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Mommy issues

The hardships faced by a woman raising children while giving birth to another—with little help from the dad—are given the Diablo Cody treatment in Tully, the second time screenwriter Cody, director Jason Reitman and actress Charlize Theron have joined forces.

They worked together before on the caustic comedy Young Adult, and this one makes that one look like an ice cream social party featuring bounce houses and unicorns. (For the purpose of this analogy, the unicorns would have to remain outside of the bounce houses to prevent people from being impaled on their majestic horns.)

Theron is all kinds of magnificent as Marlo, a mother of two getting ready to give birth to her third, and getting her ass kicked physically and emotionally. Her husband, Drew (Ron Livingston), while not complete scum, should probably take off the headphones at night and go the extra mile to help keep the household in order and his wife sane. Their young son, Jonah (Asher Miles Fallica), has been dubbed “quirky” by his school, and finding a new one has become an unwelcomed priority. Daughter Emmy (Maddie Dixon-Poirer) is slightly neglected, yet one of the more together people in the movie.

Marlo’s well-off brother Craig (Mark Duplass) gets his sis a special gift: a night nanny to help with the baby and household chores so she can grab some sleep. After the baby is born, Marlo is reluctant at first, but finally relents and calls the number her bro has provided.

Tully (Mackenzie Davis) arrives like an angel in bohemian clothing and immediately helps brighten Marlo’s downer moods. She has instant, mother-like rapport with the new baby, miraculously cleans the house overnight, and even bakes cupcakes for Jonah’s class. She also provides much needed friendship to Marlo, who has fallen out of touch with Drew and has become prone to snapping at people in public. In short, Marlo has been close to a meltdown in what amounts to a bad bout of postpartum depression. Tully helps Marlo rise above and power through.

The movie isn’t just about a mother in need getting a helping hand. That would be mighty conventional compared to what actually happens in Tully. Cody has had two children since her scripting debut Juno, her first pairing with Reitman. For her sake, I’m hoping little of what Marlo goes through in her latest script is autobiographical. Marlo has it rough.

Theron makes physical and mental exhaustion totally enthralling, and the moments where Marlo can’t take it anymore and lets the world have it are barnburners. Theron is a miraculous actress, and she gets a nice counterpart in Davis, who represents a sort of free spirit Marlo can’t seem to muster. Davis does everything and more with her screen time. I’m doubting 2018 will give us many screen duos as captivating as this one.

I have a minor quibble. I feel that Drew gets off the hook a little too easy in this movie. Granted, dudes are let off the hook every day by new moms taking on most of the blessed challenge of child rearing, but the last shot of Tully reeks a bit of over compensation for the trials and tribulations that happened before it. It feels a little too cute.

There’s no denying that the movie that happens before the final shot is one of the more brutally honest depictions of the challenges—and undeniable blessings—of parenting. Yes, the price paid is often worth the reward, but Marlo definitely gets put through the wringer here, and Theron makes her pain and struggle real.

She also provides laughter along with the shocks and sorrow, further proving she’s one of the greatest actresses to ever grace the screen. Reitman and Cody give Theron great stuff to work with and, once again, she’s in Oscar-worthy form. Ω

“oK, just don’t make me look like a clown. make it subtle.”

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4Avengers: Infinity War The Avengers team takes a swift kick to their remarkably muscular collective ass via a super baddie named Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, likely the best big blockbuster time you will have at the cinemas this summer movie season. While Marvel movies have been on a nice roll lately (Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok, Captain America: Civil War), the last “Avengers” movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron, was a misguided, boring dud. This third installment—the first of a two-parter, with the second to be released next summer—lets it all hang out with a massive collection of characters and a scary sense of impending doom. There are many, many storylines at play servicing many superheroes and villains. Infinity War feels like the Magnolia of Marvel movies in that it takes all of those storylines and balances them in a cohesive, vastly entertaining manner. It’s over two-and-a-half hours long, but it’s never even close to boring. The balancing act is performed by directors Anthony and Joe Russo, the team that made Captain America: Civil War such a winner. The magic of that film carries over into this one, which picks up directly after the end of Thor: Ragnarok. That film ended with Thor and his fellow Asgardians feeling somewhat triumphant after losing their planet after defeating emo Cate Blanchett. A mid-credits scene saw their ship coming face to face with one owned by the mighty Thanos (Josh Brolin). In one of the great performance-capture achievements, Brolin is the best of monsters, one who manages just enough of a sensitive side that he falls well short of stereotype.

3Cobra Kai Nearly 30 years after last donning the headband in The Karate Kid Part III, Ralph Macchio returns to the role of Daniel LaRusso, and old nemesis Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) is along for the ride. As a 10part series on YouTube Red, Cobra Kai gives us a chance to see how things turned out for Daniel. (He’s a rich owner of a car dealership.) While that’s fun, the real charm of the series is seeing more behind the character of Johnny, who isn’t doing so well three decades later. Prone to drinking, estranged from his son, Robby (Tanner Buchanan), and constantly beating up on himself, Johnny hasn’t adjusted well after taking that kick to the face in the karate tournament. Yes, it looked like Johnny learned his lesson and tried to be a good sport in the aftermath, but the defeat ate away at him over the years. Now, pounding beers and stuck in the past, Johnny decides to reopen the Cobra Kai dojo, much to the chagrin of Daniel, who doesn’t want his kids, especially his young daughter, Samantha (Mary Mouser), exposed to its bad teaching ways. Cobra Kai adds a great chapter to the Karate Kid saga by not making Johnny a cardboard cutout villain. (Streaming on YouTube Red).

4Isle of Dogs This is one of the strangest—and coolest—experiences you will have in a theater this year. Wes Anderson’s second foray into stop-motion animation (after 2009’s excellent Fantastic Mr. Fox) is another visual masterpiece. While the story itself goes a little flat for stretches, it’s a nonstop visual splendor for its entire running time. Two decades in the future, Megasaki, a fictional Japanese city, is ruled by the evil Mayor Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura). Kobayashi is a cat person, and after the nation’s dogs come down with a strange strain of dog flu, all canines are banned to Trash Island to live out their days scavenging through garbage and rumbling in the junkyards. Kobayashi’s nephew, Atari (Koyu Rankin), misses his dog, Spots (Liev Schreiber), and sets out to find his beloved pet on Trash Island. The island is occupied by various dog gangs, one of them consisting of Chief (Bryan Cranston), Rex (Edward Norton), King (Bob Balaban), Boss (Bill Murray) and Duke (Jeff Goldblum). Whether it’s live action or stop-motion, you can count on Anderson’s usual gang of performers to show up. (Welcome to the Wes Anderson party, Bryan Cranston!) There’s some dog gang squabbling for leadership honors, with Rex often calling for votes that the rebel Chief always loses. When Atari shows up on the island, Chief winds up spending the most time with him, and he learns a little bit about bonding with a boy, as dogs do.

4A Quiet Place Noise-intolerant neighbors are taken to all new levels in A Quiet Place, a new horror film from director John Krasinski. Krasinski also stars as Lee, a father trying to protect his family in a post-apocalyptic world besieged by horrific aliens who will tear you apart if you make so much as a peep. The aliens are blind, so they hunt by sound. Not, say, the sound of a river running or a bird chirping, but sounds that are more “interruptive,” like fireworks, a person screaming after stepping on a nail, or really loud farts. The gimmick lends itself to some faulty logic at times, but it does provide an overall interesting premise: Speak audibly in relatively quiet surroundings, and you will get your head bitten off. Krasinski’s film gives you no real back story about the aliens. A few glimpses of newspaper front pages let you know that the world has been wiped out by the species. One look at them—they are a cross between Ridley Scott’s Alien and the Cloverfield monster—and you know that just a few days with these things running around would decimate the world population.

2Ready Player One Steven Spielberg goes for broke but leaves you bleary-eyed in a bad way with Ready Player One, based on the very popular Ernest Cline novel. The film is so full of pop culture references that it doesn’t so much deliver them as visually vomit them into your face. Rather than relishing the opportunity for ’80s nostalgia, Spielberg opts for whiplash pacing and miscasting, squandering the chance to allow any of the fun elements to really sink in. The futuristic storyline involves something called the OASIS, a virtual reality world that is not only a pastime, but a total escape from real-world poverty and pollution. Wade (Tye Sheridan) lives in a place called the Stacks, basically manufactured homes piled on top of each other, and he whiles away many hours in the OASIS as his alter ego/avatar Parzival. There’s a plethora of pop culture cameos inside the OASIS, including King Kong, Freddy Krueger and the Iron Giant, but there’s very little substance.

2The Week Of After a strong and sweetly funny start, Adam Sandler’s latest falls apart in its second half, a stretch of film time that sorely needed some fine tuning. Sandler plays Kenny, a dad whose daughter (Allison Strong) is getting married in a week. He sees it as his last chance to do something for her, so he tries his best to put together an impressive spread for the two families coming together. Chris Rock plays the father of the groom, a wealthy heart surgeon who isn’t impressed with the hotel Kenny has picked. Others on hand include Rachel Dratch—good to see her—as Kenny’s wife, and Steve Buscemi as a sleazy family member with amazing climbing abilities. Directed by Robert Smigel, the film goes on long enough for the jokes to start dying from old age. A joke involving a legless uncle starts funny, gets funnier, almost gets really funny, then goes stale. As a Howard Stern fan, I was happy to finally see the culmination of all of Ronnie the Limo Driver’s hard work; he’s a bad actor, but he was better than I thought he would be. (He’s a convincing sleeper.) Having grown up on Long Island, I can say that the movie did a good job capturing the region, from the accents to the undying loyalty to Billy Joel. You have to have some respect for a comedy that kills a legless man by throwing him into a bounce pit in the middle of a strip club, but that’s not enough to make it a winner. That’s a shame, because Sandler is actually pretty endearing in it. It needed to be about 25 minutes shorter, and 35 percent funnier. (Streaming on Netflix.)