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      ‘He’s All That’ Review: Much Ado About Nothing

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      This gender-flipped reboot of “She’s All That” lazily rehashes the original but without its endearing weirdness.Set in the late-90s heyday of MTV, “She’s All That” featured a jock who, after being dumped by his girlfriend, accepts a bet to turn a geek into a prom queen. His prize? Saving face. In “He’s All That,” the new gender-flipped Netflix remake, the stakes have shifted. For the teen beauty influencer Padgett (TikTok superstar Addison Rae), popularity pays the bills. When she’s humiliated by her jerk boyfriend on a livestream, she decides to transform the brooding Cameron (Tanner Buchanan) into a prom king in a bid to win back her followers and brand endorsements.It’s a smart premise that speaks to how the times have a-changed, so it’s a pity that “He’s All That” makes such little use of it. Save for the cellphones the characters wield like weapons, Mark Waters’s reboot lazily rehashes the 1999 film, although without its endearing weirdness. Where the original had Freddie Prinze Jr. doing performance art to woo his edgy conquest, Padgett takes riding lessons with Cameron, who we’re supposed to believe is a loser in spite of his equestrian skills and eight-pack abs.Not that it was any easier to buy that Rachel Leigh Cook (who cameos here as Padgett’s mom) was ugly because she had glasses on. Hot people pretending to be homely is par for the course in makeover movies; the real thrill lies in watching opposites attract. But the catfights, confessions, and dance-offs in “He’s All That” lack the sting of real romantic conflict, and there’s nary a spark between Rae and Buchanan. Rae struggles to modulate her camera-ready bubbliness in moments that require pathos, while Buchanan plays the emo loner with reluctance, switching too easily to handsome-loverboy mode. If they dutifully deliver the film’s platitudinous message — “be yourself” — it’s with the conviction of a makeup brand selling a “natural look.”He’s All ThatNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Vacation Friends’ Review: Life Lessons Amid Chaos

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      Clay Tarver’s movie is a better grade of outrageous couples comedy.The outrageous couples comedy is by now an established if not reliable genre. “Vacation Friends” has a quality advantage in the casting of the couples; Lil Rel Howery, Yvonne Orji, John Cena and Meredith Hagner are all guaranteed laugh generators.Howery and Orji are Marcus and Emily; Marcus is a buttoned-up planner whose surprise proposal to Emily is overturned pretty much as soon as they arrive at a swank Mexican resort. Their own suite, which had been festooned with rose petals, is flooded on arrival. The culprits are the upstairs neighbors Ron and Kyla, who left their Jacuzzi running before they went out to jet ski.Played by Cena and Hagner, the couple embody spontaneity pushed to the point of psychopathy. These two rim their margarita glasses with cocaine. In less than 24 hours they trash both a jet ski and a yacht. Ron initiates a William Tell act with his automatic. And then things get sloppy.Seven months later, Marcus and Emily are to be wed in Atlanta. Components designed to sabotage a serene union include the bride’s snobbish father, hostile brother, a pair of heirloom rings that Marcus must keep safe, and more. Ron and Kyla literally crash the event. True to the subgenre, the ensuing chaos also contains mutated “life lessons.”Clay Tarver, a veteran of the TV series “Silicon Valley” (and a founder of the postpunk band Chavez) directs with an eye and ear that’s a cut above what one usually gets with this sort of fare. (A scene in which Marcus and Ron hallucinate on tree fungus is inventively lo-fi.) What Kyla says of the cocaine-margarita stunt — “it gets the job done” — can be applied to the movie as a whole.Vacation FriendsRated R for outrageous couple comedy outrageousness. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      Ynairaly Simo Reps the Bronx (and Tweenage Zest) in ‘Vivo’

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      The 14-year-old Dominican American actress makes her big screen debut in the animated musical on Netflix, with songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda.Every time Ynairaly Simo’s mother asks her what she wants to eat at home, Simo tells her the same thing: moro de guandules con bistec, or rice with pigeon peas and steak.But if they’re dining out? It’s got to be the mofongo — a Puerto Rican dish made with fried plantains — from a shop two blocks away from where Simo lives with her family in the West Bronx.The rich food culture in Fordham Heights is a piece of what makes their life so full there.“We are proud to live in the Bronx, and we are proud that we are Latinos,” Ynairaly’s mother, Ydamys Simo, said in an interview. “And we always encourage that to her: Always be proud of who you are. And never change the essence that makes you you.”Ynairaly (pronounced ya-NAH-ruh-ly) Simo, 14, is the voice of Gabi, an energetic and eccentric preteen, in the animated musical “Vivo” on Netflix. Though Ynairaly was born and raised in New York, both sides of her family are Dominican.“I’m very glad to be playing Gabi and be Dominican,” Simo said in a video interview, in front of a canary yellow wall in her mother’s room. “Because girls my age — or younger — can be like, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s Dominican! And she’s an actress? I could be an actress. I’m Dominican.’”Simo felt a similar spark when she saw Zoe Saldaña as Gamora in Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy.” She instantly loved the green warrior character, and looked up who played her.When she realized Saldaña played Gamora — and that the actress was Dominican — it hit her: She could be in a Marvel movie someday, too.Four years later, Simo and Saldaña would end up working together. Saldaña plays Rosa, Gabi’s mother, in “Vivo.” Since their recording sessions took place separately, the two have never met, but Simo still hopes to meet her idol.“I’m very glad to be playing Gabi and be Dominican,” Simo said.Josefina Santos for The New York Times“Vivo” is Simo’s first major role — although she’s been acting for years — and she worked alongside a cast of “icons,” as she put it, including Saldaña.Lin-Manuel Miranda voices the titular Vivo, a singer-musician kinkajou; the Buena Vista Social Club legend Juan de Marcos plays Andrés, Vivo’s owner; and Gloria Estefan plays Marta, Andrés’s old musical partner and unrequited love.Because of the nature of voice performance, Miranda was the only cast member Simo met in person. She was more than familiar with his work — she had, in fact, auditioned for a role in the film version of “In the Heights” — and was eager to collaborate with him.Miranda spent one-on-one time with Simo in the recording studio, helping her pin down high notes in her head voice and low notes in her chest voice. (Simo attends the Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music, where she learned she is naturally an alto.)The actress sings on five songs on the movie’s soundtrack, including “My Own Drum” — an earworm rap about being true to yourself — and its remix with the Grammy winner Missy Elliott. Miranda, known for his signature rapid-fire rapping, guided Simo along her first time in the genre.“He taught me: Get a deep breath,” Simo said. “And then learn the words, spit them out and make sure to say them, pronounce them very sharply.”Onscreen, “My Own Drum” unfolds in Gabi’s tween tornado of a bedroom (her backpack is full of slime) in Key West, Fla. It features, in the words of the director Kirk DeMicco, “almost like a Busta Rhymes, fisheye lens, fun-house scene,” intended to shake Vivo out of his comfort zone. Here, the role fit the actress.“There was this exuberant unpolished-ness to her that she just had, and this moxie that you can’t even act,” DeMicco said in an interview. “The way she delivered her lines” and “the little improvs that she did, the way she filled things in, the texture was just her.”Simo’s father, Joseph Simo, is a big fan of the scene, the song and the soundtrack. It’s his “No. 1 pick” whenever he’s at work, he said: He flips on the soundtrack and listens straight through from beginning to end.“One of the things that she always wanted to do is inspire kids: Latinos — and all the kids that are into acting and into music — to follow their dreams,” Joseph said in an interview. “And I told her the other day, ‘You see, your dreams are coming true.’”Simo’s parents are, of course, her biggest fans: Two weeks into August, they had already watched the movie 16 times. (The film began streaming on Aug. 6.) They’re not planning on stopping anytime soon.Ynairaly, center, with her parents, Ydamys and Joseph Simo.Josefina Santos for The New York TimesThey have supported their daughter’s career in the arts since it began. At age 3, Simo started modeling. At 5, she started acting — doing smaller gigs, like commercials. “Vivo” was her first singing role (although since its premiere, she’s performed the national anthem for the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Gotham Girls and the New York Liberty).But the road here was by no means easy. In July 2019, while “Vivo” was in production, Ynairaly underwent an almost 10-hour surgery to correct advanced scoliosis. Twenty screws and two metal plates later, doctors told her parents she might not be able to “move the way a normal child could” — at least for a while.The day after the surgery, the physical therapist asked her to take a couple of steps, one step at a time, her father said. She walked 20. That same summer, she learned how to swim. She danced. A month after the surgery, she convinced the doctors to let her go back to Los Angeles to record.Her family called her “Ynairaly la guerrera,” or Ynairaly the warrior. “Because that’s who she is,” her mother said. “She’s really determined.” More

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      ‘Candyman’ Review: Who Can Take a Sunrise, Sprinkle It With Blood?

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      The new take on the 1990s cult horror film returns the story to its old stomping ground, this time with Jordan Peele as a producer.The first time Candyman, the hook-wielding ghoul, hit the big screen it was 1992 and he was making mincemeat out of people in Cabrini-Green, the troubled public housing development in Chicago. Since then, residents have left (or been moved out), and more than a dozen buildings have been razed. Forgettable sequels have come and gone, too, yet Candyman abides, cult film characters being a more enduring and certainly more prized commodity than affordable housing.The original “Candyman,” written and directed by Bernard Rose, is more icky than scary, but it has real sting. It centers on the son of a formerly enslaved man — Tony Todd plays the title demon — who, once upon a time, was punished by racists for loving a white woman. Now he wanders about slicing and dicing those who summon him. Just look in a mirror and say his name five times (oh, go ahead), and wait for the blood to spurt. Among those who did back in the day was a white doctoral student who becomes a red-hot victim. The pain wasn’t exquisite, as Candyman promised, but it had its moments.In the sharp, shivery redo directed by Nia DaCosta, Candyman seems on hiatus. The time is the present and the place is the bougie community that’s sprung up around Cabrini-Green. There, in sleek towers with designer kitchens and walls of windows, the gentrifying vanguard sips wine, enjoying the view. Beyond, the city sparkles prettily and its ills are at a safe distance (if not for long). As the restless camera clocks the scene, Sammy Davis Jr. — a Black civil rights touchstone turned Richard M. Nixon supporter — belts out his sticky 1970s hit “The Candy Man” (“Who can take tomorrow/dip it in a dream.”) It’s a sly reminder, and warning, that the past always troubles the present.Sometimes the past also bites the present right where it hurts, and before long the opening calm has been violently upended. As the blood begins to gush and the body count rises, the story takes shape, as does the somewhat tense domestic life of a painter, Anthony (a very good Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), and a curator, the pointedly named Brianna (Teyonah Parris). They soon learn that Candyman never left (well, he is a valuable franchise property). Enter the scares and shrieks and anxious laughs, and the dependably indispensable Colman Domingo, who pops up with a Cheshire cat grin. There are also flashing police lights that aren’t as welcoming as they might be elsewhere.“Candyman” is the second feature from DaCosta, who made her debut with the modest drama “Little Woods.” She might have seemed a counterintuitive choice for this horror rethink, but while her first movie didn’t fully hold together, it was clear that she could direct actors and make meaning visually. She didn’t just clutter the frame with talking heads; she set (and exploited) moods and created an air of everyday, prickling unease, demonstrating a talent for the ineffable — for atmosphere — that she expands on here. It’s easy to shock viewers with splatter but the old gut-and-run gets awfully boring awfully fast. Far better is the slow creep, the horror that teases and then threatens.The dread inexorably builds in “Candyman,” which snaps into focus after Anthony learns of the boogeyman. Intrigued, he seizes on the tale of a Black spirit who stalked the area’s disadvantaged residents as grist for his art, which could use a creative kick. DaCosta — who shares script credit with Win Rosenfeld and Jordan Peele, who’s also a producer — nicely fills in the texture, stakes and emotional temperature of Anthony’s milieu with its cozy domesticity, artistic frustrations, gnawing jealousies and crossover dreams. The banter is believable, as are the pinpricks of disquiet and the weird suppurating wounds that increasingly mar this otherwise ordinary scene and its genial hero.It takes nothing away from DaCosta to note that “Candyman” is of an intellectual and political piece with Peele’s earlier work, including “Get Out” and “Us.” Like those movies, “Candyman” uses the horror genre to explore race (Peele gets under the skin), including ideas about who gets to play the hero — and villain — and why. Peele isn’t interested only in what scares us; he’s also asking who, exactly, we mean when we say “us.” As a form, horror is preoccupied with the unknown and ostensibly monstrous, a fixation that manifests in visions of otherness. Much, of course, depends on your point of view. (The series’ genesis is Clive Barker’s “The Forbidden,” set in a presumptively British slum.)DaCosta plays with perspective, shifting between Anthony’s and the intersecting, sometimes colliding worlds of more-successful artists, urban-legend propagators and, touchingly, profoundly scarred children. Throughout, she intersperses bits of shadow puppetry that work as a counterpoint to the main narrative, a reflexive device that emphasizes that “Candyman” is also fundamentally about storytelling. We tell some fictions to understand ourselves, to exist; others we tell to turn other human beings into monsters, to destroy. In “Candyman,” those who summon up this ghoul, thereby allowing him to tell his tale, first need to look at their reflections. When they do, they see innocence staring back at them — that, at least, is the story they tell themselves.CandymanRated R for horror-movie violence. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Lily Topples the World’ Review: What Goes Up

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      A gifted YouTuber gets a superficial profile in this lackadaisical documentary.If you’re not one of the more than 3 million subscribers to Lily Hevesh’s YouTube channel, then you may be unaware of what it takes to become a world-famous domino artist. “Lily Topples the World” aims to enlighten you; but this undisciplined, curiously shallow documentary from Jeremy Workman might leave you with more questions than answers.Blessed with a subject who is charmingly open and seemingly devoid of ego, Workman mostly keeps out of the way. Adopted from China as an infant, Hevesh, now 22, has been designing, building and toppling fabulously intricate contraptions since the age of 9, posting her efforts to YouTube. This passion requires patience and a certain obsessiveness, as well as a willingness to learn the basics of geometry and physics. The results are a divine fusion of engineering and aesthetics; so why are no engineers or artists invited to comment?In place of knowledgeable contributors are irritating music and blandly repetitive interviews as we follow Hevesh from convention appearances to meetings with ecstatic fans and collaborative projects with fellow topplers. With no real structure, the film becomes a blur of collapsing plastic rectangles. It’s all very pretty, but it’s also indulgent and uninformative — terms like “column technique” are dropped, without explanation — teaching us little about the effort and skill behind the shapes.Similarly, we see Hevesh ponder the worthlessness of a college degree to a career in toppling, but are never apprised of her possible long-term professional options. No arguments, frustrations or consequential disappointments mar the film’s unvaryingly upbeat tone. This leaves us with a movie that feels more like a marketing tool for her self-designed brand of dominoes than a nuanced portrait of an unusual talent.Lily Topples the WorldNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Discovery+. More

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      ‘Isabella’ Review: Audition of a Lifetime

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      The Argentine filmmaker Matías Piñeiro, who riffs on Shakespeare, expands his ambition with this drama.The New York-based Argentine filmmaker Matías Piñeiro has carved out an exclusive niche: Each of his fractured, low-stakes narratives is tied to a different Shakespeare play. His last feature, “Hermia & Helena,” involved a Spanish translation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” His latest, “Isabella,” revolves around two actresses, Mariel (María Villar) and Luciana (Agustina Muñoz), auditioning for the part of Isabella in “Measure for Measure.”If Piñeiro’s Shakespeare citations have sometimes freighted slight stories with unearned significance, “Isabella” finds him expanding his formal ambition. The movie courts confusion, at first: Sorting out the characters and timeline isn’t easy. Piñeiro sometimes shoots dialogue with the actors (or their faces) offscreen. The chronology is scrambled, with Mariel’s state — she is shown visibly pregnant or not, or else with her young son after he’s been born — providing an important marker.While the pieces more or less fall into place, trying to solve the mysteries of “Isabella” may be missing the point. The opening voice-over concerns a ritual in which a person must decide whether to cast stones into water, and the film itself seems to exist in a suspended state. The pivotal color is purple (somewhere between red and blue). A motif of rectangles that evokes Josef Albers’s “Homage to the Square” suggests infinite regress.Rhymed scenes and repeated lines contribute to the sense of indeterminacy. Both women are capable of stepping into the same part; acting is presented as, for some people, the same thing as living. Everything in “Isabella” unfolds in parallel — measure for measure, if you will.IsabellaNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘American Sausage Standoff’ Review: Order the Salad

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      This misbegotten satire about bigotry and mysterious pork products is unfunny and maladroit.The far-fetched but hardly distinctive tale told in “American Sausage Standoff” is prefaced by a title card reading “This story is based on fact.” The opening shot is of a man sitting in his car while addressing the audience directly, his soothing, honey-toned voice setting the scene.The writer-director Ulrich Thomsen nods at Joel and Ethan Coen here, specifically to “Fargo” and “The Big Lebowski.” The unfunny and maladroit scenes that follow make one wonder if “the anxiety of influence” also can apply to artists who are, through no fault of their own, doing the influencing.“American Sausage Standoff” is set in a nearly deserted town called Gutterbee. This self-proclaimed “Cabaret Capital of the West” is overseen by a guitar-picking rabid racist named Jimmy Jerry Lee Jones Jr. As indicated by character names like that, this is a movie that delivers its sociocultural observations with a sledgehammer.Starr (who, with Thomsen, starred on the TV series “Banshee”) plays Mike Dankworth McCoid, a one-time confederate of Jones who has tired of grotesquely humiliating Asian Americans and running them out of town. (These humiliations are depicted in some detail; the film’s ostensible objection to such actions is sorely undercut by the relish with which they are staged.) Instead, he forms an alliance with the newcomer Edward, a connoisseur of both German sausage and its lore.Edward is played gamely by Ewen Bremner, but his efforts, like those of the character actor Clark Middleton (who died last year) as a truculent, corrupt preacher, merely demonstrate that commitment will only get you so far with a nothing part. What ensues when Edward and the town’s reactionaries clash cannot be properly called hilarity, and the end product of this dismal film is mostly befuddlement.American Sausage StandoffNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Mosquito State’ Review: Bugging Out

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      A Wall Street genius becomes the willing host to a colony of mosquitoes in this dreamily surreal horror movie.Borne along on the whine of insects and a lead performance of surpassing strangeness, “Mosquito State” is a disquieting merger of body horror and social commentary.It’s the summer of 2007, a global financial meltdown is imminent and Richard Boca (a disconcerting Beau Knapp), a wealthy Wall Street analyst, is attending a black-tie party. When he leaves, he will have a stunning young student (Charlotte Vega) on his arm and a female mosquito on his neck; he will fully bond with only one of them.From its gorgeous opening credits to a peculiarly poignant and lyrical finale, this mesmerically slow-moving tale (directed by Filip Jan Rymsza and written by Rymsza and Mario Zermeno) works to forge a fragile link between psychic and societal breakdowns. Richard may be an algorithm savant, but his colleagues refuse to listen when his computer model warns of looming market instability. Holed up in his cavernous penthouse, all brutalist décor and dim lighting, he fumes, consoled only by the buzzing mosquito whose bites are transforming his body and whose offspring are rapidly colonizing his home.Arranged in chapters named for the insect’s stages of development (egg, larva, pupa, imago), “Mosquito State” has a dreamlike, almost dazed quality, pierced by moments of disturbing beauty. Admirable for its total refusal to ingratiate, the movie nurtures an unapologetically hostile vibe that gradually relents alongside Richard’s deterioration. Like Jeff Goldblum in “The Fly” (1986), he’s a grotesque alliance of two species; yet watching him in his apartment, the mosquitoes a milky cloud above his head or a black swarm feeding off his supine body, we see a man who has chosen the bloodsucking life form he prefers.Mosquito StateNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Shudder. More