Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Review Totally radical!

BY ALEX DE VORE alex@sfreporter.com

Whereas an inherent lack of identity in a film like Elemental from animation juggernaut Pixar earlier this summer proves the company seems to be grappling with relevance and a fundamental misunderstanding of the makeup of its audience, newly minted Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem from celebrated Hollywood stoner Seth Rogen and longtime writing/producing partner Evan Goldberg captures that certain something special that speaks to moviegoers of all ages.

Let us tip our caps, of course, to the recent format-busting Spider-Verse animated movies for establishing the market desire for offbeat art styles, but Rogen and company have something special on their hands with their new animated property.

See, Elemental (and other recent-ish Pixar properties) have struggled to adapt to various ages. Are the Disney-owned studio’s films aimed at today’s kids and their sensibilities? The parents? Neither, it turns out, at least not effectively—oh, how their ’90s heyday feels so, so long ago! Rogen, however, understands the sweet spot lies in using characters that aging nerds recognize, but designing them, writing them and executing them specifically for kids from the internet era. The older dorks who grew up with TMNT react

+ HORROR AS TRAGEDY; SOPHIE WILDE’S POSSESSED LAUGH - VISUALLY CONVENTIONAL

“Gripping” is possibly the cheesiest word to apply to a horror movie about an embalmed hand. In the case of Australian twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou’s debut feature Talk to Me, it’s also likely the most succinct summation. But whether Talk To Me may be best appreciated through the lens of “horror” at all remains a matter for more debate.

That’s not to say the film isn’t frightening. The first possession scene occurs within mere minutes, after main character Mia (Sophie Wilde) learns the lore of the central ceramic-encased severed hand (possibly that of a psychic, as we discover in an exchange poking fun at the seriousness with which most high concept horror handles its mythology). She need only hold the hand, whisper the movie’s title and issue the invitation “I let you in” to be taken over by whatever spirits accept her offer. But before 90 seconds have passed, the connection between the realms must be cut lest the departed take up more permanent residence in their living hosts.

Of course, any rule introduced so early in a scary movie has to be broken—and Wilde’s committed and intensely physical performance left even to new takes on characters they know and love, the younger generations go wild for age-specific humor.

In the newest outing for the fearsome fighting teens, heroes Leo (Nicolas Cantu), Donnie (Micah Abbey), Mikey (Shamon Brown Jr.) and Raph (Brady Noon) long to co-exist with the human world. Their adoptive father, the rat-man Splinter (a very funny Jackie Chan), forbids this—humans and mutants don’t get along! Enter April O’Neil (The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri), a high school-aged would-be journalist with a penchant for investigation who becomes the recipient of some ninja-based assistance and accepts the turtles; together, they investigate a series of crimes throughout New York City. The turtles, they reckon, will be accepted by society if they do hero stuff.

It’s not totally a spoiler to say that it’s mutants behind the crimes, but this is where the new TMNT truly shines: embracing the weirdo offshoot characters from the old TMNT days that mainly showed up as toys—characters like cyborg alligator Leatherhead (Rose Byrne), über-’90s skateboarding lizard Mondo Gecko (Paul Rudd), the bizarre Genghis Frog (Hannibal Buress), the impossibly land-based stingray Ray Filet (Post Malone) and the inimitably strange bat Wingnut (What We Do in the Shadows’ this self-professed gorehound trembling home from the theater. The film as a whole is so unrelenting it doesn’t even yield the checked-out relief that often comes when a story pushes past one’s terror tolerance threshold. It simply doesn’t let you go.

But unlike in the vast majority of horror movies, the fear doesn’t originate with the unknown—a murderer in a mask, a hidden cannibal cult, an ancient evil unleashed. Viewers see in the graphic cold open exactly what will happen to Mia, and multiple prophetic figures throughout the story reinforce that fate. Yet both she and the audience are helpless to stop it. In other words, we’re talking about a classic Greek tragedy. For all its abundant jump scares, its tightly-wound plot and gorgeous practical effects, Talk to Me is truly a film about the cyclicality and loneliness of grief. And grief is, after all, a horrifying experience.

Because of that trauma-steeped subject matter, this film might not satisfy those who turn to genre for an escape from lived pain (and extra care might be warranted for anyone sensitive to depictions of suicide). It’s also not a movie that’s going to thrill folks looking for visual innovation—the cinematography serves the story without ever offering much originality. But for anyone who loves Antigone as much as Antichrist, Talk to Me’s grasp will be too potent to resist. (Siena Sofia Bergt) Violet Crown, R, 95 min.

OPPENHEIMER 7

Natasia Demetriou) among others. The soft-reboot of the series mainly excels in the hand-drawn look to the 3D computer animation, though.

Even so, each turtle now has its own notable identity, thanks both to the writing’s homage to longtime traits set down since the early days of TMNT and the standout performances of the core four’s teen voice actors. Reworking April as a teen helps, too, as it’s strange, in retrospect, that a bunch of teenage turtles were cavorting through NYC with a grown woman/ professional journalist. Like, she just hung out with a bunch of teens? Weird. Edebiri’s nuanced take on the character is wildly enjoyable, too, and the interplay between April and the turtles is consistently funny and heartwarming while avoiding schmaltz.

Mutant Mayhem’s risky take on established properties makes it a winner that brings them into the now while paying the proper respect to their roots. Cowabunga, dudes.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM

Directed by Jeff Rowe and Kyler Spears

With Cantu, Abbey, Brown Jr., Noon, Edebiri and Chan Violet Crown, Regal, PG, 99 min.

+ IMPORTANT HISTORY, EPIC ARC OF TIME

− VERY FULL DANCE CARD, LITTLE NM CONTEXT

Most New Mexicans who viewed Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer had a head start on other moviegoers. Whether they had read the Pulitzer Prizewinning biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer or had learned about the state’s role in the birth of atomic war in grade school, they also carry other connections to the enduring legacy of the story.

Nolan’s script adapted from American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin unfolds as three storylines: Oppenheimer’s rise to become director of the nation’s new secret weapons lab and the subsequent removal of his security clearance; the birth of the bomb itself from the chalkboard to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II; and onetime Atomic Energy Commission Director Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) as the story’s true villain.

Cillian Murphy (Peaky Blinders) disappears into J. Robert Oppenheimer, delivering a performance that captures the fresh and frantic graduate student in the pre-war days all the way through to the ghoulish, battered “father of the atomic bomb” phase as he undergoes a Red Scare beat-down of his reputation.

The hopscotch through time can be confounding, though expert costuming and makeup help sync the logic, as do shifts between black and white and color photography. The sheer number of characters, however, has a tendency to overwhelm.

Women take a decidedly backseat role in this version of the story. Emily Blunt has a few powerful moments as Oppenheimer’s troubled and alcohol-dependent wife Kitty, but Nolan’s choices around how much Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) appears onscreen don’t quite add up. It’s a pity the majority of Pugh’s screen time depicts Tatlock as nude and/ or neurotic. Kai and Sherwin’s book portrays both women as troubled, but doesn’t attempt to draw such a tidy bow on their disparate relationships with Oppenheimer or cast them as antagonists the way Nolan does.

The film acknowledges New Mexico’s role in the project but doesn’t offer a true sense of place. Nolan smartly filmed on-location; the script, however, contains little mention of the contributions locals made to the project and no mention of the ongoing environmental damage wrought by the Manhattan Project and the people who suffered and died from radiation poisoning due to the secret Trinity test detonation. Yet, the story of why and how the United States developed the atomic bomb is itself more than complex, and Nolan’s film takes an admirable stab at unpacking the overlooked historical tick-tock.

(Julie Ann Grimm)

Center for Contemporary Arts, Violet Crown, 180 mins.

by Matt Jones