veers between psychodrama and just plain psycho as it navigates the contours of their relationship.
Among the writer/director’s many previous films is A Ghost Story, which could have just as easily been the title of this aggressively odd two-hander. With a name that evokes Madonna and hand tattoos that are more than a little reminiscent of Ariana Grande’s, Mother Mary is a composite pop star who stands in for our need to turn our favorite artists into messianic figures. She’s also quite literally haunted, as is Sam, by an entity so bizarre I couldn’t spoil the film’s third act if I wanted to. (That isn’t necessarily an endorsement, though I’d probably take it as one.) The (il)logical conclusion of all those “Anne Hathaway is mother” memes, Mother Mary is almost — but, crucially, not quite — as compelling as it is strange.
Michael isn’t just a bad movie; it’s a cowardly, dishonest one that makes exactly one creative choice worth mentioning: completely omitting the decades’ worth of sexual abuse allegations against the erstwhile King of Pop. That it conveniently ends in 1988, before any of those accusations were made, and includes an Avengers-style “His story continues” caption, might be a defensible excuse had it not recently been revealed that the Jackson estate specifically chose to cut those accusations from. If you want to separate the art from the artist and simply enjoy Jackson’s greatest hits, you need only turn on the radio or head to YouTube and listen to the real thing rather than this pantomime starring Jackson’s talented nephew Jaafar in the title role. If you’d rather engage with the thornier details of his life, your time would be better spent watching Dan Reed’s two-part documentary Leaving Neverland.
Except you can’t, because the same litigious estate responsible for this hagiography portraying its subject as a too-pure-for-this-world innocent sued HBO into removing the film from its streaming service in 2024. What we’re left with is akin to a movie about Harvey Weinstein that ends with him winning Best Picture for producing Shakespeare in Love or a Bill Cosby picture focusing exclusively on what a wholesome sitcom dad he was. This is brand management, not a biopic.
