This Guy at the Movies

“Humane” (Canadian/American; 2024; dystopian horror/political satire; running time 1 hour, 34 minutes; directed by Caitlin Cronenberg, written by Michael Sparaga; rated R for strong violence and language; in Canadian theaters on April 26, 2024, available on VOD and streaming services, including Shudder) starts with an intriguing, too-close-to-home concept and then doesn’t much know what to do with it. It’s not biting enough to pull off the intended satire and instead settles for violent family drama that is average in its best moments. The film is sporadically fun, but not enough to make it a must-watch. In the near future, the world has gone to hell because of climate change. The sun’s rays are too powerful for human exposure, and the food and water supply is compromised. To remedy the situation, nations have agreed to reduce their populations, at first taking volunteers who can “enlist” and be compensated ($250,000, which surely wouldn’t be hefty sum in the future). Charles York (Peter Gallagher), a former (and weathy) TV news broadcaster, and his second wife Dawn (Uni Park) have “agreed” to enlist and have invited Charles’ awful adult children – Jay Baruchel as Jared, Emily Hampshire as Rachel, Sebastian Chacon as Noah and Alanna Bale as Ashley – to announce their plans. An already tense situation gets worse when Dawn runs off. The crew carrying out the agreed-to killings, led by Bob (Enrico Colantoni), is not leaving Charles’ home without two bodies. That leaves Charles’ offspring to fight it out among themselves. Many movies have done this sort of thing (the awful elite getting what they “deserve”) much better, including “The Menu” and “Ready or Not.” The humor is so-so (Colantoni has some fun moments as a man who enjoys his work too much). The visual horror doesn’t arrive until late in the game and is limited to the four trying to kill each other but failing as to prolong the story. A world in which governments must reduce the population because we have so badly damaged the planet feels uncomfortably close. And that’s the scariest part of this movie.

My score: 54 out of 100.

***

“Starry Eyes” (American; 2014; horror; running time 1 hour, 38 minutes; written and directed by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer; rated TV-MA for strong violence, gore, some drug use, nudity; made debut at South by Southwest festival on March 8, 2014, available on VOD and streaming services, including Shudder) tells us what we already know, that the Hollywood elite are a Satanic cult who make desperate young women sell their souls in return for fame, but only after they’ve made certain sacrifices, that is gone on a bloody killing spree. At least it’s fun to think that’s true. “Starry Eyes” plays like a satire of how awful trying to make it in Hollywood can be, then throws a switch and becomes a slasher horror movie that isn’t much interested in anything but a body count. It’s more interested in gore than social commentary. Alexandra Essoe is Sarah Walker, a young aspiring actor who has grown tired of failed auditions and her fast-food job. She hangs with an awful group of wannabe movie folks. She auditions for a horror movie called “The Silver Scream” (get it?). She fails but then throws a tantrum in the restroom, witnessed by the casting director, who wants Sarah to replicate it for her and her assistant. She gets a call back and is asked to undress for a part that does not require nudity. Huh-oh. Next thing  you know she’s invited to the house of a creepy old handsy producer (Louis Dezseran as “The Producer”) who seems mighty devilish. He can make Sarah a star if, you know, she does certain things. She does, and soon Sarah is losing her hair, oozing blood and vomiting worms, because that’s how stardom works. It gets worse, especially when Sarah gets ahold of a knife and a weightlifting dumbbell. Essoe, who has a certain Shelley Duvall quality (she played Wendy Torrance, Duvall’s character in “The Shining,” in the 2019 sequel “Doctor Sleep”) is a force in a challenging role, one in which she goes from pathetically desperate to maniacally assured and psychopathic. Joining a cult will do that to a person.

My score: 63 out of 100.

“Deadpool & Wolverine”

Genres: Superhero comic book/action/comedy

Country: United States

Directed by: Shawn Levy

Written by: Levy, Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Zeb Wells

Starring: Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Matthew Macfadyen, Morena Baccarin, Rod Delaney, Leslie Uggams, Karan Soni, Brinna Hildebrand, Shioli Kutsuna, Stefan Kapicic, Randal Reeder, Lewis Tan and many others, including numerous cameos

Rated: R for strong bloody violence, gore, sexual references, language

Run time: 2 hours, 7 minutes

Release date: In theaters July 25, 2024

Where I saw it: Republic Studio 10 Cinemas in Shelbyville, Ind., on a Sunday afternoon, $7, about 70 other people in the theater, including a noisy toddler

What it’s about: The chatty Deadpool/Wade Wilson (Reynolds) and the brooding alcoholic Wolverine/James “Logan” Howlett (Jackman) team up to do comic book multiverse kind of stuff as both say the f-bomb a lot; Wolverine stays angry and sad; Deadpool makes a lot of gay/bisexual jokes, fourth-wall breaks and snarky Marvel self-references; and the two fight each other and everybody else at every opportunity, a lot of it in slow-motion. Does it matter if there’s a story?

What I liked about it: Not surprisingly, “Deadpool & Wolverine” is hilarious much of the time, but only if  you have tolerance for its raunchy brand of humor and Reynolds’ smarmy rapid-fire delivery. This movie is a lot of everything, particularly Reynolds, who is a producer as well as part of the writing team. We all know how Reynolds operates now, and that thing he does in on full display here, as he almost never shuts up. While this is a Marvel movie, it plays like a foul-mouthed buddy comedy that just happens to take place in the realm of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Jackman plays it straight, which works well with Reynolds at nonstop full throttle (Jackman and Reynolds are friends in real life). … The opening credits sequence, with Deadpool taking on adversaries (who will meet violent deaths, of course) while also mixing in dance moves to NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye,” is arguably the best part of the movie. The fight scenes are largely a bunch of incoherent noise, except for the opening credits sequence and a scene in which Deadpool and Wolverine take on multiple Deadpools, a moment that is shot in the vein of the most famous fight scene from Park Chan-wook’s 2003 classic “Old Boy,” with our superheroes moving from left to right across the screen and fending off foes 1990s video fighting game style. “Deadpool & Wolverine” makes many other references to other works (and has fun with Marvel/Disney and 20th Century Fox, which previously owned the rights to Deadpool). And if you are a fan of these characters and all things Marvel/the X-Men/Avengers, prepare to be serviced, as you will get all or most of the references (the ones that I no doubt didn’t) and appreciate the “hey, it’s them!” cameos from a bevy of familiar faces.

What I didn’t like about it: Unless you are a diehard fan, Reynolds’ schtick long ago succumbed to the law of diminishing returns. Ditto for Marvel movies and “Marvel fatigue,” which is referenced and poked at in this movie. Though I mostly enjoyed myself for the 2-plus hours, nothing here makes me want to see another Marvel movie (or Deadpool movie, or X-Men movie) anytime soon. …. Raunchy humor is fine, but I (and others, I am guessing) draw a line somewhere, a line that Reynolds crosses late in the movie, as if to say, “We got away with all these other d*ck jokes, let’s push it further.” Should not have gone there. Also, if you’ve ever been around the type of people who say “f*ck” every other word (and I have), you know it quickly loses its impact and meaning. And this movie was like that. … The first third of the film (including the opening credits) was its strongest (and funniest) stretch, and then its focus wandered, leaning into sentimentality and all the prerequisite Marvel multiverse stuff and forgetting, until regrouping later, what it wanted to be, which was a whirlwind, profanity-laced showcase for Reynolds (mostly) and his buddy Jackman.

My score: 72 out of 100

“Caveat” (Irish; 2020; horror; running time 1 hour, 28 minutes; written and directed by Damian Mc Carthy; N/R but includes violence, gore, some language; made debut at IndieCork Film Festival on Oct. 4, 2020, available on VOD and streaming services, including Shudder) is a bleak, dark (sometimes too much so) home-confinement horror story, with the confinement literal in a home that isn’t where the protagonist (if you can call him that) lives. Mc Carty, in his feature-film debut (his follow-up effort, the critically acclaimed “Oddity,” is playing in theaters), knows how to cultivate an immersive sense of fear. He dabbles in familiar horror movie tropes, but only on occasion. And when he does (like jump-scares), he does it well enough that you might not notice. Mc Carty doesn’t tie up all the loose ends to a multi-tiered story. But when all is said is done, you will have been afraid … mostly of a menacing, almost human-like toy rabbit. And screeching foxes. And a corpse with shifty eyes. And …

Isaac (Johnny French) is a drifter who seems desperate. He has amnesia, which might make him an easy mark. And it does. Moe Barrett (Ben Caplan), whose brother has committed suicide in a broken-down old house, wants to hire Isaac to “babysit” the deceased brother’s teenage daughter (Leila Sykes as Olga), who has all sorts of issues because of the suicide and because her abusive and mentally ill mother has gone missing. Super happy fun times, right? Moe will pay Isaac a nice weekly sum to keep an eye on Olga. But there’s a … wait for it … caveat. The house, which would be sinister no matter where it was located, is on an island. And, yep, Isaac can’t swim. It gets worse. Because Olga’s mental health issues are so serious (she frequently slips into a catatonic state), Isaac will need to wear a steampunk-looking leather vest with a heavy chain attached to it so that he can’t get near Olga (or the restroom, as it turns out). Who would sign up for such a job? Isaac, if for no other reason than there’s a horror movie to make. Olga often carries around a crossbow, and when she doesn’t, she’s carrying an old, dirty toy rabbit with human-looking judgmental eyes. The rabbit plays a drum, apparently when it senses evil lurking. All sorts of weird things are about to happen, and that crossbow will come into play. As will an increasingly complex plot. Moe tells Isaac the job will last only five days, but will Isaac survive that long?

French, also making his feature-film debut (he collaborated with Mc Carthy again on “Oddity”), sells the sense of peril mostly with his eyes. His Isaac doesn’t come across as smart, but he wants to do the right thing and he really needs that money. French plays Isaac not only in the present but the past, in flashbacks that indicate this isn’t Isaac’s first encounter with Moe. Sykes is creepy as Olga, whose possible involvement with her father’s death and her mother’s disappearance isn’t clear. Much of what Mc Carthy is doing here is purposely vague, and he leaves open the possibility that some of what is playing out might be reality, or a nightmare, or a product of Isaac’s suspect sanity. The rabbit’s eyes are haunting; if I were Isaac I would chuck that toy outdoors. Or burn it. Or bury it. Except … it might come in handy. As in “Oddity,” the setting (underlit at times), Richard G. Mitchell’s creepy score (he did the music for both films) and the sound design are practically characters. Did you know that crying foxes sound like teenage girls screaming? They do. And the sound is spine-tingling. While neither “Caveat” nor “Oddity” is perfect, they deliver all manner of fear and have established Mc Carthy as a horror filmmaker to keep an eye on.

My score: 81 out of 100.

Plot contrivances abound in “Vanished into the Night” (in Italian, “Svaniti nella notte”) (Italian; 2024; crime drama/thriller; running time 1 hour, 32 minutes; directed by Renato De Maria, written by Luca Infascelli and Francesca Marciano; rated TV-MA for language, smoking, drugs; available on Netflix on July 11, 2024), which puts an ordinary (though not particularly bright or likeable) guy in an extraordinary situation and then piles on the complications. The mess mostly gets sorted out in the end, and the film, which has leapt to the top spot on the Netflix worldwide charts, shows glimpses of being much better than it turned out to be. The Italian scenery is beautiful, especially when it involves the sea, and De Maria cultivates a sense of panic that would be overwhelming in a situation that involves missing children. But the story tests the bounds of believability … and the bounds of the audience’s patience.

Pietro (Riccardo Scamarcio) and Elena (Annabelle Wallis) are a couple living in Italy (she is American) embroiled in a divorce and custody battle. Both have issues. His involve gambling and having bought, using her money, a fixer-upper country house that he has not made progress on but is living in; she has a history of opiates abuse and misses her life in the states. One night the kids (Gala Coletti as Bianca and Lorenzo Ferrante as Giovanni) are staying at his place. Pietro puts them to bed, then drinks some beer and smokes some weed while watching the big soccer match at high volume. At halftime, he goes to check on them and they have, um, vanished into the night. Elena arrives on the scene, and they get a call demanding 150,000 euros in exchange for the kids. That day Pietro had been visited by some guys who usually break the legs of those who owe them gambling debts. Would they have taken the children? Pietro and Elana don’t have access to 150,000 euros, but they know someone that does – a slimy guy the kids know as Uncle Nicola (Massimiliano Gallo). Pietro and Nicola have a past, not a present. Nicola will give Pietro the ransom money IF he does a thing for him, and that thing is to, under the cover of darkness, drive a boat to a Greek island and wait for some guys to deliver a package. That’s probably drugs, right? What could go wrong? Pretty much everything. Will Pietro get the money to the kidnappers in time? Will Nicola so willingly give Pietro the money? Don’t you think there will be some sort of twist?

Wallis’ Elena isn’t in the film much, leaving this to be mostly the story of Scamarcio’s Pietro. He’s not exactly Father of the Year material, and he must be talked into asking his only option, Nicola, for the money because, I guess, otherwise he is OK with the kidnappers keeping the kids. Scamarcio is sufficiently sweaty throughout, and his eyes convey a deep sense of panic and regret. The obstacles he must overcome during his rookie foray into smuggling become almost comical, and the situation is made worse by Pietro’s seemingly loose grip on sanity. A couple of moments in the final act are groan-worthy, a situation not helped by all the contrivances that come before them. And a fight scene between former friends Pietro and Nicola, as stoned partygoers at Nicola’s mansion watch all dead-eyed, is embarrassingly bad. The running time is a lean 92 minutes, and the movie moves along at a brisk clip, but De Maria could have trimmed a few of the plot points and done more to flush out the characters. You might wonder why either Elena or Pietro would be given custody of their kids given their issues and personalities, but one of them will get Giovanni and Bianca because one proves to be up to the challenge and the other proves to be just awful.

My score: 33 out of 100.

“Oddity”

Genres: Paranormal horror/suspense

Countries: Ireland and United States

Written and directed by: Damian Mc Carthy

Starring: Gwilym Lee, Carolyn Bracken, Tadhg Murphy, Caroline Menton, Steve Wall, Jonathan French, Joe Rooney

Rated: R for some bloody images, gore, language

Run time: 1 hour, 38 minutes

Release date: Made debut at South by Southwest festival March 8, 2024; in theaters July 19, 2024

Where I saw it: AMC Showplace 17 on the southside of Indianapolis, on a Tuesday late afternoon, $12.49 with senior discount, about 12 other people in the theater

What it’s about: Dani (Bracken), the wife of psychiatrist Ted Timmis (Lee), is brutally murdered while alone and remodeling the couple’s newly acquired country house. Olin Boole (Murphy), one of Ted’s patients, is accused of the crime. But Darcy (also Bracken), Dani’s blind twin sister and a clairvoyant with psychometric powers, believes someone else killed her sister and seeks revenge.

What I liked about it: Mc Carthy, in his sophomore effort (following 2020’s “Caveat”), builds a palpable sense of dread and suspense, especially from about the one-third mark on, when the movie shakes off a slow, slow burn start. From the opening shot to the eerie sound design, to the cavernous and largely empty castle-like home and the unsettling characters, everything is designed to feed the sense of doom that hangs over the film. … If you are going to lean on jump-scares (and Mc Carthy does; there’s about a half-dozen of them in the film) you’d better make them good, and a couple of these were jolting, and they weren’t telegraphed. Jump-scares that aren’t obvious are hard to pull off with so many horror movies employing them, but here they deliver. A couple of moments are graphically gory, and another scene involving a character’s feet is squirm-inducing. … Bracken does a stellar job in two roles and disappears into her characters so well that they seemed like they were being played by different actors. The blind aren’t unsettling in real life; why are they like that in horror movies? Wall is legitimately creepy as Ivan, an orderly who works for Ted at the psychiatric hospital and is caught up in the situation. But he’s not the biggest creep.

What I didn’t like about it: I was fending off sleep during the first 20 minutes. A product of my age? A result of having been working in the hot sun that day? Those comfy recliner seats at AMC? The film not being particularly engaging? The intensity jumped up a notch later, and no one goes into a paranormal horror movie expecting it to come out swinging, but a little something seemed to be lacking in the first act. … The final shot was borderline goofy, and “Oddity” in brief moments toys with the idea of being cheesy fun, in direct contrast to the overall tone of the film. … I found the movie’s “creature” more weird than scary, at least most of the time.

My score: 75 out of 100

I sometimes hear and see people (usually movie critics and bloggers, who aren’t really people) complain that Hollywood has run out of ideas. I thought about this recently when sitting through a bunch of trailers (if I was at an AMC, it was likely nine previews) and all but one of the upcoming films was a sequel, part of a franchise or universe, or a familiar intellectual property. Maybe, I thought, Hollywood is short on fresh approaches after all.

But upon further review, that’s not totally true. Occasionally a studio production or independent work comes along that seems wholly fresh. That’s how current horror movie “Longlegs” felt even though it owes a debt to films like “Silence of the Lambs” and “Zodiac.” It’s an original story by writer/director Oz Perkins, not based on a book or magazine article and not a sequel (or prequel) or part of a franchise. The same is true of “Thelma,” Josh Margolin’s original story about a 93-year-old woman (June Squibb) who decides to go after those who conned her out of money. “Longlegs” is nearing the $50 million mark at the box office, certainly not Marvel territory but exceptional for a summertime horror movie reportedly made for less than $10 million. “Thelma” has earned more than $8 million in limited release and showing mostly at arthouses. It reportedly was made for between $2 million and $3 million.

The success of such movies is measured in much more modest terms than your average summer blockbuster. And if you want to know why there aren’t more original standalone movies at your local cineplex, here’s why: It’s the franchises, sequels and IP-based films that make the big money. As in HUGE money. If Hollywood is indeed short on new ideas, it’s because it doesn’t necessarily need new ideas. Moviegoers fill seats when what they are seeing is familiar to them. The box-office numbers don’t lie.

Sure, it took 28 years, but “Twisters” is an indirect sequel to “Twister,” and anyone familiar with the first film knew what they were getting into when they went to watch the new one. A sense of nostalgia for the 40-and-up set no doubt contributed to the runaway success of “Twisters,” which exceeded expectations when it opened to an $80.5 million weekend in North America alone. Only “Inside Out 2” ($154.2 million) and “Dune: Part Two” ($82.5 million) opened to a bigger bang this year. And, by the way, both of those movies also are sequels.

The top 10 moneymaking movies of 2024 so far are more of the same. All of them – from No. 1 “Inside Out 2” ($1.4 billion worldwide) to No. 10 “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” ($201 million) – are sequels or franchise movies, excepting No. 9 “The Garfield Movie” ($220 million), which is a familiar and proven IP. The first original idea movie is John Krasinski’s “IF,” at No. 11 with just over $186 million worldwide, thanks no doubt to the star power of Ryan Reynolds. He figures to have another film vault into the top 10 soon, as Marvel’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” opens this weekend.

What does all this mean? It means you, the moviegoing public, had better get used to sequels, franchises and universes, and IP-based films. Theaters still are, nearly four years later, recovering from COVID and how the pandemic (along with the rise of streaming services, convenient during the pandemic) changed moviegoers’ habits. Add in inflation, and moviegoers logically are being more careful about how they spend their entertainment dollars. If they are going to shell out upwards of $75 (at a chain theater, including concessions) to take the family to a movie, they want to know going in that they will get their money’s worth. And the best way for them to do that is to pick movies that feel familiar.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place in the world for independent films based on original stories that push the envelope. It’s important that the filmmaking art and craft be advanced by those willing to take chances without much thought given to how many millions their work might make. Not everyone who goes to the movies wants to see all things Marvel, or Pixar, or a title followed by a number. But that’s exactly what the casual moviegoer wants. And given the box-office numbers, that’s what they’ll continue to get.

Suicide as a movie storyline is best treaded into lightly. “Find Me Falling” (Cyprus/United States; 2024; romantic comedy/drama/music; running time 1 hour, 33 minutes; written and directed by Stelana Kliris; rated TV-14 for language, smoking, suicide; available on Netflix on July 19, 2024) instead treats the subject rather flippantly, at least at first, then turns it into a plot device to drive the protagonist’s redemption. Who thought it a good idea to include suicide in a light romcom anyway? The specter of desperation and death makes Kliris’ film, otherwise a paint-by-numbers Hallmark-style musical romance set in Cyprus along the picturesque Mediterranean, an awkward watch when it could have been, and should have been, an airy and forgettable feel-good diversion.

Harry Connick Jr. is John Allman, an aging rock star whose career is in decline. He has moved to Cyprus seemingly randomly (but …), buying a small house near a cliff overlooking the sea, and just wants to be left alone. One day a man appears at the cliff with his back to John, and when John tells him to get lost, the man purposely falls over the cliff. When the local police arrive, they explain that the cliff frequently has visitors who throw themselves off it. Keep in mind, this is a romcom. John makes a half-hearted, drunken attempt to erect a fence along his property, but he’s a rock star, not a carpenter. And that fence is only going to serve as symbolism, just you wait and see. Local police Capt. Manoli (Tony Demetriou), who has figured out who John is, invites him to a night on the town and hopes to fix the musician up with his sister. At the nightspot, John sees a young woman (Ali Fumiko Whitney as Melina) with remarkable talent singing. Then he is introduced to a table of people and – uh-oh – one of the women (Agni Scott as Sia) seems mighty familiar. She is a local doctor, and she and John were a thing about 25 years ago. Say, isn’t Melina about 25 years old? You don’t think …? Sia and John will get a second chance at love, but not before overcoming many obstacles, one of them being John’s rock-star self-centeredness, which will dissipate (to a degree) when he convinces a young pregnant woman not to jump off that cliff.

Connick is beefier and bearded here, and at first I thought I had stumbled upon a Russell Crowe movie. Connick’s acting is adequate enough (to put it kindly) for this sort of thing, and the same goes for the rest of the cast, who in fairness aren’t given much to play with in a movie that says (in English and Greek) and does pretty much what you think it will say and do when you think it will say and do it. The cavalier attitude about suicide and death is carried throughout the rest of the movie, with Sia’s elderly mother wishing to die and expressing disappointment when she is nearly run over by a vehicle, and John not being able to pronounce Sia’s full name, Athanasia, and instead calling her Euthanasia. Big laughs, right? The scenery is gorgeous because how could you botch Cypress’ beauty? The music is about what you would expect, light adult pop, though John’s signature hit from way back in the day, “Girl on the Beach,” is laughably cheesy. Despite a suicide, thwarted suicide attempts, a grandma with a death wish and frequent use of the name Euthanasia, love will find a way and everyone will be all smiles in the end. Which makes one wonder what death had to do with it. 

My score: 40 out of 100

Nicolas Cage gets lost in his character in “Dream Scenario” (American; 2023; black comedy/fantasy; running time 1 hour, 42 minutes; written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli; rated R for language, violence, some sexual content; made debut at Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 9, 2023, available on VOD and streaming services, including HBO Max), and he pulls the audience along with him for a strange, surreal but fun (until it isn’t) ride. Cage delivers one of his most interesting and remarkably believable performances as an average man caught up in a situation over which he has almost no control. Norwegian filmmaker Borgli is riffing on the Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman collaborations (1999’s “Being John Malkovich” and 2002’s “Adaptation”) and does it well, creating a dreamlike and nightmarelike world in which the monster is instant online fame and everything good and (mostly) bad that comes along with it. “Dream Scenario” seamlessly goes from out-loud funny to unsettlingly dark to sad. It doesn’t explain everything, but it didn’t need to. The details are vague, but the message is clear enough.

Cage is Paul Matthews, a bland family man who teaches evolutionary biology at the local university. He has male-pattern baldness, wears glasses, sports a salt-and-pepper beard and usually is decked out in slacks and a sweater. His students pay little attention to him, as does his family – wife Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and teen daughters Sophie (Lily Bird) and Hanna (Jessica Clement). Paul just wants to be acknowledged and respected, and he wants to publish a book (one he hasn’t gotten around to writing) about his research into ants. But he is too timid to go after his dreams. Sophie has a dream in which her father is raking leaves but does nothing as objects start falling from the sky and she is pulled into the air. Paul and Janet run into one of his long-ago girlfriends (Marnie McPhail as Claire) who wants to write an online article about Paul having shown up in her dreams, doing nothing. Soon Paul seemingly is in everyone’s dreams, all as a passive bystander, and soon the world (especially the online portion of it) is fascinated with him. He even meets with a viral marketing agency, led by Trent (Michael Cera), who wants him to use his fame to pitch products such as Sprite, though Paul just wants his unwritten book published. Paul seems to be getting comfortable with his fame when it takes a turn for the worse. Suddenly he is in peoples’ nightmares, doing terrible things to them. Though that is no fault of his own, he is vilified in the real world, and his life crumbles. Did he deserve any of this?

Cage gets to be Cage during a couple of frustrated outbursts, but mostly he is wonderfully subdued. His Paul is awkward, a characteristic we don’t often associate with the actor, and overwhelmed but also intrigued by the situation he has fallen into. Cage seems comfortable in the role, and the result is that he fully becomes Paul Matthews. The laughs are plenty in the first-half setup, including a scene in which an attractive young assistant at the marketing agency (Dylan Gelula as Molly) wants to play out her dream about Paul, one in which Paul was not passive, if you catch my drift. The dream sequences are done right, beautifully off-kilter moments that avoid going over the top; they seem like strange dreams we all could have had. Borgli doesn’t bother with explaining how Paul started showing up in everyone’s dreams (collective consciousness?), and the film loses some of its offbeat charm in the second half, especially when mob mentality takes over (and the metaphors become too obvious) as Paul goes from a likeable passive observer in his own life to overwhelmed by the temptation of fame to a sympathetic victim of hatred from people who had just days before been enamored with him. “Dream Scenario” is about dreams, but it serves as a cautionary real-world tale. If your wish is to be noticed, be careful what you wish for.

My score: 87 out of 100

Woe is Charlie Kaufman. “Adaptation” (American; 2002; black comedy/drama; running time 1 hour, 54 minutes; directed by Spike Jonze, written by Kaufman; rated R for language, sexuality, drug use, violent images; in theaters Dec. 6, 2002, available on VOD and streaming services, including Amazon Prime Video) is nearly two hours of therapy session, with Kaufman the self-loathing patient. A film that blends elements of real life, fiction and fantasy, it’s the story of Kaufman suffering from writer’s block (and presumably lack of any self-esteem whatsoever) while trying to forge a screenplay from Susan Orlean’s 1998 nonfiction book “The Orchid Thief.” It’s mostly about Kaufman (and a fictional twin brother Donald, who is listed as a screenwriter in the credits) and, yes, it’s all sorts of self-indulgent. And you might well get tired of Kaufman (played by Nicolas Cage, who also plays the brother) and his whining, and you might be exhausted by the final act, which (with a wink) includes tropes that the movie’s Kaufman (who speaks in frequent voiceovers) wanted to avoid in his adaptation, including sex, drugs, guns, a chase and characters coming out of the story a better person. But it’s clever, unique and (almost surprisingly) delivers real emotions. You might even find yourself feeling sorry for Kaufman. Or at least not finding him insufferable.

Orlean (a real-life writer played by Meryl Streep in the film) wrote a 1995 article for The New Yorker about Florida man John Edward Laroche (played by Chris Cooper), who was arrested along with three Seminole accomplices for poaching rare orchids in the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. The article became the book, and Kaufman was tasked with turning it into a screenplay. But he struggled to find the focus of the story (Should his movie be about flowers? About Laroche? About finding your life’s passion?) and was hampered by his self-doubts, social phobia and depression. Meanwhile, Kaufman’s fictional twin brother, more self-assured, moves in with Charlie and decides, after taking a three-day course, that he is going to write a movie. “Adaptation” has Charlie Kaufman telling his story but also recounts (with many added fictional elements) Orlean’s writing process, including multiple visits with Laroche, with whom she forms a personal relationship. Will Charlie Kaufman find inspiration and finish the screenplay?

“Adaptation” is grounded (as much as a surreal film like this can be) by the performances. Cage is a fascinating watch in both roles, the paunchy, balding, self-conscious, intimacy-fearing Charlie and the carefree Donald. Streep is Streep, and her version of Orlean is, like Charlie Kaufman, searching for inspiration and a reason to be excited by life. Cooper played Laroche, a good ol’ boy horticulturalist with missing front teeth, so well that he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. The sneaky emotional hooks come from Charlie’s would-be relationship with Amelia (Cara Seymour), who obviously has a thing for the writer but is tired of waiting on him to make a move; and Charlie gradually tolerating and then growing closer to his alter-ego brother. If you can get past Charlie’s incessant whining, “Adaptation” can be fun (like another movie within the movie about the writing of a movie, scenes from the making of Jonze’s and Kaufman’s 1999 film “Being John Malkovich,” including Malkovich himself) and funny (the humor, like the heart, sneaks up on you). Orlean’s “The Orchid Thief” never became its own film, but the process of turning it into a film became this movie, which just happens to cover (loosely) the book’s narrative. So, as it turns out, Charlie Kaufman did finish the job after finding inspiration — within his neurotic self.

My score: 89 out of 100

“Twisters”

Genres: Disaster action thriller

Country: United States

Directed by: Lee Isaac Chung

Written by: Mark L. Smith

Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Harry Hadden-Paton, Sasha Lane, Daryl McCormack, Kiernan Shipka, Nik Dodani, David Corenswet, Tunde Adebimpe, Katy O’Brien, David Born

Rated: PG-13 for intense action, natural violence, some language

Run time: 2 hours, 2 minutes

Release date: In theaters July 18, 2024

Where I saw it: Yes Cinema and Café in downtown Columbus, Ind., on a Thursday evening, $6, about 40 other people in the theater

What it’s about: In a standalone sequel to “Twister” (1996), storm chaser Kate Cooper (Edgar-Jones), after losing three of her college friends while trying to disrupt the intensity of a tornado, leaves Oklahoma for New York but returns when the other survivor, Javi (Ramos), convinces her she can help him and his team gather weather data that can be used to save lives. But their team has competition from “rednecks with a YouTube channel,” led by cowboy scientist Tyler Owens (Powell). Will both sides be able to put aside their differences so that they can help the people of tornado-decimated Oklahoma?

What I liked about it: A tornado, even one created by CGI, is an impressively powerful weather occurrence, and “Twisters” has lots of tornadoes. Shot on 35mm film, the movie is visually rich, with gorgeous wide-open spaces for the tornadoes to play in and for the characters to race around chasing them. “Twisters” is a LOUD movie, noisy all the time (except when it pauses for the expected attempt at developing drama and sentimentality) and big in every way. There’s something oddly entertaining about people, cars and buildings being sucked up into the sky, and the filmmakers know this. … Powell’s character might be annoying (actually, there’s no “might” to it), but his charisma carries the film when tornadoes aren’t around. He was perfect for the part.

What I didn’t like about it: Look, this is a people-pleasing, popcorn-munching, fan-servicing summertime movie based on a now-nostalgic original (that, to be fair, has benefited from the selective memory that time creates), so I shouldn’t have been expecting anything unexpected. And “Twisters” didn’t deliver anything unexpected. If I told you nothing but Powell’s Tyler Owens and Edgar-Jones’ Kate Cooper hate each other at first, you’d know where that is going. The rest of the film is just as predictable. … I don’t ever again want to see another movie with this much modern, good ol’ boy country music in it. Worse, the needle drops are for songs that are too obvious, matching each scene with lyrics describing situations that viewers can figure out on their own. … The “country folks vs. city slickers” thing gets tired, but in case you don’t get that’s what’s going on, Powell’s character (Yee-haw!) will remind you every couple of minutes. … The crews chasing the tornadoes include exactly the type of stock characters you will find in any science-y action movie. … The faux drama-building part made me wish another tornado would come along already. … This might have been veiled commentary on climate change, but the filmmakers obviously didn’t want to bog down the summertime movie fun, so they didn’t trouble themselves much with the topic.

My score: 37 out of 100