Chefs, vampires, serial killers and Eddie Murphy.
The Bear Season 3
The Bear might be the most popular scripted series currently on the air. An instant smash hit when it debuted back in 2022, it only grew bigger and bigger with each passing episode until, by the end of Season 2, everyone declared it this true masterwork of television. I’ll admit it took me a while to get into the show, but once I did, I joined the cult like everyone else and absolutely loved every surprising and innovative minute of it. The first season was great, but the second season was near perfect, fusing together a narrative of transitioning a hot beef stand into a fancy-ass restaurant with exceptional standalone flashback or bottle episodes that served only to expand upon the already well-established psyches of the core characters. Anticipation was high for this third season, and while there are some truly outstanding episodes in the ten given to us, the overarching narrative has stalled, and creator Christopher Storer seems unsure of just where to take The Bear.
Season 3 begins with a cloyingly pretentious and downright abstract first episode. Its intent seems to be to climb inside the mind of our protagonist, Chef Carmy Berzatto (the riveting Jeremy Allen White), following the intense emotional fallout of last season’s intense finale, where he had a major falling out with his girlfriend, Claire (Molly Gordon) and his cousin, Richie (show MVP Ebon Moss-Bachrach). Another episode this season begins with voice-over narration by Martin Scorsese and deceased magician turned-character actor Ricky Jay discussing the trickery or magic of art to highlight how great, unique cooking is also like magic…or something. The second and third episodes are solid and get the season’s narrative on track – which is The Bear staff struggling to keep the wheels on the kitchen in the infancy of a restaurant while waiting on pins and needles for a review that could make or break them. This season has three masterful episodes – 4, 6, and 8 – focusing on Richie, Tina, and Natalie, respectively. They’re interspersed between three standard and sometimes meandering episodes – 5, 7, and 9 – before giving us an underwhelming but not terrible finale despite a conveyor belt of cameos.
Despite my positive but still mixed review, I’m definitely not willing to give up on The Bear, as even in its weakest moments, it is better than the majority of scripted television out there. I hope season 4 is better and the show doesn’t ultimately become a parody of itself. I’m optimistic. Grade: B (Hulu)
MaXXXine
One of the best voices in modern horror today is Ti West, a filmmaker who started his career in the early 2000s, mostly making slow-burn indie horror features. Basically, A24 horror before A24 horror was really a thing. Quality chillers like The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers mainly flew under the radar and weren’t talked about much outside of dedicated horror circles. Occasionally, he’d do more mainstream fare like the abysmal and uncomfortably mean-spirited Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever or an entry in Simon Barrett‘s horror anthology V/H/S, which went on to spawn four sequels and counting. It wasn’t until X, the first entry of his X trilogy, that he more or less crossed over into the mainstream horror avenue. X and its prequel, Pearl, were good, with Pearl being one of the best horror films of the past decade. Now he comes at us with his latest, MaXXXine, the closing chapter of his X series, and while there’s a lot to like about it, it’s unquestionably the weakest entry.
MaXXXine takes place in the mid-1980s and follows the exploits of the lone survivor of X, Maxine (Mia Goth), now a famous pornstar in Hollywood trying to break through into mainstream cinema. She’s got the talent and the chutzpah, but overcoming the taboo of porn proves difficult. It’s even more difficult with real-life serial killer Richard “The Night Stalker” Ramirez running around in the background. When Maxine begins receiving threatening letters and videos from her past, she suspects she might be a primary target for this serial killer. Or maybe another serial killer! Who knows?
Visually, MaXXXine is a feast for the eyes, with West nailing the 80s aesthetic without being overly flashy or gaudy. Goth is exceptional as always in the role, and the cast boasts some really heavy hitters like Elizabeth Debicki, Lily Collins, Bobby Cannavale, Michelle Monaghan, and Kevin Bacon in peak sicko mode. Even brilliant character actor Toby Huss (King of the Hill, Seinfeld) shows up briefly as a gross coroner. However, every character outside of Maxine is paper thin and exists only to move the plot forward or, in Cannavale‘s case, deliver a recurring joke of EVERYONE being an actor in Hollywood. Pearl was an intense character study, and the movie was built around the title character (also played by Goth in her very best role) and her relationships with the people in her life. Even X, which didn’t have the most dynamic characters, gave every one of its slasher victims a particular want or a goal. Here, they seem little more than window dressing, especially in the case of Maxine’s gay bestie film nerd who works at a video store, played by musician Moses Sumney.
Another thing that constantly took me out of MaXXXine was its lack of narrative focus. It introduces many plot and character elements it never sees to fruition, mainly because it doesn’t have the runtime to support them. MaXXXine certainly doesn’t lack ideas, and a few culminate in exceptionally cinematic sequences, such as a chase scene on a studio backlot that leads to the Norman Bates house set. The final 20 minutes, in particular, are outstanding and funny, but ultimately frustrating because they reveal MaXXXine‘s potential. It really is the Return of the Jedi of the X franchise. Grade: B- (In Theaters)
Beverly Hills Cop 4: Axel F
Maybe the biggest surprise of the Summer Movie Season is that Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, the straight-to-Netflix third sequel to a pretty meh franchise that released its previous installment 30 years ago, is not terrible. It’s not even bad. It’s not particularly good; it’s shamelessly formulaic and predictable around every corner, but it’s very watchable when you’re stuck at home with nothing to do. What more can you ask of a straight-to-Netflix legacy sequel of a 40-year-old movie? In this movie climate, not a lot.
Eddie Murphy returns as Axel Foley, who is still a cop in Detroit. His nerdy white co-worker, played in the series by Paul Reiser, is now his captain, who is pushing Foley to retire cause he’s all old, and cause you can’t go around destroying millions of dollars worth of city property to arrest a dude for armed robbery anymore, ya know? Right on cue, Axel receives word from his old LA cop buddy, Billy Rosewood (the delightful Judge Reinhold), that Axel’s estranged daughter (Zola‘s Taylour Paige), now a criminal defense attorney, is in danger. You see, she’s defending a suspected cop killer who is claiming he was set up by an underground organization of dirty cops. Apparently, there’s an SD card out there that shows that the cops actually did the cop killing, and the dirty cop organization will do anything to find it – including killing the suspect, his lawyer, and anybody who knows about it. Axel arrives in Beverly Hills, and it’s off to races to repair his dysfunctional relationship with his daughter, reunite with his old cop buddies, and expose this organization of dirty killer cops. It’s all very predictable from here.
John Ashton returns as John Taggart, now Captain Taggart, and Bronson Pinchot returns as Serge, the gay foreign art dealer, a character who was funny in 1984 because he was gay AND foreign. Interestingly enough, there’s never a mention of the Jenny or Mikey characters from the first movie, characters who were supposedly lifelong friends of Foley and gave him his entire motivation for bringing down the bad guy in the original. New to the roster is Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a young cop who used to date Foley’s daughter, and Kevin Bacon as a slick cop who is so obviously the bad guy from the first second you see him on screen. That’s two villains in one article, Mr. Bacon, but at least in MaXXXine, he got a little bit more to sink his teeth into, not by much, but a little bit more. This is a standard/boring bad guy character, and by design, the series has never been about the villains’ outlandishness, except for the second one, which was way more of a Tony Scott movie than a BHC entry.
If you’re looking for a fresh action comedy, this isn’t it. However, if you just want to turn on the TV and bask in a little 80s nostalgia for two hours, you could do worse than Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. It’s not great, it’s not even good, it’s passable and surprisingly enough, better than the two lackluster original sequels. Grade: C+ (Netflix)
Interview with the Vampire Season 2
One of the best shows currently flying under the radar is playwright Rolin Jones‘ adaptation of Anne Rice‘s Interview with the Vampire. The series charts the centuries-spanning, on-again, off-again toxic romance between two vampires – Louis de Point du Lac (Jacob Anderson – Greyworm from Game of Thrones) and his maker, Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid). Played by Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in the 1994 film adaptation but far better written and performed here, Louis and Lestat are your typical opposites-attract couple. Lestat is a cruel, flamboyant sociopath who sees his vampirism as some sort of divine gift. Louis is a sensitive, guilt-ridden man desperately clinging to his former humanity because he views vampirism as a curse. The story is told through Louis’ Interview with an aging, cynical, sarcastic journalist, a real Eric Bogosian-type played by Eric Bogosian. The story switches back and forth from this timeline in 2021 to Louis’ story, which spans the early 1900s to the 1970s.
I’ve never read the Anne Rice novel, but from what I’m told, the significant change in the story is Louis’ background. In the novel, he’s a young white man turned Vampire. Here, he’s a closeted young Black business owner turned Vampire, not only having to deal with the difficulties of being a creature of the night but also the prejudice a man of color would face in the South during this time. This makes our protagonist much more interesting and his struggle with becoming a monster much more compelling. The first season dealt with this more but the second season sees Louis separated from Lestat, traveling to Paris after World War II. He’s joined by Claudia (originally Bailey Bass in Season 1 but replaced by Delainey Hayles in Season 2), a 40-something-year-old vampire trapped in the body of a 14-year-old girl. In Paris, they meet an acting troupe of vampires led by Armand (Assad Zaman), a 500-year-old vampire in love with Louis, and Santiago (Ben Daniels), a wildly insecure and brutal stage actor suspicious of Louis and Claudia.
The best part of the first season was Sam Reid‘s rousing portrayal of Lestat, a clear co-lead who is now relegated to a more minor supporting role this season. When the season began, I worried the show would suffer because of it, but through consistently excellent writing, the introduction of new compelling characters, and the fact Jacob Anderson (Louis) really stepped it up this season, my concerns quickly evaporated. Once Lestat gets thrown more prominently into the narrative in the final two episodes, Season 2 actually eclipsed the extraordinary debut season. Besides Reid and Anderson, the real standout here is veteran stage actor Ben Daniels as Santiago, the head diva bitch of the vamp thesp squad. When he’s on-screen, you can’t take your eyes off him; he imbues this character with a sense of mystery and creates a fantastically complex villain.
While many vampire stories have reflected on the ultimate burden eternal life would present, few have done so as gracefully and purposefully as this iteration of Interview with the Vampire. This is a riveting cerebral and emotional experience nearly perfectly orchestrated by a showrunner who truly understands their source material. Grade: A- (AMC+)
ALSO IN THEATERS
The Bikeriders (B-)
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (C+) – also VOD
Hit Man (B) – also Netflix
I Saw the TV Glow (B-) – also VOD
In a Violent Nature (C+) – also VOD
Kinds of Kindness (B+)
The Watchers (D) – also VOD
STREAMING ON NETFLIX
Aftersun (A)
Baby Reindeer (B+)
Dumb Money (C+)
Hit Man (B)
May December (A-)
Monster (B)
Ripley (B+)
Thanksgiving (B)
STREAMING ON HULU
Eileen (B-)
The First Omen (B)
Titane (B+)
When Evil Lurks (B+)
STREAMING ON AMC+
Birth/Rebirth (B)
Blackberry (B+)
Influencer (B-)
Late Night with the Devil (B-)
Stopmotion (B)
Margetis Movie Reviews 