Film Reviews: This Week, “Practical Magic” Is the Sisterhood of the Traveling Family Trauma, “Hope” Is a Thing with Claws and “The Uprising” Is a Historical Recreation of Collective Anger

Practical Magic 2 (c) Warner Bros Pictures

Film: Practical Magic 2 
In Cinemas 

I don’t remember the original 1998 Practical Magic that well, but don’t worry, the sequel will do its best to remind you with many callbacks meant to make fans coo: “Coconut” by Harry Nilsson and songs by witchy icon Stevie Nicks are on the soundtrack, people blow candles on and an unlucky bloke gets hit by a car. And just like that, we are back with the Owens sisters. Sally (Sandra Bullock) is just trying to live a simple life as a librarian, who, like Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi, has turned off the witchy force inside her, and while Gillian (Nicole Kidman) is still doing some practical magic, she has promised not to tell Sally’s daughters, Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams), that not only are they from a family of witches, they are also cursed to have anyone they fall in love with die. That last tidbit really should have been revealed as Kylie has fallen in love with her classmate (Xolo Maridueña), and when something bad happens, she feels betrayed and takes matters into her own hands as a novice witch with an evil spells book, straight out of Marvel's WandaVision. If there’s a reason for this film to exist, it is to see the two lead actresses (as well as Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing as their aunts) giving great women-supporting-women vibe. But, nothing else really works, including a lot of corny dialogue that falls flat or people doing silly things for the plot to work, including Kylie just announcing she has a cursed book in her possession. The humor is also awkward, such as a running joke with Gillian and Sally having big suitcases to lug around. Would they even pack if they’re rushing to save Kylie from danger? Yet, this is still a comforting warm sweater of a film, directed by Susanne Bier, reuniting with her Bird Box star, and when the plot isn’t butting in, it’s just nice to see everyone in that house again. The best addition to the cast is Lee Pace as a British professor with an interest in witches, but even he has some of the silliest things to say, including one bit about molecules that is painful. Also, please watch this film at AMC Theaters so you can watch the promo where Kidman talks about cinema being a place for magic before she performs some of her own. 

Theater Reviews: In Late Summer, New Yorkers Saw Some Giggle-Inducing “Paranormal Activity,” a Jealous King in “The Winter’s Tale,” a Group of Friends Facing a “Disruption” With AI, and Chekhov Through the Prism of “The Real Ivanov”

Paranormal Activity (c) Matthew Murphy

Broadway: Paranormal Activity 
At the August Wilson Theatre 

It is serendipitous that Paranormal Activity, the first Broadway play ever based on a horror film franchise, is playing at the August Wilson Theatre. First of all, Wilson’s famous 10-play cycle is full of supernatural spirits in post-slavery 20th century America, but the theater was also the host of one of the most infamous horror movie adaptations for Broadway, with 1988’s musical version of Carrie (“God has seen your sinning, just beginning…”). Since then, there have been many attempts to reinvent spookiness from the big screen to the Great White Way, including intellectual horror in the plays of Conor McPherson (Shining City still has my favorite scare moment on Broadway) and recent productions like Stranger Things: The First Shadow and Grey House. The author of the latter, Levi Holloway, wrote Paranormal Activity, which is less an adaptation than in the spirit of. Gone is the hook of showing the spooky happenings on video as the lead couple sleeps. Now we’re following a new couple, James and Lou (Travis A. Knight and Cher Alvarez), recently married, and newly transplanted to suburban England for a fresh start, mainly for Lou’s mental health. But from the beginning, Fly Davis’ beautifully dilapidated two-level, old house does the heavy lifting on the portentous scale that audience members hoping to get jump-scared are looking for. And jump-scares the play does.

Film Reviews: Fans of Green Day Will Enjoy “Nimrods,” a Road Trip Love Letter to Punk Rock, While in “The Last House” a Family Only Has Each Other as the World Ends

Nimrods (c) Inaugural Entertainment

Film: Nimrods 
In Cinemas 

Up-and-coming actor Mason Thames has fought dragons (and then befriended them) in How to Train Your Dragon and a serial killer in Black Phone, but his biggest challenge in his young film career has to be portraying a teen believing that Green Day wants his band, Analog Dogs, to play a concert with them, on New Year’s Eve in Nimrods. It seems in the world of the film that it’s a given that this teen would believe this crazy offer, so how much you go with it will determine your enjoyment of this fun hangout. The hurdles for Tommy (Thames) to overcome are that he’s underage (his mom, played by Jenna Fischer, expressly forbids it) and he also doesn’t have any way to get to California from Missouri with less than $30 to his name. His bandmates are his high-school best friend, bassist Chad (Kylr Coffman), and his high school “can barely stand him but he can play the drums” Fred (Ryan Foust). Their road trip starts with a stolen car and an emergency-only credit card, and from there we get run-ins with all kinds of characters, including a kindly bar owner (Angela Kinsey), a fellow aspiring singer (McKenna Grace) and a very (very!) strange motel owner (Fred Arminsen). But this is all played with a healthy dose of can-do attitude and a smart screenplay by Lee Kirk (with a story assist by the Green Day band members themselves: Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool) so even though every plot point can be predicted a mile away, it is still an enjoyable ride. Thames is a cool but clueless everyman with an impossible dream while the goofy Coffman and self-serious Foust give ample comedy support in a Superbad kinda way. There’s also Keen Ruffalo, son of Mark, as Tommy’s older brother Wayne, who instigates the whole plot and has a nice emotional moment at the end of the film. To say that Green Day does show up is barely a spoiler, but the concert scenes add a satisfying romp for fans of the band, road-trip movies and those American Idiots who refuse to give up on their dreams. 

Theater Review: Thirty-Years Later, in a Bizarro Political Landscape, This “American Daughter” Revival Is Strangely Nostalgic; A Footballer Play Needs Less Banter and More “Pass”-ing; Cat Cohen’s “Broad Strokes” Has Funny Thoughts, As Almost-Death Becomes Her

An American Daughter (c) Joan Marcus

Theater: An American Daughter 
At The Pershing Square Signature Center 

The downside of having a QR Code instead of a Playbill is that essential information is now not readily accessible to theatergoers. For the first New York revival of Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter, which premiered on Broadway in the 1997 with the great Kate Nelligan in the title role, I was wondering if director Sarna Lapine would update the play to modern day MAGA or keep it in the 90s where the biggest scandal was Nannygate, in which President Bill Clinton had to withdraw two female nominees for attorney general because one didn’t pay social security tax for her nanny and the other had hired an illegal alien for hers. Even though set designer Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’ upscale Georgetown living room is gorgeous, its timeless design doesn’t give us any clues. The first clue actually comes from the radio that’s playing Ringo Starr’s version of “You’re Sixteen,” a now looked down-upon song about a man professing his love for an underaged girl, with Lyssa Dent Hughes (Jean Lichty) unironically singing along. We are definitely in 1997. Lyssa is the current nominee for surgeon general, where she hopes to promote women-specific health care. The two solid rocks in her life are her shaggy dog of a husband Walter (Robert Sean Leonard) and her best friend Judith (Montego Glover), who is not only a doctor, but one of the few black Jews at her synagogue. Then there are the young whippersnappers (who today would be political vlogger influencers) with typical Wasserstein Charles Dickens-type names: Quincy Quince (Carmen Zilles), a feminist essayist with aspirations of grandeur, and Timber Tucker (Chris Ghaffari), a political reporter doing a piece on Lyssa. They all end up at a brunch where the most unbelievable character of a play, Walter’s friend named (sigh!) Morrow McCarthy (Ryan Spahn), a conservative, pro-life, gay newspaper columnist willingly and with seeming malice, accuses Lyssa that she, using her busy upper-class life as an alibi, willingly ignored a jury summons. And what was just a throwaway conversation bon mot becomes the current news cycle’s hot gotcha moment that threatens to derail her nomination. 

Reviews: Teens Born With Empathy Try to Interpret Religion in “The Saviors” and Greek Mythology is On a Box Office Roll With “Hadestown: The Musical”

The Saviors (c) Ahron R. Foster

Theater: The Saviors 
At Atlantic Theater Company

The minute you walk into the Linda Gross Theater, it’s sort of a shock to see a realistic sanctuary of a church (courtesy of set designer David Zinn), since the theater used to be St. Peter’s Episcopal Church when it was built in 1854 with a huge crucifix towering over the audience, an altar in the center of the stage, a board with hymn numbers to be sung on the left and a door leading outside to the right. Thankfully, credit playwright Bubba Weiler for having most of the action of The Saviors happen on the sides and not the altar itself. Instead of focusing on the church itself, we watch the days in and days out of two altar boys after mass as they clean up and do their chores. Michael (Ivan Howe), the younger but more gregarious of the two, starts the play conflicted as to what his confirmation name should be. Paul (Julius Rinzel) doesn’t seem to have put much thought into his, so when Michael suggests they take each other’s name, it’s a clue to not only the faith of the best friends, but their relationship as well. Despite this Call Me By Your Name moment, the play is less about sexual awakening (although there is some) and more about religious faith. Paul, like a certain nun in a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, tries to explain to Michael that he has Doubts. This sort of rocks Michael’s world as he always assumed he and Paul would do everything together, including going to the nearby Catholic high school. But Paul doesn’t want to traverse the same path most of the people in this small town seem to be on and explore the outside world instead.