“Oh, Mary!” opened Thursday at the Lyceum Theatre after a successful run Off Broadway, and Cole Escola, the show’s author and star, achieves what such crossdressing trailblazers as Charles Ludlam and Charles Busch were never allowed to do. Busch’s one shot at Broadway came in 2000 when his comedy “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife” opened, starring Linda Lavin and followed by Valerie Harper and Rhea Perlman in the lead role. No plans were ever made for Busch to impersonate the character of Upper West Side matron Marjorie Taub, despite his having played the female lead in more than a dozen plays he wrote before and since “Allergist’s Wife.” Is the difference quality? I think not. Busch’s “Red Scare on Sunset” and “The Divine Sister,” as well Ludlam’s “Irma Vep” and “Galas,” could have played Broadway with their respective creators on stage in drag. All they lacked were producers willing to take the plunge.

What a difference a few intrepid money people make!

“Oh, Mary!” plays even better on Broadway than it did downtown at the Lucille Lortel Theater earlier this year. Experiencing this comedy with a few hundred more theatergoers takes the laughter from boisterous to atomic and the effect is absolutely radioactive. Plot-wise, it continues to be best to write as little as possible. There are outrageous twists and turns in the story that genuinely shock an audience into delayed convulsions of laughter. Let’s just say that Escola has somehow managed to turn the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln into an inspired, rollicking comedy.

From the moment Escola’s Mary Todd Lincoln enters the Oval Office (terrific sets by Dots), it’s like watching the last reel of “The Valley of the Dolls” with Patty Duke in full drunken fury. Escola not only brilliantly overacts from the get-go, this performer possesses Duke’s doll-like features, and wig designer Leah J. Loukas has concocted a set of long coiled curls that’s a dead-ringer for what Duke wears in the “Dolls” scene that replicates Judy Garland getting fired from “Annie Get Your Gun.” (That sentence is a test: if you don’t get it, maybe “Oh, Mary!” is not for you.)

In the world of camp, heterosexuality is the biggest joke of all. Except in “Oh, Mary!” This play lampoons gay sex even more than the straight variety. On any other stage, Escola’s Mary would steal the show, but fellow actors Conrad Ricamora and James Scully often snatch it right back. The show’s funniest scene (arguably) belongs not to Escola but Ricamora (“Mary’s husband”) and Scully (“Mary’s teacher”) when they launch into a dish session that roasts poor Mary alive.

Bianca Leigh and Tony Macht round out the terrific cast, which Sam Pinkleton directs with all the subtlety of a wild man wielding a buzzsaw.

The post ‘Oh, Mary!’ Broadway Review: A New Star Moves Uptown to Wow the Masses appeared first on TheWrap.

Yet Jeb Stuart’s “Vikings” spin-off series still tortures actual timelines like a zealous Christian convert would an obstinate pagan. The “Die Hard” writer’s team slams together famous, 11th Century personages who may have met in melodramatic ways that they certainly did not. The show piles up coincidences, hair’s breadth escapes and heroic showdowns so Hollywood phony, it makes you long for the relative realism of a White Walker attack.

Overall though, “Valhalla’s” imaginative interpretation of ultra-interesting history is clever and reliably rousing. Each episode should motivate the curious to learn the truth about the events and people depicted here. The non-do-your-own-research crowd will be more than satisfied by all the political intrigues, family resentments, pageantry and bloodlust on display, even if the bigger battles are marred by jittery step-printing. With at least four, far-flung plotlines going at any given hour, the narrative never drags, nor hangs around anyplace long enough to get too stupid.

Set seven years after the events of Season 2, this eight-episode run opens up a new theater of operations in the Mediterranean, and does so with a bang. Now the respected leader of the Byzantine Empire’s formidable Varangian Guards, Norwegian Prince Harald Sigurdsson (Leo Suter) strategizes the best way to take Syracuse and kick the Saracens out of Sicily. He’s immensely aided by his best bud and traveling companion Leif Eriksson (Sam Corlett), who’s become the ultimate medieval autodidact while still rocking that Hot Jesus look.

We’re expected to believe that Leif invents the infamous incendiary weapon called Greek fire, a move he guiltily regrets when jealousy-fired Greek General Maniakes (Florian Munteanu) applies the compound to helpless civilians. After their triumphant return to Constantinople, Harald and the hissable Maniakes chart a sneaky, gory collision course, while the troubled Leif decides to sail west — way west, ultimately, with a dream of setting foot on the American landmass the Greenlander once glimpsed as a child.

But first, Leif wants to know what’s happened to his sister. A lot, as it turns out. Fightin’ shield maiden Freydís Eiríksdóttir (Frida Gustavsson) is now high priestess and leader of Jomsborg, the last unchristianized European Viking colony. She’s also the fiercely protective mother of a son Harald doesn’t know he shares with her, is always getting captured and escaping, and wants to lead her people to that genuinely green land her brother told her about when they were kids. Their dad, Erik the Red (Goran Višnjić), is not crazy about that idea.

Meanwhile, in Rome, Canute the Great (Bradley Freegard), ruler of the Denmark/England/Norway North Sea Empire and none too thrilled about renouncing his Asgard-worshipping ways for political purposes, is conducting amusing, decidedly not pious negotiations with a corrupt Vatican. His second wife, England’s Norman Queen Emma (Laura Berlin), and her Machiavellian Saxon advisor Earl Godwin (David Oakes) — both multi-dimensional in their quietly calculating ways — lend their unparalleled skills to the papal intrigues. Visits to Normandy, Denmark and London follow, where assorted nasty youths destined to claim English and Norse crowns are introduced. By season’s climax most of the surviving players end up in Kattegat, the series’ fictional Norwegian capital.

These include younger versions of Harald Hardrada, Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror (a toddler Harold Godwinson can be spotted too). They’ll all become key figures in 1066, the year both the Viking Age and Anglo-Saxon rule in England end and everyone’s French cousins take over. But that’s decades away — not sure how long exactly, considering those mutilated timelines — from where this run of “Valhalla” ends. This is the series’ final season, which is more disappointing than for most shows Netflix pulls the plug on too soon. Perhaps a third series could show us the history-altering battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings — but Leif and Freydis still need to find Newfoundland, goddammit!

Forgive the profanity, but “Valhalla’s” increasingly sophisticated examination of religion this season is its smartest thematic element, and dare I say inspirational in the way it distinguishes this show from the plague of Middle Ages sword-swingers out there. While earlier seasons emphasized fanatic, cross-wearing barbarians, this round digs into how the power of the Church was wielded as an instrument of control and consolidation. For all the radiant charisma and strength of character Gustavsson brings to Freydis, we know the monotheists’ might will overcome her Odin’s in the end (canonizing St. Olaf, whom Freydis slew last season, requires a pleasing bit of savage ingenuity). And while it can’t be said that Corlett totally sells Leif’s dual nature as man of science and unstoppable swashbuckler, he does convey the Catholic-curious hero’s nagging moral quandaries.

Since Munteanu plays Maniakes as pure evil in every conceivable way, it’s no surprise that the character is also the series’ number one Islamophobe. This is not a big part of the season, but it’s a noteworthy acknowledgement that some things have not changed to this day — and a reminder that, before the 11th Century’s end, the Crusades will be in full, ghastly swing.

So yeah, lots here for history buffs to drink in, despite the hangovers it may give sticklers. Language snobs may rightfully wince at clumsily written lines such as “Vikings are NEVER lost” and “Take these to the kitchen, there is much cooking to be done!” Yet “Valhalla’s” faults fade as one binges on through its eventful plot, impressive-enough locations (Ireland for the Northern climes, Croatia for the Mediterranean parts), and longboat-sinking, battleaxe bludgeoning action. I still don’t buy that drunk crows can set an imperial city on fire, but aside from things like that, I believe in “Valhalla” like Norse warriors had faith in their afterlife reward.

“Vikings: Valhalla” Season 3 premieres Thursday, July 11, on Netflix.

The post ‘Vikings: Valhalla’ Season 3 Review: Netflix Historical Drama Ends With Plenty of Unexplored Potential appeared first on TheWrap.

“Longlegs” stars Maika Monroe as a rookie FBI agent named Lee Harker, a quiet and piercing young woman who the bureau quickly clocks as, if not psychic, then at least highly intuitive. So — presumably since the movie takes place in the mid-1990s and everyone’s recently watched “The Silence of the Lambs” — they immediately assign her to an unsolved serial killer case under an experienced elder statesman, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), in the hopes that she’ll see something no one else has.

The serial killer, known only as Longlegs, has a disturbing and seemingly impossible M.O. Somehow he convinces the people in a family to kill each other, without ever touching them or talking to them or walking into their houses. There’s physical evidence, like a Zodiac-style cypher code that links all the crimes together. But nothing points to a culprit or even a clear methodology. It’s just weird, dang it.

One suspects that “it’s just weird, dang it” may have been one of writer/director Osgood Perkins’ instructions to his film crew. Perkins is arguably the modern master of dread. His films “The Blackcoat’s Daughter,” “I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House” and “Gretel and Hansel” practically sweat discomfort. His style is formed from half-dreamy camera movements and frames that look only slightly out of alignment. Andrés Arochi is his cinematographer, and together they’ve made the scariest-looking film in recent memory. In “Longlegs” even an establishing shot of a house can make you panic.

For the majority of “Longlegs,” Perkins’ macabre imagery and enigmatic storytelling drills itself through you, until you’re unable to move from your seat. Over the course of four feature films he’s somehow filtered all of the human decency of his atmosphere until only fear and oppression remain. God damn it, this movie is disquieting.

But what actually lives in that atmosphere? That’s a more complicated question. “Longlegs” starts out as a serial killer procedural, but as the tale unfolds, it’s unclear how literally we’re supposed to interpret its eerie images, and whether the story is actually supposed to make sense or if it’s just supposed to leave you unbalanced and uncertain. 

It’s at this point that it would be damn convenient to simply talk about the film’s ending, but there’s no sense ruining that now. Suffice it to say that when entering the world of “Longlegs” you should expect to have your preconceived notions of airplane novel serial killer stories challenged. You’ll get more mileage out of this film the more open you are to its oddness.

Whether you love where “Longlegs” takes you or not, you’re going to have a creepy time getting there. Monroe cuts through her scenes like a knife, this typically energetic performer keeping anything resembling joy locked deep inside. Or maybe she’s simply thrown it all out. Harker is a grim tour guide through this cold and merciless world of loneliness and violence. When we meet her mother, Ruth (Alicia Witt), a shut-in with a hoarder’s house full of mysteries and clues, we get some sense of how Agent Harker got this way, until we find out more. Maybe too much.

And then of course there’s Nicolas Cage, who plays the title villain, and can be found caked under thick white makeup and a ratty wig. It’s quizzical that Osgood Perkins went so overboard with Longlegs as a character. His look is straight out of a Tim Burton film, his motives have leapt off the pages of a satanic panic Jack T. Chick tract and his methods could have come from a Silver Age comic book. He’s an over-the-top villain in a film otherwise defined by graveness and gravity. The film almost breaks upon his arrival, transforming into something wholly unexpected, but not necessarily more effective.

“Longlegs” doesn’t want you to get your bearings. I watched it over a week ago and I’m still searching for mine. What’s clear is that as a stylist, Perkins is at the top of his game. Maybe even the top of anyone’s game. As a storyteller, he’s either a bold innovator or just slapping dream logic onto old-fashioned pulp. Either way “Longlegs” is a horrifying motion picture, if not Perkins’ best than at least his most striking. And when it strikes it leaves a mark.

The post ‘Longlegs’ Review: Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage Clash in a Chilling, Pulp Nightmare appeared first on TheWrap.

Now, the beauty of Lee Isaac Chung’s “Twisters” is that it follows a similar formula. “Twisters” has a lot of eardrum-bursting action sequences but at its heart it’s just a romantic character piece about two people finding each other, surrounded by a throng of character actors who, like the supporting cast in “Twister,” seem slightly overqualified for their tiny roles. All in all, the film has more personality than we’re used to in studio-driven event films. It’s easy to get swept up in it.

Daisy Edgar-Jones (“Where the Crawdads Sing”) stars as Kate Cooper, a meteorologist whose tornado sense is superior to any computer-driven weather predictions. She’s got a theory that tornadoes can be dissipated by filling them with, I didn’t catch the technical term, but basically “stuff.” If they put this “stuff” in barrels and get a tornado to suck them up into the sky, the tornado is supposed to disappear. It doesn’t work, lots of people die, and now it’s five years later and Kate has given up on her dreams for a cushy, boring desk job.

That’s when her old storm-chasing partner Javi (Anthony Ramos, “In the Heights”) shows up to pull her out of retirement. He’s developed a technology that can map the inside of a tornado, but to do that they need to find a tornado, and he needs Kate to track them down, since apparently computers suck. When she waffles, he points out that there’s a once in a generation tornado outbreak in Oklahoma and that “it’s coming after the people we love,” as if the weather system is the shark from “Jaws: The Revenge” and it won’t stop until it’s killed everyone Kate ever knew.

Kate begrudgingly goes along and the job should be easy, except they’re not alone out there. A group of high-tech storm-chasers with a hit YouTube channel are chasing the same storms, and they’re constantly getting in the way. These “Storm Wranglers” are spending what looks like hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment and have over a million subscribers, which is an awful lot of effort for a relatively small reward. They could reach a bigger audience by shit-talking “Star Wars” in their living rooms.

The Storm Wranglers are led by Tyler Owens, played by Glen Powell, and Lee Isaac Chung (“Minari”) is committed to making him a sex symbol. Director of photography Dan Mindel (“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”) films Glen Powell like a beer commercial could break out at any second. Powell seems happy to play the part: cracking wise, opening his heart, and finding a lost dog because, as Tyler himself says, “Of course I found the dog.” Romance between Kate and Tyler isn’t just inevitable, it’s demanded.

There’s not a lot of plot to “Twisters,” which again, is in the “Twister” tradition. The closest thing the film has to a villain is ethical complexity, as Kate finds out that Javi’s financial backers aren’t wholly altruistic, and that Tyler only sells t-shirts with his face on them for the sake of charity. It’s a film that argues that in a capitalist system it’s impossible to make entirely moral choices, and that’s more than a lot of other blockbusters have on their mind, even if the concept isn’t explored terribly well.

That said, “Twisters” does have its share of silliness. These professional storm chasers have an odd tendency to yell out things they all know, as if they’re somehow aware they’ve got an audience. “Overpasses are the worst in tornados!” is a rather absurd thing to yell when there’s literally no other cover and you’re all about to die.“Their moisture numbers are off!” is also one hell of a sentence to scream, and kudos to the cast for making lines like that more-or-less work.

It’s a hard job, acting in these kinds of movies, and Lee Isaac Chung assembled a great cast to do it. Sasha Lane, Kiernan Shipka, Tunde Adebimpe, Katy O’Brian, Harry Hadden-Paton and many more actors besides bring real character to what could have been a generic ensemble of scientists and thrill-seekers. Even future Superman David Corenswet shows up in a pretty thankless stick-in-the-mud corporate stooge role, the kind of guy who literally only exists to have mud splashed on his face at the end. That’s not a great part, but Corenswet knows he’s supposed to be unlikable and he does his damn job.

“Twisters” doesn’t have a lot to do with the original film as far as the plot and characters go. We see the weather-scanning device Helen Hunt invented in the film’s opening scenes, so we know it takes place in the same universe, and there are a couple of winking references if you know where to look for them (“It’s good to have you back.” “I’m not back.”).

But you don’t need to see “Twister” to appreciate “Twisters.” They just have the same breezy vibes and impressive visual scale. For a sequel to a nearly 30-year-old movie, “Twisters” miraculously stands out against the modern blockbuster landscape. Just like “Twister” did back in 1996. It’s the rare legacy sequel done right.

A Universal Pictures release, “Twisters” opens exclusively in theaters on July 17.

The post ‘Twisters’ Review: Lee Isaac Chung’s Blockbuster Sequel Is a Breath of Fresh Air appeared first on TheWrap.

Hollywood loves to be topical, so filmmakers latched onto this paranoid fantasy immediately. Only two years after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, James Bond stumbled across NASA’s top secret film studio in “Diamonds Are Forever.” The government hunted down O.J. Simpson to keep a fake Mars mission secret in 1977’s “Capricorn One.” By the time we got to the present day it wasn’t even a subversive idea anymore. It was just a throwaway gag in kids movies like “Minions.”

Now it’s the premise for “Fly Me to the Moon,” a romantic comedy starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum. But even though the conspiracy theory that NASA faked the moon landing is deeply and depressingly cynical, there isn’t an ounce of cynicism in Greg Berlanti’s sweet, comical and joyous film. “Fly Me to the Moon” uses great screenwriting and good old-fashioned star power to bring a far-fetched concept back down to Earth.

Johansson stars as Kelly Jones, a fast-talking advertising executive hired by a mysterious G-man named Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson) to revitalize America’s crumbling space race propaganda machine. While she’s building buzz through fake interviews and product placement deals, NASA’s launch director Cole Davis (Tatum) builds the whole Apollo 11 spacecraft. He takes his job so seriously that he even flips out when he sees a stray black cat toddling across Kennedy Space Center, just in case bad luck is real. When his co-workers tell Cole he’s overreacting, he screams out “You’re not overreacting enough!”

Cole is sincere. Kelly is a compulsive liar. They have nothing in common except a shared and seemingly impossible goal, to land American astronauts on the moon. It’s a formula for romantic chemistry that could be taught in science classes, not just film school. Lesser actors could rest on this premise and get away with it but Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum are on fire. Almost all romantic comedies have a “meet cute” scene, but very few will leave you fanning yourself afterwards. My heavens, Channing Tatum, you’re going to give us all the vapors.

It sounds like hyperbole to compare Tatum and Johansson to Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, but those shoes fit. Johansson’s high-energy vivacity and Tatum’s sad-sack grumpiness make for a wonderful centerpiece, and then Berlanti fills the rest of the film with memorable side characters, like the diva commercial director Lance Vespertine (Jim Rash), and Kelly’s card-carrying feminist assistant Ruby (Anna Garcia). It’s almost hard to believe this film takes place at a maximum security location since every scene gets stolen by somebody.

Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski shoots “Fly Me to the Moon” with a colorful sleekness, a wistful and sharp evocation of 1960s visual aesthetics that never hits you over the head too hard. (He also has a small role as a cinematographer lighting the moon landing, which is a fun little treat.) Mary Zophres’ costume design and Shane Valentino’s production design make for a spiffy combination.

It’s an inviting place to visit, this version of the 1960s, and although the film is adamant about keeping a light and airy tone, it doesn’t pretend the Vietnam War isn’t happening at the same time, or that President Richard Nixon wasn’t already widely despised. It does, however, pretend that almost no one smoked in the mid-20th century, and that’s as big a lie as the fake moon landing.

This screenplay is one hell of a balancing act. It probably shouldn’t work but it works practically perfectly. Rose Gilroy wrote the script from a story by Keenan Flynn and Bill Kirstein, and that script segues smartly from frothy romance to teary pathos and back again. Best of all, “Fly Me to the Moon” cleverly takes its bitter conspiracy theory and treats it like a threat instead of a fact. The mission to put a person on the moon was successful because people believed it could be done. The very idea of faking that mission is such an insult to their achievements that it must be stopped at any cost. With those kinds of stakes, “Fly Me to the Moon” never feels weightless, no matter how light it comes across.

It’s fair to say that Greg Berlanti’s film is more successful when it’s funny than when it’s serious, but it never gets sidetracked by one tone for very long. Instead, Berlanti keeps his film zooming along at a brisk, even breathless clip. Always pressing forward, always shooting off sparks. It’s a rocketship ride of a rom-com, and one day — probably not far in the future — I suspect it may be considered a classic.

An Apple Original Film, “Fly Me to the Moon” opens in theaters on July 12 courtesy of Sony Pictures before it hits streaming at a later date.

The post ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ Review: Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum Soar in Space Age Rom-Com appeared first on TheWrap.

Jones tested herself a bit more as a leading lady in the Sofia Coppola movie “On the Rocks,” but her lower-key take on gilded-cage ennui wound up a comfortable fit for what was itself a lower-key Coppola picture of more modest moods and less spiritual distress. In the new Apple TV+ series “Sunny,” however, Jones must access a greater range of emotions — even when they’re supposed to be partially concealed. As Suzie, a woman living in near-future Japan whose husband Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and young son are presumed dead after a horrific plane crash, she needs to convey grief over that potential loss, anger at its unfairness, exasperation (bordering on disgust) at being stuck with her judgmental mother-in-law Noriko (Judy Ongg), and a nagging suspicion that information is being kept from her, among other complexities.

It’s not necessarily that Jones lets “Sunny” down with her acting. All of those requisite emotions do come across — at times, almost too clearly. In a multifaceted show with a tricky tone, her directness should be a guiding light for the audience, but Jones seems to have trouble squaring those complicated, conflicting feelings with Suzie’s self-presentation, as well as making those inner conflicts surprising or counterintuitive. So instead she sticks to the surface: Scowling, swearing and occasionally sobbing. She’s not exactly overacting; it’s more like emotional exposition.

Some of this, of course, is really a problem in the writing of “Sunny.” It’s based on the novel “The Dark Manual” by Colin O’Sullivan, and some details (whether in the book or invented for the show) have been brought to life with great skill by series creator Katie Robbins and her staff. On paper, it seems like one of its most challenging elements would be Sunny (Joanna Sotomura), the advanced domestic robot that Masa leaves to Suzie. This wish confounds Suzy, given that she has always expressed revulsion at the concept, and throws her further as she realizes what a complex not-quite-person Sunny appears to be.

Roughly the height of a tween but with bulkier proportions, Sunny’s version of a robotic demeanor (at least as we initially see it) is less ultra-efficient automaton than slightly frantic people-pleaser with big cartoony eyes — which only makes her more unnerving (and funnier; it’s the rare original re-interpretation of the servile-robot dynamic). Both the visual effects and the personality are surprisingly believable as Sunny wears down Suzie’s resistance and becomes her sidekick of sorts — though she has to compete with bartender Mixxy (the singer-songwriter known as annie the clumsy), a new human friend Suzie meets (and maybe flirts with?) in the aftermath of her family’s disappearance.

The trio gets deeper into an investigation that involves hacked robots, secrets Masa kept from his wife, and possible business involving the Yakuza. Along the way, some of the quirkier details feel like the show is using its futuristic surface to get away with a bunch of tired isn’t-Japan-weird material. That might just come down to “Sunny” missing the mark when it’s aiming for dark comedy. For every intriguing plot turn or bit of clever irony, there’s a scene that really clangs, like a midseries police interview that’s played as comic absurdity but is actually just a bunch of unbelievable behavior. Suzie describes a missing robot without mentioning that she’s talking about a robot, then issues sarcastic quips that depend entirely on the police detective supplying information to fuel them.

“Sunny” often looks great, perpetuating Apple’s rep as a go-to streamer for well-appointed sci-fi. Its sense of design isn’t ostentatious; though some character dynamics recall Spielberg’s “A.I.,” it’s scaled closer to the smaller, more retro-futuristic style of Spike Jonze’s “Her.” But for much of its ten episodes, the show, like Suzie, is doing a lot — prickly, uneasy buddy comedy; big sci-fi ideas about artificial intelligence; messy grief drama; crime intrigue; amateur private-detective work – and not doing any of it especially well. It’s the kind of show that insists on having its lead character’s flaws conspicuously called out around the three-quarters mark, lest the audience misunderstand whether Suzie is meant to be a good person, and winds up coming across more like a lampshading of the show’s more unconvincing human elements.

A late-season backstory episode about the art of robotics programming is a welcome change of pace, yet has to carry so much weight in 37 minutes that it throws the material around it out of whack. The season as a whole is at once drawn-out and overstuffed. Like Jones, “Sunny” has admirable ambition – and doesn’t seem entirely prepared to follow it through.

“Sunny” premieres Wednesday, July 10, on Apple TV+.

The post ‘Sunny’ Review: Rashida Jones Stumbles Through Apple’s Overstuffed Sci-fi Dramedy appeared first on TheWrap.

It’s evident in the first few minutes of “Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken” that this isn’t a typical concert documentary. A two-part docuseries that concentrates its energy on the pitfalls of drug addiction and the failed penal system revolving around rehabilitation, Etheridge speaks directly to the camera as she prepares for a monumental show at the aforementioned correctional facility. Beginning nine months before the concert, the “Come to My Window” legend explains her reasons for performing for prisoners, mainly due to her upbringing in Leavenworth, Kansas, a town famous for its own prison.

The only other landmark in Leavenworth? A guitar-shaped sign that greets visitors entering the town that reads, “The Hometown of Melissa Etheridge.”

But the underlying thread that connects Etheridge to the women housed in the Topeka Correctional Facility is the fact that she lost her son to a fentanyl overdose in 2020. Still dealing with the trauma of losing a child, the singer is determined to help those still struggling with addiction in any way she can. Collaborating with prison workers and five specific prisoners, Etheridge wants to give the incarcerated population the concert of a lifetime while vocalizing her support for changes to the system.

The courage and resilience of these women, who are striving to overcome their past and build a better future, is inspiration personified.

Interviews with prisoners about their experiences with drug addiction, and how they ended up in prison, highlight the earnest reasoning behind Melissa Etheridge’s intentions. Tugging at the heartstrings of an emotional journey that inspires Etheridge to draft a new song dedicated to the prisoners, the docuseries explores the fractured relationship between addiction and imprisonment. Discussions are presented of these women’s hopes and fears leading up to the debut of Etheridge’s new song, aptly referred to as “I’m Not Broken,” for most of the series.

The directing duo behind “Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken,” Brian Morrow and Amy Scott, are keen to keep viewers guessing as to how Etheridge’s new song will sound. The docuseries is interspersed with scenes directly from the concert while taking viewers back to when the songwriter developed the song in her Los Angeles home. She interviews five incarcerated women who ultimately inspired her to write a melody filled to the brim with transcendence and healing, for a population of prisoners who haven’t connected with a performer in quite some time.

For many of these women, Melissa Etheridge is their first concert experience. That becomes apparent as we learn their fears for the future and the hope a singer like Etheridge brings to their confined existence. The docuseries brings to light many of the challenges they face while giving Etheridge a platform to stun an eager congregation with her sultry sound.

It’s a powerful reminder of the transformative power of music, offering hope and solace in even the most challenging circumstances.

Boy, does she ever! There aren’t a lot of performers quite like Melissa Etheridge in this day and age, especially considering the hurdles she’s had to overcome to get to this moment in her 63 years. Much of that isn’t explored via this series. Rather, the focus is squarely placed on Etheridge’s guilt and revelations of her son’s death during the opioid crisis, and how it relates to the difficulties these incarcerated women go through within their own drug addictions.

“Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken” lifts up a population of women forgotten by society and strives to tell an inspiring story filled with overcoming loss and human connection through music with others experiencing trauma and grief. The series shines a light on what many consider a failed penal system, using Etheridge as the seductive voice of reason. Though many aspects of that system aren’t necessarily repaired through her desire to affect change, the documentary does a fantastic job of traversing prisoners’ experiences using empathy and understanding set to the tune of Etheridge’s vocal genius.

Before the credits start rolling, viewers and the in-person audience are rewarded with Etheridge’s newest song, dedicated and inspired by her conversations with the five incarcerated women. The emotional impact of Etheridge’s new song, inspired by the stories of these women, is truly moving and underscores the power of music to connect and heal. If you weren’t familiar with Melissa Etheridge’s work and political activism before, this series will make a fan out of you.

“Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken” premieres Tuesday, July 9, on Paramount+.

The post ‘Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken’ Review: Rock Music and Drug Addiction Intersect in Moving Prison Docuseries appeared first on TheWrap.

Over three 40-ish minute episodes, “Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer” does nothing but tell, tell, tell. A necessary evil of the true crime docuseries form, so often marked by talking heads and case files and the like? To an extent, but superior versions of this type of series use a keener sense of “telling” to reveal and deepen. “Mastermind” feels content with superficial, Wikipedia-level summary told at an aggressively rushed, and therefore unmoving, pace.

Don’t get it twisted: none of this is an indictment of the docuseries’ subject, Dr. Ann Burgess. If you enjoyed Netflix’s fictional crime series “Mindhunter,” you will likely find an interest in Dr. Burgess, as Anna Torv’s character is based on her. Dr. Burgess, a psychiatric nurse and professor, was one of the, well, masterminds behind the psychological profiling of serial killers and rapists, helping federal agents capture and understand the perpetrators of these heinous crimes. She is obviously an important, underappreciated figure in the world of criminal justice, and it’s a noble goal of showrunner Dani Sloane (“The Truth About Jim”) and superstar executive producers Dakota and Elle Fanning to produce a shining, borderline hagiographic examination of her life, attempting to springboard it into a broadly persevering form of state-sanctioned feminism.

“Attempt” is, unfortunately, the key word, as most techniques and sections of the series leave viewers confused or even annoyed. Director Abby Fuller, who worked with Sloane on the influential docuseries “Chef’s Table,” transplants some of that series’ immaculate aestheticization into her visual language, changing aspect ratios, framing her talking heads in unorthodox compositions, and rendering reenactments with a sort of fetishization of “grimy crime stuff” that recalls the trailer for horror-thriller “Longlegs” more than a respectful engagement with real acts of violence.

But these oft-tasteless predilections do nothing to offset the constructive sloppiness present throughout the work; soundbites are clearly Frankensteined together, visual edits are noticeably jagged, B-roll is misleadingly disseminated to force inaccurate conclusions, and one particular piece of taped audio from an interview with a killer is used so many times that it becomes unintentionally, perversely comical.

These taped interviews with the most notorious of killers (think Ted Bundy and Ed Kemper) should be bone-chilling, stopping viewers in their tracks until Dr. Burgess and her filmmakers reveal the game-changing psychological expertise that led to such ripples within law enforcement. These revelations never come. Instead, we receive a stimulus — a section of a taped interview or talking head summarizing a criminal — followed immediately by a conclusion; Dr. Burgess saying she figured it out, or another talking head telling us she figured it out. What we’re missing are some crucial journalistic questions: what did she figure out, and how? By eliminating the operating sign from the math equations, the documentarians present some raw numbers and variables and tell us what it equals. It’s sloppy storytelling math, proof without proof.

At times, “Mastermind” doesn’t even deign itself to go through these lowest common denominator moves. Many times, it will compress numerous people or events into a fast-forwarded montage, audio and video colliding over each other into incomprehensible cacophony (except for that one friggin’ repeated serial killer soundbite). By increasing the tempo, “Mastermind” thinks it can get away with a lack of concrete detail by sheer force of momentum. It does not.

When the show slows down, in some second and third-episode passages, it can occasionally find insight and nuance. In particular, the use of archival television footage helps paint a picture of society’s ever-regressive patriarchal attitudes. Men, both on the street and hosting professional television news programs, categorize rape as something women eventually want. Men take public credit for the techniques cultivated by Dr. Burgess, rippling through the culture in such a way that even Dr. Burgess’ “Mindhunter” analogue is third-billed behind two men. And men lambast Dr. Burgess testifying that the infamous Menendez brothers were sexually abused, callously conflating “explanation” with “endorsement” — with even John Malkovich catching a stray for an icky piece of “Saturday Night Live” hosting!

These passages, if unhelpful in explaining how to think like Dr. Burgess, help explain why we need people like her — and that helps take some steps toward earning the series’ rah-rah ending moments. But they’re too few and far between. The primary mode of “Mastermind” is “Person With Passing Interest In Criminal Justice Hastily Explaining Something They Heard About At A Cocktail Party.” Dr. Burgess’ mind deserves more.

“Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer” premieres Thursday, July 11, on Hulu.

The post ‘Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer’ Review: Hulu Docuseries Flounders With Surface-Level Look Inside the Minds of Murderers appeared first on TheWrap.

“Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” stars Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley, who is not and has never been a “Beverly Hills cop.” He’s a quick-witted, down-to-earth Detroit cop who has, on three (now four) separate occasions, solved some crimes in Beverly Hills, a city so bourgeois it may as well be on a different planet. The joke in Martin Brest’s original blockbuster comedy was that Foley is a stranger in a strange land, and the heart of the film was the relationship Foley developed with two actual Beverly Hills cops, Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and John Taggart (John Ashton). 

In Tony Scott’s slick and stylish “Beverly Hills Cop II,” their three-pronged buddy dynamic only grew stronger. Though not as funny as the original, the action was spectacular and the characters evolved in interesting, exciting ways. Then “Beverly Hills Cop III” came along and pissed all that away, rejecting both humor and thrills in favor of, if we’re being honest, just kinda being there and doing stuff. It’s one of the laziest, boringest sequels on record, and it effectively killed the franchise.

Until now. It’s been 30 years and we all seem to have collectively agreed to ignore the existence of “Beverly Hills Cop III.” Even Netflix — which produced and distributed “Axel F” — didn’t bother acquiring the third film this month. You can watch the first two “Beverly Hills Cop” movies on the streamer, and this new one, but not the third. Presumably because they knew if anyone actually watched it, or even saw the thumbnail, they’d lose all interest.

Murphy’s fourth outing kicks in when Axel’s hitherto unmentioned daughter Jane (Taylour Paige, “Zola”), a lawyer in Beverly Hills, takes on a client who was framed for killing an undercover cop. In retaliation, the villains hook her car up to a tow truck and dangle her off a building in the middle of the city in the middle of the day, to convince her to drop the case. Which is exactly the sort of thing a smart villain does when they don’t want to draw any attention to their criminal conspiracy.

Axel comes to the west coast to solve the crime and save his daughter, who hasn’t spoken to him in years because Axel abandoned Jane and her mother. Making matters more complicated, Billy Rosewood went missing while investigating the murder, Jane’s cop ex-boyfriend Bobby (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has just arrested Axel for disturbing the peace and Captain John Taggart refuses to believe that a mysteriously wealthy cop named Grant (Kevin Bacon) could possibly be on the take.

Murphy’s natural charm has anchored this series for decades, but his performance as Axel Foley has always been mutating. In the first film he was an affable trickster, in the second he cranked down the humor to match Tony Scott’s intensity, and in the third he just kinda stood there saying his lines. Murphy once again seems fully engaged, thank goodness, and he does his level best to shine through this material. 

Unfortunately, the material is tired and not very funny. Murphy’s scenes with Paige reveal little about their characters besides the backstory, so all we get out of them are deadbeat dad complaints and deadbeat dad excuses before the inevitable deadbeat dad reconciliation. His relationship with Rosewood and Taggart, formerly the centerpiece, is almost completely sidelined in favor of his new relationship with Bobby. But Bobby is just a good guy and a good cop. He has no distinctive qualities that play into or against Foley’s personality, so their chemistry never froths over.

The foundational gag of “Beverly Hills Cop” is, again, that Beverly Hills is different than Detroit. But aside from a couple montages and slightly harsher lighting, Mark Molloy’s film makes little use of this contrast. The script by Will Beall, Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten also seems to misunderstand how Foley stands out in this environment. The previous “Beverly Hills Cop” films all featured scenes where the villains get publicly confronted and humiliated by Foley because in Beverly Hills, appearance and status are everyone’s Achilles heel. “Axel F” keeps the dramatic beat but removes the part where Axel makes a spectacle of himself, so now it’s just a drab chat at a bar with no comedic, dramatic or thematic function.

Frankly, a lot of the jokes in “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” are weird. The opening scene finds Axel humiliating a hockey fan for not knowing about the history of the Black hockey league in Canada before laughing in his face and saying he was only kidding. And since he completely made up the name of the team, the implication is he made up the concept too. Except there actually was a Black hockey league in Canada for 35 years, and its historical erasure is an ongoing issue. There was even a documentary about it in 2022 called “Black Ice.” But if you didn’t already know about that, this movie would have you believe Axel Foley made it up. So what … are we even doing there, movie?

The action in “Axel F” ranges from pretty exciting (a helicopter chase that looks genuinely risky) to simply functional (most of the rest of it). There’s a scene where they meet a wacky real estate agent, but it’s mostly an excuse to shoehorn in a cameo from Bronson Pinchot, since otherwise his helpful art/weapons dealer Serge had no reason to turn up. These action scenes and comedic asides may prove a pleasant distraction from the generic deadbeat dad storyline and the generic corrupt cop plot, but it’s a shame that we need distractions in the first place.

“Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” serves two important functions. First, it prevents “Beverly Hills Cop III” from having the last word in this series, and I’m sure we can all respect that. Second, it reminds us that “Beverly Hills Cop” existed, which I’m not sure was necessary but if that’s what you needed, here you go.

Plus, the soundtrack is a greatest hits album from a series of soundtracks which, in all fairness, did have a lot of great hits. The biggest scenes are mostly callbacks and the characters are all familiar, either because we’ve met them before or we’ve met their ilk. 

But “Axel F” is so invested in the history of this series that it’s weird how much it screws with the timeline, claiming — in one scene right after the other — that Axel has only been a cop for a little over 30 years, but also that the events of the first movie took place 40 years ago. Later the film also claims that Jane is 32 years old, and since we know these films all take place in the year of their release, and we know Foley didn’t abandon his family until Jane was old enough to have a lot of memories, that means when Axel had an affair with Janice (Theresa Randle) in “Beverly Hills Cop III,” Jane was only two and Axel was cheating on his wife. So now that’s canon.

So “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” isn’t a particularly bad movie, and after the bar was so thoroughly lowered 30 years ago, that makes it look like a bit of an achievement. But it’s still a formulaic legacy sequel, offering familiar comforts instead of new entertainment. If all you want is another “Beverly Hills Cop,” here it is. If you want a great new “Beverly Hills Cop,” keep waiting.

“Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” will be streaming on Netflix starting July 3.

The post ‘Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F’ Review: The Heat Is Off in Netflix’s Generic Legacy Sequel appeared first on TheWrap.

In real life, Johnson co-produced “Daddio” with her regular collaborator Ro Donnelly (“Cha Cha Real Smooth,” “The Disappearance of Shere Hite”) and also suggested Penn for the role of Clark. Writer/director Christy Hall additionally credits her two actors with making adjustments to her script, which has a habit of chugging ahead without first establishing any credible emotional reality to contextualize its wilder twists and turns.

A pseudo-adult fairy tale about a New York that only exists in the minds of incurious tourists, “Daddio” follows a younger woman and an older man who inexplicably dive into the guts of their personal lives. Hall says she took inspiration from “Taxicab Confessions,” and it shows in some of Clark’s more crass and brazen lines. He talks more than she does, and it soon becomes hard to take seriously a movie whose ostensibly frank, unsentimental characters mostly speak in blustery clichés or tin-eared generalizations.

It’s especially hard to understand the apparent ease of Girlie and Clark’s unbelievable conversation. Maybe it’s because they’re talented actors who make bad creative decisions, or maybe these characters simply don’t say anything that their creators don’t on some level wonder themselves. Either way, Clark sizes her up and asks her leading questions, like, “Did your daddy do something?” or “Did you like getting tied up?”

Girlie seems to confirm, or at least mulls over, Clark’s dreary and often retrograde observations, including when he reads into her relationship with “L,” the mysterious man she occasionally sexts with between questions. She seems flattered by Clark’s concern and always interested in wherever his erratic train of thought will stop next, even if it’s on the essential differences between men and women or twerpy compliments like, “You don’t use the ‘L Word’ unless you mean it.” She occasionally escapes into her phone to talk to L, but that’s also a largely one-sided conversation, filled with pushy sex talk — “need your pink,” “help me cum” — and guarded curiosity (from her, of course). None of it appears natural or real, even within the fetish-ready environment of a NYC yellow cab.

“Daddio” also often looks dull, with negligible variations of the same shots that juxtapose his face, frontlit with a bad Van Dyke in the camera’s extreme foreground, with hers, platinum blonde, staring off-camera, low lit and with a very soft/blurry focus at the back of the frame. His face runs a gamut of strained emotions, from giddy self-satisfaction to damp, steely-eyed concentration. She mostly holds our attention by letting her uncertain body language — flicking eyes, bemused shakes of the head — speak for her, especially whenever Girlie seems most concerned with keeping her mind running, holding space for thoughts rather than actively processing anything in particular.

Johnson’s performance remains the best reason to see “Daddio,” a dialogue-focused movie whose conversation’s were frequently steered, if not completely dominated, by Clark’s oily personality. You presumably don’t have to nod along with everything that Clark says in order to buy or even be intrigued by his conversation with Girlie, but it would probably help if Girlie were less of a cypher than a fully-realized character. Johnson’s performance and investment in her skimpy role says some things about her character, but not enough to compensate for Penn’s insistent over-acting. She commands attention when she sadly waves her head at L’s increasingly desperate sexts, or when she thoughtfully bites her acrylic nails, presumably to ward off unwelcome thoughts. In a climactic later scene, Girlie reveals something deeply personal about her character that retrospectively colors her entire conversation with Clark. That speech is moving, but the power of Johnson’s performance is regularly undercut by reaction shots of Penn, nodding and staring a little too hard.

Penn’s unpleasantly familiar character at least matches his flop-sweat intensity, especially when Clark fondly remembers chasing his first wife around the kitchen, and then, after an uncomfortably suggestive pause, adds: “That was a good day.” It’s still pretty hard to take the movie’s generation-gap-bridging conversation seriously when so much depends on Penn talking, in multiple scenes, about scuba-diving as an aspirational way to live one’s life, or when he describes his first wife — who is this woman? — as “dumb as s–t,” even if “she was a sweetheart.” Penn and Johnson often seem enamored with each other’s company, though it’s still hard to catch their chummy vibe given the grating and graceless pitch of their conversation. As a feature-length conversation, “Daddio” lurches from one beat to the next; as a drama, it barely moves at all.

“Daddio” premieres Friday after having debuting at Telluride last September.

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