When sex happens once a year

  Boasting a blatantly contrived high-concept premise, One Night Only is better than it ought to be. At the same time, the movie — which rides on  agreeable performances from Monica Barbaro and Collum Tower — isn’t the winning charmer it might have been.

  The contrivance: One Night Only, directed by Will Gluck and written by Travis Baum, creates a world in which unmarried people are subject to an oppressive government mandate: They’re allowed to have sex on only one night a year. 

  Don't expect a hard satirical punch; the movie delivers more of a powder-puff pat. The sex mandate stems from a fascistic government that wants to promote marriage and restrain what it regards as profligacy. 

   Gluck surrounds this implausible premise with a spiffed-up version of New York City, where Tower’s Owen operates a pizza restaurant and Barbaro’s Allie sings for a living. 

    Afflicted by stage fright, Allie is relegated to recording songs for commercials, in this case for a drug that’s supposed to help with psoriasis. Is there a compelling reason that psoriasis maintains its cliched status as joke material? 

   After an initial flop of a meet-cute, Allie and Owen try to find someone with whom to have sex while the clock ticks its way towards celibacy. 

    A romantic at heart, Allie gives up on any hope of finding love after an ill-fated foray to a bar with a pal.  She heads home, but her gay roommate (Quintessa Swindell) gives her a sexy dress and pushes her out again.

    For his part, Owen is stranded by his girlfriend (Maya Hawke). Over an expensive omakase dinner, she announces that she doesn’t plan to sleep with him. She's after a new experience. 

   Allie and Owen keep encountering each other as the movie works its way through a variety of contrivances, notably a search for condoms in a market where they seem to have sold out.

   Eventually we meet Owen’s mom (Molly Ringwald). She has planned a sexual evening with her partner (LeVar Burton). Still, the movie mostly wanders through a Gen Z world, introducing a set piece involving a hip private party. Allie easily gains admission. Owen is shut out.

    At the party, Allie meets a rock star (Charlie Gillespie) who pushes her to sing in public. He charms her until their encounter goes bad with a bit that lands an unneeded sour note.

    A determined socialite (a sharp Ella Loudon) gets Owen into the club, but that relationship also goes awry in another scene that hovers on the border of tastelessness.

     Look, we know that Owen and Allie are destined to be together. Some of the dialogue is amusing, as is a precocious kid (Mateo Ray) who boldly presents himself as a possible sex partner for Allie.

     So back to the beginning. Gluck (Easy A and Anyone But You) gets good work from his cast, but can't liberate enough laughs from this gimmicky fable. 

     

       

       

A tasty heist movie set in LA

  Chris Hemsworth sheds Thor's hammer, and Halle Berry gives one of her best performances in the new heist thriller, Crime 101. In adapting a 2021 novella by Don Winslow, director Bart Layton delivers a throwback caper movie that knows its business and pretty much sticks to it.

   Set in present-day Los Angeles, Crime 101 centers on Mike Davis (Hemsworth), an accomplished diamond thief who targets jewelry stores positioned along the 101. The freeway provides a convenient escape route for Mike's meticulously planned robberies.

   Like many thieves, Mike is looking for the final heist that will allow him to start a new life -- albeit with a fortune at his disposal.

    Of course, someone stands in Mike's way.  Mark Ruffalo plays Lou, the rumpled but good-humored detective who's more interested in catching the man he dubs "The 101 Thief" than in keeping his bosses happy.

     Layton weaves others into his LA tapestry. Berry's Sharon sells insurance to high rollers who fear the loss of their big-ticket belongings, not all of them legally acquired. Barry Keoghan arrives as Ormon, a scary loose cannon motorcyclist who becomes a threat to Davis. 

     In a small role, Nick Nolte adds flavor as Money, the gravel-voiced guy who finances Mike's efforts and ushered him into the crime.

      Layton seasons the screenplay with a few side issues. At 53, Berry's Sharon is supposedly losing the eye-candy glow that helped her sell insurance. That's probably why her male-dominated firm has been dragging its feet on a long-promised partnership.

     Sexism makes for a trendy issue that Layton allows Berry to forcefully denounce, but the movie doesn't climb on a soapbox, and Layton efficiently introduces the elements necessary to keep the plot flowing. He also  includes shots of LA's homeless to remind us that the city's glamor isn't all-inclusive.

     Mike's strictly business approach is challenged when he meets an attractive young woman (Monica Barbaro). He begins to feel an attachment, not a good thing in the thieves' trade. 

    Hemsworth has a steady hold on the role of a criminal who can't totally bury his humanity. Mike carries a gun but never uses it. He has never hurt anyone during his work. He's a thief who tries to be decent about it.

     A complicated screenplay slowly pulls the various characters into the same story, which includes several well-designed, stomach-tightening car chases and a cameo appearance by Jennifer Jason Leigh. Leigh plays a woman who's dumping Lou, mostly because guys like Lou don't have happy home lives.

     You may find plot holes along the way, the movie needn't have extended to 145 minutes, and its LA gloss can feel vaguely familiar. But Layton's screenplay teases us with a nice collection of conflicting rooting interests, and its characters are interesting enough to keep Crime 101 on track. Nice job.

     

'Top Gun' sequel hits the right marks

  

    Top Gun: Maverick should once and for all prove how easy it is to make a mega-hit. All you need is Tom Cruise, lots of sleek fighter jets, a gifted camera team, and an attractive supporting cast that knows how to trade macho barbs.

   OK, I'm kidding. 

   If Cruise is the last remaining movie star, as some would have it, it could be because he’s whip smart about managing his career. Besides, a movie as slick as Top Gun: Maverick requires more than a little behind-the-scenes talent.

  Since the release of the original in 1986, few viewers have been clamoring for a sequel. But now we have one, and it deserves credit for finding the right gear: The movie brims with exciting aerial action (not CGI), its own ideas about heroism, and plenty of Cruise charisma.  

    Although Cruise isn’t entirely immune from aging, he retains the pluck and dentist’s dream smile that upped the octane of the original — and many other Cruise hits. 

   Taking over for the late Tony Scott, director Joseph Kosinski infuses the movie with a welcome blast of youth. This time, a new generation of actors (Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Jay Ellis, and Monica Barbaro among them) portray the best pilots in the world.

    The dramatic key to the new movie involves Maverick’s relationship with a younger pilot, Miles Teller's Bradley (Rooster) Bradshaw.

     In what amounts to a disregard for avian identity, Rooster, we learn, is the son of Goose, a Maverick pal who died in the original movie. Goose's death, referred to in a flashback, left Maverick wrestling with guilt.

   Maverick’s inner struggles aside, no one attends a Top Gun movie in search of psychological revelation. Kosinski and his team ably create the visceral excitement of watching jets in dog fights. Though preposterous, the movie’s major mission cranks up lots of tension.

   The supporting cast includes Ed Harris (briefly) as an admiral who tries to ground Maverick’s career. Jon Hamm portrays the commanding officer of the unit to which Maverick is reassigned after another run-in with Naval authority.

    Maverick has a protector in the Navy, Val Kilmer's Ice, his former rival from the first movie. Now an admiral, Ice makes sure that Maverick, an officer with a taste for improvisation, survives in a rule-bound military society.

   In a near-nostalgic moment, Kilmer and Cruise share a scene in which Ice types his part of the conversation onto a computer screen before forcing himself to speak.

   For most of the movie, Maverick trains younger pilots to trust their instincts so that they can perform seemingly impossible tasks without thinking.

    A bit of romance softens the proceedings -- or, at least, tries to do that. Jennifer Connelly plays an admiral’s daughter and potential love interest for Maverick. She owns a bar where the pilots gather. She also has a teenage daughter (Lyliana Wray). 

   The young cast — particularly Powell's  “Hangman” — blends perfectly into a movie that glorifies roguish individuality over the increasingly machine-like nature of combat. 

     Moreover, the tough-love conflict between Maverick and Rooster creates sparks, recalling the original without feeling as if it's repeating it, a feat the movie in general accomplishes.

         Early on, Harris’s character claims combat soon won’t involve human pilots. In a drone-dominated future, there’s no place for guys such as Maverick, men who insist that the pilot makes the crucial difference, not the plane.

       Guess who turns out to be wrong?

      Top Gun Maverick probably will roar at the box office. Why not? It’s so obviously scaled for the big screen that there's no reason to take it too seriously -- at least not as a portrait of military life or of global conflict.

      To put it another way, in the world of movies, Top Gun: Maverick hits the mark, maybe because neither the filmmakers nor the actors are flying on auto-pilot.