The eighth installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise smashes onto movie screens all over town this weekend, and you know what? Just go with it.
No? Well then, there’s a half-decent family film, a nice moon race documentary, at least one provocative horror film and other indies to explore in town this weekend.
The Fate of the Furious
Maybe it was when it rained cars down on Seventh Avenue in New York. Maybe it was the shootout on a plane with a baby. Or maybe —just maybe— it was when the gang attacked a nuclear submarine with sports cars gliding across a tundra.
However naturally each absurd setup manages to segue within the operatic universe of the franchise, the totality of The Fate of the Furious finally answers the question: how much is too much Fast and the Furious?
In the eighth installment of the series, the gang goes up against one of their own: Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) breaks bad to abet a criminal hacker (Charlize Theron) in mass genocide, and only Dom’s makeshift family of gearheads and misfits can save the day.
To help take down Dom, the gang has to work together with a former foe, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham). It’s not an original twist, but the chemistry between Statham and Dwayne Johnson is the most pitch-perfect sendup of action movie homoeroticism since Hot Fuzz—maybe more so, given how truly gifted the two men are at contrasting their action figure physiques with deadpan comedy.
When the film sticks to its hook – Dom v. Everyone Else – director F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton) delightfully serves up the best and worst of the franchise. There’s more excess, more teenage boy wish fulfillment, more glib treatment of women, more stereotypical wisecracking—and since more is more, there’s over two hours of it.
Grade: B+
Gifted
Chris Evans attempts the gruff everyman with some success, playing Uncle Frank, guardian to math genius Mary (Mckenna Grace – very solid).
What’s the best way to care for a gifted child? This is the conundrum at the heart of the film. In rooting out the answer, writer Tom Flynn wisely keeps Mary at the center of the story. She’s an actual character, not a prop for evangelizing one course of action over another.
Luckily, Grace is up to the task, and her chemistry with Evans feels genuine enough to make you invest in their story.
Perhaps more important is Lindsay Duncan, a formidable talent who elevates a tough role. She, too, shares a warm chemistry with Evans, and it’s that kind of unexpected character layering that helps Gifted transcend its overcooked family dramedy trappings.
Strong performances help the film navigate sentimental landscape, but Flynn’s script veers off in too many underdeveloped and downright needless directions, and director Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer) can’t find a tone.
Gifted is warm without being too sweet. Though it knows the answer to the question it’s asking, the film resists oversimplification and never stoops to pitting one-dimensional characters against each other in service of a sermon.
Grade: B-
Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo
Just in the last few months, the smash movie Hidden Figures — plus the death of American hero John Glenn — brought renewed attention to the birth of the U.S. space program. Director David Fairhead moves the spotlight a few years ahead with Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo, a fitting salute to both teamwork and an amazing job well done.
Fairhead, in his feature documentary debut, makes the most of some stellar archival footage, often cutting from present-day interviews with mission controllers to decades-old looks at their younger selves moving through an ever-present cigarette haze to get astronauts to the moon.
In its entirety, the Apollo mission saw tragedy, triumph, and lives in the balance, persevering through situations that were “complicated as hell back then.” Mission Control can’t help but get a bit wonky with the space geekiness, but by the time one crew member gets choked up at the pride and amazement his memories still bring, it’s pretty hard to blame him.
Grade: B+
Tommy’s Honour
I know zilch about golf, and was fascinated by the story of the father and son who pioneered the modern game, Thomas Morris and Thomas Morris Jr. But there was just too much story squeezed into this movie: class snobbery, ambition, shifts in morality, romance, father/son drama, the development of golfing as a profession, the innovations in technique, the designing of greens, death, grief, alcoholism…
The movie lacked clear focus and, thus, presented enough of the elements of the story to intrigue, but not enough to satisfy—often the case when a book is adapted. In this case, the screenplay was written by Pamela Marin and Kevin Cook, based on Cook’s own 2007 book Tommy’s Honor: The Story of Old Tom Morris and Young Tom Morris, Golf’s Founding Father and Son.
The best part of the movie was the credits sequence where director Jason Connery flashes old photos of the real-life father and son with some simple accompanying text about their lives. So, ultimately, I’d have rather have been introduced to this story as a documentary. Or, if acted, as a BBC or Netflix series that would have allowed all the different facets of the story enough room to really shine.
Grade: C-
Also opening in Columbus:
The Dark Below (NR)
The Eyes (NR)
Growing Up Smith (PG-13)
Little Boxes (NR)
Personal Shopper (R)
Spark: A Space Tail (PG)
Reviews with help from George Wolf, Matt Weiner and Christie Robb.
Read more from Hope at MADDWOLF and listen to her bi-weekly horror movie podcast, FRIGHT CLUB.