Jared Leto in Tron: Ares
TRON: ARES
A sci-fi excursion that's neither as scientific as you may need nor as fictional as you may want, Tron: Ares finds the fate of humanity resting in the hands of either a global-weaponry mogul or a video-game mastermind. So, you know, we're pretty much effed any way you slice it.
The news about the movie itself, though, is considerably less grim. Dusting off IP that Disney feels the need to resurrect every 15 to 28 years, director Joachim Rønning extends the worlds of 2010's Tron: Legacy and 1984's Jeff Bridges-led Tron with a feature-length meditation on the perils and potential perks of AI, and it isn't bad. That is to say, the visuals are arresting and occasionally spectacular, the (plot-hole-ridden) narrative is easy to follow, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, under their Nine Inch Nails moniker, supply an energetic, synth-heavy, aggressively loud score that convinces you that what you're witnessing is momentous even when it's not – and it's usually not. As scripted by Jesse Wigutow, with David DiGilio getting a “story by” credit, the characters are tissue-paper thin and the answers to troublesome questions might as well be answered with a simple “Because.” There's also just so much Jared Leto. Yet unlike Legacy, Rønning's outing at least didn't cause me to nod off, which, beyond the throbbing electronica of its Daft Punk soundtrack, is the only thing I genuinely recall from the 2010 experience. Ares may not be the neo-futurist, über-relevant opus you sense it aiming to be, but “diverting” and “watchable,” in this context, certainly suffice.
An opening TV-news montage of events from 1982 to 2025 gets us up to speed (and underlines that you don't need to remember Legacy in the slightest), the information that Bridges' former ENCON CEO and original Tron creator Kevin Flynn is still missing leading to the introduction of Ares' warring tech magnates Eve Kim (Greta Lee) and Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters). Both have conquered the laws of physics by discovering how to make digital images exist as tangible objects – but only for 29 minutes at a time. They key to making them last longer, potentially forever, lies with something called the “permanence code,” which Eve and Julian are hungry to find for opposing reasons. ENCON's new CEO Eve wants to use the technological miracle to make medical advances and feed the planet. Julian, CEO of Dillinger Systems, wants to build “peacekeeping” forces of indestructible power with armies of soldiers who look like Jared Leto. It's when this Leto prototype, named Ares, first encounters rain that Julian's evil scheme begins to go awry, because it turns out that a few droplets, combined with evidence of Eve's unwavering goodness, are all it takes for this AI to grow a conscience on its way to developing a soul. Soon enough, Ares and Eve are on the run hoping to secure the permanence code before Julian does, a quest made more treacherous by the routine imprinting of another AI – Jodie Turner-Smith's Athena – who's on their tails and hell-bent on eliminating them.
I'm not sure how lucid that synopsis reads, but in practice, Ares' storyline is blessedly coherent. This was one of those rare times in which I was relieved to see the Disney imprint on a movie that's not expressly designed for kids, because the studio's practice of making action and behavior as understandable-for-all-demographics as possible really helps in getting through the massive amounts of computerese and cyberspeak here. Tireless champion of the underprivileged Eve, still mourning the loss of her late sister, is obviously a good guy, so it's safe to root for whatever nonsense plan she devises. Consequently, we know we can boo and hiss every morsel of gobbledygook that comes from the mouth of twitchy, grandiose Julian, an American weasel so villainous he's been given an icy British mother – or rather, a mom played by Gillian Anderson, who's now clearly committed to a British dialect for every role she accepts, regardless of necessity. (The accent work is impeccable, Gillian, and your Margaret Thatcher was a delight. But seriously: You. Are. From. Chicago.)
Yet what are we to make of Jared Leto? Which begs the question: What are we ever to make of Jared Leto? How did he get to be such a frequently top-billed star, and why didn't I get a vote? It's tempting to say he's spent the last 15 years being wrong for every part he's been cast in, which might partly account for his against-type Oscar victory (against nominees including Bradley Cooper and Michael Fassbender, no less). That would suggest, though, that there are roles he's right for, and I'm struggling to figure out what they might be. His Ares, thankfully, isn't one of Leto's godawful performances (House of Gucci, Suicide Squad), or even one of his “What on earth are you doing?!” portrayals (Morbius, The Little Things). Playing a variant on Schwarzenegger's android from Terminator II, Leto is actually pretty benign in the latest Tron. And you still don't get him.
This is largely the fault of Wigutow's script, which never comes close to explaining how Ares' physicalized assemblage of zeroes and ones develops sentience through rainwater, let alone develops a sense of humor. (It at least made sense when Schwarzenegger's Terminator got one, as all of his behavior was learned from a sardonic tween.) Yet even though Leto's conception of Ares as a mission-forward babe in the woods tracks – as does, to a certain degree, the AI's obsession with the 1980s as a cultural high-water mark – his rhythms feel off. How does one deliver Ares' monologue about Depeche Mode being superior to Mozart without scoring a single laugh? Leto doesn't seem quizzical or searching so much as overly medicated, and when Ares finally runs into Bridges' Grid-locked Kevin Flynn, it's like a watching a “Who's more stoned?” competition. Don't get me wrong: Their unacknowledged battle is amusing, even if Bridges wins by a considerable margin. But it's the Ares actor, not the character, who appears to be flailing, and Leto doing so little so much of the time merely highlights the performers who are doing way too much, principally Evans and Arturo Castro, the latter such a relentless punchline machine that I wished he would crumble to AI dust after 29 minutes.
Even with the wonderfully present Greta Lee around, though, I doubt many viewers are here for the characters, and so long as Rønning is focused on the stuff rather than those doing the stuff, his sequel is entertaining enough. While that crumbling-to-AI-dust bit may be the latest riff on Thanos' finger-snap disintegrations, it's still a nifty effect, as are the franchise's familiar Killer Frisbee attacks. (I know, I know … they're called Identity Discs. But they're Killer Frisbees.) The Light Cycles that glow a dazzling neon red are kick-ass, too, and employed for the movie's single-most effective sequence: a thrilling high-speed chase – and the most recognizably video-game-esque one – with the vehicles' trails of orange luminescence creating physical barriers and slicing Earth cars in half. There's genuine awe in the scene of Athena taking to the sky in a hovering Recognizer; the craft kind of looks like Spinal Tap's Stonehenge rocks but at Devil's Tower size, and there's more than a hint of Close Encounters grandeur to the sight.
Meanwhile, we '80s nerds will find it hard not to giggle when Ares first lands inside Flynn's primitive Grid, and we find the place practically unchanged since the original Tron, complete with that slender banana-yellow Light Cycle that looked barely wide enough for a passenger. (Charmingly, its movement that seemed so zippy in '82 now feels jalopy-level slow.) Adding the aural frosting of that propulsive, unignorable Nine Inch Nails score, there's more than enough visual and sonic thrill in Tron: Ares to override your complaints about human elements such as performance and dialogue and logic and … . Wait. Is that perhaps precisely what the filmmakers intended? Getting us to love the tech while the people and what they say become afterthoughts? The theme of Rønning's movie, after all, isn't “Fear AI.” It's “Fear AI … but if it says it wants to help you and looks like Jared Leto, just go with it.” I think I was happier merely being afraid.
ROOFMAN
It's rare to find your biggest complaint about a movie all but nullified during the end credits. But after two hours of director/co-writer Derek Cianfrance's based-on-true-events caper Roofman, just as I was thinking “That was terrific, but there's no way its protagonist was that lovable in real life,” we're treated to end-credits news footage with some of the actual people depicted in the film. And guess what. Turns out that Jeffrey Manchester, whose documented offenses include robbery with a dangerous weapon and malicious use of explosives, may indeed have been nearly as adorable as Channing Tatum.
Let's be sure to accentuate that “nearly,” though, because Tatum is on a full-scale charm offensive in Cianfrance's crime dramedy, and even those still cynical about the man's gifts might find themselves hopelessly won over. It's far easier to be cynical about the legitimacy of Roofman's on-screen happenings, but if Wikipedia is to be trusted – and when isn't it? – just about everything that Cianfrance and co-scribe Kirt Gunn present checks out. Jeffrey Allen Manchester did serve in the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division, where he would learn skill sets that would come in handy later. He was indeed married with three young children before, claiming financial necessity, he initiated a spree of robberies in which he unlawfully entered venues – primarily fast-food chains, usually McDonald's – through their roofs. (Hence his nickname.) He was ultimately caught and sent to prison. He escaped and spent six months hiding out in a Toys “R” Us in Charlotte, North Carolina. He frequently crept out of hiding and eventually became a trusted member of the community, attending church functions and dating local divorcee Leigh Wainscott. Through it all, he never stopped committing crimes. And he was, to hear people tell it, just about the nicest guy on God's green earth.
This is one of those tales so endearingly ludicrous that if it weren't true, someone would've had to invent it. That's why it was somewhat unanticipated, though not totally unwelcome, that Cianfrance would initially treat Roofman's scenario with such seriousness. Granted, the man's résumé – Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines, the HBO miniseries I Know This Much Is True – is no barrel of laughs. Yet both before and after the early robbery that finds Jeffrey, at peak sweetness, giving his coat to the McDonald's manager before locking him and his employees in the freezer, the overall tone is melancholic, if not actively downbeat. It's made abundantly clear that economic hardship and his desire to give his children the world is the impetus for Jeffrey's terrible decisions, and even passages that would seem to be played for laughs tend to end on notes of discomfort. (A slapstick chase with the police tailing a costumed Jeffrey, one that finds them all bouncing uncomfortably on a trampoline, climaxes with the center-screen sight of Jeffrey's shell-shocked seven-year-old daughter, whose birthday party has just been ruined.) The drama is effective, and Tatum acts it for all it's worth. But the movie doesn't truly liven up until Jeffrey makes his way to that Toys “R” Us, at which point the film and its star find what was previously lacking: unfettered, liberating joy.
One of the more under-the-radar titles among Tatum's credits is 2017's Logan Lucky, Steven Soderbergh's fantastically fun, Ocean's 11-y lark involving the robbery of the Charlotte Motor Speedway. (What's with Channing's apparent need to commit felonies in North Carolina?) The Toys “R” Us section of Roofman is like a giddy Logan Lucky highlight reel. There's an enormous kick in watching the procedure behind Jeffrey ensconcing himself in a hollow wall behind the bike display: hiding in the bathroom ceiling; deleting the video surveillance; disarming the security systems. Once he's free to roam about after closing, given that he sleeps in his hideout during store hours, Jeffrey doesn't roam so much as cartwheel – a buff, adult Kevin McCallister wolfing down peanut M&M's and causing an insane ruckus, a nightly cleanup of debris being the escaped con's only duty. Toggling between sly demonstrations of technical precision (baby monitors are covertly installed everywhere) and explosions of silliness, this segment is a howl – the portion of the film you wish would go on forever.
It's to Kirsten Dunst's enormous credit that you don't much mind when it doesn't. As Toys “R” Us employee Leigh Wainscott, Dunst's natural radiance and straight-shooting demeanor are so alluring, even from the grainy black-and-white of a baby monitor, that it seems perfectly reasonable (if stupid) for Jeffrey to eventually pursue a relationship with her. The script may overplay Jeffrey's saintliness in his dealings with Leigh's two daughters (Lily Collias and Kennedy Moyer), but the domestic scenes add texture and warmth, and Tatum and Dunst share relaxed, frisky rapport. Their bliss also compounds the knowledge, traditional in a Cianfrance, that things aren't going to end happily. And the screenwriters deserve props for not disguising the fact that, for all of his “generosity” in providing stolen toys, Jeffrey is treating Leigh and her kids abominably, suggesting a future that he knows they won't have together, his actions growing shadier and more destructive the closer he gets to true escape.
All told, I had a great time at this funny, touching effort, and that's not something I can say in regard to any of Derek Cianfrance's previous projects. Beyond the excellent Dunst, the film is almost ridiculously stacked with supporting talent: LaKeith Stanfield; Juno Temple; Peter Dinklage (a bit too cartoonish); Ben Mendelsohn; Uzo Aduba; Melonie Diaz; Emory Cohen; Jimmy O. Yang; Tony Revolori. Tatum gives one of his richest, most heartfelt performances to date without skimping on the comic inventiveness, and after so many upstanding average Joes and dim bulbs who are awfully good at their jobs, it feels almost revelatory to see him playing, for a change, the smartest one in the room. The dialogue is sharp; the anxiety tangible; the rooting interest strong. And even if Roofman weren't as well-produced as it is, its truly lunatic true story would likely keep you invested, despite, amazingly, some of its most flabbergasting details not making their way to the screen. Apparently, in addition to a Toys “R” Us, Jeffrey also set up secret living quarters in a Circuit City, which police discovered by finding one Manchester fingerprint in the store – on a DVD of Catch Me If You Can. Oh the irony.
KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN
Beyond writer/director Bill Condon and diva supreme Jennifer Lopez, I'm not sure who was clamoring for a film version of the Kiss of the Spider Woman musical. I would've asked a fellow patron at my Saturday-afternoon screening in Chicagoland, but I was the only one in the auditorium.
Plenty of people, myself included, admire the material, which debuted as a 1976 novel by Argentinian author Manuel Puig, then became a 1983 play, then became a 1985 film (and Best Actor Oscar winner for William Hurt), then became a 1993 Broadway spectacle that ran for nearly three years and won seven Tony Awards. But all that was a long time ago, and the stage show is rarely produced, and musicals these days aren't exactly Kander & Ebb, though Spider Woman itself very much is. So should I be surprised that the movie feels like such an awkward relic: three decades late in its musical stylings, four decades late in its corny, artificial dialogue, and perhaps even five decades late as a political piece with “risque” sympathy for a queer protagonist? Although it boasts a handful of affecting moments and a poignant, charismatic breakout performance by Tonatiuh, Condon's adaptation likely wouldn't have worked even if the presentation didn't feel so moldy. But despite the movie's 1983 setting, it might've at least felt relevant – a picture of the past that speaks to the present. Instead, depressingly, all that's being spoken to are audiences who might wonder what The Odd Couple would look like if Felix were openly gay, and if Officer Murray were replaced by a heavily air-brushed J. Lo.
Somewhat unexpectedly, in its telling of an Argentinian political prisoner (Diego Luna's Valentin) who shares a cell with a sex offender (Tonatiuh's Luis) who's secretly there to extract information, Condon's feature more closely resembles Puig's book and Hector Babenco's '85 film than it does the musical. You know, except for in the musical numbers. Presented as memories from a classic-Hollywood song-and-dance entertainment, one that Luis recounts to Valentin to alleviate the tedium, these wildly colorful sequences are a sharp contrast to the dourness of the prison setting – and they're tedious in their own right. It doesn't help that only one of the compositions by hallowed Cabaret collaborators John Kander and Fred Ebb is the least bit hummable or memorable, and as staged here, with the male chorus writhing in leather under dramatic down lights, “Where You Are” unwisely suggests a musical version of Cruising. Yet while I'm grateful that Condon had cinematographer Tobias A. Schliessler shoot full bodies in motion rather than having the dances edited to death à la Chicago, Sergio Trujillo's choreography is generally unexceptional and repetitive, and there isn't a single number with the electricity of even the dullest routines in La La Land or The Greatest Showman.
Lopez, alas, is her own specific problem. Playing Hollywood starlet Ingrid Luna and the two figures she portrays in Luis' cinematic retelling – the lovestruck Aurora and seductive, deadly Spider Woman – Lopez, filter trickery and all, looks sensational, and she's obviously game to sing and dance and be the belle of the ball. But while she stays on (occasionally wobbly) pitch throughout, her dance-pop vocals are all wrong for the languorous ballads and belting show tunes Kander and Ebb supply; her energetic hoofing is adequate but hardly showstopping; and her intentionally nuance-free acting in the movie re-creations isn't significantly different from the star's acting in modern-day rom-coms. Lopez's casting is ideal in theory but lackluster in practice, and Condon's senses of framing, pacing, and timing all seem to vanish in the film-within-the-film vignettes. I honestly never thought tune-filled scenes of faux-Technicolor glamour would make me yearn for the claustrophobia of a dank prison cell.
It's there, however, that Kiss of the Spider Woman works – at least on those occasions in which it does work. The cutesy opposites-attract banter in Luna's and Tonatiuh's opening segments and Luis' meant-to-be-endearing self-mockery make it rough going for a while. (To be fair, these are also issues in Spider Woman's other iterations.) But after both actors stop pushing so hard to make their initial impacts – Luna gruff, humorless, and determinedly hetero; Tonatiuh winsome, fanciful, and unapologetically queer – they settle into a lovely, comfortable performance rhythm, and you begin to truly feel for their characters' plights. It was smart of Condon to ditch the songs that, in the stage version, Valentin and Luis croon during their incarceration; the lack of musical escape exacerbates the real-world ugliness, and the songs weren't great anyway. (The male leads do sing and dance, though, as Luna and Tonatiuh also portray Aurora's respective beau Armando and traveling companion Kendall in the film-within-the-film – Tonatiuh is quite fine, Luna tries hard, and both, when dancing, look at their feet too much.) Even more than the décor and grim lighting, though, it's Luna and particularly Tonatiuh who allow you to feel the oppression of the surroundings. They also make you wish that Condon had eliminated the musical elements entirely and simply remade Babenco's film.
Granted, in that case, we may have spent the whole movie wondering why Luna's co-star wasn't Gael García Bernal instead. While it's wonderful and apt that the role of Luis went to a queer Hispanic actor – how far we've come since blond, blue-eyed William Hurt played the part! – Spider Woman seems so natural a fit for Y tu mamá también co-stars and decades-long besties Luna and Bernal that it's almost distracting not to see them opposite one another here. (My guess is that Bernal being straight was a completely understandable deal-breaker … that, and his rendition of Coco's “Remember Me” at the 2018 Oscars.) Yet it's hard to fathom who could be disappointed in the casting of Tonatiuh, who proves outstandingly adept at blending mordant wit and pathos, and whose beautiful, searching eyes and sad smile routinely fill in the script's emotional blanks. I'm sure that he and Luna could've done more with the material had they been allowed; it was a shame to loose the book's and previous film's implication that mutual manipulation may be at work in Valentin's and Luis' “noble” climactic gestures. They still do well with what they're given, though, and Tonatiuh does it superbly. If only Kiss of the Spider Woman itself weren't so easy to kiss off.
JOHN CANDY: I LIKE ME
Director Colin Hanks' John Candy: I Like Me would've been worthwhile even if the documentary did nothing more than treat us to home-movie clips, interview footage, and scenes from the comic actor's many big- and small-screen appearances. In truth, it really can't do much more than that, at least in terms of what we expect from traditional portraits of show-biz figures. The Canadian Emmy winner, who passed away in 1994 at age 43, wasn't involved in any public scandals; he was a loving father of two married to the same woman for 15 years; while he certainly ate, drank, and smoked too much, he had no hard-drug problems and stayed out of rehab. As the first celebrity to offer on-screen testimony here, Bill Murray half-jokes that Hanks' doc (newly streaming on Prime Video) might wind up boring because no one will have an unkind word to say about Candy, and they don't. But this loving bear-hug of a salute still packs a singular punch, given that it's one of the few works of its type to demonstrate how easy it was to take its subject for granted. And if you were around during Candy's heyday, which basically constituted his entire career, lord was it easy.
After making an early impression in Steven Spielberg's 1979 World War II comedy 1941, Candy went on to amass nearly three-dozen movie credits before his death, plus numerous television credits that included, of course, his stint on the legendary sketch series SCTV Network 90. He wasn't always the lead, or even principal support, and it sometimes takes years-later returns to the films to recall his scene-stealing work in The Blues Brothers and National Lampoon's Vacation and Little Shop of Horrors. But for more than a decade, the guy seemed to always be around. In I Like Me, Macaulay Culkin makes the case that Candy should be the actor most associated with John Hughes, given that while presumed title-holder Molly Ringwald appeared in three of Hughes' comedies, Candy appeared in nine. That alone made the actor ubiquitous for his time; Hughes wrote, produced, and directed a lot. Candy, though, also starred and co-starred in some real stinkers (as he admits during interview footage here, he generally did so as favors to friends), and as much as you adored the performer, it became a chore to even contemplate sitting through such long-forgotten slapsticks as The Great Outdoors, Who's Harry Crumb?, and Delirious. I can skip this one, you'd think. He'll make another.
Eventually, it should go without saying, he didn't. So in addition to being a celebration of the man's talent, presence, decency, and legacy, I Like Me stands as a necessary reminder that even when Candy's projects sucked, he never gave them less than full commitment – a lazy John Candy performance simply doesn't exist. And because he was omnipresent and made everything he did look effortless, he never quite received his deserved due as an actor. As much as Planes, Trains, & Automobiles is cherished as a holiday staple, it might take Steve Martin's appraisal here, and the accompanying film clips, for you to recognize just how good Candy is when his boisterous traveling salesman is emotionally clobbered by Martin's tightly wound ad exec. (You're reminded just how good Martin is, too.) In truth, my chief complaint with Hanks' doc lies with movie titles not appearing in conjunction with their clips, because I think others would join me in seeking them out if we knew what they were. I'm almost sure that much of the lovely paternal work we're shown is from Summer Rental, but I haven't seen that comedy in 40-plus years, so I can't be sure. Similarly, younger viewers may be wondering what film found Candy getting pretty intense from behind sunglasses, not knowing that it's Oliver Stone's JFK.
After all, aren't the snippets of favorite and previously unseen performances the main draw for these kinds of documentary profiles? I mean, sure, we also want to learn things, and there's valuable footage concerning Candy's lifelong battles with anxiety, weight, impostor syndrome, and his fear of losing friends and family, his own father having died on his son's fifth birthday. (The party, probably traumatically, went on anyway.) It's fun to see which celebs agree to be interviewed, the sincere, frequently teary fans here including Dan Aykroyd, Mel Brooks, Conan O'Brien, Colin's dad Tom Hanks, and Candy's SCTV teammates Robin Duke, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, and Dave Thomas. (Alas, we'll apparently have to wait until Spaceballs 2 for another Rick Moranis sighting.) But whether you're a dyed-in-the-wool fanatic or new to the fold, check out I Like Me for the extraordinary evidence of John Candy's comic genius, be it while being interrogated by Culkin in Uncle Buck or ad libbing with Tom Hanks in Splash or confiscating a sucker's poker money in Stripes. Or, in my (and Conan's) favorite bit, appearing in an SCTV trailer for a Western titled Yellowbelly, where his nervous-Nelly cowpoke shoots a young child in the back mere seconds before doing the same to Catherine O'Hara. Then or now, who but the eternally lovable, unspeakably gifted John Candy could possibly have gotten away with that?
