Film reviews: Eden and Honey Don't!

Eden

Directed by Ron Howard (R)

★★

"In a film littered with monstrous behavior, what is perhaps most shocking about Eden is the director behind it," said Tim Grierson in Screen Daily. In most Ron Howard movies, "the best of humanity usually shines brightest." Here, he aims instead to reveal the worst, taking us to a Galápagos island in the 1930s to watch as unwelcome guests poison the wilderness utopia that a pompous real-life German doctor and his wife had begun to build. As rivalries emerge, "Howard embraces the story's demented bent," offering the viewer kinky sex and "a level of brutality unique to his oeuvre." Still, "he can't quite connect with the evil that permeates his film." Jude Law, playing the doctor, does some "enjoyable scenery chewing," and Vanessa Kirby "goes toe to toe with him," said Maureen Lee Lenker in Entertainment Weekly.

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But the story leans heavily on an "over-the-top" Ana de Armas as a grifter traveling with two male lovers and on Sydney Sweeney, who's clearly "not suited for a period piece." Playing a meek young mother, the rising star "has the energy of a modern woman," and "it's impossible to believe this is a human being who existed prior to the internet." At least the "flamboyant sexiness" of de Armas' character gives the movie a needed spark, said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. "Part biblical cautionary tale, part Lord of the Flies nightmare," Eden winds up being "never dull" but also "only intermittently surprising."

Honey Don't!

Directed by Ethan Coen (R)

★★

A retro sheen hangs over Honey Don't!, director Ethan Coen's second attempt to put a lesbian spin on a tossed-off genre workout, said Esther Zuckerman in IndieWire. Private eye Honey O'Donahue, played by Margaret Qualley, prowls the dusty streets of Bakersfield, Calif., in a vintage Chevy SS, sporting red pumps and seamed stockings when she steps onto murder scenes. "Not much about this film is fantastic," but Qualley's wardrobe is.

Co-written by Coen and his spouse, Tricia Cooke, Honey follows last year's road-trip flick Drive-Away Dolls, building toward a trilogy of intentionally madcap riffs on the lesbian experience, said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. "A deliberate throwaway," Honey Don't! is "just trying to show you a flaky good time." And watching Qualley is time well spent, as she imbues Honey with "unapologetic erotic power" and "the steady gaze of a femme fatale."

To me, Qualley is "not very convincing as a hard-boiled type," said Alison Willmore in NYMag.com. Nor is Chris Evans persuasive as a preacher who sleeps with his female congregants or Aubrey Plaza as the butch local cop Honey hooks up with. Everybody seems to be merely playacting, setting up the scenes of lesbian intimacy that Coen and Cooke truly care about staging. In the end, the movie's shagginess "feels like a challenge, daring viewers to decide if it's just goofy, just horny, or just diverting enough to make up for how it runs out of gas long before the credits roll."