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Three Films You Can Watch This Weekend: An Oscar Favorite, An Inevitable Sequel And An Unnecessary Prequel
The three biggest titles releasing on December 20, 2024, are Barry Jenkins's "Mufasa: The Lion King," "Sonic The Hedgehog 3" -- which stars Jim Carrey, Ben Schwartz, Keanu Reeves and others -- and "The Brutalist," a three-and-half-hour historical drama starring Adrien Brody.
If you're considering watching any of these films, here's what the reviews have been saying.
'Mufasa: The Lion King'
Disney's ministry of sequels, prequels and remakes has managed to deliver all three in one package. The 2019 version of "The Lion King," thanks to Jon Favreau's warmth and feel for comedy, found some fun new ideas in its retelling of the original 1994 animated classic. Like Mr. Favreau's film, "Mufasa" is digital animation that is meant to look like live action. What was magical five years ago, however, now seems like an item taken out of the recycling bin.
[WSJ]
I'm losing count of how many prequel/sequel/origin stories I've seen this year: "Furiosa," "Wicked," "Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim," "Gladiator 2," "Transformers One." It is hard to think of these films as anything more than fan service and brand extension. "Mufasa" is fine and most families will be satisfied. But the jubilant imagination that went into the original, make this one look as pale as Kiros.
This heartfelt prequel to the 1994 classic recounts the dramatic backstory of King Mufasa but is scarred by a forgettable musical score.
Consensus: Looks like director Barry Jenkins has his first "L."
Watch the trailer:
'Sonic The Hedgehog 3'
The hedgehogs are the stars here, and after three delightfully breezy good times at the theater, it's no longer a surprise as to why that is.
It's hard to settle on what's more bombastic: Carrey's admittedly virtuoso double act, or the teeming computer graphics gadgetry of death and destruction spilling out of every corner of the screen. However you choose to categorize this movie, you have to admit it's a lot -- up to and including a post-credits tease for the next picture in the franchise.
[NY Times]
If this seems a little heavy for a "Sonic" movie, that's because it is. There are ways that the script by the returning writing team of Pat Casey, Josh Miller and John Whittington could have handled this important life lesson about anger in a more family-friendly way. Instead, the film flips between unimpressive banter and disturbingly high-stakes danger. There's no coherence here, each scene sitting in disjointed discomfort with the next.
Consensus: The show and sequels must go on. Keeping that in mind, this one doesn't sound too bad.
Watch the trailer:
'The Brutalist'
A harrowing 215-minute epic of perseverance, trauma, exploitation and anti-Semitism, it's a bracing examination of the scars of war, the difficulty of recovery, and the genius, madness, and self-destruction begat by calamity. The auteur's third feature (after 2015's "The Childhood of a Leader" and 2018's "Vox Lux,") it marks Corbett as a filmmaker of titanic vision, as well as Brody as one of Hollywood's most arresting actors.
Not all directors can pull off such a feat and make it worth our while. "The Brutalist," like its protagonist, is not without flaws or incongruities or indulgences. But it hardly seems accidental that one of the film's key lines tells us it's the destination, not the journey, that matters. Corbet went big here — really big — and it paid off.
Sadly, the second half was way more uneven to me -- partially because the pacing starts to feel overly indulgent as the film takes some dark turns, but mostly because I didn't love the casting or writing of László's wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), who finally reunites with her husband after being separated from him during the Holocaust. Corbet explained that he wanted "The Brutalist" to slowly reveal itself to be a love story, and my disconnect from the Erzsébet character probably explains why I felt so disconnected from the second half of the film as a whole.
Consensus: Brody is box office magic, and he might get another award.
Watch the trailer:
[Image: A24]
