Action, love, death and rebellion. This week, you can get a taste of each.
Here’s our roundup.
“Andor Season 2”: You realize you’re watching something special when, after finishing the 11th episode in a 12-part series, you delay streaming that final episode because you really don’t want it to end.
Disney+’s last season of the acclaimed “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” prequel series is something to savor like that, an example of multifaceted worldbuilding that stresses the importance of complex character arcs and terrific writing. It’s layered with intrigue and full of intricate rebellious acts and is relevant to today’s turmoil and troubling times. Showrunner Tony Gilroy redefines an overstuffed, often overcalculated “Star Wars” universe that has produced some standouts as well as some rote duds. This character-focused production charts Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and his transformation from a wayward, selfish thief to a major player in the Rebel Alliance.
In Season 2, Andor becomes more entrenched in the cause, seeking to overthrow the Galactic Empire’s covert machinations as they Storm-troop their way closer to making that Death Star. Boo! Hiss! These fascists will stop at nothing, even stripping one planet of its critical resources while subjecting its inhabitants to something unfathomable.
Season 2 brings back the secretive chess-like moves of rebels as they spy and inform from high places — senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) and antiques dealer Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) — but it also keeps tabs on the evil ones with power and a wickedness to want more — the Imperial Security Bureau’s cunning and fervently ambitious Dedra Meero (Denise Gough, who verges on a snarl in every scene, and is deserving of an Emmy nomination for being so diabolical), her malleable pseudo-boyfriend Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) and director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn, the human version of a cobra).
There are many others in the cast, including mechanic and scrapyard owner Bix (Adria Arjona) who wrestles with big changes this season with the help of Cassian.
Why “Andor” remains a cut above other entries in the “Star Wars” empire is that it values dialogue and characterization as much as it does suspense and special effects. But it also deals with about the realness of sacrifice and rebellion. Characters die here, and not just the villains. While this season does jump ahead in years since Gilroy tabled making it a multi season series, it never feels rushed nor truncated. Certainly, it gives even more complexity to “Rogue One.” What a force this series has truly been. Details: 4 stars out of 4; three episodes drop every week starting April 22 on Disney+.
“The Accountant 2”: The best moments in this jaunty sequel to the 2016 surprise hit don’t pertain to the action scenes, although they’re thrilling and all. Rather, it’s the bantering and squabbling between estranged brothers Christian Wolff, (Ben Affleck), a brilliant incognito forensic accountant with autism, and Brax (Jon Bernthal), a cocky hitman who likes to strut around in his black boxer briefs, that energizes director Gavin O’Connor’s entertaining guilty pleasure. While the bros’ back history did get explored in the first outing, it doesn’t matter if you lack that context. You’ll get the gist from various interactions such as when Christian and Brax toss back beers atop his Airstream and then bond and brawl at a country Western bar. The two reunite after Christian gets tracked down by the U.S. Treasury Deputy Director Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) to investigate the murder of treasury agent Ray King (J.K. Simmons). Both try to hash out how a family photo figures into the carnage and what role a mysterious woman (Oakland native Daniella Pineda) at the crime scene plays in it. Meanwhile, a team of techie whiz kids again work their special computer magic (another highlight) at a hidden institution and show up the Luddite adults. Affleck does a fine job (a matchmaking event is a high point), but what makes “The Accountant 2” better than it should be is Bernthal, a roguish charmer who can talk calmly, with just a trace of menace, even though he’s been responsible for a pile of bloodied corpses. He bounces off the more deadpan Affleck like a true comedian and it’s then that “Accountant 2” hits its numbers, even exceeds them. Details: 3 stars; opens April 25 in theaters.
“The Shrouds”: David Cronenberg remains as bold and pioneering as ever at 82. Need evidence? Check out his latest surreal Rubik’s cube that covers his favorite topics – death, technology and, of course, sex. Once again, it makes for a kinky and weird experience, a head trip that left me befuddled about its ending. The bizarre is indeed Cronenberg’s romping grounds and this time he’s funneling the weirdness toward grief and mortality. His main character is dapper Karsh (Vincent Cassell), creator of a GraveTech software that provides the bereaved with a front row seat to gawk at the decomposition of their loved ones bodies, now encased in a shroud. Ick is right. Vandals strike key graves on the manicured grounds that Karsh oversees and the brazen act accelerates a dormant paranoia inside of him that’s almost in step with the alarm bell ringing inside his conspiracy-spouting sister-in-law Terry (Diane Kruger). Both, along with Terry’s unstable but techie smart ex-husband (Guy Pearce, getting all twitchy) are still grieving Becca (also played by Kruger), who died of cancer. Cronenberg’s solemn yet sexy portrait of the stalled stages of grief (he wrote it in the wake of his own wife’s death) illustrates the lengths we go to try to preserve the departed and how desperately we search for answers to personal questions that haunt and often evade us. It makes you feel like you’re in a dreamy fugue state and is lined with dark flashes of humor – a blind date sequence is vintage Cronenberg and utterly macabre. Kruger juggles both roles like the pro she is while Cassell exudes a cool calmness that belies the turmoil inside. Better than all that is just how quintessential Cronenberg “The Shrouds” happens to be. How lucky we are to have this boundary pusher still thinking up such bold and provocative films. Details: 3½ stars; opens April 25 at AMC Mercado, Santa Clara; the Roxie, San Francisco, the Cinemark Century Daly City.
“On Swift Horses”: In director Daniel Minahan’s sexy shakedown of mythical and long-in-the-saddle Western “values,” repression and secretive trysts boil over in the lives of two attractive people (Daisy Edgar-Jones and Jacob Elordi) tied to a Korean War veteran (Will Poulter) who so wants to lead that elusive, white-picket dream in suburban California. Minahan’s steamy and soapy (in the right way) adaptation of Shannon Pufahl’s novel draws out three soulful performances from its leads, but also includes a searing one from Diego Calva (“Babylon”) as a Las Vegas cheat detector who gets hotly involved with drift-about Julius, the strapping brother that everyone considers “different” (aka gay) from the more traditionalist brother Lee (Poulter). Julius lands in Vegas and gets his heart tugged hard by scheming Henry (Calva), and those scenes are highly sensual. Muriel and Julius understand and recognize each other’s true identities while Lee stays clueless. Both of them also realize they can only be themselves at certain times and in certain venues, even though Muriel has yet to explore her hidden feelings. Minahan’s engrossing, beautiful to behold drama has been somewhat dismissed for its old-school storytelling style. But that is sort of the entire point here as it plays and messes with those tropes by giving them a queer sensibility all of its own. In its quiet but rebellious way, “On Swift Horses” even refuses to succumb to tragedy, an easy way out, and offers its characters the opportunity to ride off in a promising enough sunset toward hope. Don’t miss it. Details: 3½ stars; in theaters April 25.
“Yadang: The Snitch”: Three adversaries swallow their distaste for each other so they can take on a power-mad prosecutor and an annoying rich party boy with a huge drug habit. Expect to get a bit of whiplash from this action-packed South Korean actioner, paced so fast and furiously you can’t help but get sucked into its Tilt A Whirl mayhem. Swaggering pretty-boy Kang-suoo (Kang Ha-nuel of “Squid Game 2”) teams up with ambitious prosecutor Kuoo GKwan-hee (Yoo Hae-jin) as they target drug runners to attain media glory and political clout. Kang-suoo acts as a broker, a hotshot go-between of criminals and the law Narcotics detective Oh Sang-jae (Park Hae-joon) catches more than a whiff about this after his path crosses with an actress (Chae Won-been) who is partying hard with the sinfully rich son (Ryu Kyung-soo) of a dad who can sweep most bad behavior under the rug and have the cops look the other way. Director Hwang Byeong-gug piles one breathless scene atop of another as the broker, the actress and the detective devise a payback scheme that could all fall apart. It’s a blast of hyperactive action with a real killer finale. Details: 3 stars; opens April 26 at the Cinemark Century Daly City 20, the AMC Mercado 20, Santa Clara and the Cinemark Century Union Landing 25, Union City.
“Viet and Nam”: Truong Minh Quý’’s transcendent second feature often feels as if you went to sleep and woke up inside of one of Ocean Vuong’s evocative poems or an Apichatpong Weerasethakul film. Ostensibly, it’s a love story about two male coal miners and lovers (Duy Bao Dinh Dao and Pham Thanh Hai) with one – Nam (Hai) – preparing to part from the other and move to the United States. The time is 2001 and the setting is North Vietnam, decades after the country’s split and the bloody war. Speaking of that war, it cloaks the film in spectral and metaphorical forms, particularly when Nam journeys with his mom (Nguyen Thi Nga) and Viet near the spot where his father went missing in action. The experience of watching “Viet and Nam” equates to a dream as it wafts and wanders through time and drops in on the intimate desires and aches of both men who so want to be whole together. While I wish Quý’ would have spent a little more time developing Viet’s character, there is no denying that his immersive film borders on pure visual poetry, and largely that’s due to Son Doan’s astonishing cinematography. Details: 3½ stars; opens April 25 at the Roxie in San Francisco.
Contact Randy Myers at [email protected].
