“David”
This plucky animated feature is the latest Angel Studios Christian value film to resonate with audiences. “Sound of Freedom” (2023) was made for $14 million and grossed over $250 million, last year’s “King of Kings” had a $25 million budget and raked in $80 million. “David” is still doing well in theaters and arrives to VOD having made well past its $60 million dollar budget, the most Angel has ever laid out for a film. It’s arguably the highest-grossing animated faith-based film, depending on how you classify “The Prince of Egypt” (1998). (Not all Angel films stick it at the box-office: “Cabrini” (2024) had a budget of $50 million and only took home $20 million.)
Written and directed by Brent Dawes and Phil Cunningham, “David”’s animation is on par with Pixar. It sticks to the part of the Biblical story that chronicles the rise of the young shepherd and poet who would become the unifying King of Israel. Of course, David slays Goliath, repels the Philistines, deals with King Saul’s January 6th cling to power and ultimately makes Jerusalem the capital of Israel — all this around 1,000 BC. David (well voiced by Brandon Engman) is an earnest, reluctant leader full of brio, no matter the tall odds.
Scenes of battle and violent conflict are tres G-rated—think fights in “The Lion King.” As David matures as a military leader, he is not the conflicted warrior king depicted in the streaming series “House of David” and the Bible itself, the one who commits adultery with Bathsheba and subsequently hatches a plot to kill her husband. No, this David often breaks into song and follows prophecy to the letter. It’s crisp animation and tight story-telling. — Tom Meek
Available on Prime Video and other VOD platforms
“The Wrecking Crew”
The brotherly dysfunction between a boozed-up cop (Jason Momoa) and a solemnly stoic Navy SEAL (Dave Bautista) propels this crime drama. The Marvel-DC studio divide means we will probably never see the two action stars — and real-life buds — share the screen as Drax and Aquaman, so this may be the closest we get to an action-cum-comedy pairing the two actors. The jacked bros play estranged stepbrothers Jonny (Momoa) and James (Bautista) forced to cooperate to determine whether the hit-and-run death of their father, Walter (Brian L. Keaulana), was an accident.
Walter, it happens, was a B-level private investigator who had dirt on everyone on O’ahu. He allegedly has sent a package to Jonny, now living in Oklahoma, which brings three yakuza looking for it. Jonny manages to fend them off while sauced and wearing just a towel.
This brings Jonny back to his Hawaiian homeland and a bristly bonding experience with elder brother James while battering a litany of bad guys. Angel Manuel Soto (“Blue Beetle”) directs action sequences packed with movement and explosions but also jerkily choreographed and problematic—who hires Uzi-toting henchmen who miss so regularly at point blank range?
“The Wrecking Crew” doesn’t give its leading men much to work with. The script by Jonathan Tropper packs some cheeky gems, like Jonny calling one hulking underling “a fat John Cena,” and even pausing mid-brawl to down a can of beer. But Bautista’s James looks bored and just wants to find a hammock to take five. Much gets wrecked by this crew, but mayhem without meaning just leaves debris. — Tom Meek
Streaming on Amazon Prime
“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”
Evil AI and time travel abound in this quirky, sci-fi do-si-do, which is sort of a meshing of the “Matrix” films with Terry Gilliam’s “12 Monkeys” or “The Fisher King.”
Gonzo guy next door Sam Rockwell is a Brad Pitt-esque traveler from the future. But he’s wearing a clear plastic raincoat with explosives strapped to him, so he’s received in the present as a nutty homeless scamp. Rockwell’s unnamed chrononaut has to recruit a team of volunteers in a diner to stop an AI baby (think the Star Baby in “2001”) from constructing an alter-reality that essentially will enslave mankind in a false, idyllic existence.
Rockwell’s infectiousness and all-in commitment make the movie, which could just be another in the raft of movies where characters get to re-live a day, but director Gore Verbinski (“Pirates of the Caribbean”) keeps the wash-rinse-repeat minefield of lethal obstacles surprisingly fresh. High school students are brainwashed by their smartphones and transformed into a relentless zombie horde, a giant kitty snacks on mouse-sized humans and the police force is the de facto Mr. Anderson of “Matrix” fame. The movie’s lo-fi vibe plays in its favor.
For a déjà vu movie, “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die,” is spry and packed with enough punchy humor and twists to keep it feeling fresh. — Tom Meek
At AMC Assembly Row 12
“‘Wuthering Heights'”
In Emerald Fennell’s “’Wuthering Heights’” the quotation marks are part of the title, because this is not a strict adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel but rather a fantasia on the idea of its central romance. Cathy and Heathcliff, played by Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, are childhood playmates who grow into impossibly attractive adults. Just as they begin to realize their simmering sexual tension (spurred by witnessing a sado-masochistic tryst between the stable hands), Cathy is asked to marry the wealthy Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif). Heathcliff storms off in a jealous rage, only to reappear on Cathy’s doorstep years later, inexplicably wealthy and bent on revenge. Despite Cathy’s pregnancy, the pair resume their furtive romance, but this time their dalliances come with a darker twist.
Aesthetically and thematically, “’Wuthering Heights’” is an extension of Fennell’s transgressive hit “Saltburn” (2023), but it’s a far more assured work. Where “Saltburn” is a dumb movie posing as smart satire, ‘Heights’ makes no bones about its essential lunkheadedness, and, paradoxically, is far smarter for it. The film wears its anachronisms on its lacy, billowing sleeve —gowns stitched from materials a century from being invented, a pounding pop soundtrack by Charli XCX (to say nothing of the flesh-colored walls of Cathy’s bedroom, complete with visible veins and pores). Everything is heightened (so to speak). The Linton estate is captured in the eye-popping color palette of a 1980s paperback cover, while the squalor of Cathy’s upbringing recalls the grotesque humor of Terry Gilliam. The film is as big as its characters’ feelings. While it wears out its welcome in the final act, when everyone is miserable instead of horny, it’s seldom boring.
This all goes double for the performances. Robbie plays Cathy as broadly comic as she does Barbie, while Elordi leans into his sex symbol status with poses that would make Fabio blush. Both are upstaged by Alison Oliver, hilarious as Linton’s naive young sister Isabelle. The much-touted sex scenes are suitably tawdry, but, there is very little in the way of actual nudity. It is as if, rather than witnessing the story itself, we are privy to the furtive daydreams of a Brontë reader. Fennell’s ‘Heights’ are far from their literary roots, but the resulting film is a guilty pleasure of the most ribald order. — Oscar Goff
At Kendall Square Cinema, Apple Cinemas Cambridge, and AMC Assembly Row
Cambridge writer Tom Meek’s reviews, essays, short stories and articles have appeared in WBUR’s The 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.
Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville. He is film editor and senior critic for the Boston Hassle and his work has appeared in the monthly Boston Compass newspaper and publications such as WBUR’s The ARTery and iHeartNoise. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, and the Online Film Critics Society.
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