In Review: 'Twisters,' 'Sing Sing'

In theaters this week: a sequel to a '90s disaster film about storm chasers and a small-scale drama about a prison's theater troupe.

Twisters
Dir. Lee Isaac Chung
122 min.

Glen Powell is a movie star. And that goes beyond the obvious magnetism of his confidence, good looks, and smooth Texas drawl or even the plain fact that he tends to command attention over anyone else on the screen. He also understands the assignment, instinctually connecting with an audience even when he’s immersed in playing a character. Richard Linklater has already showcased his particular star qualities this year with Hit Man, a fact-adjacent comedy that fits him like an expertly tailored suit. And now he’s off chasing tornadoes in Twisters, a nearly 30-years-delayed sequel to the 1996 CGI showreel where Powell appears to be having the time of his life. He’s fully prepared to turn an unending series of natural disasters into a sexy adventure, like an EF5 charisma storm ripping through the plains. 

The movie has other ideas. Because you see, it’s about trauma. It’s about saving lives. It’s about preventing the next big tornado from wiping out families and loved ones like a past tornado did. That’s basically the same motive driving the original Twister, in which Helen Hunt’s meteorologist joins a ragtag group of storm-chasers  because an F5 destroyed the family farm and killed her paw-paw in 1969 Oklahoma. And it resurfaces again in Lee Isaac Chung’s disappointing sequel through Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kate Cooper, an Oklahoma native and weather savant who loses some of her friends to a storm in the opening sequence and blames herself for allowing her ambitions to put them in harm’s way. The contrast between her seriousness and Powell’s devil-may-care attitude is intended to set up a fire-and-ice chemistry between the two, but the tension does the film no favors. 

The one leftover element from the 1996 film is “Dorothy,” the barrel full of sensors that’s successfully launched into a tornado so scientists can study it more closely. To that, Kate intends to add more barrel balls that have the potential to break a tornado apart, handing mankind a major W in its ongoing war with Mother Nature. But after a mission goes tragically awry, Kate retreats to a weather center in New York, where she can consider storm patterns from the safe distance of computer monitors. Five years later, an old colleague (Anthony Ramos) turns up with news of a military-grade tracking system that could prove to be a breakthrough in early detection and he needs Kate to help guide his team through a particularly nasty season of storms in Oklahoma. That’s when Kate encounters Tyler (Powell), a social-media star who proves more useful than the click-chasing yahoo he first appears to be. 

It’s not like it would have been impossible to improve upon the original Twister, a gussied-up piece of schlock that brought the disaster picture into the age of digital effects. And in certain respects, Chung and his artisans have, thanks to natural advances in effects and a robust sound design that bring the storms to seat-rattling life. But any expectation that Chung would bring any of the depth of his previous film about the Heartland, 2020’s Minari, is dispelled by a story that follows the original formula with an even more serious tone, which he feels like a wet blanket. The first film benefited from an enjoyably daffy who’s-who of ride-along adrenaline junkies, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck, Jeremy Davies, and Todd Field. There’s less energy coming from the supporting bunch in Twisters, leaving Powell to kick up all the fun he can on his own. He can only do so much. — Scott Tobias

Twisters opens everywhere tonight.

Sing Sing
Dir. Greg Kwedar
105 min.

Divine G (Colman Domingo) has a spot he’s come to think of as his own. A longtime resident of Sing Sing, the venerable upstate New York prison, he knows a little-traveled niche on an upper floor that looks out on the larger world. The view doesn’t extend that far into the distance, but it’s enough, or at least enough for the moment. In Sing Sing, any kind of escape is welcome. It’s not Divine G’s only way to get out, however. He fills his small cell with books and spends his free time writing. But, above all, he has Rehabilitation Through the Arts, a theater troupe in which he’s been a long-serving member and occasional in-house playwright. But RTA has become more than a way to escape. It’s a place of therapy, reflection, and camaraderie, a chance for men to bond with one another and express themselves, in ways discouraged elsewhere. It’s not freedom but, like that view, it’s close enough for now.

These aren’t conclusions Divine G reaches at the end of Sing Sing, as they might be in a more traditional film. As the film opens, he’s already there, having just delivered a well-received performance of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream before returning to an orderly, oppressive world of routine, walking in lines, and dealing with ill-tempered guards. Director Greg Kwedar offers only glimpses of these familiar prison moments, however. Inspired by a 2005 Esquire article by John H. Richardson, the film’s script is credited to Kwedar and Clint Bentley (with whom he co-wrote the script to Bentley’s much-liked Jockey) but draws from the stories of RTA participants, including the real-life John “Divine G” Whitfield and Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin and doesn’t have much interest in familiar dramatic arcs or even, except in a few flashes, conflict. It’s interested in its characters’ experiences and in both the “rehabilitation” and “arts” bookends of RTA’s name. These are men who found something they needed by living the lives of others on stage.

The film is  made by true believers. Apart from Domingo and Paul Raci, who’s excellent the troupe’s director, the cast is almost entirely made up of since-released RTA members, but there’s nothing in Sing Sing that gives this away. Domingo is magnetic as Divine G—playing him as a man whose wisdom, compassion, and creativity can’t always counterbalance his frustration and disappointment—but the film wants to tell the troupe’s story, not just his. Kwedar allows everyone their moment, including a monologue from Sean San Jose (as Divine G’s best friend Mike Mike). 

The film’s more concerned with depicting experiences within RTA than following a narrative from beginning to end, but the experiences of a newcomer, a short-tempered drug dealer named Divine Eye, gives it shape. (Macklin plays a fictionalized version of himself, as does most of the cast.) Divine Eye enters RTA as a skeptic. He’s put off by acting exercises he finds silly and reflexively threatens a fellow cast member for walking behind him, even though the scene’s blocking requires it. Sing Sing does little to counter his skepticism. The exercises do look silly and so does the play the company decides to mount, an original time-traveling comedy that throws in everything from Egyptian mummies to cowboys to Freddy Kreuger to Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” monologue. He’s skeptical, too, of Divine G, whose attempts to reach out to the newcomer meet resistance that only gradually gives way.

Even this burgeoning friendship doesn’t play out in quite the expected way. Sing Sing’s decision to focus on its characters rather than a structured narrative sometimes makes the film feel a bit shapeless, but that trade-off ultimately works in its favor. It’s an immersive and humane film—shot naturalistically behind the walls of a decommissioned prison—that finds sparks of hope in a dark corner, one filled with characters left with nothing to do but reflect on the lives they left behind and, maybe, find new possibilities for living on stage. —Keith Phipps

Sing Sing is currently playing in select theaters and will be expanding its run over the next few weeks.