What to watch: Workin’ on our Night moves

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Are you ready for some fresh Night moves?
M. Night Shyamalan is back – and unleashing an original story for the first time in a while – with the new thriller “Trap.” I’m still recovering from Comic-Con but the Twistmaster General’s return to the big screen is psyching us up to deliver the coolest recommendations to your inbox. Plus, we’re still buzzing from all the Marvel news last week – from the boffo box-office success of “Deadpool & Wolverine” to the fallout of Robert Downey as Doctor Doom. And over in the DC universe, their resident Dark Knight has a new animated series. Holy cartoon high jinks, Batman!
Now on to the good stuff:
Shyamalan lets you in on a major twist of “Trap” right from the start: Josh Hartnett plays loving father Cooper, who takes his teen daughter to a concert that’s secretly being used as a trap for a nasty serial killer known as “The Butcher.” And Cooper is The Butcher, so he has to make sure his daughter is having fun and avoid being nabbed by the cops. It’s a great premise that doesn’t completely pay off, though Hartnett is fab at flipping between nice guy and total creeper while Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka has a compelling role as the pop star who gets caught up in the drama.
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See how it ranks in my rundown of the director’s best and worst efforts. (Spoiler alert: “The Sixth Sense” isn’t No. 1!) I also chatted with Shyamalan about how “Trap” is a really a dad movie and why parenthood is always a major theme in his films. “They’re all kind of urban nightmares, this sense of something threatening the sanctity of the family,” he says. “I guess that’s just the underlying fear for me, so most of my movies have that at the center.”
I’m a bad nerd because I still I haven’t binged the new Batman cartoon yet! But TV critic Kelly Lawler has seen “Batman: Caped Crusader (streaming now on Prime Video) and says the show, executive produced by J.J. Abrams and “The Batman” director Matt Reeves, is a noir take with a moody, melancholy and emotional tone “that puts the ‘dark’ squarely back in Dark Knight.” (Read her ★★★ review.)
Hamish Linklater (who’s so good in “Midnight Mass”) is the latest actor to take on Gotham City’s resident vigilante, and the voices also includes Minnie Driver as a gender-swapped Penguin, Jamie Chung as Harley Quinn and Christina Ricci as Catwoman.
The numbers don’t lie: “Deadpool & Wolverine” is still crushing it at the box office after having the largest opening ever for an R-rated movie and the sixth-largest domestic opening in history. But have Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman’s returning heroes saved the Marvel Cinematic Universe? That’s a harder question to answer, as my colleague Felecia Wellington Radel writes in an essay about how the future of the MCU remains unclear.
That future does again include Robert Downey Jr., making his MCU return as supervillain Doctor Doom. I covered that in the special Comic-Con edition of Watch Party, and after a few days to think about the monumental news, I wrote a piece on how it’s both inspired casting but also the safe choice for a brand that’s best when it’s taking big swings.
Got thoughts, questions, ideas, concerns, compliments or maybe even some recs for me? Email [email protected] and follow me on the socials: I’m @briantruitt on Twitter (not calling it X!), Instagram and Threads.