The latest film releases include Back to Black, IF, Gasoline Rainbow, and Babes. Weighing in are Shawn Edwards, a film critic at Fox 4 News in Kansas City and co-founder of the African American Film Critics Association, and Katie Walsh, film reviewer for the Tribune News Service and the Los Angeles Times.
Back to Black
Sam Taylor-Johnson directs this long-awaited biopic about Amy Winehouse, who died 13 years ago. Marisa Abela stars as the jazz-pop singer.
Edwards: “Back to Black isn't as nearly as hard-hitting or earth-shattering as the 2015 Oscar winner documentary. … The singer died at age 27 of alcohol poisoning, and she was known for having a really problematic and troubling life. And yes, the movie does a great job of capturing that. But … the movie does a really poor job of really taking us in a new direction and helping us discover new elements about Amy Winehouse’s life. … And the biggest flaw is, sadly, you get to see very little of the genius that went into creating her music.”
Walsh: “It's so impressive that [Abela] does her own singing, which I don't think was originally the plan. But as she started training to perform the songs, she really captures Winehouse’s sound.
… [The film is] just a very reductive, almost insultingly reductive portrait of her demons because they ascribe everything to the toxic relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil. … It's just like she's a girl with a great voice and a bad boyfriend, and that's the end of the story. They also tried to put this idea that she's really sad and tormented because she hasn't had kids, which I just find really insulting. …
I found it to be a really incurious and condescending portrait of Amy Winehouse. And she was just such an outsized talent, and I loved her music so much, and watching her downfall was such a horror. … This facsimile just can't even come close to the real thing.”
IF
In this animation, a girl reconnects kids with their forgotten imaginary friends. The star-studded cast includes Ryan Reynolds, Emily Blunt, Steve Carrell, Awkwafina, Matt Damon, and Bradley Cooper.
Walsh: “The trailer makes so much more sense than the actual movie. Casting is very bizarre. But it really just feels like such a celebrity vanity project for John Krasinski. He got a whole bunch of celebrities to give voices: George Clooney, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon. All these people are voicing these imaginary friends for one or two lines. It's just this incredibly strange, nonsensical story about matchmaking imaginary friends back with their old kids. But then there's no stakes. Nobody knows what happens to the imaginary friends if they don't match up with the kids. … The other very strange thing about this movie is that it is incredibly somber and sad. It is about dead and dying parents.”
Edwards: “The movie makes no sense. It's part Toy Story, part Monsters Inc., part The Sixth Sense, part Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. … This will probably only appeal to 3 to 8-year-olds. And then the score — I've heard happier music at a funeral. … It seemed like it was an idea that wasn't fully formed, but they moved ahead and did the movie anyway.”
Gasoline Rainbow
After graduating from high school in small-town Oregon, five teenagers venture 500 miles to the Pacific coast.
Edwards: “The beautiful thing about this movie is it actually functions like a true road trip. It's unpredictable, it's organic, it's haphazard. But it's all pretty uniquely authentic. … This doesn't feel scripted at all, which makes it lean toward feeling like a documentary. … It's neither an examination or an indictment of Gen Zers. It's just this movie that breaks all the rules of structure because there's no beginning, there's no middle, there's no end. And basically, we're just getting a glimpse of these young adults just existing. It's almost like a hippie film, but made in 2024. But I thought that was brilliant because somehow it does manage to avoid all the tropes that you usually see in this type of genre film.”
Walsh: “They cast these kids, they're first-time actors … but they really did become friends. … All of their interactions are very authentic. And then the events along the road trip are planned, but they just let them play out and captured the spontaneity, the improvisation, the conversations. … The kids really care for each other in such a beautiful way. And so what comes through is really their bond, their friendships, and then also just their openness, their pliability as people in this brief, fleeting moment in time.
… It feels very specific to Gen Z, but there is a timelessness because it really makes you long for that period of time in your life that's so short, where you're not a kid and not quite an adult, you haven't been hardened into a person yet. So it really just made me feel so nostalgic. … I loved experiencing those feelings again of freedom and possibility. I think it's a real triumph. And it's stunningly beautiful.”
Babes
This comedy about the highs, lows, and unknowns of pregnancy stars Michelle Buteau and Ilana Glazer, who also co-wrote the film. It is directed by Pamela Adlon.
Edwards: “Babes felt like a movie that was written, directed, and produced by a man. …The way that they deal with pregnancy and the way that they deal with friendships between two women, it all seemed very juvenile, and none of it seemed to be based in reality.”
Walsh: “Babes did not work for me at all. … It's a gross-out comedy about pregnancy, which, there is a world for that. … It doesn't have any structure or stakes to the screenplay. The jokes are not there. I did not find it funny. I'm a little bit over the overperformed shtick that's going on here, and I just didn't find it very plausible at all. … It’s a flop for me.”