Claim to Fame is a wild guessing game, but Thor: Love and Thunder is even more bonkers
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Each Friday, our critics provide a few quick-hit reviews of the titles that have them giddy and groaning — or, to put it another way, the Musts & Misses of the week.
Thor: Love and Thunder
In theaters now
Jasin Boland/Marvel Studios Natalie Portman and Chris Hemsworth in 'Thor: Love and Thunder'
Is the multiverse eating itself? When Thor: Love and Thunder lands in theaters, it will be the fourth Marvel movie in less than a year after Eternals, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and the latest iterations of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. (Which doesn't even account for some half-dozen TV offshoots.) If Thunder, with its cheerful melee of starry cameos, in-jokes, and Cliffs-Notes mythology, feels a lot like franchise fatigue, it also has frequent moments of gonzo charm, thanks largely to the Technicolor lunacy of writer-director Taika Waititi and a cast that seems inordinately game to follow his lead.
Christian Bale, his hairless body wraith-pale and lips blackened like a day-walking Nosferatu, has been handed the villain's mantle this time as Gorr the God Butcher, a vessel of vengeance armed with a death-list for misbehaving deities and an immortal blade called the Necrosword. The once-untouchable Thor (Chris Hemsworth), now mired in an immortal-life crisis of beer and bad ponchos, is working to get back to his former glory when his estranged lady love Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) arrives suddenly in Asgard, compelled somehow by her ex's now-freelance hammer. His Viking ego must absorb the blow that Jane's possession of his birthright weapon invests her with powers comparable to his, a twist the actress dutifully takes on in a much-vaunted transformation that mostly manifests in tawny hair extensions and a pair of terrifying biceps. (If you've seen the trailer, you have some idea of the leather-and-lightning rivalry to come; Portman wears it well as a costume, though she still seems more at home as an earthly scientist.)
With those story pieces more or less in place, Waititi is free to turn up his style dials to 11. If the MCU at this point has become a mood ring for its various directors — Chloe Zhao's spacious, slow-churn Eternals; Sam Raimi's squishy, trippy Doctor Strange — New Zealand native Waititi is the impish Kiwi outsider, his psychedelic visuals and offbeat humor so infused with chaos and camp, it often feels as if the film has passed through a fine mist of ayahuasca. In the best moments, that yields inspired scenes like Russell Crowe as a portly, imperious Zeus addressing a summit of the Gods. (Have you really lived until you've heard Crowe roll the word "Babycake" across his tongue like butterscotch?); in the lesser ones, it's just feels like space junk.
Hemsworth remains almost absurdly well-suited to the title role, a golden-god himbo with crack comic timing and a seemingly bottomless well of Aussie goodwill. Bale is appropriately ghoulish and sepulchral, though the difficulty-setting on this part seems low for an actor of his caliber; mostly, he just has to snarl from dark corners and not lose too much squid-ink spittle when he talks. The movie suffers from none of the self-seriousness or draggy exposition of other Marvel outings, even when its patchwork plot feels stuck together with rainbows and chewing gum. (And so much Guns N' Roses — Axl Rose is essentially the spirit animal of the soundtrack.) More and more, this cinematic universe feels simultaneously too big to fail and too wide to support the weight of its own endless machinations. None of it necessarily makes any more sense in Waititi's hands, but at least somebody's having fun. Grade: B —Leah Greenblatt
Fire of Love
In theaters now
Sundance Institute 'Fire of Love'
Director Sara Dosa's documentary, loaded with gorgeous streams of lava and plumes of ash, starts off on the cool side, a truck pushing its way through several feet of snow. By the time it treks up the craggy mountain and we finally peek over the rim, your eyeballs aren't ready for the bright orange explosions in store: hypnotic footage of rocks on fire, ripples of molten earth, dark rivers pocked with flare-ups. Sometimes, it looks like red car lights on the highway at night. Elsewhere, you may think of a Hawaiian sunset. Never once does it feel less than absolutely dangerous.
Watching Fire of Love, you realize how addicting and scary it would be to commit one's life work to the pursuit of such sights — a good thing, because Katia and Maurice Krafft, the married Alsatian French volcanologists at the core of the story remain stubbornly opaque throughout. They are, of course, adorable in their red knit caps (required of all French explorers?), and, as they prep their cameras and equipment, they display the quiet shorthand and efficiency of longtime partners. The film isn't coy about their 1991 deaths from a sudden unpredictable flow, so the quirky Wes Anderson vibe is undercut, tartly, by a sense of fatalism from the start.
Dosa's technique follows suit, quieting down from its initial hyperactive preciousness into a cleaner grammar. A bloopy, hard-driving electronica score (Brian Eno, Air, credited composer Nicolas Godin, and others) situates us squarely in a brainiac's beat laboratory, while the narrating voice of artist-filmmaker Miranda July — itself a kind of throaty, breathy terrain — supplies just the right balance of hushed awe and diaristic intimacy. Grade: A– —Joshua Rothkopf
Claim to Fame
July 11, 10:01 p.m. (ABC)
John Fleenor/ABC Don't worry, the "Eyes Wide Shut" masks don't last long.
Claim to Fame is a bit of a Frankenstein's monster — part Big Brother, part The Masked Singer, a pinch of The Other Two — but the result is more addictive than terrifying.
In this new reality competition from the producers of Love is Blind, twelve people who are related to a celebrity (including relatives of Zendaya, Whoopi Goldberg, and Chuck Norris) move into a California mansion. The contestants' goal: Uncover who each player is related to, all while keeping the identity of their own famous family member a secret. Deception is built into the game — players introduce themselves with two truths and a lie — as are clues, which are sprinkled throughout the house and worked into weekly challenges.
Everything about Claim to Fame is done with an appropriate level of self-deprecating cheek. Music megastar Kevin Jonas hosts with his not-nearly-as-famous (but very good-natured) youngest brother, Frankie, a.k.a. the "Bonus Jonas." (Frankie: "In our family, talent grows stronger with every sibling." Kevin: [condescending pause] "Sure.") Producers ensure that the first challenge is a talent show, just to drive home all the reasons these celebrity relatives are not famous themselves. Even the house where all the contestants live is fame-adjacent: It was once owned by Katy Perry.
Though the audience is told who a few of the contestants are related to in the premiere, there are enough questions left for viewers who like to play amateur detective. It's almost impossible not to play along, and I'll admit to feeling a ridiculous amount of satisfaction when a Google search confirmed that my guess about one eccentric contestant was correct. And while these mystery relatives have (presumably) never spent much time in front of a camera, most of them get the hang of reality TV pretty quick: Alliances form, betrayals brew, and tears flow. (People related to) stars — they're just like us! B+ —Kristen Baldwin
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