Movie Reviews

’10 Lives’ Review: A Cat Comes Back in Different Forms in Kiddie-Targeted Kitty Toon

Published

5 months ago

January 27, 2024

’10 Lives’ Review: A Cat Comes Back in Different Forms in Kiddie-Targeted Kitty Toon

Co-written and directed by Christopher Jenkins (a Disney alum who counts “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin” among his credits), “10 Lives” makes for an entertaining and easily digestible outlier at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The computer-animated story of a cute but lazy cat — imagine Garfield but much cuddlier — who keeps coming back in different forms, “10 Lives” is hardly the first kid-focused toon to premiere in Park City (last year brought “The Amazing Maurice,” which quietly went on to become one of the 2023 edition’s bigger box office earners). Still, it’s probably not what most people imagine when they hear the words “Sundance movie.”

First introduced in feline form, Beckett (voiced by Mo Gilligan) is adopted by a scientist named Rose (Simone Ashley) when she nearly runs him over with her car. Rose is working on a postgraduate dissertation focusing on finding ways to save the world’s bee population. Her boss, Professor Craven (Bill Nighy), tries to sabotage her project for his own nefarious reasons. Feeling jealous of Rose’s assistant/boyfriend Larry (Dylan Llewwellyn), Beckett gets himself in much trouble, losing his ninth life in the process. Lucky for him, a kindly angel (Sophie Okonedo) gives the cat 10 more chances to make it right, be less selfish and win Rose back.

While that high-concept premise surely sounds schematic (and slightly macabre) to adults, younger audiences should find it fun counting down the 10 lives. Every time Beckett is reincarnated, he appears as a new animal in a different situation. Kids can watch him become a horse, a cockroach and a parrot, and so on. But it’s not until Beckett morphs into a dog that the real fun starts. Jenkins and his co-writers, Karen Wengrod and Ken Cinnamon, mine many amusing situations from the animosity between cats and dogs. No matter which species they prefer, pet owners will laugh with recognition at this amusing comparison.

But “10 Lives” is about more than just hilarious scenarios; the movie also has bigger themes on its mind. For example, there’s a message about sustainability and climate change. Rose’s research on bee life conservation mines the idea of all species coming together to carry the burden of keeping the earth alive. These ideas might flow unnoticed by younger audiences, yet they give the film a deeper resonance. “10 Lives” also has a subplot that would be right at home in a third-rate James Bond knockoff: Craven’s efforts to undermine Rose and replace the world’s bee population with animatronic insects. It’s absurd and doesn’t always make sense, but allows the movie’s real star to shine brightly.

Nighy brings down the house on several occasions with an uproariously ridiculous performance. His voice slippery like a lizard, the actor makes every intonation clear and meaningful yet also full of mockery, playing the character while also making fun of him. Hearing that stately clipped voice utter the pharse “Dickie numb bum,” will be hard to top. Other voice performances are on notice.

Perhaps Nighy runs away with the film because all the other elements are much less striking. The animation looks like a conventional throwback to hand-drawn films, while somehow also anonymous with no distinguishing features. The expressions on the animals’ faces — particularly the original Beckett before his many transformations — are more expressive than the human faces. The script borrows from so many tropes that it loses the narrative thread. Pop star Zayn Malik, who also wrote songs for “10 Lives,” appears as a pair of sweet goons who half-heartedly help Craven. But the characters are not especially funny and feel so peripheral to the story that they could be eliminated without affecting anything. Malik’s songs are catchy, at least, even if most are relegated to the end credits.

Gilligan and Ashley play well off each other, giving loose and free performances. Ashley’s voice is appropriately full of warmth, while Gilligan adds an intriguing scratch that makes him believable as a cat. At Sundance, “10 Lives” may seem like an oddity, but it’s made with enough panache (from Nighy in particular) to perform well in the wider world.

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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: MAXXXINE – Assignment X

Published

6 hours ago

July 5, 2024

Press Room

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: July 5th, 2024 / 01:29 AM

Rating: R
Stars: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Uli Latukefu, Giancarlo Esposito, Chloe Farnworth, Halsey, Kevin Bacon, Lily Collins, Simon Prast
Writer: Ti West
Director: Ti West
Distributor: A24
Release Date: July 5, 2024

MAXXXINE, not counting its flashbacks and flash-forwards, is set in 1985. However, it feels more like a ‘70s indie, with its mix of very tough female protagonist, soft porn (meant to be hard porn where we don’t see all the details), detective story, and horror.

It’s a completely fun blend, and star Mia Goth commits two hundred and twenty percent to everything she’s doing.

Maxine Minx (Goth), nee Miller, is a star on the XXX movie circuit in Los Angeles. She adds to her income by doing stripper gigs and peep shows. But Maxine wants to break into mainstream films. No one who saw 2022’s X, the film that introduced Goth as Maxine, will doubt her determination.

Maxine has the talent to book a lead role in a horror movie sequel, directed by hard-nosed Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki), who will brook no tardiness or excuses from her cast.

This puts Maxine in a difficult position when her porn colleagues and friends start getting murdered in horrible ways. Marks left on their bodies suggest cult killings. Meanwhile, L.A. is being terrorized by the Night Stalker.

Maxine doesn’t want to talk to the two detectives (Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale) on the case. She wants to talk even less with a private eye from Louisiana, John Labat (Kevin Bacon), who seems to know way too much about events that happened in 1979 Texas (covered in X).

MAXXXINE writer/director Ti West also helmed and scripted X and its follow-up prequel PEARL, set in 1918 and co-written by and starring Goth as its title character. In fact, in heavy makeup, Goth had dual roles in X, as Maxine and the aged version of Pearl.

West shows great love for recreating Hollywood and particularly Hollywood Boulevard in all of its freak-flag-flying ‘80s heyday, with its styles, songs and subcultures. He also is clearly in his element with the slasher sequences, which have a bit of ‘80s flavor but also fit just fine in their present-day context.

Goth lives up to expectations, which is to say that she is terrific. Debicki, Uli Latukefu as a loyal friend and Giancarlo Esposito as Maxine’s multifaceted agent also make strong impressions. Bacon is overdoing it a tad as the out-of-town slimeball, but since the character is the type who would lay it on thick, the performance suits the purpose.

MAXXXINE has a couple of moments where it is teetering on being funny or scary and doesn’t quite commit fast enough to be either. There aren’t enough of these to severely dent the overall mood, but they register.

While West and Company never overtly promised this, it’s a little surprising to find that MAXXXINE doesn’t provide more narrative throughline with X and PEARL. There is, of course, Goth at the center of all three, and there are tonal similarities in places.

However, there isn’t some “aha” moment or plot point that makes each essential for the others. X informs Maxine’s character to the extent that we know she’s not easily intimidated (to put it mildly). It’s not necessary to have seen X to understand this, though; Goth makes it wholly clear in MAXXXINE.

PEARL factors in even less to the current proceedings. It is in no way obliged to do so. it’s just that the idea that the three films form a trilogy in the conventional sense will have viewers anticipating a kind of emphasis that doesn’t surface.

MAXXXINE is certainly a kick for fans of the type of moviemaking it celebrates. Moreover, there’s no doubt Maxine herself would love it.

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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: 'The Bikeriders' is photography in motion

Published

13 hours ago

July 4, 2024

Press Room

Movie Review: 'The Bikeriders' is photography in motion

The Bikeriders starts in the middle of its own story. A man in a “Chicago Vandals” jacket, head hanging over the bar counter.

“You can’t be wearing no colors in this neighborhood,” someone threatens, to which he replies: “You’d have to kill me to get this jacket off of me.”

The man, Benny, approaches most things in his life with this same kind of fervor. His wife, Kathy, describes Benny camping out in her front yard until her boyfriend at the time packed up his car and left.

It’s through Kathy’s eyes that we come to know the Vandals: The leader, Johnny; his right hand, Brucie; and a menagerie of other club members — Cockroach, Zipco, Cal, Funny Sonny, Corky and Wahoo, to name a few. Kathy, with varying levels of exasperation, takes us through the club’s rise and fall over her interviews with Danny, the photojournalist meant to represent the author of “The Bikeriders,” the book on which the film is based.

Johnny’s vision for the club starts simply enough — just guys talking about bikes. But, as The Vandals grow, he realizes what he’s created might have become impossible to control.

The first, most obvious thing to say about “The Bikeriders” is that it’s gorgeous.

The beauty and effectiveness of Danny Lyon’s photography translates perfectly to film. Although an article by the Smithsonian reports 70% of the film’s dialogue is taken from Lyon’s interviews, you could almost watch this movie with the sound off.

Color, light and framing are used so beautifully here it’s hard not to spend the whole review geeking out. Stoplights, bars and midwestern houses and parking lots become art pieces, dioramas of the tumultuous life of a “bikerider.”

Beyond the surface, though, I’m not sure how to feel about this movie.

When Kathy says Johnny got the idea for the club while watching TV, we cut to him staring, enraptured, as 1953’s “The Wild One” plays in his living room. “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” The girl in the movie asks. Marlon Brando replies, “Whaddaya got?”

This listlessness, this sense that Johnny doesn’t have any purpose in mind, that the club doesn’t have much of a point, permeates the film. For me, it extended to the movie itself: At the beginning I thought life in a motorcycle gang would be exciting but dangerous, and by the end I thought the exact same thing.

Maybe it’s Kathy’s perspective leaking through the narration, but the deaths in this movie are, as a rule, abrupt and stupid. Once the shock wore off, I found myself wondering, “What was that all for?”

For all the glamor and power being a bikerider supposedly grants, they don’t die for great causes or in blazes of glory. The end is a car in reverse, an empty parking lot.

“The Bikeriders” is gorgeous and exciting, but doesn’t appear to say very much. Maybe that’s exactly what it’s saying.

Movie Reviews

Movie review: ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’

Published

20 hours ago

July 4, 2024

Press Room

A Quiet Place: Day One. Valley News/Courtesy photo

Bob Garver
Special to Valley News
“A Quiet Place: Day One” made a grave miscalculation with its advertising. Scenes were filmed with the intention of putting them in the trailers, but not the movie. This way, when people saw the movie, they wouldn’t be able to properly anticipate the surprises and story progression. To that end, the advertising succeeded, I was indeed thrown off while watching the movie. But here’s where they didn’t succeed: the scenes shot just for the trailers were terrible, with clumsy dialogue and careless pacing. I was so mad at Hollywood for continuing this series without the creative vision of director John Krasinski, especially when the movie looked like garbage without his input. I only saw this movie out of obligation for the column, and I wouldn’t