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G20
There’s no shortage of white male critics who’ll call G20—a big-budget action flick featuring Viola Davis as a decorated war hero-turned-president of the United States—gimmicky and unrealistic. Fuck those guys. Davis turns in a compelling performance as President Danielle Sutton, whose G20 summit plans to end world hunger are dashed when the meeting is besieged by double-crossing high-tech terrorists looking to deep-fake summit conversations to crash the U.S. dollar. President Sutton must outsmart, outfight and outlast her attackers to save her country, her fellow world leaders and her family (played by Anthony Edwards, Marsai Martin and Christopher Farrar). Directed by Patricia Riggen (Lemonade Mouth, Girl in Progress), G20 is not designed to strum the familiar notes of triumphing over bigotry or exposing the brutalities of racism. It’s a plain and simple shoot-‘em-up action flick in the same vein as Die Hard and Air Force One, featuring a U.S. president who’s also a married Black mother of two. Whether you can overlook the utopian fantasy of a Black woman president or not, Davis plays this role so believably it could very well earn her the actual presidency someday (shout out Volodymyr Zelenskyy). Bottom line: Vote Viola Davis in 2028. R. BRIANNA WHEELER. Amazon Prime.
DROP
First-date anxieties get knocked up a notch in Drop, Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach’s romantic thriller. Violet (Meghann Fahy), a widowed single mom, meets Henry (Brandon Sklenar) for dinner at a high-rise Chicago restaurant. Once seated, AirDropped threats on her child’s life trickle in unless Violet does as instructed: kill Henry. Everyone around her is a suspect as the clock counts down while Violet tries to save her son without harming a seemingly innocent man. But the restaurant is packed with red herrings, only adding to the tension. Director Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day, Freaky) showcases his knack for crafting slick thrillers, this one in the vein of When a Stranger Calls and Panic Room. Fahy shines as the stakes rise against her, fully emoting amid grueling tension, fully justifying her White Lotus Emmy nomination. Even when occasionally frustrating character choices and an outlandish third act reveal that steps on the gas and plows through the momentum built up by the film’s cat and mouse game, Drop plays as a classic thriller with a modern digital twist. PG-13. RUDY VALDEZ. Laurelhurst, Studio One Theaters, AMC, Cinemark and Regal locations.
THE WEDDING BANQUET
LGBTQ+ themes and ideologies became more prominent as movies evolved, resulting in the New Queer Cinema movement that swept through independent features in the ’90s. Among these was Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (1993), a farcical rom-com that questioned East-West cultural differences and attitudes on same-sex relationships that earned an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. It spawned a novelization, a stage musical and now an American remake from Fire Island director Andrew Ahn that updates the text without losing the intimacy and empathy that made it a beloved classic. Shifting from New York to Seattle, Korean artist Min (Han Gi-chan) faces pressure to get married and start a family, despite not being out to his conservative grandmother (Youn Yuh-jung). When his plan to wed his boyfriend Chris (Bowen Yang) falls through, he comes up with a new scheme: marry his friend Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) in exchange for covering the costly IVF treatments she and her partner (Lily Gladstone) seek. In a premise rife with comic misunderstandings, especially when Grandma arrives in town to meet the bride-to-be, Ahn and co-writer James Schamus (who also penned the original film) make sure the ensemble’s emotional truth feels real and earned. Like Lee, Ahn displays a keen eye for interpersonal drama. Tran in particular gets to show off her talent for subtle sadness as the introverted Angela deals with her overly supportive mother (Joan Chen), whose allyship she sees as wholly performative. If there’s any mark against the film, it’s that a modest budget keeps some comedic set pieces from reaching their full potential, but that’s ultimately of little concern. The Wedding Banquet is a sumptuous feast—a high-wire act of dramedy that’s just as funny, heartfelt and envelope pushing as the original. R. MORGAN SHAUNETTE. Opens Friday, April 18, at Cinema 21, Living Room Theaters, and AMC, Cinemark and Regal locations.
WARFARE
Following last year’s sleeper hit Civil War, director Alex Garland continues to indulge his fascination with combat realism in Warfare. Here, the onetime specialist in speculative sci-fi horror (Ex Machina, Annihilation) co-directs and writes with former Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza. It’s a story that purports to be based purely on the memories of Mendoza’s unit from a no-good, very-bad day during the Iraq War. Lacking in all framing—both a sharp choice and a convenient escape hatch for attempted apoliticism—Warfare is a tense, terse snapshot that’s more coordinates than story. The SEAL Team commandeers a family duplex for tactical position, gets trapped, and tries harrowingly to evacuate. In this confinement, Garland’s penchant for eerie, economical nihilism clashes interestingly with Mendoza’s bone-deep affection for his brothers. Yet it’s Mendoza who gives Warfare the raison d’etre that Civil War never had. The expositionless quest for survival and small but unmistakable signals that the high command cares more about gear than people generate human interest despite the hyperreal style. In turn, the ensemble, which includes Charles Melton, Joseph Quinn, Will Poulter, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai and Michael Gandolfini, commits to underplaying their shell shock in off-speed, believable ways. As much as the world may not need a minimalist Black Hawk Down in 2025, it’s the pointlessness that reverberates through Warfare. All these skills, all these relationships, all these life-altering memories—and for what? R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Hollywood, Laurelhurst, Living Room Theaters, AMC, Cinemark and Regal locations.