RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON: 3 ½ STARS

If you look on IMDb, there are dozens of titles containing the phrase “dragon slayer.” Movie dragons, by and large have been of the Smaug variety, a beast “The Hobbit” author J.R.R. Tolkien described as “a most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm.”

There are exceptions of course, like the “How to Train Your Dragon” creatures and the wyvern in “The Reluctant Dragon” who would rather recite poetry than cause havoc. “You’ve got to be mad to breathe fire,” he says, “but I’m not mad at anybody.”

This week we can add Sisu the self-deprecating water dragon voiced by Awkwafina in Disney+’s animated “Raya and the Last Dragon,” to the happy dragon list

Five hundred years ago humans and dragons happily co-existed in the Five Lands of Kumandra— Heart, Talon, Fang, Spine and Tail — the fantasy land (inspired by several Southeast Asian cultures) Warrior Princess Raya (Kelly Marie Tran), Guardian of the Dragon Gem, calls home. 

The dragons were fierce warriors, the only creatures capable of defeating the Druun, the nasty neighbors who turn everything they touch into stone. To save humanity Sisu the dragon imbued a gem with magic powerful enough to drive away the interlopers and bring the folks who had been turned into pillars back to life. With the work done, Sisu disappeared, leaving behind the gem and a deeply divided nation. 

In an effort to bring the warring tribes together Raya’s father Benja (Daniel Dae Kim), head of the Heart Tribe, leaves the gem vulnerable and soon it is smashed, split into pieces, leaving the land open to further attacks from the Druun. 

If the Druun are to be defeated once and for all Raya must track down the last dragon. That would be Sisu, a quirky pink and turquoise dragon with self-esteem issues. “I’m going to be real with you,” she says. “I’m not like the best dragon. Have you ever done like a group project, but there’s like that one kid who didn’t pitch in as much, but still ended up with the same grade?”

Disney’s first original princess movie since 2016’s “Moana,” “Raya and the Last Dragon” is a feast for the eyes. The backgrounds are beautifully rendered, with particular attention paid to the details that differentiate the five clans. The animation will make your eye balls dance, and perhaps leave you wishing this could be the big screen experience it was originally meant to be. 

The clever backgrounds are populated with nicely realized characters. As Raya, Kelly Marie Tran plays the first Disney princess who is as good with her fists as she is with her wits. The combat scenes, including a fistfight with Fang Tribe meanie Namaari (Gemma Chan), sword fights and chases, are well presented, always allowing for the viewer to follow the action and not get lost in a blur of glinting swords or flying fists. In a film populated with lots of secondary characters, she holds her own with determination and a heap of spunk.

Awkwafina has more to work with character wise. As the quirky dragon she’s a scene stealer, bring humour and heart to Sisu. The movie wants you to root for her and you will.

“Raya and the Last Dragon” is meant for kids, so the main character’s journey isn’t overly complicated, but it does contain poignant, joyful messages of the importance of togetherness and trust. In an increasingly divided world comes a movie that promotes trust as a key to human relationships. Disney isn’t blazing new ground with the moral, but it’s not such a bad thing to be reminded of from time to time. 

COMING 2 AMERICA: 3 STARS

Coming 2 America

“Coming 2 America,” the thirty-three-years-in-the-making sequel to the Eddie Murphy hit, now streaming on Amazon Prime, may be the peak pandemic film. It’s a blast of nostalgia for those who seek comfort in the familiar when the world seems to have gone mad, tempered with a new, updated attitude.

Murphy and Arsenio Hall return as newly-crowned King Akeem Joffer of Zamunda and his confidante Semmi (among at least a half dozen other characters they play). The African nation is still a paradise where Akeem, his wife Queen Lisa Joffer (Shari Headley) and three daughters, 

Princess Meeka (KiKi Layne), Princess Omma (Bella Murphy) and Princess Tinashe (Akiley Love), are benign and loved rulers, but there are hiccups.

With no male heir to take his place, King Akeem is vulnerable to the whims of General Izzi (Wesley Snipes), leader of the nearby Nextdoria. When it appears that Akeem may have an heir from a one-night stand from his first trip to Queens, New York decades ago, the King and Semmi gas up the private jet and return to America. 

There’s more plot and quite a few more laughs, but the story is so predictable, you’ve probably already figured where this story is going. It’s comfort food with a side of girl power on the side, that plays like the first fish-out-of-water movie in reverse. Originally, a prince came to Queens to find a queen and self-awareness; now a prince comes to Zamunda to find a wife and himself. 

Original screenwriters Barry W. Blaustein and David Sheffield along with “Black-ish” writer and producer Kenya Barris, give the people what they want, a blast of nostalgia that mostly does away with the dated sexism of the first film. There’s even some subtext about tradition vs. progress woven through the story, but let’s be real, you’re not dialling up “Coming 2 America” for the subtext. You’re here for the warm fuzzies. There’s something comforting about Murphy’s effortless way with a funny line, and while the movie isn’t exactly a knee slapper all the way through, it’s fun to see Eddie and Arsenio back in their royal robes. 

Supporting work from Leslie Jones as Akeem’s loud and proud one-night-stand is laugh-out-loud-funny and Snipes, as the slightly unhinged Izzy, reaffirms that the comedic chemistry he and Murphy shared in “Dolemite Is My Name” wasn’t a fluke. Add to that a game of spot the actors reprising their roles and some new cameos—James Earl Jones! John Amos! Shari Headley! Rick Ross!—and you have peak pandemic, a movie that amiably passes the time until you can go to bed. 

CRISIS: 3 STARS

crisis

“Crisis,” the new Gary Oldman movie now available on demand, aspires to be a multi-pronged thriller in the same vein as “21 Grams” and “Traffic.” 

Director Nicholas Jarecki presents three parallel story threads that bob and weave to put a human face on the opioid epidemic. First is Gary Oldman as Dr. Tyrone Brower, a university professor working on developing products for a pharmaceutical company. He is confronted by an ethical dilemma when the company announces a new “non-addictive” painkiller. Bribes and big pharma conspire to push his moral code to the limit. 

Elsewhere, architect Claire Reimann (Evangeline Lilly) beats an oxycodone addiction to get to the bottom of her son’s drug related disappearance while DEA agent Jake Kelly (Armie Hammer) goes deep undercover to bust up a multi-cartel Fentanyl smuggling operation as drug movie staple “Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’” by the Rolling Stones plays on the soundtrack.

Eventually the trio of story shards resolve, mixing the corporate, revenge and procedural plotlines into an entertaining but not particularly substantive look at a very serious subject. 

Jarecki slathers an action movie sheen on the proceedings, heightening every scene, and while the propulsive pacing, “power gangsters” and Brower’s habit of snarling pat lines like, “This is the biggest public health crisis since tobacco!” amplify the movie’s popcorn aura, they minimize its complexity. 

Oldman is predictably entertaining, all self-righteousness and bluster, while Hammer (in a role shot before his recent controversies) and Lilly are blandly appealing leads who get the job done in roles that require little from them other than angst and action. Canadian actor Guy Nadon brings a toxic mix of charm and danger as a drug lord named Mother alongside an all-star supporting cast that includes Greg Kinnear, Michelle Rodriguez, Kid Cudi and Luke Evans.

“Crisis” aims high as a well-meaning message movie that plays more like a Saturday afternoon matinee flick.

UNITED STATES VS. BILLIE HOLIDAY: 4 STARS

UNITED STATES VS. BILLIE HOLIDAY

“The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” the new film about the turbulent life of jazz singer Billie Holiday from director Lee Daniels and now on digital, is a showcase for its star Andra Day.

Day, in her first leading role, plays Holiday not just as a jazz and swing icon, but also as a 

Civil Rights symbol, a woman persecuted by a racist federal government. “Strange Fruit,” her signature song, and musical protest of the lynching of Black Americans, was called a “musical starting gun for this so-called civil rights movement,” by a government office determined to silence her.

Using a framing device of a late career radio interview, hosted by a casually racist journalist (Leslie Jordan), the story quickly moves to flashback to reveal a campaign of terror launched against Lady Day because the feds were uncomfortable with the lyrics to “Strange Fruit.” The song, according to the g-men, is incendiary, a declaration of war, unamerican. “This jazz music is the devil’s work,” says Harry Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund), commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. “That’s why this Holiday’s woman got to be stopped.”

The film follows the dirty tricks used to harass and harness the singer. Her popularity made it near impossible for the government to prevent her from singing, but well aware of her reliance on opioids, Anslinger focus on her drug use. 

Based in part on the book “Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs” by Johann Hari, “United States Vs. Billie Holiday” isn’t simply a show business biopic. The details of Holiday’s life are well documented and presented, from the troubled relationships and fluid sexuality to the drug use and soul searching that seemed to fuel her transcendent talent. But this is a dual story. Daniels dovetails the story of a troubled life with the governmental interference that made Holiday one of the first victims of the war on drugs. 

But of all the relationships seen in the movie, it’s the bond Holiday had with her music that is most revealing. She understood the efforts of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics to destroy her went far beyond putting her body in jail, they were trying to take something far more precious from her. “They want me to stop singing what’s in my soul,” she says. Muzzling her voice wasn’t about keeping her quiet, it was about taking what she meant to herself and others away. That “Strange Fruit” is still sung to this day, long after the war on drugs has been declared a failure is a triumph of Holiday’s spirit, even though that may be cold comfort to her fans and community. “Your grandkids will be singing ‘Strange Fruit,’” she says to the agents who harassed her on her deathbed. 

Uniformly nice performances support Day in her striking lead debut. Vocally she’s a ringer for the late singer but the performance goes beyond mimicry to unveil the hurt that fueled Holiday’s personal and professional life. 

“The United States vs. Billie Holiday” is an ambitious movie that dekivers more than a standard biopic.

MY SALINGER YEAR: 3 STARS

MY SALINGER YEAR

Set back in the days when e-mail was “a new trend that will phase out,” “My Salinger Year,” now on VOD, is a coming-of-age story of an aspiring writer who finds herself enmeshed in the shadow of one of the great, reclusive authors of the twentieth century. 

Tired of analyzing other people’s work Joanna (Margaret Qualley) drops out of Berkeley to move to New York City to write. “Isn’t that what aspiring did?” she says. “Live in cheap apartments and write in cafes?” She gets a foot in the door with a job with Margaret (Sigourney Weaver), the old-school literary agent of “Catcher in the Rye” author J. D. Salinger. The reclusive author is alive and well, and still writing but unwilling to actually publish any of his work. 

Margaret has lots of rules. No computers, no opened toed shoes and no need to wear stocking in the summer. Above all, no talking to Jerry, as in Jerry Salinger. “Jerry doesn’t want to hear about how much you love ‘Catcher in the Rye,’ she says, “and he doesn’t want to hear about your stories. Just say, Yes Jerry, ‘I’ll tell my boss you called.’” 

Jerry also doesn’t want to hear from his readers, even though fans send letters by the truck load. Instead, the letters are read, that’s the bulk of Joanna’s new job, and responded to with a form letter. 

Soon though, her secretarial role takes on a different dimension when she finds herself emotionally invested in the letters; the stories from fans about how Salinger’s work affected their lives. “I can’t send them a letter that says, ‘Dear Kid, J.D. Salinger doesn’t care about you.” Instead, she secretly begins personalizing the letters, discovering a new inner voice.

“My Salinger Year,” based on the 2014 memoir of the same name by Joanna Rakoff, is a coming-of-age story about pushing insecurity aside to find a path in life. Far from another “The Devil Wears Prada” knock-off—although Weaver has fun playing Joanna’s cantankerous, computer-hating boss—it’s subtler than that. 

It works best when it focusses on Joanna’s time at the literary agency. Less so when she’s washing dishes in the bathtub of her cheap NYC apartment she shares with her Socialist boyfriend Don (Douglas Booth). Joanna’s relationship with Salinger (Tim Post, heard but barely seen) and Margaret are the gateways that define her need to step away from the life she knew; to be extraordinary. That’s the film’s most compelling journey, the rest feels shopworn.

“My Salinger Year” is about momentous changes in Joanna’s life, but it doesn’t feel momentous. Qualley is effective but emphasizes the character’s naiveté in a way that underplays Joanna’s journey. A third act dance number, one that visualizes Joanna’s reaction to reading “Catcher in the Rye,” brings the life the story deserves, but by then it’s too late. 

THE MAURITANIAN: 3 ½ STARS

The Mauritanian

"The Last King of Scotland" director Kevin Macdonald makes good use of his background in documentary film for his latest release “The Mauritanian,” now on premium digital and on-demand. The story of a 9/11 suspect held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay despite never being officially charged, is a drama based on true events, but uses documentary style devices to convey the nuts and bolts of the case.

Jodie Foster is Nancy Hollander, an attorney who takes on the pro bono case of Mohamedou Ould Slahi (Tahar Rahim), a Mauritanian national accused of acts of terrorism related to 9/11. While he is housed at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp without charge and, as a high-value detainee, subjected to torture, Hollander begins her investigation. “I’m not just defending him,” she says. “I’m defending you and me. The constitution doesn’t have an asterisk at the end that says, ‘Terms and Conditions apply.’” 

On the prosecution is Lt. Colonel Stuart Couch (Benedict Cumberbatch), a straight arrow with a personal connection to the case. “He recruited the SOBs who flew your friend into the south tower,” he is told. Couch lost a good friend in 9/11 and is seeking the death penalty for Slahi. “If we miss something,” he says to his team, “this guy goes home. Let’s get to it.”

As the trial looms Couch learns federal agents, including his friend and former classmate Neil Buckland (Zachary Levi), are withholding crucial documents. Powerful people want a quick and decisive conviction and are willing to bury an evidence that may get in the way of that. “Your job is to bring charges,” he is told. Couch fights back, believing the only path to an unequivocal verdict, one without the possibility of appeal, lies in having all the facts. “I’ve never been part of a conspiracy,” he says, “but I’m starting to think this is what it must feel like to be on the outside.”

“The Mauritanian” is an uneven film with several standout elements. As a procedural it is fairly straightforward, but within the story are complex legal questions. At what point does fear circumvent the law? How can human rights violations be condoned under any circumstances? How can habeas corpus, the right to appear before a judge, to know why you’ve been arrested and detained, ever be denied? 

Each question is a conversation starter and Hollander wasted no words clarifying her stance on these questions. “I’m not just defending him,” she says. “I’m defending the rule of law.” It’s a powerful reminder that ethics and rules matter. “You built this place and you abandoned all your principles and all of your laws,” Hollander says. “What if you were wrong?” 

Adding humanity to the story’s tale of inhuman behaviour is Rahim who hands in a layered, interesting performance in a film that isn’t quite as complex as his work.