Clockwise from top: Splitsville, Wednesday, The Conjuring: Last Rites, and Task.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: NEON, Warner Bros., Peter Kramer/HBO, Helen Sloan/Netflix
This weekend, Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson star in their last Conjuring movie, and that makes me want to say boooo. All good things must end, but boooo. (Spooky pun unintended.) But I can say yay to Splitsville, a dry comedy about a pair of dysfunctional couples finally going wide for all to see. There’s also an Office spinoff out, but maybe I’ll wait until there are nine seasons to binge on Peacock. Here’s everything!
Much as they did with their delightful 2019 film, The Climb, director Michael Angelo Covino and his co-writer and best bud, Kyle Marvin, play pals whose lives are upended when one sleeps with the other’s wife. Visually inventive and deceptively complex, this rom-com unfolds in a totally unexpected fashion; it could reinvent the genre. —Bilge Ebiri
➽ ”Like Tom Cruise, these two dorks did their own stunts.”
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga have carried this franchise for years, and now it’s apparently the end for these two, which weirdly makes me emotional. Aside from the first film, The Conjuring universe hasn’t exactly been critically beloved, but the movies are quite entertaining (and big moneymakers), even if their source material is questionable, to say the least. In Last Rites, Wilson and Farmiga return as Ed and Lorraine Warren as they take on one of their most dangerous cases involving a real creepy demon. (One of many in this series.)
The long-awaited reboot of Greg Daniels’s The Office is a spinoff in vibe and approach rather than an explicit continuation. It’s a mockumentary again, and it also features a bad boss (the exquisite Sabrina Impacciatore of The White Lotus). The setting is new, though — the documentary crew now follows the employees of a local paper that relies on volunteer reporters. —Kathryn VanArendonk
➽ As the wacky managing editor of the failing newspaper of The Paper, Sabrina Impacciatore needed “to be blessed” by Steve Carell.
From the creator of Mare of Easttown, Task is the next “HBO show about a gruesome murder in a small town with a beloved actor playing the grizzled detective struggling with loss.” (A rich subgenre!) Mark Ruffalo stars as a FBI detective tasked with investigating a string of aggressive home-invasion robberies in Philadelphia. Expect bleak! Expect crime! Expect being enveloped in the drama regardless of how depressing it is!
Dylan O’Brien stans might have already seen Twinless, the movie that got leaked because his die-hards couldn’t resist spoiling a major scene from it out of Sundance. Now, James Sweeney’s film is finally available in its (legal) entirety. Sweeney co-stars with O’Brien, as the two play young men who meet at a twin bereavement group in this black comedy.
History has its eyes on you, but you can have your eyes on Hamilton on the big screen for the first time. Don’t throw away your shot to see the original cast of the Broadway hit. Why wait for it to be in theaters again, when you could be in the room where it happens to be playing nearest you. And Peggy! —James Grebey
Comfort food in spirit and reality, The Great British Baking Show has a whole new season of amateur bakers putting their skills to the test.
The iconic ’90s slackers are back. What else can they get up to after ten seasons and two movies? Unclear, but if an episode mimics that Saturday Night Live sketch with Mikey Day and Ryan Gosling, that would be pleasantly self-aware. —Roxana Hadadi
Part one ended with Wednesday being thrown from a window, and they really wanted us to believe in the small possibility she wouldn’t make it. Sure. Obviously, she’s still around for part two, because there’s still a conspiracy afoot. And there’s Lady Gaga.
Disney followed one poorly received live-action adaptation with one that crossed a billion dollars. Maybe it’s the fact that they revamped a fresher animated classic, or the fact that people just intensely love Stitch (voiced by Chris Sanders, the original voice and co-director of the 2002 movie). The Lilo & Stitch remake may not be as strong as its animated counterpart, but its Lilo, Maia Kealoha, is quite a find.
Thank God Andrew DeYoung’s ridiculous comedy is on streaming, because now I can watch that stupid psychedelic toad trip scene a million times. Tim Robinson and Paud Rudd are two awkward men who attempt to be friends. Robinson’s Craig wears that awkwardness on his sleeve as he works a boring corporate-ad job and has trouble bonding with his wife (Kate Mara) and kid (Jack Dylan Grazer) but becomes obsessed with forming a friendship with Rudd’s outwardly suave weatherman, Austin.
➽ Plus, after a two-week run in theaters, Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest is coming to Apple TV+.
Want more? Read our recommendations from the weekend of August 29.
Source link
