Movie Reviews
Movie review: 'Dogma' re-release highlights thoughtful script – UPI.com
1 of 5 | Ben Affleck (L) and Matt Damon star in “Dogma,” returning to theaters June 5. Photo courtesy of Triple Media Films
LOS ANGELES, May 23 (UPI) — Dogma, returning to theaters June 5, comes from a decade where indie writer/directors were celebrated for the words in their screenplays. Kevin Smith was one of the major voices that emerged in the era of Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater and Sofia Coppola.
In his first film, Clerks, Smith had his convenience store clerks express all of his thoughts about Star Wars, retail and relationships. Dogma, his fourth film, was the work of a writer who grew up Catholic and had thoughts about faith.
Exiled angels Bartleby (Ben Affleck) and Loki (Matt Damon) find a way to get back into heaven. As part of a Catholicism outreach campaign, New Jersey Cardinal Glick (George Carlin) promises forgiveness to anyone who passes through his church’s arch.
If the angels gain forgiveness, then take human form and die, God will have no choice but to allow them back into heaven. What they don’t realize is that invalidating God’s decree will cause the end of all existence.
So God’s Metatron (Alan Rickman) visits Planned Parenthood employee Bethany (Linda Fiorentino) and gives her the task of preventing Loki and Bartleby from entering the church. Smith regulars Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith) are sent as prophets to help Bethany in her quest.
This is a story that adapts Catholic scripture into a modern apocalyptic story, but it is really a vehicle for characters to talk about religion, the way characters in other Smith movies talk about movies and comic books.
That dialogue is performed emphatically, and more subtly it’s well edited by Smith and producer Scott Mosier. Smith’s biblical figures would use the F word while making their profound points, but maybe they learned it from millennia of humans, or at the Tower of Babel.
The film’s messages challenge some of the oldest doctrines of Catholicism. No one has to base their values on a movie, but as an artistic exploration of this thesis, all of Smith’s questions are backed up by a creative interpretation of the scripture.
The message is ultimately that God doesn’t care which religion you follow as long as you believe. That would offend organized religion, but the film unabashedly believes in God.
Jesus’ unsung 13th apostle Rufus (Chris Rock) tells Bethany that God wants people to think for themselves. As bold a take on religion as that might be, it is ultimately optimistic.
Bethany is a character seeking to regain her faith. She remembers the feelings that church gave her as a child.
Yet she no longer feels that as an adult, which is understandable with painful life experience. But she’s open to restoring her faith and this adventure gives her a reason.
Of course, Smith has a mischievous spark. Loki likes to talk nuns out of their faith when he’s literally an Angel with knowledge of God herself (Alanis Morissette).
Smith speculates on eras of Jesus’ life that were not in the Bible as characters speak of their time with him. Those extrapolations show empathy towards the burden of being the son of God for a teenager.
They’re also not meant to be canonical. Smith’s point is to get viewers thinking as they laugh, not launch a religion himself.
Exposure to biblical figures certainly does not make Jay any more wholesome, but his ability to keep making vulgar sexual innuendo amid crises of faith of apocalyptic proportions is impressive.
There is a little bit of gay panic when Bethany mistakes Bartleby and Loki for lovers, and Rufus exposes Jay’s secret desires for men. Characters also use the R-word, because 1999 was unfortunately before many people learned it was a slur, but Smith has addressed both of those issues in subsequent work.
The complicated release history of Dogma, passing between several studios, has made it difficult to see since its Blu-ray release. Now out of print and not streaming anywhere, the re-release is a welcome return of one of Smith’s seminal works.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
movie review
TOY STORY 5
Running time: 102 minutes. PG (some thematic elements, rude humor). In theaters.
Long before ChatGPT was a household name, Hollywood had been making AI the villain for decades — from HAL 9000 to Skynet to Agent Smith.
Yet the most emotionally involving spin on the terrors of tech in ages arrives not from groundbreaking sci-fi, but the smart, wonderful and tremendously funny fifth “Toy Story” movie.
That’s a surprise, since it’s a film that I really hoped would never happen. After middling “4,” which was a giant step down from the heartbreaking third, the world was more than ready for Woody and Buzz to ride off into the sunset. Woody actually did.
Well, it’s good that Tom Hanks and Tim Allen got back behind the mike, because the digital age gives Pixar’s playthings a renewed sense of purpose and atypically high stakes. Usually the gang helps a young person stay in touch with their childhood. This time, they save one in progress.
That’s the formative years of little Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), the girl who inherited the dolls from Andy (who’s now, like, 40) in the last movie. She’s 8 years old, paralyzed by shyness and totally friendless. Desperate, Bonnie begs her parents to buy her a Lilypad, an interactive touchscreen that’s all the rage at school.
Yes, the baddie that Woody (Hanks), Buzz (Allen) and Jessie (Joan Cusack) must face this time is an alarmingly cute tablet, voiced by Greta Lee.
So, rather than humanity’s fears of artificial intelligence taking control of the nuclear arsenal or replacing us with cyborgs, director Andrew Stanton’s “5” taps into a much more immediate concern: screens rewiring kids’ minds.
Much like when action figure Buzz arrived, sigh, 31 years ago, the toys are mortified by the mysterious intruder and her luminescent ilk. As they look across their neighborhood, all they can see for blocks are glowing blue windows with zombie youths staring into the 10×10 void.
The end is nigh, they think. How can a cowboy, cowgirl and a space cadet compete against a reactive mini-computer that connects a lonely child to the entire planet?
But these toys aren’t ready for the dark recesses of eBay just yet. They go head to head — or plastic to plastic — with Lilypad, whom Lee gives a voice that’s both bestie and “Mean Girls.”
You may recall lovebirds Woody and Bo Peep went off on their own at the end of the last chapter. Of course, they find their way back, but Jessie is running things now. That’s a refreshing and appropriate switch-up. Cusack’s maternal performance is better suited to this particular adventure than Hanks’ “old buddy, old pal” delivery.
After a sleepover mishap, Jessie winds up lost at another house — her first one, it turns out — where a girl named Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris) lives. And it’s there we meet perhaps the best new character in this franchise since 1995: Smarty Pants.
The real misfit toys aren’t the OG crew, we learn, but obsolete computer devices from the aughts. One is Conan O’Brien’s Smarty Pants, a hysterical, hyperactive box that teaches tykes how to use the toilet. He’s been powered down for years and therefore goes berserk when juiced up.
O’Brien is — and I’m sure he’d agree — a toy trapped in a man’s body. He’s practically typecasting. And his demented acting is so energetic and untethered, you can picture Disney security guards hauling him out of the recording studio. I mean that in a good way.
There’s also a lot of fun mined from a shipment of misplaced Buzzes. We check in on the look-alikes occasionally as they morph into a phalanx of determined Navy SEALs to eventually join Jessie and Co.
“Five” is arguably the first new “Toy Story” film to be both watched and understood by the kids of the 1995 original’s millennial audience. That shared experience is very moving all by itself.
But, even more poignantly, who can teach these young parents this vital lesson in 21st-century child-rearing better than their own toys?
3.5/5 stars
The notoriously treacherous hurdles that Hong Kong telecommunications company i-Cable used to put in front of customers looking to unsubscribe from its internet and pay-TV services throughout the 2000s and early 2010s provide the premise of this Kafkaesque comedy-drama – an alternately hilarious and heartbreaking case of raging against the system.
By Susan Granger
With the release of his 35th movie, it’s obvious that Steven Spielberg is not just a good story-teller, he’s a GREAT story-teller.
The suspenseful tale he spins this time is “Disclosure Day” about the U.S. government’s attempt to keep the truth about UFOs secret.
Sinister Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) heads WARDEX (Waived Reporting, Development and Extraction), a quasi-Defense Department agency from which cybersecurity expert Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) has stolen a powerful device of alien origin along with extensive classified information and video files.
Although his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) is held hostage by Scanlon’s underlings, Daniel manages to free her and get away, igniting a manhunt.
Supported by WARDEX’s Director of Biological Assets, paternal Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), whistleblower Daniel believes people have a right to know about the coverup, dating back to the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico, paranoia and the Nixon Administration.
Meanwhile in the middle of a TV broadcast, Kansas City, Missouri, meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) suddenly begins making bizarre, guttural clicking sounds which make no sense – except to Daniel, who recognizes the alien code.
To the bewilderment of her boyfriend, Jackson (Wyatt Russell, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell’s son), Margaret can suddenly speak foreign languages – like Korean and Russian – and manipulate the minds of everyone she encounters.
What Daniel and Margaret have in common is a terrifying childhood trauma that neither wants to remember. To tell you more would ruin the film’s many white-knuckle surprises and insights about faith in a supreme deity and the philosophical essence of humanity.
Scripted by David Koepp from Steven Spielberg’s story, it revolves around a nefarious conspiracy, cloaked in sci-fi mystery, tracing back to “E.T.” and “Close Encounters of a Third Kind.” And it’s a timely topic since former President Obama said he believes aliens are real, prompting President Trump to accuse him of revealing “classified information.”
Sure – there are some gaping plot loopholes – but cinematographer Janusz Kaminski dazzles with a high-speed train chase. Buoyed by John Williams’ throwback score – on the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Disclosure Day” is an exciting 9, playing in theaters now.
Catch up on Susan’s recent reviews:
Susan Granger
Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in Journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has appeared on radio and television as an anchorwoman and movie critic for many years. Read all her reviews at susangranger.com.
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