Let it be said that M3GAN is the best film of 2023 to date. Okay, so it’s basically the *only* film of 2023 to date, but that technicality shouldn’t detract from the delightfully wicked, Ginsu-sharp attitude it flexes. The titular doll (which stands for Model 3 Generative Android) is a prototype designed for 9-year-old Cady (Violet McGraw), who goes to live with her Aunt Gemma (Allison Williams) - a top roboticist at the lucrative, Seattle-based toy company Funki - after her parents die in a car accident. M3GAN, who’s like Skynet crossed with Teddy Ruxpin, seems too good to be true, and Gemma’s bosses soon have Scrooge McDuck dollar signs in their eyes (“Let’s talk manufacturing costs… more or less than a Tesla?”). But creepy dolls and artificial intelligence are rarely good news on their own - let alone in combination - and it isn’t long before M3GAN is taking more aggressive measures when it comes to protecting her primary user… and as she continues to learn and evolve, self-sufficiency (and eventually self-preservation) becomes an unnerving priority.  

M3GAN is the latest Blumhouse offering, and a product of the creative team behind 2021’s Malignant (Akela Cooper wrote the script, once again working from a story she cooked up with filmmaker James Wan - though directing duties are entrusted to Gerard Johnstone this time). That film caused a bit of a stir within the horror community… but it was frankly a pretty flaccid effort, propped up by a decent twist and a few memorable scenes (specifically the one in the holding cell). M3GAN, on the other hand, much like its diminutive antagonist, goes about its business with breezy self-assurance. The concept isn’t exactly novel. Child’s Play is the obvious comparison here (and M3GAN’s Twitter feud with Chucky has been a bright spot in an inspired marketing campaign), but the film evokes everything from Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend to the Orphan franchise, in addition to recent efforts about the perils of smart technology, such as Jexi or Tau (not to mention a pretty terrific X-Files episode from the most recent revival).

What differentiates M3GAN is the title character. She’s a pretty marvelous creation visually - in some ways eerily lifelike and in other ways a pointed heightening of the uncanny valley, with her vacant yet watchful gaze, and pert mouth that adjusts ever-so-slightly into a knowing smirk or a disconcerting smile (the character is a blend of real life actor, animatronics and CGI, with Jenna Davis supplying the voice). The filmmakers seem acutely cognizant of having a real opportunity, not only for a hit film, but to create a new horror icon - which is no doubt why they have M3GAN busting out TikTok-style dance moves before taking a paper cutter blade to a potential victim (the movie’s taken some flak for this perceived Gen-Z pandering - as well as for its PG-13 rating - but it’s the sort of unapologetic fun the genre could do with more of). By the time M3GAN is generating chaos at Funki headquarters like a Cabbage Patch Hal 9000 and tearing off into the night in a $300,000 McLaren, only the most obstinate of horror lovers will resist strapping in for this increasingly nutty ride. ​

And it’s a good thing the movie has M3GAN too, because its handling of its human characters is more checkered. Initially, the details of Gemma and Cady’s relationship are well-observed (Gemma makes it clear her rare collectibles aren’t toys, has to download a bedtime story onto her phone, and can’t let go of her coaster OCD)… and there’s a promising psychological subtext about Gemma, ill-equipped as a parental figure, subconsciously trying to shift the burden onto M3GAN. But the components never quite mesh, and the movie remains perfunctory on an emotional level. Williams is a particularly difficult actress to get a read on. She has a relatable quality that’s of great value… but also a curiously muted emotional range that doesn’t always serve the film (it’s also never clear why Gemma is so hellbent on remaining Cady’s guardian - presumably at least partially out of guilt, but the script never digs in). No matter - everyone knows who the star of the show is. M3GAN, not surprisingly, is thwarted in the end (a great example of “Chekhov’s college robotics project”), but she’ll be back. And, if Blumhouse is smart and can make it happen, Chucky will be waiting.

The best thing about Glass Onion, the new Netflix-funded Knives Out mystery, is how little it actually resembles Knives Out. The first film was an entertaining but overcooked whodunit, a snappy Agatha Christie throwback fortified with a modern satirical sting but undercut by its ham-fisted “eat the rich” social agenda… but it was also a massive hit, and writer/director Rian Johnson would have been more than justified erecting a lucrative franchise on its basic template.   

Instead, this initial follow-up (further sequels are in development) is less Agatha Christie, and more like a deranged, live-action game of Clue (one character even suggests that Benoit Blanc - the renowned Hercule-Poirot-by-way-of-Foghorn-Leghorn private detective played by Daniel Craig - must be a big fan, to which he snaps “I am not. It’s a terrible game!”). Johnson once again has class conflict on his mind, but this time his target is the “eccentric” billionaire tech innovator Miles Bron (Edward Norton) and the quartet of conflicted acolytes caught in his orbit - Connecticut politician Claire (Kathryn Hahn), head scientist Lionel (Leslie Odom Jr.), model turned fashion designer Birdie (Kate Hudson), and chauvinistic Twitch streamer Duke (Dave Bautista). Think Professor Plum backed by an influx of Silicon Valley capital and Mrs. Peacock as a social influencer.

Bron has invited his friends (which also includes Birdie’s long-suffering assistant Peg (Jessica Henwick, completely wasted) and Duke’s girlfriend Whiskey (Madelyn Cline)) for a weekend getaway to his private Greek island - a Neverland retreat that revolves around his state-of-the-art mansion / borderline Bond villain lair, dubbed “The Glass Onion.” Joining them - surprisingly - is Bron’s former business partner Andi (Janelle Monae), whom he ousted from the company under acrimonious circumstances, and Blanc, whose invitation turns out to be of unknown origin. Given that the gathering has a murder mystery theme, it’s assumed that Blanc’s presence has a firmly tongue-in-cheek motivation.

Of course, things don’t unfold according to plan. Even more so than in Knives Out, the payoff feels beside the point (the title, of course, is a reference to the Beatles song with its deliberately nonsensical lyrics, meant to stymie those who make a point of reading too much into things - onions, after all, are known for their many layers, but if one is made of glass and you can peer straight through it, then it doesn’t have much use… particularly in regards to a mystery). The actual fun lies in the plot’s intricate, puzzle box construction… but Johnson - either cynically or ingeniously - has also effectively safeguarded himself by making these films part homage and part spoof (it’s still not entirely clear if Blanc is a legitimately world-class sleuth, or - with his exaggerated Southern affectations - merely a lampoon of one). Whenever a knot is untangled by a narrative contrivance - as is the case with a mid-film revelation that hinges on one of the most hackneyed contrivances of them all - well, that’s all part of the joke, isn’t it? Wink, wink?

But, perhaps because of the specific nature of Glass Onion’s targets - particularly Norton’s Elon Musk-inspired blowhard, dancing the razor-thin line between genius and idiocy (or maybe just idiocy and idiocy) - it’s easier to revel in the film’s causticly satiric intentions than it was when Johnson was seemingly stacking the deck in favor of Ana de Armas’s immigrant nurse. The characters are thinly-drawn, but that’s rather the point - their entire personas are manufactured; a product of self-conscious superficiality in the social media age. As a sequel, the film feels less substantial than its predecessor, but its humor has a fleeter, more impish quality - when Bron, in a flourish of supreme hubris, reveals that he has the Mona Lisa on loan from the Louvre while the museum rides out the pandemic, the anticipation of potential disaster comes edged with giddy relish. If these characters were piñatas, let’s just say we wouldn’t mind taking a few vindictive whacks.​

Craig, free to stretch his limbs outside the grim parameters of playing James Bond, once again delivers a performance ripe with brio… but the film ultimately belongs to Janelle Monae. The actress/singer appeared poised for big-screen stardom after appearing in both Moonlight and Hidden Figures in 2016, but more recently has gotten swept up in ludicrous junk like Antebellum. But here - called upon to pivot in dexterous and unexpected ways - her talent feels like it’s been pulled back into focus. Blanc, fittingly, proves more than willing to cede the film - both literally and figuratively - to her character in the closing scenes. In that sense, he’s like the anti-007; all too happy to step aside and be upstaged by the latest of his platonic “Blanc Girls.”

 A guest review by Joe Frankel, who takes a look at the 1971 Best Picture winner. (EDITOR'S NOTE: Gene Hackman won the Oscar for Best Actor. That same year, Jane Fonda won Best Actress for Klute, which I'm currently reviewing for the Criterion section. Pop is all about synergy) 

It is one of just a handful of genre thrillers to receive Oscars in the top categories and it hasn’t really lost its power despite being a product of its time.  First-time viewers numbed by the glut of modern police procedurals may feel it doesn’t measure up, but this would be missing the point.  Even when it first came out it didn’t seek to dazzle you with the mechanics of an airtight plot or a glimpse behind the curtain at the intricacies of modern detective work.  The movie is far more concerned with capturing an authentic feeling for the seedy streets of 70s New York with a visceral, docu-style aesthetic and an expansiveness in the action scenes that feels bigger and more immersive than more standard TV cop show fare (of the modern or vintage variety).  It therefore shines as a particularly vivid time capsule. It’s directed with urgency and restless, herky-jerky energy by William Friedkin. The script by Ernest Tidyman is memorably terse and spare. There is very little dialogue and much of the movie revolves around stakeouts and chases.  The cast (including Gene Hackman as officer Popeye Doyle, Roy Scheider as his partner Buddy Russo and Fernando Ray as the French drug smuggler they wish to bring down) performs their roles in a notably minimalistic manner that feels more at home today than it would have back in the 70s when acting was still synonymous with theatricality.  The movie crackles with a nerve-jangling tension that the leads help to generate. There’s very little text, but you feel how much is on the line for Popeye and it’s touching how Buddy repeatedly attempts to clean up Popeye’s mess.  Friedkin doesn’t pause for character development or conventional story beats, but the movie still feels layered.  He directs the camera as if it’s undercover — searching for and finding the action.  It feels 100% authentic. It makes you believe you’re eavesdropping on real cops and looking over their shoulders as they chase half-baked hunches and questionable leads around New York and beyond.  

Politically it’s unclear whether the movie has sympathy for the black characters who Popeye busts. His taunting tagline, “do you pick your feet in Poughkipsie?” reveals his sadistic pleasure in taking down the (ultimately inconsequential) street pushers that make up his daily beat.  Did audiences used to laugh without any deeper consideration of the larger racial implications?  Popeye’s proud-boy posturing is disturbing – – particularly from a modern standpoint. It also gives the movie an air of truth. Very little has actually changed in 50 years.  Popeye has a friendship with one black informant (charismatically played by Al Fann) but he appears to delight in roughing him up after getting the information he needs from him.  (He implies the beat-down is required to cover up their friendship).  The picture witnesses the casual violence that Popeye enacts on these racialized characters.  He is equally determined to bust Sal Boca, the Italian high-roller who he spots across a bar and decides must be dirty based entirely on dubious profiling that proves (in this case) to be right.  Boca leads Popeye to a high level drug smuggler (Ray) and his “french connection” who become the central (white) adversary to Popeye and his partners in the movie.  Popeye makes a lot of questionable moves on the street, but we believe it’s all he really lives for and we can’t help but be riveted.  He’s such a loose canon we want to see what he’ll do next. Even when it’s uncomfortable to follow along with him we can’t look away.

The only issue with James Cameron is that he’s evolved to a point where movies can barely contain the level of his ambition anymore. Avatar: The Way of Water is only the second feature he’s made in the 25 years since Titanic, and it frequently feels as if he’s working in a completely different medium from any other filmmaker. The original Avatar, which released in 2009, was a very good - at times genuinely great - movie that was rightfully hailed for its groundbreaking innovations in 3D and motion-capture technology, even if its shopworn sci-fi narrative was merely serviceable… the edges smoothed and sanded, its dimensions meticulously and self-consciously tailored for mass consumption in a way that fell short of his stone-cold genre classics of the 80s and 90s.

The Way of Water returns us to Pandora - the lush and untamed alien planet fueled by Cameron’s unbridled imagination - where Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), the ex-marine turned heroic savior and clan leader to the blue-skinned, feline-like alien race known as the Na’vi, and his fierce-hearted warrior-mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) have settled into a peaceful life of domestic normalcy. But, inevitably, humans (also known as the “Sky People”) return en masse, with designs on ruthlessly milking Pandora for all its many resources (in addition to unobtanium, a special brain enzyme unique to a whale-like creature known as a Tulkun has become a priceless anti-aging drug back on Earth) - and that unexpectedly includes Jake’s arch-nemesis Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), whose memories and consciousness have been downloaded into a new, state-of-the-art avatar body, along with the rest of his gum-popping, “hoo-rah” war dogs who were collectively slain in the first movie (and don’t feel guilty if they were collectively purged from your memory banks the moment the end credits started rolling).  

Recognizing the immediate danger his family is in, Jake elects to sever ties with the Omaticaya clan and seek asylum with the reef-dwelling Metkayina people - effectively entering self-exile. Pandora isn’t always as conceptually enthralling as Cameron seems to think it is, but in this case the cultural and physiological differences within the Na’vi legitimately compel. The Metkayina, with their fin-like bone structure and paddle-shaped tails (and foam green skin tones), have acclimated to a life spent in the ocean; the forest skills of the Sully brood are of little use to them. As Jake’s family attempt to integrate and adapt, Cameron - in a brazen move - all but sidelines Worthington and Saldana as he shifts the narrative focus squarely onto their children - specifically Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), who was birthed by the avatar body of the late Grace Augustine (don’t ask), and their younger son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), who, a strong case could be made, is the actual protagonist of the movie. The gambit pays off. The teen drama is fairly artless on the surface (Lo’ak squabbles with the Chief’s sons, but strikes chaste romantic sparks with his daughter Reya), but such are Cameron’s gifts as a storyteller - he takes simple and familiar building blocks, paints with the broadest of emotional brushes… and yet the end result consistently transcends the sum of its parts. 

For those who’ve grown numb to the artificial pallor of increasingly cheap, homogenized green screen in studio blockbusters, it’s difficult to overstate the level of technical brilliance on display here. The 3D craze sputtered out between Avatar releases, mainly because - with a few minor exceptions (Scorsese with Hugo; Ang Lee with Life of Pi) - no director came close to Cameron’s exacting visual standards. Rarely was the tech showcased over these past dozen years with any true artistic vitality or sense of purpose. Even for those (such as myself) who remain agnostic in regards to the cinematic necessity of 3D, it’s impossible to deny the immersive, scalpel-sharp clarity of the imagery Cameron conjures - particularly when he leads us into uncharted waters (literally), beneath the surface of Pandora’s fantastical oceans. As was the case with the first Avatar, the visual seams literally do not show. Every frame maintains the highest visual fidelity. It genuinely feels as if the movie were filmed on location on some distant alien planet (which, knowing Cameron’s fanatical perfectionism, doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility). This is astounding moviemaking.     

The Way of Water is a deeper, richer experience than the original Avatar… but it’s also the peculiar film that somehow suffers from too much story while - conversely - not quite having enough of it. There’s so much going on (we receive an almost Moby Dick-level immersion into Pandora’s stomach-churning Tulkan trade), and yet… the driving conflict never amounts to much more than Quaritch’s rabidly one-note pursuit of the Sully brood. I was a big defender of Stephen Lang’s performance in the first film, arguing that his lack of moral shading was an effective throwback to 80s action villains who were deliberately bad to the bone. But the character’s shtick feels more tiresome the second time around. A Wrath of Khan approach - in which Quaritch’s bulldog-like obsession with Jake actually comes to threaten his side’s overarching goals - might have paid dividends… but Cameron actually has a far simpler solution. That would be the character of Spider (Jack Champion), Quaritch’s teenage son, who was left behind on Pandora as an infant (babies can’t be put into cryo) and effectively grew up feral as a surrogate member of the Na’vi. Frustratingly, their relationship can only skim the surface - even in a 190-minute movie, the subplots keep crowding each other out of the way, fighting for precious oxygen.      ​

However, such criticisms tend to get swept aside in the face of Avatar’s towering final hour. As an action director, Cameron remains second-to-none. Jake and the Metkayina engage in ocean-based combat with Quaritch’s battle fleet (a tidy inversion of the aerial climax of the first film) and Cameron’s iron-gripped control of the logistics is absolute. But what truly impresses is the balance between the epic and the intimate… the familial bonds tested by the crucible of war. “Wherever we go… this family is our fortress,” Jake comments at one point - a theme that will undoubtedly echo across future sequels. For those who grew up on Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss and Titanic, there’s a dispiriting sense that Cameron’s filmography has been left wanting in the 21st century - that we’ve been deprived of one of the medium’s great blockbuster visionaries. But the reason no one else makes movies like these is because no one else can. Cameron appears wedded to Pandora for the foreseeable future (as many as three more could be on the way), but if he continues to raise the bar on what’s possible on-screen there’s no reason to feel blue about it.