The Reveal

It’s trashy fun made by an overqualified creative team, but it struggles to find a finale memorable enough to match the literal bloodbath of its opening.

To be as generous to Digger as possible, it feels like an Armando Iannucci rewrite away from being a masterpiece. But that distance is nonetheless as vast as a civilization-blitzing ice shelf.

Forgotten Island is colorful, fun, and, thanks to the care taken in depicting the protagonists’ friendship, quite moving. It’s also a little exhausting by the end.

In sharp contrast to Predators, which adds more layers and insight as the documentary goes deeper into journalistic ethics and personal trauma, Primetime has a visceral punch that can feel restrictive at times, like Oppenheim and Pattinson are too committed to the same bit. Yet whenever it threatens to get repetitive, the film is rescued by Wever’s turn as a shrewd, careerist producer and especially Gisondo’s heartbreaking performance as a young actor who’s improvising a role against unsettling creatures on both sides of the camera.

There’s nothing wrong with a simple man-and-dog story and we’re not exactly swimming in them these days, which makes Heart of the Beast feel at once old-fashioned and refreshing, even if there’s a nagging sense that a little more storytelling ambition would have made the journey more memorable.

The mission seems to be “Let me show you why it’s fun to play this game,” and Cregger has the boyish enthusiasm and skill to make the game-to-screen transition look startlingly seamless.

In the broadest strokes, the film is a tribute to—and cautionary tale about—human nature, and the messy cycles of decay and rebirth that define it. Yet the experience of watching it feels personal, in that you gravitate toward the small things that catch your eye. John Wilson has a talent for turning you into John Wilson.

It’s a rousing hero’s journey, though, amounting to no more or no less than Hawke’s mesmerizing Murphy putting himself through the wringer to find his way home. That’s as fine a rationale to make a movie as any.

The action is, as usual for Greengrass, immediate and unsettling and the performances, especially Garfield’s combination of rage and hope, keep The Uprising grounded in human emotions just as the grime and confusion grounds it in historical reality. It’s the attempt to use a complicated incident from the past as a source of inspiration for the present that sells those realities short.

The sturdier source of fun is the chemistry between Bullock’s repressed widow and Kidman’s free-spirited imp, who springs to life at the thought of her sister finally giving in and embracing their wicked heritage together. The two haven’t lost a step as comedic talents and there’s a pleasurable stretch of Practical Magic 2 where they’re mostly on their own in England.