‘Hypnotic’ Review: For His Next Trick, Robert Rodriguez Will Pull Ben Affleck Out of a Funk

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Los Angeles-based Italian director Andrea Pallaoro’s delicate drama “Monica” is finally set to open in U.S. theaters via IFC following its world premiere at last year’s Venice Film Festival. The film starring transgender actor Trace Lysette (“Transparent”) as a woman who returns home to the Midwest to care for her dying mother, played by Patricia Clarkson, marked the first time an openly-transgender actress headlined a Venice competition title. In “Monica” Lysette plays a woman who from Los Angeles goes back to her suburban midwest home for the first time since she was a teenager to care for her mom who had rejected her when she transitioned.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Americans spend tens of billions of dollars on basketball sneakers every year. Sure, everybody needs shoes, but it shouldn’t matter if your choice bears the Nike swoosh, Adidas’ three stripes or the Converse star. In most cases, consumers aren’t simply buying footwear; they’re investing in the fantasy of walking in someone else’s shoes — a sports star or personal idol — of believing that switching one’s kicks has a direct impact on your potential for greatness. As the Nike marketing gurus in Ben Affleck’s “Air” put it, “A shoe is just a shoe until someone steps into.” If you’ve been alive on earth in the last 40 years, then you already know what happened when a rookie named Michael Jordan let Nike put his name and likeness on their shoes. But “Air” isn’t about convincing the greatest basketball player in the history of the game to sign with Nike, although a “Jerry Maguire”-desperate Matt Damon — as paunchy, flop-sweating Sonny Vaccaro — might trick you into thinking this is just the (admittedly very entertaining) anatomy of a landmark business deal.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In 1993, “The Joy Luck Club” made Hollywood history, proving to a skeptical — and let’s face it, racist — industry that there was mainstream demand for a culturally sensitive Chinese American ensemble drama. Three decades later, along comes “Joy Ride,” throwing sensitivity to the wind en route to obliterating any remaining barriers. Like “Girls Trip” with an all-Asian-American cast, the Seth Rogen-produced, hard-R road movie follows small-town besties Audrey (Ashley Park) and Lolo (Sherry Cola) to Beijing, where they tackle everything from taboo tattoos to a devil’s threesome with all the gusto you’d hope or expect from “Crazy Rich Asians” co-writer Adele Lim’s directorial debut.

“Air,” the first film from Ben Affleck and Matt Damon‘s Artist Equity banner, closes SXSW in Austin this year to much anticipation.

EXCLUSIVE: Fresh off a surprise “work in progress” screening at SXSW, Robert Rodriguez’s action-thriller Hypnotic, starring Ben Affleck, has been set for a May 12 U.S. release.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic At last, a video game movie that’s more than just a video game movie. In theory, “Tetris” — that primitive and highly addictive block-stacking strategy game — doesn’t lend itself to the big-screen treatment any more than Rubik’s Cube or Tic-Tac-Toe might. But Noah Pink has found an ingenious solution to a classic puzzle. The screenwriter realized that there’s more to Tetris than most people knew. Namely, there’s a terrific backstory about how this Soviet-hatched computer software made its way over the Iron Curtain, and telling it could play like a Cold War thriller as three teams of Western rivals race one another to Russia to secure the rights.

Charna Flam The so-called “crackberry” is back. IFC Films has released the first official trailer for the upcoming comedy-drama film, “BlackBerry,” which provides a peek into exactly how the handheld device revolutionized the cell phone industry. Director Matt Johnson, along with co-screenwriter Matthew Miller, adapted Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff’s book “Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry” for the big screen. Johnsonplays BlackBerry co-founder Douglas Fregin in the film, alongside Glenn Howerton as chair and co-CEO Jim Balsillie, Jay Baruchel as co-founder Mike Lazaridis and Cary Elwes as Palm CEO Carl Yankowski. The cast also includes Saul Rubinek, Michael Ironside, Rich Sommer, Michelle Giroux, Mark Critch and SungWon Cho.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Some folks have it easy, and others make life difficult for themselves. Guess which type “Problemista” is about. The perpetually unsatisfied title character, a demanding New York art critic played by Tilda Swinton as a hag with hair the color of hibiscus tea, is obsessed with archiving the life’s work of her late husband (RZA), who left behind a series of egg paintings no one seems to understand. Swinton feels like a future Halloween costume in search of a movie in writer-director Julio Torres’ overly kooky and all-too-quixotic debut — another attention-deficit comedy from the studio that made “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” except that Torres lacks the technical experience to pull off even a fraction of the ideas to which he aspires.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic If they ever make a sequel to “The Celluloid Closet” — the landmark doc about the history of LGBT representation on screen — Lukas Gage should warrant at least two mentions. First, there’s the scene from the first season of “White Lotus” where Jake Lacy barges into the resort manager’s office, only to find Gage getting his salad tossed (a history-making moment for gay TV fans). And now there’s “Down Low,” an over-the-top, bottom-trawling comedy that wants to be for the gay community what “The Hangover” was to the mainstream — which is to say, wildly irreverent and incredibly wrong. Starring openly gay “Heroes” villain Zachary Quinto as Gary, a recently divorced, richie-rich zaddy hoping for a happy ending, “Down Low” doesn’t quite understand its own title — code within the Black and Latino community for men who consider themselves straight while having sex with other men — but that’s OK. “Down Low” is still light-years ahead of mainstream movies (including last year’s “Bros”) as debuting feature director Rightor Doyle delivers what an entire contingent of queer audiences have been asking for all their lives: namely, a comedy that’s as raunchy and inappropriate as the jokes they make between themselves. While nowhere near as extreme (or enjoyable) as 2009’s “I Love You Phillip Morris,” it’s still a rare enough occurrence to earn a dedicated following.

The idea for Hypnotic conceptualized around the time director Robert Rodriguez was filming Spy Kids 2, which is what he told the audience at Sunday night’s premiere screening. His love of Austin and SXSW is what brought him back 30 years after El Mariachi. This was a full-circle moment for him, and he revealed that is this film is a work in progress. After watching it, Hypnotic still needs work in order to progress because this is all over the place. Written by Rodriguez (who also provided the score) and Matt Borenstein, the pic stars Ben Affleck, Alice Braga, William Fichtner, Jeff Fahey and Dayo Okeniyi.

Robert Rodriguez didn’t want to screen his new movie for the first time on the same night as the Oscars. It just worked out that way. It all started when, in mid-February, the 54-year-old filmmaker realized he was rapidly approaching the 30th anniversary of the theatrical release of his first feature film, the neo-Western “El Mariachi.” “It fucking snuck up on me,” Rodriguez tells Variety on Sunday afternoon, sitting on a hotel rooftop bar overlooking the ever-changing Austin skyline. Rodriguez famously shot “El Mariachi” on a $7,000 budget, and its success helped to catalyze the independent film revolution of the 1990s and reinforce Rodriguez’s conviction to continue his DIY, homegrown approach to filmmaking. Almost all of Rodriguez’s films have been made at least in part out of his Austin-based Troublemaker Studios, from his R-rated action films like 1998’s “The Faculty,” 2005’s “Sin City” and 2010’s “Machete” to his family movies franchises “Spy Kids” and “Sharkboy and Lavagirl.” Even 2019’s “Alita: Battle Angel,” the James Cameron-produced action epic with visual effects work by Weta Digital, was shot at Troublemaker.

Though it boasts a few clever ideas and exciting set pieces, Rodriguez's latest falters for the same reason his films usually do: a flimsy script.

The Oscars didn’t rain on Robert Rodriguez’s parade tonight as the filmmaker debuted his long-in-the-works Hypnotic at SXSW’s Paramount Theatre, with crowds being turned away.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic There are movies made during the pandemic, and movies made because the pandemic, and though debuting director Jake Johnson had been kicking around the idea for “Self Reliance” for years, it took COVID to motivate him to make it. Why? Because the “New Girl” actor’s absurdist concept — about a sad-sack bored enough with his life that he agrees to risk it in a “Most Dangerous Game”-style reality show — assumed both profundity and relevance as soon as the species went into lockdown. Coming up for connection, Johnson delivers a silly and frequently surprising why-we-need-people parable. The helmer plays Tommy, who’s been a passive bystander in his own life for as long as he can remember, until one day famous dude Andy Samberg (who also happens to be among the film’s producers) randomly pulls up in a stretch limo and offers Tommy a ride. Should he take it? Probably not, but Tommy’s bored enough to accept, agreeing to meet a pair of eccentric producers who inform him that he’s been selected for a chance to win a million dollars. All he has to do is survive for 30 days, while a team of highly trained “hunters” try to take him out.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Americans can’t get enough of processed corn. They eat it for breakfast, in cereal form, and all throughout the day, snacking on cookies and crackers and chips, often washing it down with soda (sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, naturally). Premiering at the SXSW Film Festival, “Flamin’ Hot” tells the backstory of Frito-Lay’s insanely popular, ultra-spicy line of snack chips — the ones that singe your taste buds and stain your fingers a radioactive red — as marketing guru Richard Montañez lays it out in his memoir, “A Boy, a Burrito, and a Cookie: From Janitor to Executive.” After a rough start selling drugs and hustling on the streets of East Los Angeles, Montañez got a job cleaning the machines at Frito-Lay’s Rancho Cucamonga plant and worked his way up to head of Multicultural marketing. Along the way, he may or may not have invented the recipe for Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Doritos, et al.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic How long does a documentary need to be? Frederick Wiseman frequently goes long, and Oscar-winning “OJ: Made in America” ran nearly eight hours. Lately, with “Bill Russell: Legend” and “Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker,” streamers have embraced the so-called “two-part documentary” — a fancy term for what used to be called a miniseries. So, while there are no limits on how much longer docs can get, it’s refreshing to see a compelling subject covered in 40 minutes or less, and doubly rewarding to realize that four of the five packaged in ShortsTV’s “2023 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Documentary” found audiences on their own merits, even without theatrical distribution.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic “Chang Can Dunk” doesn’t go the way you’d expect, and that’s a good thing. Here’s a Disney movie about a 5-foot-8-inch Chinese American high school basketball player who bets his rival that he can dunk by the end of the season. He gets his wish about an hour in (that’s neither spoiler nor surprise, since the title literally tells us that Chang can dunk), but there’s still a long way for the character to go — and grow — in a film that believes maturity isn’t achieved by shortcuts. The result marks the attention-worthy debut of writer-director Jingyi Shao, and exemplifies the sort of movies Disney should be making: It has its values in the right place, but doesn’t pretend its hero is perfect. If there’s a villain in “Chang Can Dunk,” that role is arguably filled by the title character (tenaciously embodied by Bloom Li, who keeps us wondering how to feel about Chang). In time, the obsessive teen’s ultra-competitive personality winds up alienating practically everyone in his life, except demanding single mom Chen (an excellent Mardy Ma), whose tough-love approach only amplifies his resentment.

TriStar Pictures has acquired Spyglass Media Group‘s “Thanksgiving,” a full-length slasher film inspired by the fake trailer from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s double feature “Grindhouse,” according to an insider with knowledge of the project.Roth is attached to direct the horror thriller film. “Thanksgiving” is co-written by Roth and Jeff Rendell, with Roger Birnbaum, Roth and Rendell producing.Chatter has existed about turning the jokey trailer into an actual movie, with Roth having written a screenplay over a dozen years ago.

Variety asked editors Peter Debruge, Clayton Davis, Tim Gray, and Jenelle Riley, to answer four questions about this past year in film and discuss its standout moments. The questions are: 1. How would you rate 2022’s films against previous years? 2. What was the most important issue this year for the industry?  3. What film inspired you the most this year?

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic While Peter Farrelly was off winning Oscars for “Green Book,” younger brother Bobby has been largely absent from feature directing. It’s been nearly a decade since the siblings shared credit — the last time being 2014’s “Dumb and Dumber To.” Now, rather than competing with Peter at the respectability game, Bobby sticks to what he knows with “Champions,” in which Woody Harrelson plays a minor-league basketball coach court-ordered to assist a Special Olympics team for 90 days — just long enough to take the team from bumbling incompetents to national finalists. There are zero surprises in “Champions,” unless you count the not-inconsiderable shock that such a movie exists at all. A remake of 2018 Spanish box office sensation “Campeones,” this awkward (if presumably well-intentioned) comedy might have felt enlightened 25 years ago — back when “Forrest Gump” was an Oscar favorite — but today makes for a patronizing portrayal of people with intellectual disabilities. That’s still better than no portrayal at all, I suppose, and there’s some satisfaction to be had in watching Harrelson’s character overcome his prejudices — reflected by using the “boo-boo word” that starts with “R” — and grow to see these amateur athletes for more than their limitations. But did the film (little more than a “Role Models” redux) have to paint its players as such extreme incompetents from the outset?