‘Mufasa’ (2024)
If there’s one thing Disney has leaned into in the past decade, it’s the commodification of existing intellectual property. Starting with “Cinderella” in 2015, it has remade several of its classic films, including “The Jungle Book” (2016), “Beauty and the Beast” (2017) and “Mulan” (2020), to mostly tepid reviews. Live action is the new animation, I suppose, and “The Lion King” got its due with a remake in 2019, which wasn’t particularly well-received either. Disney has returned to the ultra-successful franchise with a prequel called “Mufasa.” It tells the story of the father of Simba (Donald Glover), Mufasa (Aaron Pierre), which begins with losing his parents in a flood, meeting a cub named Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), and being taken in by his pride with clear reluctance from Taka’s father, the king Obasi (Lennie James). Things progress from there in a narrative that has pretty much everything you can reliably expect from Disney: some tension, a love interest, some tension over the love interest, a few jokes to lighten things up, a few moments that pull at the heartstrings. It’s all narrated by Rafiki (John Kani), the mandrill from the original movie, in a story-within-a-story device. He’s babysitting Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter), the cub of Simba and Nala (Beyoncé) and Mufasa’s grandcub, with Pumbaa (Seth Rogen) and Timon (Billy Eichner). As Rafiki tells the story, we watch it unfold in flashbacks accompanied by a slate of Lin-Manuel Miranda songs that are pleasant to listen to but not nearly as good as the originals. That’s about the best way to sum up “Mufasa” as a whole: Not bad, but it doesn’t add anything to what’s already known and loved. I hoped Barry Jenkins would somehow manage to do something different, but beyond visual beauty, I wasn’t impressed. If I didn’t know it was directed by Jenkins, of “Moonlight” fame, I wouldn’t have figured it out by watching the film, and to say it pales in comparison to his other work is putting it lightly. (Madeleine Aitken) At Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge; Apple Cinemas Cambridge, 168 Alewife Brook Parkway, Cambridge Highlands near Alewife and Fresh Pond; and AMC Assembly Row 12, 395 Artisan Way, Assembly Square, Somerville.
‘Subservience’ (2024)
A silly concept well-played, thanks largely to lead Megan Fox leaning in on her screen persona. It’s not the first time for Fox, who rose to notoriety as eye candy for teenage boys in the “Transformer” films: In 2009 she paired with “Girlfight” (2000) director Karyn Kusama and writer Diablo Cody (“Juno”) for the deconstructive horror-comedy “Jennifer’s Body.” Here she plays Alice, a droid nanny in a clingy maid outfit. She’s what’s known as a “sim,” mass-produced humanlike robots programmed to help out around the house, hospital, worksite or whatever. Alice is brought into the fold of a family to aid Nick (Michele Monroe) in the care of his daughter (Matilda Firth) and infant son because mom (Madeline Zima) is waiting on a heart transplant and might not be in the picture long. There’s tension because Nick is a construction worker dealing with the issue of sims replacing him and his crew at work, yet also sexual tension between him and Alice that’s pretty high from the get-go, added by glimpses of Alice in her babydoll garb and undies. The catalyst that turns Alice into a “M3gan”-esque terminator (yes, Megan goes M3gan) is the movie “Casablanca” – no joke. Nick’s a fan, and when Alice sits down to watch it with him one night and fires off a salvo of film factoids, Nick asks her if there is anyway to expunge the info from her memory banks so she might enjoy the cinematic experience organically. The answer is a disastrous reset that renders Alice jailbroken and able to go off script. Fox does a commendable job of physically articulating the tics and quirks of being a ’bot. How the film directed by S.K. Dale, who worked with Fox on “Till Death” (2021, also streaming on Netflix), evolves from there, packs a few neat curveballs and leaves things open for a sequel, but you’ve seen this bad ’bot plot before – and better. (Tom Meek) On Netflix.
‘Red One’ (2024)
Still playing in theaters but also now on Amazon Prime for free this week is this ho-ho-ho, so-so comedy-adventure that has Saint Nick (J.K. Simmons) kidnapped so an evil impish creature can take over the reins of Christmas. “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993) this is not. Simmons’ Santa is a bit of a change-up from your usual: He works out, hates macaroons and has a tricked-out sled with grotesquely jacked CGI reindeer. In this winter wonderland universe directed by Jake Kasdan (“Zero Effect”) there’s an org called the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority that’s trying to “rewild” the world with entities of myth and lore. One such is Grýla (Kiernan Shipka), the winter witch from Icelandic lore wants to take over the sleigh and deliver snow globes to the naughty that will imprison them in the globe for life. This is cause for pause, because is imprisoning potential future sociopaths a bad thing (well, yeah, because it’s kids, and naughty doesn’t mean homicidal), and did Grýla in the plotting of her scheme ever contemplate a three-strikes policy? In the mix to save the day are Dwayne Johnson as Nick’s head of security, Chris Evans as a hacker and bungling pa who accidentally gives away the secret locale of Santa’s operations, and Lucy Liu as a Mora operative. Thankfully, the ever-cantankerous Krampus (Kristofer Hivju, “Cocaine Bear”) makes an appearance and brings fire and fun to the few scenes he’s in. “Red One” is relatively watchable family fare, but as ephemeral and forgettable as a first dusting of snow. (Tom Meek) At Apple Cinemas Cambridge, 168 Alewife Brook Parkway, Cambridge Highlands near Alewife and Fresh Pond; AMC Assembly Row 12, 395 Artisan Way, Assembly Square, Somerville; and on Amazon Prime Video.
‘Carry-On’ (2024)
Another just-watchable holiday-themed flick that treads heavily on its “Die Hard” (1988) aspirations, starting with an East Coast fish-out-of-water Jersey boy hero, now played by Taron Egerton (Elton John himself from “Rocketman”), trying to thwart a terrorist strike in a bustling L.A. complex. Egerton plays Ethan Kopek, an underachieving TSA officer and cop wannabe who regularly shows up late for airport shifts and, as a result, draws menial shit job duties and can’t get a promotion. It’s Christmas Eve and, as is his MO, Ethan shows up late and is assigned a luggage-scanning post. Unbeknown, the station is the target of terrorists trying to get a briefcase full of the lethal Russian nerve gas Novichok onto a plane. The motive has to do with framing the Russians by killing a congresswoman aboard and thus generating contracts for U.S. military contractors, or something like that, not the most inventive MacGuffin. The terrorists, led by a calm, cool Jason Bateman (“Ozark”), get the bag through the checkpoint through a threat to Ethan: that his pregnant girlfriend (Sofia Carson) working in another wing of the airport is in a sniper’s scope and will be shot should he not comply with their every instruction. It’s a pat but passable thriller, with credit to Bateman’s wormy confidence and Danielle Deadwyler, good here as a cop in the mix and even better in “The Piano Lesson” this year. But they’re not enough to elicit a “Yippee-ki-yay.” (Tom Meek) On Netflix.
Tom Meek is a writer living in Cambridge. His reviews, essays, short stories and articles have appeared in the WBUR ARTery, The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The Rumpus, The Charleston City Paper and SLAB literary journal. Tom is also a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and rides his bike everywhere.
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