A still from ‘Despicable Me 4’ 

The sixth entry in the Despicable Me franchise and a sequel to 2017’s Despicable Me 3, Despicable Me 4 sees Felonious Gru (Steve Carell) heading to his school Lycée Pas Bon for a reunion. But he is also undercover for the Anti-Villain League (AVL) to capture Maxine Le Mal (Will Ferrell).

Maxine and Gru have a long-standing rivalry from their school days especially after Gru sang Culture Club’s ‘Karma Chameleon’ dressed as Boy George at the talent show. Maxine, who was planning to sing the same song, also dressed as Boy George, could not do so as everyone would think he was copying Gru (shudder).

Maxine has developed many villainous properties including a machine to turn people into enhanced bugs. Gru arrests Maxine who promptly escapes the AVL’s maximum security prison with help from his femme fatale girlfriend Valentina (Sofía Vergara) and swears vengeance on Gru and his family.

The former director of AVL Silas Ramsbottom (Steve Coogan) comes out of retirement to get Gru and his family, which includes his wife,Lucy (Kristen Wiig) adopted daughters Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (Madison Polan) and son Gru Jr, (Tara Strong) to a safe house in the upscale Mayflower neighbourhood.  

A still from ‘Despicable Me 4’ 

Though the Grus, with the cover name of Cunningham, try to blend in, they do stick out. Gru’s attempt at making friends with his neighbour the super-rich Perry Prescott (Stephen Colbert) fall flat while Lucy’s efforts at the hair salon end up in an epic fail with burning a customer, Melora’s (Laraine Newman) hair. Perry’s wife Patsy (Chloe Fineman) invites the Cunninghams to a game of tennis, which Lucy knows is no sign of being accepted.

The Prescott daughter Poppy (Joey King), however recognises Gru and blackmails him to joining her on a heist to steal the school mascot. Apart from the three minions (Pierre Coffin) who accompany the Gru family, the rest are at AVL headquarters and Silas puts five into a programme for the creation of super-powered Mega Minions. The programme is quickly shut down as the Mega Minions unleash all kinds of mayhem under the guise of helping.

The voice work is fun with most of the gang reprising their roles. Romesh Ranganathan as Gru’s quarter master Dr. Nefario and Chris Renaud as the tough-as-nails principal Übelschlecht have a blast as do Ferrell and Vergara. Some of the sequences are inventive, especially the one with the mega minion and the Swiss cheese.

Stuff keeps happening through Despicable Me 4’s 94 minutes and before you know it, the credits are rolling, which might be a good thing if you want to pounded into submission with a relentless procession of gags. Despicable Me 4 is fun while it lasts, but might not stand as a synonym for enduring.

Despicable Me 4 is currently running in theatres

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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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.

Caroline Julstrom, intern, may be reached at 218-855-5851 or cjulstrom@brainerddispatch.com.

Caroline Julstrom finished her second year at the University of Minnesota in May 2024, and started working as a summer intern for the Brainerd Dispatch in June.