“Motor” needs no words to thrill
A highly stylized experiment, Potsy Ponciroli’s Motor City takes a standard revenge plot and gives it new life by omitting nearly all dialogue between its characters. Much like In a Violent Nature (2024), a slasher film with no music soundtrack, the omission of a narrative element we’ve come to take for granted requires the viewer to see the film in a different light. It seems like a small adjustment but it makes a big difference as we find ourselves more conscious of the visual elements and minimalist acting on display. Fortunately, Ponciroli has the chops to frame and choreograph one arresting image and sequence after another while his cast is up to the task of getting more out of doing less.
Knowing complex plot twists would be hard to convey, Chad St. John’s script is a model of simplicity. Ex-con and current autoworker John Miller (Alan Ritchson) has been set up by the nefarious gangster Reynolds (Ben Foster), his minions having planted a large cache of cocaine in his car. His ex, Sophia (Shailene Woodley) is engaged to the big lug and the best way to get him out of the way is to make sure he has a long stay in the Crossbar Hotel. Constantly abused by the guards in Reynolds’ employ, Miller stews in stir, plotting a grand revenge while Sophia, who forgets about him a bit too quickly, indulges in the high life her new old partner can provide.
Playing like a series of music videos, Motor comes off as a visual record album, each cut a mini vignette, all strung together as a narrative whole. While not an original concept, the film holds together, executed so well you soon forget about the gimmick and get sucked into the operatic nature of the story.
Taking place in the mid-1970s, the soundtrack is of that era, the various moods of each scene ultimately resulting in an eclectic mix. Bill Wither’s Lovely Day plays beneath the moment Miller proposes to Sophia, David Bowie’s Cat People (Putting Out Fire) propels one of the many action sequences, while Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain plays beneath Miller’s arrest, conveying the long-term consequences of this action. Stephan Jablonsky’s score provides a seamless bridge between the pop hits, the cumulative effect proving hypnotic yet never obtrusive.
Working with cinematographer John Matiysiak, Ponciroli composes one arresting image after another. Most refreshing is his ability to allow his camera to dwell on the well-choreographed action sequences. Eschewing the oft-used combination of close-ups, quick camera pans, and hyper-kinetic editing, the director instead holds on the movement in the frame longer and employs far fewer cuts over the course of a sequence. This results in set pieces that are much easier to follow and appreciate, the use of slow-motion used with restraint to, at times, underscore the impact of the destruction Miller and Reynolds are inflicting upon each other.
The highly stylized, gritty urban aesthetic creates a distinctive environment reminiscent of Walter Hill’s Streets of Fire (1984) and, to some degree, Frank Miller’s Sin City (2005). The battered muscle cars that rumble over the cracked streets, the weather-decayed buildings, the rust-laden prison and grease-spattered diners contribute to a cumulative feeling of rot and despair. And while the characters desperately try to find some sort of salvation within, they can’t help but be affected by their surroundings. The sordid nature of this world ultimately seeps into their bones, corrupting and skewing their moral compasses, their actions becoming more and more abhorrent. It comes as no surprise that ultimately none of the three principals recognize the person looking back at them in the mirror.
Sure to be a cult favorite in years to come, Motor City pulls off an interesting highwire act, emphasizing film fundamentals over computer wizardry, creating analog images and utilizing in-camera special effects to, ironically, create a fresh look at a worn-out genre. Unlike most modern action films, City left me invigorated rather than exhausted, Ponciroli’s old-school approach a reminder that often times, especially where filmmaking is concerned, less is more. In Theaters.
Supporting cast save The Dink
An amusing enough time-filler, Josh Greenbaum’s The Dink looks at the class divide through a distinctly modern prism, as the clash between supporters of pickleball and those of tennis is put in the spotlight. At times not quite as humorous as it should be, at others explosively funny, the movie moves in fits and starts, struggling to find the momentum it needs. However, the veteran cast, particularly the supporting players, end up saving the film in the end, their energetically rendered bits delivering just enough comic gold to make this worth your while.
Reduced to giving tennis lessons to kids at his father’s country club, Dustin Boyd (Jake Johnson) is the poster boy for Peter Pan Syndrome. Having been groomed by his dad, Chuck (Ed Harris), to be the Tiger Woods of the tennis world, as a young man he was a sensation in local and youth leagues. However, when, as a teen, he went up against a young Andy Roddick in a national tournament, Boyd suffered a major meltdown, breaking his own wrist to avoid completing the match.
Now a middle-aged never-was, he’s been trying to live down this humiliation for years. A chance at redemption occurs when he’s given the opportunity to represent his father’s club in a showdown match with a pickleball champion. If he wins, the club will not have to install more pickleball courts. If he loses, the Philistines will invade.
However, when he reinjures his wrist, it’s recommended he rehab by playing pickleball. This is an anathema to him yet he reluctantly heads to the courts of shame, paired up with recent divorcee, Candace (Mary Steenburgen). Boyd finds his power tennis tactics have no place on these smaller courts and is forced to adjust not only his game, but his attitude toward his new partner and her friends.
Films of this sort follow a predictable narrative path so screenwriter Sean Clements’ job isn’t to come up with clever plot twists, but populate the story with colorful characters. He proves to be more than up to the task, as the collection of oddballs he creates provide one laugh-out-loud moment after another.
Patton Oswalt is on board as Skip, a pickleball promoter who lets his passion for the sport get the best of him time and again. Aaron Chen steals one scene after another as PJ, Boyd’s best friend who gets hung up on the minutiae of every situation he’s in, while Ben Stiller’s Dr. Stone has trouble maintaining professional boundaries with his patients. Throw in Roddick and John McEnroe playing outsized, comedic versions of themselves, and you have a murderer’s row of comic support.
To be sure, Johnson has his moments. His character’s constant bragging and inability to master pickleball are funny but get old fast. Of course, Steenburgen can do no wrong and while it’s initially off-putting seeing Harris in a comedy, he manages to generate a laugh or two along the way.
Clements’ script does veer toward the icky when he introduces a potential romance between Boyd and Candace. While it underscores the former’s desperate nature and his need for validation, it comes off as cringy and out of place. Thankfully, it’s addressed and put to bed quickly.
As for the predictable conclusion, a pickleball match between Boyd and Roddick, it contains enough physical comedy to make it amusing, its outcome plausible and satisfying. The Dink ends up not only being a primer for those new to pickleball but a pleasant way to while away a hot summer day. With films of this sort, you can’t ask for much more. Streaming on Apple TV.
Refn’s Hell one of his own making
One of my favorite movies from the last 20 years is Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. This western masquerading as a neo-noir set in seamy L.A. is a glorious exercise in retro 1980s style, a slow burn that periodically erupts into shocking violence, its flawed hero driven by a fatalistic attempt at redemption. A box office hit and critical darling, the film is the most accessible of Refn’s works, a story set in Hollywood that simultaneously skewers and exploits many Tinseltown tropes, in the process getting the director cache within the mainstream.
However, becoming a Hollywood auteur was not what the filmmaker had in mind for himself, each of his subsequent movies contributing to a cumulative act of self-immolation. Only God Forgives (2013) was an oh-so-slow burn featuring a glorious over-the-top performance from Kristin Scott Thomas who demands her son (Ryan Gosling) avenge his brother’s death. Suggestions of incest and bursts of graphic violence were the rewards for those that endured that particular 90 minutes of “cinema.” His follow-up, The Neon Demon (2016), also taxed its viewers patience with its lugubrious pacing and at times, confounding plot. Cannibalism was the taboo subject Refn so daringly addressed in this cult darling.
I would suggest that his latest, Her Private Hell, is his most personal work as he is surely the only one who understands it. This pastiche of hackneyed plot points, set against an overly-stylized sci-fi setting is unendurable, a film awash in artifice, narrative substance just so much collateral damage in the quest to say something “deep.”
Set somewhere, sometime in a world suffused with neon pink and blue hues, the film opens in the Tower Hotel, a building, like many others, that soars so tall it pierces the clouds. Elle (Sophie Thatcher) has returned home to find Hunter (Kristine Forseth) waiting for her in the lobby. Seems they are about to start filming a cheesy sci-fi movie together so she takes the ingenue by the hand and leads her to the penthouse where she meets Dominique (Havana Rose Liu). She happens to be Elle’s ex, but is now married to her father Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), who keeps a stable of models who refer to him as “Daddy.”
We’re told by Mr. Thunders that the mist that surrounds the city brings a serial killer/demon into their midst called The Leather Man. Seems he has gloves festooned with diamonds and possesses incredible strength as his M.O. is tearing open the chest cavities of his young women victims. In a separate storyline, Private K (Charles Melton) is hunting the killer, his daughter having fallen victim to him. He believes that were he to kill him, he will be reunited with her.
Other than the action scenes that show K on the hunt, much of the film is executed with a kind of stylized lethargy, the overwrought score by Pino Donaggio underscoring how dreamy it all is. So many of the scenes are staged as if they’re ripped from fashion magazines, these overtly artificial settings meant to create an alternate reality. While this sort of purposeful aesthetic may appeal to some, its obvious nature undercuts Refn’s attempt to create something distinctive. It’s as if we’re seeing a teenage boy trying far too hard to impress with his first movie.
Defenders of this work are drawing comparisons to this with the films of David Lynch. While there are some surface similarities, the difference lies in the intelligence and craftsmanship Lynch employed. His movies prompted curiosity, enticing us to follow him through his sometime labyrinthine plots, his fully-drawn characters relatable and sympathetic. Nothing of that sort exists in “Private.”
The director claims to have been inspired to make this film after having been dead for 25 minutes after a near-fatal cardiac incident. Whatever … His reputation as a provocateur casts doubt on all he says. A test of one’s endurance and willingness to put up with the pretentiousness of the “artist,” Private is nothing more than a middle finger to the audience, an exercise that purposely confounds and insults, Refn’s hubris on full display. In Theaters.
This article appears in July 23-29, 2026.
