Nelly is about 8 years old. Her grandmother has just died and her mother, Marion, and her father, are cleaning out her house. Nelly plays in the woods and meets another girl, the same age, in fact, with the same face, named... Marion. Or is she an imaginary playmate? They visit with each others' families, so the convention is that she is not, but still... But where does this story go? Not very far. I would imagine the point is supposed to be something about the cycle of life, of death, and memory, but the drama is so low-key and antiseptic that nothing much endures beyond prettiness and a little bit of melancholy.
Josephine Sanz, Gabrielle Sanz, Nina Meurisse, Stephane Varupenne, Margot Abascal
Who needs a screenwriter? I'll write my own... Boring, pedestrian attempt to mock society's ignorance of the potential impact of global warming, in the personification of a meteor headed for the earth. Everyone reacts as if they read the script and knows what the audience expects of the all-star cast. Even Streep is lame as President Orlean, and Lawrence is wasted as the young astronomer who first spots the threatening comet, and DiCaprio is always a waste but even here he seems particularly dud-ish. Nobody seems particularly inspired except-- surprise-- Timothy Chalamet who actually brings his fundamentalist Christian character--Yule-- to life. Most of the satire is more mugging than parody. No effort is made to connect the specific satirical elements to their real-life inspirations. President Orlean doesn't seem to have any skills you would imagine a satirical president would have and chooses to try to mine the asteroid rather than deflect it. Her son is her chief of staff- a very unfunny Jonah Hill. There was opportunity for funny political advice-- left on the shelf. Not much insight into how people, even in parody, would react to impending disaster (many, we know, would just continue doing what they were doing). The talk show hosts are so over-the-top ignorant that it is isn't even amusing to watch them try to do something with their roles. Why the romantic sub-plot, with Mindy and Brie? She seems to get off on impending disaster-- I couldn't figure out what that is supposed to be a parody of. Ariana Grande and Timothee Chalamet are the only cast members who actually give it the old college try and come away with something.
Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Timothee Chalamet, Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rob Morgan, Ariana Grande, Melanie Lynskey
Beautifully filmed documentary of a the "black Woodstock", the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, featuring some of the most important black musical acts in business at the time, including Sly and the Family Stone, Fifth Dimension, Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, B. B. King, Nina Simone, and more. Great sound and cinematography, including interviews with guests, fans, participants, and crew, captured at their peak levels of performance.
Mahailia Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, Nina Simone, Sly Stone
Without a doubt the worst Christmas movie of all time: 104 minutes of dreck. Even knowing that Jim Carrey was a complete asshole on set, one sympathizes with the actor for the pressure put on him to come up with business-- mostly improvised mugging-- in every scene. Turn the camera on and encourage him to be stupid. And he fulfilled their wishes. Even worse, someone imagined that it would be fun to make the Whos as repellent as possible, to reduce the chance of actually caring about what happens to their Christmas. In fact, one starts rooting for the Grinch to blow up Whoville and put us all out of our misery. Chock full of lame gimmickry, noise, and with the ugliest set designs I can imagine, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" is a permanent stain on Ron Howard's legacy as a director. Even the version of the traditional Grinch song reflects a sickly conviction that the more excessive the interpretation, the more amusing. Anthony Hopkins, we are told, did the whole narration gig in one day, and it sounds like it. If Carrey doesn't begin to make you nauseous by the time he rides his rocket-sleigh down to Whoville, you don't have a soul. Not only is his continuous mugging repetitive and trite and more evocative of your boring drunk uncle than any actor I know of, but all of the techno-wizardry also becomes tiresome and bombastic. His romantic object, Martha May Whovier, looks like a stripper. But it's all so miscalculated. Arriving at the first house, Carrey does a parody of a commentator at a diving competition and the Grinch does a twisty dive. There are multiple cuts in the sequence-- why? The artistic dive-- who thought that was hilarious? That's all they could come up with? Then Carrey parodies a woman concerned about her weight-- who thought of that? Who thought that was amusing? There are so many cuts in the vacuum scene that, even if it was amusing, there's no wonder to it. When Cindy-Lou mistakes him for Santa, he actually shows his face, which she clearly would recognize-- but she doesn't. Was Howard so cynical about audiences by now that he didn't even care? He didn't care: the scene with the cat was so monumentally stupid it's hard to imagine even Ron Howard coming up with it. By this time, he must have delegated the writing to a 2-year-old somewhere. But a 2-year-old would at least have kept the whip which, one assumes, was deleted on orders from the Humane Society which now has to approve every Hollywood scene with animals in it. Then we have the Whos learning the true meaning of Christmas from Lou, to whom it seems to have just occurred. Then the oldest, most tired trope of all: "I don't need anything more for Christmas than this right here: my family". With choirs droning in the background, the Grinch has a heart-attack, which nicely evokes extreme pain as the cost of generosity. Carrey must have worked at least five minutes to get his crying right. Maybe two times. The Grinch repeats the flaw of the original: after "discovering" the true meaning of Christmas, the real crisis is the possible loss of-- yes-- the Christmas presents! And the audience is relieved to know that having the true meaning of Christmas doesn't prevent them from having all the goodies they really wanted after all. It would have been a nice statement if he just let the bag fall. And he returned to Whoville to find they all still welcomed him. And then, in just one more enormous miscalculation by the director, the crowd in Whoville all react simultaneously to the sight of the Grinch descending the mountain. Nobody just noticed it first? No dramatic spread of awareness? This is just shit. But wait-- you're not throwing up yet? Let's have an angelic chorus at the end, panorama of the mountain. ANd then dedicated it to mom, Jean Speegle Howard, over the dreary "Where are you Christmas" performed by Faith Hill, just the last of this multitude of miscalculation and bad taste. This is not a movie: it's a theme park for ADD nine-year-olds.
Jim Carrey, Taylor Momsen, Jeffrey Tambor, Christine Baranski, Bill Irwin
George and Phil Burbank, brothers, own and manage a large ranch in Montana, and have an uneasy but settled relationship: George is a bit overweight, and not as capable as his brother, and Phil likes to call him "fatso". When George meets a woman named Rose Gordon, a single mother with a teenage son, Peter, and takes a serious interest in her, the effects reverberate through the ranch in unexpected ways. Rose plays piano but her loneliness is not obviated by her new relationship. Peter is so obviously gay that the drama doesn't even start there. He's also smart and tactful and he understands more than he lets on. Plemons and Cumberbatch are simply wonderful as brothers who don't like each other much but have learned to accommodate each other well enough to manage. George is used to the insults, and Phil knows better than the press too far. George takes a risk with Rose but then he is inattentive and insensitive and you realize that anything more than that was never in the books and Rose seems to realize it too. Haunting; superbly acted and tense, beautifully filmed with a striking musical soundtrack, "Power of the Dog" is one of the best films of 2021.
Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee
My award for the best sport among actors would go to Gloria Swanson for playing herself, kind of, in this soapy but compelling, well-written drama by Billy Wilder. Other declining actresses, like Mary Pickford and Norma Shearer, turned down the role because, obviously, it was too close to reality for some of them, but also because it was a demeaning part: a desperate, aging, narcissistic actress with delusions of making a comeback. The situations are rendered credibly-- good writing, and witty-- and most of the actors are adequate at least (Von Stroheim was marvelous). The mansion was a gem (it was real, belonging to a Getty, as was the car) and the Hollywood "guest" appearances were handled well. In short, Norma Desmond is an aging, reclusive actress who is no longer wanted. She lives in a decrepit but lavish mansion in near anonymity until one night when a struggling writer, Joe Gillis stumbles into her house while trying to hide from creditors. She "persuades" him to edit a script she has written in which she herself plays Salome, and which she intends for her big comeback, directed by no other than Cecil B. DeMille. The relationship is corrosive and the film mainly falters when it tries to convince us that Joe would turn down money or writing credits on principle: we already know Joe-- he wouldn't. Nancy Olson is charming as the love interest who, we are asked to believe, Joe walks away from, in the end, disgusted with himself. Much of the story is implied rather than displayed as per 1950's Hollywood, but there's little doubt.
Nancy Olson, William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich Von Stroheim, Fred Clark, Jack Webb, Cecil B. DeMille, Hedda Hopper, Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner, Ray Evans
Documentary about the consequences of inadequate testing of "bleeding edge" medical devices, specifically mesh supports, a robotic surgery device called the "Da Vinci", and a birth control method that involves injecting a metal spiral into the fallopian tubes. Various women suffering numerous serious ailments are interviewed, and government inaction reviewed. The manufacturers, of course, refuse interview requests.
Robert Bridges, Angie Firmalino, Rita Redberg
Alex Lewis is in a motorcycle accident at the age of 18. When he recovers in the hospital he finds that he completely lost his memory of his childhood and parents and everyone except his twin brother Marcus. Marcus gradually rebuilds Alex's memory except for important details about the sexual abuse they both suffered at the hands of their mother who ran a kind of paedophile network from her home, using the twins. Marcus, instead, builds memories of an idyllic childhood which Alex accepts at first. Later, he is bitter about the deception. Do we accept this story at face value? I am apparently in a small minority that distrusts this narrative. Alex and Marcus had two siblings who are not even mentioned in the documentary. The dad in the film is a step-dad: also not mentioned. The twins were actually placed in foster care for a time while mum was out "shagging" everyone and anyone. But the documentary spends an inordinate amount of time teasing: Marcus explaining why he couldn't bring himself to tell Alex about the abuse at first, and Alex mourning the deception, until there is a contrived face-to-face meeting, at which Marcus presents a video of his recollections while leaving the room. None of the alleged paedophile ring are identified, and both parents are deceased. No friends or siblings or other relatives are recorded. No dates or times or places. Then we are treated to the usual excuse for publicizing a story the subjects are allegedly ashamed to tell: closure. By revealing the truth, Alex's traumatic feelings are supposedly resolved and the brothers have reestablished a strong relationship. I suspect that everyone loves this story so much that they have suspended their critical faculties and ignored questions about amnesia and memory, and accountability: the brothers do nothing to bring anyone to account, after alleging horrendous criminal acts performed on them. A real documentary would have raised those questions.
Alexa Lewis, Marcus Lewis, Jill Dudley
Documentary about a family in Michigan dealing with the death of a two- year-old girl, and the gender transition of her aunt, and the marriage issues of her mother. Randomly organized and featuring impressionistic scenes and interviews of varying context, of the mother, the film- maker's parents, and the husband with the criminal record. Interesting and biting at times, amateurish and contrived at others, a great example of how the technology allows people with interesting if sometimes incoherent ideas access to the public medium. Ultimately, it's about family, the hidden grievances (his sister accuses him of being abusive when he was younger, and his niece observes that daddy doesn't really like mommy).
Angelo Madsen Minox
We've seen this before: Dounia is a bad girl, tired of her home-life, lacking in respect for her junkie mother, pessimistic about her own future. She sees Rebecca and her gang making lots of money and joins up, with her friend Maimouna, who will inevitably be betrayed in this trope. The problem for the view is that Rebecca readily integrates Dounia into her trusted circle without what you would expect as a process of training and increasing trust. She is also expected to use sex to get at a stash of money held but a rival gang leader, without any particular experience that we know of. But then, she rescues a dancer from falling from a beam by actually lifting him up with her arms-- the most improbable of a number of improbables in this film. Oulaya Amamra is clever and lively as Dounia but she can't save this story from it's own constricted sophomoric perspective.
Oulaya Amamra, Deborah Lukumuena, Kevin Mischel, Jisca Kalvanda, Yasin Houicha, Majdouline Idrissi, Bass Dhem
While most critics hale this film as a work of genius, Stanley Kubrick called it "crude" and didn't care much for it. Kubrick is right. It is spectacular and very long, and it's wonderful to see the huge casts of extras in uniforms, but the drama itself is pedestrian and I don't admire the hagiography of Napoleon. I think you could make a case for Napoleon as a genius and as ultimately beneficial to the people he ruled, but having him pose like Gance does-- with or without an eagle overlaid-- gets pompous real quick. The adoration of the surrounding people-- including the Italian women in the fields who worship their "liberator"-- also raises a few questions. Still, it's spectacular. And Albert Dieudonne as Bonaparte is interesting, at least, and intense. We follow Napoleon from his school days where he marshals classmates into a brilliant victory in a snowball fight-- to his rise from artillery officer to general and his victorious Italian campaign: and then this version ends, with choirs and angels and glowing eyes. And Josephine, his muse, his inspiration (until he discarded her) also overlaid. One finds Violine, her maid, a more compelling beauty. There are scenes of intense military action though it's hard to follow which side is moving where, and ultra-wide shots of the army waiting for instructions from a small man in a funny hat who does not have any form of amplification available: how did they all hear him? It's a trip to watch, full of touch-stones of history, and more interesting than you might think a 6 hour black & white film would be.
Albert Dieudonne, Vladimir Roudenko, Edmond Van Daele, Alexandre Koubitzky, Antonin Artaud, Abel Gance, Gina Manes, Suzanne Bianchetti, Marguerite Gance, Philippe Heriat, Pierre Batcheff, Annabella Annabella, Henri Baudin, Max Maxudian
Chock full of cameos by well-known actors and Anderson's forte: beautiful, strange, archaic compositions, "French Dispatch" is extremely likeable... and boring. As fun as it is to watch a waiter ascend stairwells through several windows at different levels, and animations, and wonderful tableaus of actors in various stages of interest, curiosity, anger, disbelief, etc., the story never really goes anywhere or develops a resonant theme. We are given three stories as they might be related by the wonderful writers Anderson admires, and they are each amusing and fresh, but what is it exactly about the writing that makes them so compelling? One can appreciate the impossible task, short of actually reading the texts, or using more narration. The story of the painter in the prison might have made a good movie all on it's own, but it is neither short enough to stay snappy nor long enough to hold up. One wants to like it-- it's cute and fun and daring. But it also dragged at times, and I don't think Anderson ever located the point of view that would sell the argument, that these writers were special and produced work that magically transformed the readers understanding of a part of the world.
Benicio Del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Lea Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothee Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Almaric, Steve Park, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Lois Smith
Just because you can act-- serious stuff, you know-- not Hollywood-- doesn't mean you can direct, or write. But Branagh knows what serious looks like and he strives to look it in "Belfast" without much success. What he has going for him is Jude Hill, the talented boy who played Buddy, but whose talents are not used to optimum effect here. Buddy's family lives in Belfast and it's the 1960's and the troubles, of course. His family is protestant, living in a mixed neighborhood and the nasty protestant thugs want all the Catholics to move out. This was a disastrous movement of the time when Catholics and protestants had been living in relative harmony in different areas of Belfast. Buddy's dad and mom resist but dad is away in England working most of the time so Buddy is the one who is confronted by the thugs. Dad comes to consider the option of moving away seriously but mom wants badly to stay in her familiar home. The problem starts with the choice to film in black & white, and obvious attempt to evoke the period. It is compounded by the decision to film scenes of violence with hand-held jerky cameras, as people couldn't see clearly what was in front of them at the time (it's simply not true: nobody sees action in front of them the way a jerky camera sees it). There are, in fact, many sequences where one seriously wonders about the choice of shot, extreme close-up too often, or bad composition. There is the romance between Buddy and a blonde class-mate that is handled without charm or insight which makes you wish Branagh had studied Truffaut a bit before shooting. Buddy's older brother Will is almost invisible-- anyone with an older brother would know there is lot missing there. Buddy talks to his grand-dad about the girl, who is Catholic, in a way that does not suggest much about a ten-year-old's crush on a classmate. The grandparents don't have much character to them beyond a thoughtless recollection of loyalty and affection that doesn't seem lived in. Other parts of the film evoke Terence Davies-- badly. It just didn't come to life for me though Branagh claims this is an account of his own life in Belfast before his family moved to London. One suspects it's not really all that accurate, except in the broad swath of incidents.
Jude Hill, Lewis McAskie, Jamie Dornan, Caitriona Balfe, Judi Dench, Ciaran Hinds, Lara McDonnell, Michael Maloney
Documentary of the life of Lee Alexander McQueen, a controversial fashion designer who produced a lot of daring, weird outfits and fashion shows, and influenced a lot of unimportant people. Interestingly filmed and edited, including lots of excellent footage of his shows which were produced with a certain dramatic, visually impressive élan. Many interviews with siblings, mother, friends, competitors. McQueen worked with Givenchy and Tom Ford and reached a high level of success before succumbing to depression and committing suicide shortly after his mother's death in 2010. It is believed he also had HIV at the time.
Lee Alexander McQueen, Joyce McQueen, John Hitchcock, Danny Hall, Janet McQueen, Romeo Gigli, Isabella Blow
The small town of Tickle Cove is in decline: we are introduced with a long list of all the charming characteristics Tickle Cove possessed before the damn government messed things up and told them they couldn't fish anymore. Apparently, there was no violence, drunkenness, unemployment, welfare, divorce, broken families, and so on. And so, to restore the town's sense of pride, they seek a factory, some kind of recycling plant. But to get the factory, they have to prove they have a doctor. To get the doctor, they blackmail a candidate into coming for a month, and then they resort to an elaborate and unbelievable series of deceptions while tapping his phone and pretending to love cricket. There are a few amusing sequences, every cliché in the book and then some, and the lovely scenery, which is worth seeing. But if you think this genre is inherently limited, you haven't seen "Local Hero" which treads the same turf but turns out a gem.
Taylor Kitsch, Brendan Gleeson, Gordon Pinsent, Liane Balaban, Percy Hynes White, Cathy Jones, Mark Critch, Lawrence Barry
Incredibly comprehensive history of the French Revolution from the meeting of the Estates General to the fall of Robespierre. Relatively accurate historically, focused primarily on the relationship between Georges Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Maximilien Robespierre, with generous looks at Lafayette, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and other principals. Most astonishing-- by today's standards-- are the large, well-populated crowd scenes, from the storming of the Bastille to the army rushing out to meet the Prussians: real actors in real uniforms as far as the eye can see. Critically reviled when first released, I think it is better than given credit for. The acting is generally very good, and the story builds to a powerful tension as Robespierre and La Juste manipulate the Convention to try to control the moderates who have begun to tire of the executions. Robespierre is a fascinating character, a Stalinesque leader who was incorruptible but almost sadistic in his determination to impose revolutionary ideas on a massive mob (his greatest miscalculation: the huge ceremony to honor the "god" of Reason). Yes, fascinating because of the insanely dramatic history of the period, but give it credit for being a "warts and all" portrait of the revolution, and for sticking-- mostly-- with the facts.
Klaus Maria Brandauer, Francoise Cluzet, Jane Seymour, Jean-Francois Balmer, Marianne Basler, Andrzej Seweryn, Peter Ustinov, Sam Neill, Vittorio Mezzogiorno, Christopher Lee, Marie Bunel, Raymond Gerome, Bruce Myers
The very definition of an enigmatic performance: Toni Servillo plays the Italian Prime-Minister of whom it was frequently alleged that he had close ties to the Mafia and may have had people murdered in order to preserve his position. Servillo plays Andreotti as incredibly reserved, cagey, smart, and dispassionate, to the point of caricature, but not annoyingly so. "Il Divo" seems to embrace Andreotti's inscrutability, his contemptuousness, his weird Catholicism, his inexplicable magnetism. It could be Robespierre or Stalin in that mask. Beautifully filmed-- as all Sorrentino films are-- and fascinating, evocative soundtrack. Servillo is brilliant, as is the supporting cast. It's a portrait of man as negative space.
Toni Servillo, Anna Bonaiuto, Giulio Bosetti, Flavio Bucci, Carlo Buccirosso, Giorgio Colangeli, Piera Degli Esposti
Literate but whiny take on the romantic foibles of Albert Brooks in a Woody Allenesque comedy about an insecure, pathetic film editor, Robert, who can't made a firm decision about his relationship with Mary. It's on again and off again, while he mutters a long stream of self-deprecating somewhat monotonous thoughts that really don't go anywhere. Entertaining on one level-- the script is at least, as I say, somewhat literate and engaging, but Robert is so off-putting as a character you begin to wish he would just off himself and get it over with. To it's credit, Mary is believably annoyed with Robert's narcissism, at least to a point. And we see a real film editor in action, which is more interesting than the usual generic unknown source of income.
Albert Brooks, Kathryn Harrold, Bruno KIrby, Jane Hallaren, George Kennedy
Based on the book by Vera Brittain-- the same-- the story of a young woman whose brothers, fiancé, and friends felt that duty and honor called them to join the army when war broke out. All of them died on the battlefield. Brittain's account is touching and moving but the movie version is poorly directed and acted. And poorly conceived: Vera wants very, very badly to be educated at Oxford (or Somerville, the Oxford ancillary school for women) because she dreams of equality and achievement, but she almost immediately subverts her ambition by her attachment to Roland, and eagerness to marry him. I believe the movie shows us this version because it wants us to be heart-broken when Roland is killed in the war, but it completely undermines our believe in Vera's feminism or the sincerity of her interest in an education. Vera leaves Oxford and volunteers with the Voluntary Aid Detachment but her sudden immersion into the intense treatment programs for injured soldiers invites something a lot more compelling than this flippant entry. When her fiancé's body is returned she is seemingly far more concerned about finding her own picture and letters among his effects than about the loss of her lover and future husband. Her breakdown is conspicuously over-acted and more pathetic than moving. Her activity at the hospitals reeks of only a passing familiarity with the mechanisms a nurse would be intimately familiar with. Perhaps useful as a biopic if you want the main outline of Vera Brittain's life, but there are much better films that cover the same ground.
Alicia Vikander, Kit Harington, Taron Egerton, Dominic West, Colin Morgan, Emily Watson, Joanna Scanlan, MIranda Richardson
I can't think of a better example of a movie spoiled by method acting-- everyone's in on it in "The Light Between Oceans" and phony herky-jerky hand-held camera movement. The director likely called for it and got it with everyone pretending they are deep and SIGNIFCANT. The story is not bad: a young couple working in a very isolated lighthouse is trying hard to have children but the wife, Isabel, has a miscarriage, and then another miscarriage. Just after the second, a small boat washes up on the island holding a small baby and the body of a dead man. Isabel, wanting a baby very, very badly (and crushed by the miscarriage) convinces her husband, Tom, to let her keep the baby and tell the outside word that the second miscarriage never happened. And so it was. But, back on the mainland shortly after, Tom sees a young woman mourning at a gravestone and realizes that she is the mother and she is mourning her lost husband and baby. (The gravestone for a missing husband, lost at sea in a boat, would be unlikely this soon.) So how do you set up the situation of a man and a baby in a boat out at sea without the mother? I don't know. "The Light Between Oceans" suggests that he was mocked so bitterly by the English community (he was German) that he left, with the baby, without the mom who adored him. They couldn't come up with a better story than that? (I'd have gone for an illness on the mother's part.) How do you convince the audience that Michael Fassbender is 28 (he's 37)? You don't. This is method acting and soap opera. When the boat washes up on the beach, Tom and Isabel run desperately towards it, not because that's what real people would have done, but because the actors want to lay out the intense desire of this couple for a baby. Too often characters react to a level of gravity that is not known yet. The police investigators fail to consider that a young woman who just had a miscarriage and might want a baby badly would not likely be part of the plan to keep the baby. Tom decided to send letters and physical clues to the mother to let her know that her baby was still alive-- which is sort of believable, but the film doesn't resolve the tension between his apparent intelligence and the massive stupidity of the gesture-- this is a small town! Some of the secondary actors are not professional and it shows, though that is not always a deficit. Finally, "The Light Between Oceans" takes a definitive turn towards soap opera combined with modern self-affirmation therapy by making Tom a saint for wanting to take the blame all by himself (nobody really enjoys that kind of saint) and trying exculpate Isabel from blame by having the person she most wronged absolve her. This is not fun to watch in a movie that sets out with such high-minded, stylish seriousness.
Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Rachel Weisz, Florence Clery, Jack Thompson, Thomas Unger, Garry McDonald, Jane Menelaus
Johan Borg has terrible nightmares-- or are they memories-- of violence and horror. He and his wife live on a desolate island along with the landlord, who lives in a castle, and a few other hardy inhabitants. A chance encounter with a stranger turns violent. Johan and his wife, Alma, are invited to a castle. Alma reads his diary. She brings up a scandalous affair that he had. The woman he had the affair with is coming to the party at the castle, which he intends to attend. Alma is terrified that he will resume his affair. This moody and puzzling work seems like an appendage to some of Bergman's other projects, without a complete life of its own. Many, many close-ups of very serious expressions-- one can see how it is easily parodied. On the other hand, who else explores the dark recesses of the mind like Bergman?
Max Von Sydow, LIv Ullmann, Gertrud Fridh, Georg Rydeberg, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin, Mikael Rundquist
Even the poster is misleading: Uncle Buck looks like stereotypical Hollywood fare. Lucille Ball syndrome: isn't this obnoxious, annoying, impulsive, reckless bimbo so darn adorable? Surprise: Uncle Buck, who is required to step in to look after Bob and Cindy's three children when Cindy's father has a heart attack, is kind of strict and tough on the kids. But he's also reliable and caring and the two younger sibs start to really like him. Tia, the 15-year-old, stretching herself out and looking to have good times with the boys, does not. I started to really like the movie towards the end when Hughes smartly avoided the type of cloying resolution of this conflict for a more nuanced and bittersweet version-- and then he went all slap-sticky for the last ten minutes, and added a second resolution that laid it on a bit thick.
John Candy, Macaulay Culkin, Jean Louisa Kelly, Amy Madigan, Gaby Hoffman, Elaine Bromka, Garrett Brown, Laurie Metcalf, Jay Underwood
Unkind film about two self-centred parents who split up and squabble over custody of Maisie, a seven-year-old, who is remarkably adaptable without being too remarkable. While both parents claim to adore her, they each make decisions that clearly place their own ambitions ahead of her welfare. In steps a babysitter and the mother's new lover. Beautifully acted, especially by Onata Aprile as Maisie, and wonderfully intelligent: with the exception of a coda, the relations between adults and children are believable and compelling. In the end, a bit of idealism intrudes but not enough to spoil the over-all impression of a smart, insightful look at a separation from the child's point of view.
Julianne Moore, Steve Coogan, Joanna Vanderham, Alexander Skarsgard, Onata Aprile,
Dreary horror film about two men working a very isolated lighthouse. One of them, Thomas Wake, is an older, grizzled sailor who may be intent on driving the other, Thomas Howard, crazy. Wake imposes his will on Howard, forcing him into a strict regimen of back-breaking work and denying him access to the light itself. So what's really going on? It's hard to tell. In the quest for originality, "Lighthouse" does away with those details that clue you in to what the writer thinks you should think. And Robert Pattinson as Howard is doing his best Dicaprio imitation: a lightweight glamour boy trying very, very hard for some artistic cred without the talent to really carry it off. For one thing, his accent-- of indeterminate vintage-- wandered often, and Dafoe's wandered occasionally. There are eerie seagulls, hallucinations (or not) of mermaids and ghosts, storms, and masturbation. Great films can be transgressive but not all transgressive films are great. Nicely filmed in black and white but promises far more than it delivers.
Willem Dafoe, Robert Pattinson, Valeria Karaman, Logan Hawkes
Firstly, the film was shot in 8 - 10 hours per day, as opposed to the usual 12+ hours for most films. It shows. Scenes are under-rehearsed, lack intensity and development, and the actors often seem rushed and kind of rote. Secondly, of course there are fibs. The McDonald brothers were quite happy with the millions they received as a settlement, Ray and Ethel had a daughter who lost her existence in the film, Ray Kroc was more than a decade younger than Michael Keaton when he met the McDonalds (it shows), Joan Kroc did not invent the milk-shake substitute, and nobody could have seriously believed the powdered substitute for real ice cream in the shakes was just as good as the real thing. Apparently McDonald's let the movie go without issue-- and it shows. Why would they mind? They never show the appalling original Ronald McDonald clown, or discuss nutrition, and no one ever describes McDonald's food as anything other than fabulous, though it is noted that the Instapak milk-shake substitute was eventually abandoned. Given the puffery in the first 30 minutes, I anticipated holographic treatment of Kroc but the last 30 minutes portrays him as more of a Trumpian hustler, greedy, ruthless, and arrogant. Still, the film never questions the basic value of McDonald's food, or the fact that McDonald's doesn't even really sell "hamburgers" at all, except for the quarter-pounder, which they do their best to discourage people from ordering. It's a good story and everyone knows McDonald's and the details of Kroc's material success are interesting enough. But it shouldn't surprise anyone that "The Founder" didn't get a single nomination for an academy award. It's prosaic, efficient illustration with flat cinematography, unimpressive acting and music, and an incurious attachment to the facts.
Michael Keaton, Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch, Laura Dern, B. J. Novak, Linda Cardellini
Carla works in the office of a real estate developer. She is mostly deaf but, by reading lips and with a hearing aid, she is able to function and even thrive, though she never gets credit for her work. She is also clearly regarded as "plain" or homely by the men around her and she clearly hungers for some romantic attention. Her boss recommends she hire an assistant and she does and he turns out to be Paul, a convict. Carla is not demur about the fact that she wants to hire a young man, and she gets what she wants, but Paul is challenging and sometimes uncooperative until circumstances (Carla is cheated out of a commission by a colleague) bring them together in a plot to make some quick money. The sexual tension is palpable all the way through and well-handled without obviousness or predictability. Carla is demur and resistant but clearly intrigued by Paul's simmering violence and abrasiveness. For a story that outwardly seemed so predictable, Audiard does a wonderful job keeping things a just below boiling for the bulk of the plot until escalating tensions credibly bring the two into explosive desire.
Emmanuelle Devos, Vincent Cassel, Olivier Gourmet, Olivier Perrier, Olivia Bonamy, Bernard Alane
Well, someone had to find something remarkable in the trashiest TV Evangelist of them all, and they lucked into Tammy Faye's unusual tolerance for gay and transgender people, and her utter ignorance of just what was wrong about what she and Jimmy Bakker did (taking the money of naïve, suggestible Christians to finance their incredibly lavish lifestyle: in her view, that's just right). There's no narrative intelligence at work here-- just Tammy Faye, Tammy Faye, Tammy Faye, and the long, sorry story of her rise and fall, of corruption, her love of make-up, her singing (not all bad, but still country-trash), and her subsequent financial struggles after she married Roe Messner (who bailed out the Bakker organization at one point during the Jessica Hahn scandal). Entertaining because the subject is so outrageous, but not really all that interesting as narrative.
Tammy Faye Bakker, Jim Bakker, RuPaul RuPaul, Oral Roberts, Roe Messner, Jessica Hahn
I have always believed that the startling charm of "Lost in Translation" was not the result of a brilliant director or writer but rather a charming accidental combination of Scarlett Johannsson's naïve sexual magnetism, Bill Murray's cool, obtuse charm and witty improvisation, the alienating harsh commercialism of Japanese culture and Tokyo itself, and Coppola's hands-off direction. "On the Rocks", like all of Coppola's subsequent efforts, merely confirms my view. Aimless, poorly written, and predictable, and it looks a like a desperate attempt to recreate the magic of "Lost in Translation", even to the point of having Murray sing. There is not a single sequence that approaches the eerie authenticity of "did you buy your Porsche yet?" in "Lost in Translation". Instead, "On the Rocks" lays bare Coppola's weaknesses as director. She has very little to offer besides what the cast brings and if the cast doesn't bring it, she has nothing. Bill Murray is not nearly as witty as you might think anyway and here he is completely out of ideas. And Rashida Jones-- unlike Johansson in "Translation"-- is trying to act, and she doesn't have the chops. She is dull and rote and often seems to be nothing more than straight man to Bill Murray's alleged wit. The plot: Laura suspects her husband, a high-flying businessman at some kind of high- tech firm (doh), is cheating on her. Her intrusive father (Murray) decides to investigate, casually suggesting she check his phone text messages, and follow him around (some reviewers incomprehensibly thought this sequence was hilarious). While doing so, he alludes to his sex life in a way most daughters would find creepy, and she alludes to his betrayal of the family, for which he is unapologetic. There are overtones here though I'm not sure Coppola means anything in particular-- she has so little control over her material. Daddy issues? Who knows. But Rashida Jones barely conveys anything convincing as a daughter, and Murray is reticent but a little self- serving. Where does this all go? If you love Bill Murray more than I do-- and a lot of people do-- you will gladly watch 90 minutes of this dreck.
Bill Murray, Rashida Jones, Marlon Wayans, Jessica Henwick, Barbara Bain
Stephen Meyers (an always inadequate Ryan Gosling) is a political idealist working for Governor Mike Morris' presidential campaign. Morris is an idealized portrait-- though generally creditable-- of a smart, liberal, progressive, charismatic leader. There are snags in the campaign, specifically, the critical endorsement of a popular black Senator, and a shocking (ha ha) affair with an attractive young intern. Up to this point the story was generally credible and tense and politically astute. Except... Meyer's is offered a job by a rival campaign and we are supposed to believe that this secret meeting 1) had to be a secret and 2) was somehow inappropriate, in and of itself. In fact, campaign staff of rival primary candidates have every reason to communicate with each other and a meeting should not have been scandalous, and certainly not scandalous enough to cost Meyers his job, as it did here. And it you can't buy that, you'll have an even bigger problem with some melodramatic developments later. The script is not all bad, and the secondary cast is pretty good, even with Giamatti and Gosling doing their usual method acting schtick. It's just the one core development that is hard to buy.
George Clooney, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ryan Gosling, Evan Rachel Wood, Marisa Tomei, Jeffrey Wright, Max Minghella, Jennifer Ehle
Holly Hunter is probably best thing about "Miss Firecracker" though it is directed by Thomas Schlamme, who later directed many episodes of "West Wing". And it's based on the play, by Beth Henley ("Crimes of the Heart", "Nobody's Fool"), which at least gives it a story and dialogue. Hunter plays Carnelle, who was kind of adopted into the Rutledge family and idealizes Elain, who won the Miss Firecracker contest years before. And so she is determined to also win it. Carnelle has a "reputation" -- as they used to say-- and questionable taste, so it's an uphill battle for her. Somehow, she wrangles her way into the five finalists and gets to perform her patriotic routine before the judges. There are no real familiar tropes in this odd film-- some of the men around her genuinely admire Carnelle, and even Elain has a soft spot for her, so she isn't really "ridiculed" so much as satirized for aspiring to an achievement that is obviously ridiculous. And she sort of gets that in the end. "Nobody's Fool" is a more complete realization of the idea.
Holly Hunter, Tim Robbins, Mary Steenburgen, Alfre Woodard, Scott Glenn
Quite obviously inspired by the historical activities of Germany's Krupp family, the story of a decadent aristocratic family, the Von Essenbecks, and their steelworks and their collaboration with the Nazi Party as it rises to dominance in the 1930's. The Krupps were incredibly central to the Germany military, providing steel, tanks, submarines, and ammunition for the Reichswehr, and financial support to the Nazi party. "The Damned" tracks the battle for control of the company as Friedrich Bruckmann, married to the widowed Sophie Von Essenbeck (whose deceased husband was a war hero in World War I), makes his move, trying to sideline upstart Konstantin and take control. This is complicated by the fact that the Krupps don't see women as being equal in inheritance rights. Konstantin is deeply involved with the numerous gay Nazis (not quite historically accurate) under Rohm and you can see where that is going to end. Martin is the "deviant" (compared to mass murderers?) of the family, obviously homosexual, but also abusing the children of Elisabeth, and a Jewish girl in an apartment building. As the grandson of Baron Joachim, he is the primary heir to the majority shares of the company, though Konstantin is the president. Aschenbach is the Nazi party leader who manipulates from behind the scenes to ensure that the regime gets what it needs from the Von Essenbecks. (You can see clear lines to the movie "Cabaret", from Martin to the Emcee and especially Aschenbach who is very similar in tone and voice to Maximilian). The problem with "The Damned" is that it is melodrama. The acting is stiff and rote, the substance is overwrought emotional turmoil, and the really interesting details of ownership, control, and power are so sloppily presented that the narrative keeps falling back on the emotional outbursts. The dreary, hugely disappointing music by Maurice Jarre does not help at all. Visconti is far more interested in Martin's perversity as a transvestite (disgusting his grandfather) than the use of slave labor at the Krupp factories. (The real life Krupp grandfather was, in fact, a homosexual.) The take-down of Ernst Rohm is spectacular but not remotely evocative of a real event. This is Rainer Werner Fassbinder's favorite movie?
Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Griem, Helmut Berger, Renaud Verley, Umberto Orsini, Reinhard Kolldehoff, Albrecht Schoehals, Charlotte Rampling
I knew nothing about this film, except that some critics liked it, before we started watching. It got better and better. Very well-written and acted, and far more reliable than the usual "true story". Katherine Gun was a young analyst with British Intelligence when a memo crossed her desk that clearly implied that the U.S. was asking the U.K. to assist them with compiling a dossier of communications between some of the temporary members of the Security Council and others that could be used to leverage them into endorsing the war on Iraq. Gun thought it was an attempt to start a war with deceit and leaked the memo to an anti-war activist who leaked it to the press. This created a sensation, but also provoked an investigation by the British that eventually snared her, leading to the charge of violating the "Official Secrets Act". Knightly gives a vanity-free performance; names are named; and the film as a taught, efficient tempo to it that is riveting. Kudos to Nicole Mowbray, the real life journalist at the Observer, who spell-corrected the memo into British style which temporarily discredited the entire story to the Drudge Report, who cooperated with actress Hanako Footman to make her own humiliation as authentic as possible.
Keira Knightley, Matt Smith, Matthew Goode, Rhys Ifans, Adam Bakri, Ralph Fiennes
Searing drama about a Republican political leader who is forced into hiding after Franco's forces seize the government in 1936 Spain and start executing members of the opposition. He is prepared and has built a small space behind a shelf in his house. Eventually he moves to slightly larger space in his father's house. And there he remains for 30 years as Franco rules and continues to persecute leftists. But the story is really about Higinio's insularity and fear of exposure like something that could simply be a personality trait. His wife, Rosa, wants to stretch out, have a child, go to the coast, but is inhibited by Higinio's fear of being caught and executed. The film keeps us in his claustrophobic environment to the end, with a focus on how it has left him with a constricted, wasted life, and how it has robbed Rosa of the full expression of her marriage and love. Complications-- give the film strong tension-- ensue, including an amorous Rodrigo, a soldier in Franco's guard, who tries to rape Rosa, and Gonzalo, whose brother may have been betrayed by Higinio (and executed) It's a haunting, sad portrait (based on, or inspired by fact) that leaves you considering what opportunities in your own life you may have passed over out of fear or timidity. Key to this understanding is the fact that Higinio is no hero of the revolution: he appears to have been complicit in some of the excesses of the Republican government, and, perhaps, a coward, for hiding instead of finding a way to escape or fight.
Antonio De la Torre, Belen Cuesta, Vicente Vergara, Jose Manuel Poga, Emilio Palacios, Joaquin Gomez
The fact that I could predict from the very beginning that there would be a scene in which Laurence is physically assaulted and then cruelly distanced by his friends and family tells you a lot about Xavier Dolan's self-indulgent and ultimately narcissistic wallow into the victimization oeuvre. If poor old Laurence isn't rejected and victimized, where's the drama? Where's the self-pity? Where's the spotlight? He is a professor in a relationship with a girl who has a particular kind of prettiness that you can immediately recognize even if she doesn't. And is Laurence gay? The movie would have you believe he continues a heterosexual relationship while transforming into a woman, but there are moments in which a homosexual orientation is implied. He also seems to find it important to retain his distant mother's love but... well, she's distant. We don't see anything there that is so great that he badly wants to keep it. The father, of course is hostile, but, well, it's set in the 1980's.
Melvil Poupaud, Nathalie Baye, Emmanuel Schwartz, Suzanne Clement, Monia Chokri, Yves Jacques
Allegedly about Frankie Lymon of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, one-hit wonders from the 1950's, who ever regained success after the hit song of the title. Lymon became a drug addict who died at the age of 25 of an overdose in his grandmother's house. But you wouldn't know much about addiction from this film. What is used to try to sustain interest is a battle among Lymon's three wives (he didn't divorce any of them) for his estate (after Diana Ross recorded "Why do Fools Fall in Love" in 1981, producing a hit and royalties). But half of the royalties-- inevitably-- went to his manager, Morris Levy, who simply added his name to the credits after it became a hit and never paid a dime to Lymon of the other two actual composers. (I question whether Lymon played any part in the composition). Either way, this film doesn't capture anything interesting about Lymon, the music business, drugs, or marriage.
Halle Berry, Vivica Fox, Lela Rochon, Larenz Tate, Paul Mazursky, Little Richard, Ben Vareen
Largely improvised and displaying remnants of "Easy Rider" and other misbegotten relics of the 1960's, "Kings of the Road" nevertheless has its charms. It is almost 3 hours of two men driving a truck. One of them services movie theatres. The other drove his Beetle into a lake after this wife left him. They slowly become friends, allowing each other into small recesses of their manly facades, contemplating life, relishing the journey, wondering what the point of it all is. Do they even wonder? Wenders is too cool to make it too obvious. Some regard this as Wender's best film but I don't think it comes close to "Wings of Desire", though it has some of the same idiosyncratic off- handedness of that film. A scene that made me cringe: at one point, Robert travels to his hometown to visit his father, a newspaper editor. He lectures him about how awful he was and how he didn't treat his wife very well, and writes a pseudo news item about "how to treat a woman" and prints it for him. The scene is awkward and out of character for Robert who, until then, had been quite reticent and even humble about his own situation. Here he is self-righteous and even cruel.
Rudiger Vogler, Hanns Zischler, Lisa Kreuzer, Rudolf Schundler, Marquard Bohm
Compelling documentary about the one-child policy in China from the 1970's to 2000's when it was finally rescinded. Hi-lights the role state officials played in securing sometimes forced abortions and sterilizations on women who disobeyed the directive. Striking interviews with officials involved, including the film-maker's own family members (they were often women). Points out that orphanages that supplied children to Western couples were making money on the supply of unwanted (mostly female) children that were abandoned by families trying hard for a male.
Nanfu Wang, Zaodi Wang, Zhimei Wang, Tunde Wang, Huaru Yuan
"Nayattu" feels raw and authentic: three police officers-- none of whom fit the stereo-type in these kind of movies-- have to flee a district because of a hot political situation and the arrest and assault of an innocent civilian. In the process, they accidentally kill a cyclist who may have been material to the first investigation: so now the police are also after them and the local politicians find it expedient to jump on the bandwagon. The star of "Nayattu" though is the relationship between the three officers and how they respond to various obstacles and developments on the news. Well-acted, well-filmed, and intelligent.
Kunchacko Boban, Joju George, Nimisha Sajayan, Jaffer Idukki, Yama Gilgamesh
When Desmond Doss explains that he is being persecuted because of his "values", you know that this film is really about Mel Gibson, an ultra-conservative Christian who has a fetish for blood; blood dripping, blood splattering, exploding, dribbling, blood everywhere. That that's what "Hacksaw Ridge" largely consists of: bloody bodies dancing in the air, swirling and swinging and swaying to the beat of Gibson's adored violence. The "values" line is anachronistic: he should have said "faith", but Gibson knows his targets. So Desmond is never shown in a situation in which his refusal to lift a weapon caused a comrade to be bayoneted to death, even though such a situation must have been likely. Nor does "Hacksaw Ridge" dissect the hypocrisy of providing medic services for men who do kill, with rifles, machine guns, and bombs. There is no doubt Doss was courageous, but was he rational? Desmond Doss doesn't have to join the military but he wants it both ways. He wants to be in the military but he wants to refuse to even tough a rifle. He wants to be a prostitute without having to have sex. The movie heavily distorts the impediments and hostility he received (remember: it's really about Gibson), even making up an incident wherein he is prevented from attending his own wedding by a vindictive sergeant. Nor was his dad the abusive drunk shown here. Nor did a choir of angels sing to accompany the astonished reverence with which his comrades greet him after he lowers the wounded from the ridge -- including some Japanese ! (he did not). Garfield, like DiCaprio, puts up a great façade of an actor putting up a façade, of suffering and anguish and humility-- please, please my wounds aren't so bad: give my stretcher to that man over there! He soon becomes insufferable. There is a genuine story here-- Doss did receive the Medal of Honor for his feats-- but it's drowned in Gibson's narcissistic indulgence. Like Spielberg, he never thinks it's enough; he grinds the point into the viewer's face until the astute viewer doesn't care. Yet this piece of self-indulgence genuflection received 9:48 of standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival. I can only assume that the audience was convinced by the volume of blood and guts that the film itself had blood and guts. It does not.
Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey, Teresa Palmer, Milo Gibson, Hugo Weaving, Rachel Griffiths, Vince Vaughn
Vulgar and tasteless paean to the glories of gay actualization, in the person of Eric, who has a hetero best friend but-- shockingly-- discovers he is attracted to men. Plays out like a gay director's fantasy, coy, predictable, and probably most interesting as a relic of 1980's attitudes towards homosexuality (the adults around Eric don't automatically believe he is entitled to authentic sexual self- expression). Don't forget-- this is the era of AIDS as well, which does give the story a slight shade of incipient tragedy as well. On the plus side, there is actual mention of condoms and discussion of what the partner consents to do. And give them some credit: the gay characters do kiss and carouse (unlike most Hollywood films about courageous gay people standing up for themselves).
Chris Stafford, Tina Holmes, Andersen Gabrych, Stephanie McVay, Lea DeLaria, John Eby
Rob used to be a brilliant chef but now lives in the forested wilderness with his pet pig, who apparently can find truffles. Cliche #1: he left society when his incredibly great wife, Lori, died. We don't know how. When his pig is pignapped, Rob, with his dealer Amir, has to make contact with some of his hold associates in order to find out who has the pig. We encounter an underground society in Portland, and a kind of (unconvincing) fight club, and a bitter competitive dealer. Rob is in the category of that fetishistic American creation, the rugged, alienated individualist who is too pure for the corrupt society he was part of, and who is respected and admired no matter how disagreeable he really is. Cliche #3 or 4 or 5: he is able to cook up a dish so good that it compels his antagonist to acknowledge his moral ascendency and make concessions. Nicholas Cage is obviously trying to sell his performance as gritty and intense but he never really puts out anything beyond what is required. The entire film was made in 20 days with no real budget and looks it. Parts of it reminded me a little of "Babette's Feast" but this is nowhere near the same league.
Nicholas Cage, Alex Wolff, Adam Arkin, Julia Bray, Darius Pierce, David Knell, John Walton, Darius Pierce
Folksy production about a criminal, having served his time, returning to where he buried his loot only to find a shrine erected over the "grave", dedicated to "the unknown saint". Colorful denizens of the film: a local barber/dentist, a father and son who resent the shrine attracting citizens away from their drought-stricken town, a guard, and his guard-dog, and a doctor who attracts women patients with imagined complaints, because the men go to the shrine to be cured. Fresh and original, and amateurish in a likeable way, but not quite winning enough to be a gem.
Younes Bouab, Salah Ben Seleh, Bouchaib Semmak, Mohammed Nouaimane, Anas El Baz, Abdelghani Kitab
Joan Fontaine is miscast in this melodramatic tragedy about a naïve young woman whose obsessive love for a musician does nothing except produce an overbeating sense of self-pity. Stylishly directed but I found it very hard to get over the mature actress trying to play her younger, more spritely self.
Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan, Mady Christians, Marcel Journet, Art Smith, Howard Freeman, John Good
Co-written by future Nobel Prize (for literature) winner Patrick Modiano, who became known for his incisive fiction about France during World War II. Lucien is a disaffected young man, dissatisfied with his status and influence. He stumbles into a party held by a French collaborationists and Germans and they kind of adopt him into the German police force (in the South of France, co-existing above the French police). The ambiguous nature of the relationship of these men to a Jewish tailor and his daughter, and to each other, seems confusing only because we have been trained by Hollywood to expect dumbed down, simplified relationships. All Nazis bad; all allies good. Or, there is a good Nazi because he isn't really a Nazi at heart. "Lacombe, Lucien" dissects these illusions with complication after complication. The central tension is Lucien's desire for France, the tailor's beautiful daughter, and her willingness to gratify him if it's necessary (and it is) to protect her father. Lucien himself is unlikeable, a bully, petty, and childish, while France's father, Albert, is dignified and intelligent but fully aware of how vulnerable his to blackmail. Well acted and beautifully filmed. Malle, incidentally, insists he saw historical evidence that there was at least one black man in the Gestapo, but the IMDB denies it.
Pierre Blaise, Aurora Clement, Holger Lowenadler, Therese Giehse, Stephane Bouy, Loumi Iacobsesco, Rene Bouloc
Allegedly the greatest concert film of all time (I would rate "The Last Waltz" as better), "Stop Making Sense" is a tour-de-force of David Byrnes dynamic, solipsistic personality: quirk with energy, imagination with discipline. From the very first moments, he dominates the film, with his dance moves, his voice, his face, and his music. The Talking Heads is very good band, but it's clearly the David Byrne Show, and he carries it off. This is early in the Talking Heads' career, so we miss some of their later classics like "True Stories", but it's still a collection of brilliant pieces, beautifully staged and filmed, and recorded. Collected from several different live shows (one night shot from one side of the stage, the next night from the other, in order to minimize disruption of the cameras).
David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Jerry Harrison, Bernie Worrell, Chris Frantz, Alex Weir, Steven Scales
Incredibly tiresome entry into the Star Wars comic book series without the slightest charm, imagination, freshness, or life. If it were not for the incredibly tedious John Williams score pounding throughout the action or inaction it would have all the dynamic of slowly filling vat of congealed liquid. Anakin Skywalker and his best friend Obi-Wan Kenobi are young Jedi interns. The Jedi are kind of like the military, working for the Republic, for the Senate, but at the same time under their own authority, or not, depending on plot twist requirements. Supreme Chancellor (heil Palpatine!) Palpatine is deviously manipulating Anakin into becoming Darth Vader, so he can rule. The biggest problem in the whole series rests on this axis: why? The best dramas and even the best comic books know that the protagonist must want something, and it must be something with some kind of value-- power itself, or money, or women. What does Palpatine want? What does Vader want? Mainly, to not be stopped. But without that driving lust, their "evil" is muted and incomprehensible. Even worse, the devious Jedi-- recruiting Anakin to spy on Palpatine-- don't behave all that much better than the evil chancellor. And as I have always asserted, Yoda is the most badly misconceived character in any major film I have even seen. Interesting, he is not. The pigeon English makes no sense -- why, if he is the wisest being in the movie, is he so articulate? Because he is too smart for words? No, because Lucas is too dumb to convincingly create an intelligent character. But let no one forget that the entire Star Wars series was deliberately modelled on 1950's b-movies and they were b-movies for a reason: they are second-rate.
Hayden Christensen, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson, Ian McDiarmid, Jimmy Smits, Frank Oz, Anthony Daniels,
Yes, you can tell it's written by a real writer, playwright August Wilson. Ma Rainey has been brought in by a white record label to record some new songs. She is aware of the exploitive nature of the relationship, and her limited options, but expresses her limited aspirations by demanding a coke before she starts recording. Meanwhile, her band has it's own tensions: Levee is working on his own material and wants to break out and record his own album. It works, in the end, with a few uneven spots.
Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, Michael Potts, Jeremy Shamos, JOnny Coyne
Well, it's intriguing on one level for about 45 minutes and then it goes over the top. Lucy (Johansson) ingests, accidentally, some substance that causes the human brain to grow. The biggest problem with "Lucy" is that the cornerstone premise-- that humans only use 10% of their brains-- is absurdly untrue. The second part, that we could become telekinetic and cosmically powerful if we did use more of our brain-- is fair game for speculative sci-fi, but only if the first premise was true, which it is not. In any case, the rest of the movie consists largely of Johansson running around killing people until it becomes inconvenient to the plot, at which point she just sits in a chair and expands herself, as a kind of gloppy, slimy, tentacle thing, taking over computers, travelling through time. Besson just couldn't resist going way, way, way over the top, and the film becomes a crashing bore.
Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Choi Min-sik, Amr Waked
Charming documentary about a woman who took up the Polaroid camera as her weapon of choice for portrait photography, up to the large format 20 by 24 instant camera. Really, a low-key, unpretentious portrait of an interesting personality whose work probably doesn't really amount to anything very significant but who contributed her piece to the panorama of American photographic arts in the 1960's and 70's.
Elsa Dorfman
Lenny Cantrow rushes into a marriage with Elaine May's daughter-- uh, actress Jeannie Berlin-- because, frankly, he needs to get it off regularly and he really hasn't given much thought to the enterprise. As they drive to Florida for their honeymoon, he gradually comes to realize that his new bride, Lila, is really annoying. Just kind of annoying. She keeps repeating how the marriage if for 40, 50 years, and how he will get used to her off- key singing and sense of humour because he has 40, 50 years to get used to it. She ignores his advise on the first day at the beach and gets badly burned. He goes down to the beach by himself and meets the transcendent Kelly, who is witty, and tasteful, and amusing, and provocative: she likes him right from the start and doesn't seem bothered by his marital status. Lenny immediately decides he has made a big mistake with Lily and pursues Kelly. He even tells her father his exact circumstance and insists he'll work it out. He is determined. He's also behaves like a man who just doesn't understand how other people receive what he says and does. He doesn't care. A lot of the humour here is in his lengthy monologues filled with odd, awkward observation and commentary. Like many 1970's and earlier movies, the script is literate and developed-- it's an adult comedy which you just don't see much of anymore. Very reminiscent of "The Graduate", including the Jewish undertext. Good supporting cast. Jerry Seinfeld considers "The Heartbreak Kid" the greatest American comedy of all time.
Charles Grodin, Cybill Shepherd, Eddie Albert, Jeannie Berlin, Audra Lindley, Doris Roberts, Marilyn Putnam
Extremely faithful-- to no advantage-- adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's strange novel about a lost discharged soldier who fancies himself an evangelist for the church without Christ, as he insists that Christ is not necessary for anyone, and that he didn't die for anything, and all religion is false. O'Connor has kind of set out to prove him wrong here and I'm not sure it works on any level. Hazel Motes is abrasive, self-deluding, and crude, and even takes up with a prostitute to prove he is not subject to conventional morality. When he finds a blind street preacher, he almost invites him to prove him wrong, but, instead, he finds a fraud. His one convert annoys him and he drives him off. Feels like nobody driving this jalopy: the actors don't seem to have a strong sense of who they are or how they relate to each other.
Brad Dourif, John Huston, Dan Shor, Harry Dean Stanton, Amy Wright, Ned Beatty, Mary Nell Santacroce
To his credit, instead of complaining bitterly about unjust criticism, Clooney apologized to his financiers and took the blame for this episodic, poorly-developed, occasionally charming pastiche about a group of Americans, Brits, and Frenchmen assigned the task of rescuing or preserving historic, cultural artifacts from destruction during the invasion of Germany in World War II. Never mind that it was actually the British who initiated the idea, or that there were hundreds involved, not this handful of charming, well-known, character types, or that the big discoveries were made by someone else, let's just throw it all together like a string of sitcom episodes and about adventurous boy scouts (Matt Damon even resists Cate Blanchett's sultry charms, improbably and unnecessarily). At one point it is implied that the Germans want to destroy all these incredibly valuable cultural products: quite the contrary. It would have been interesting to have someone discuss the fact that the most barbaric regime in modern history loved great culture. We also get an argument between a commander and one of the monuments men over whether a historic building should be preserved if it means sacrificing the lives of soldiers. I cannot imagine that the monuments men would not have immediate agreed that the soldiers lives take priority, but if a way could be found to accomplish the task without destroying the building, it should be preferred. There is also an inane moment where James Granger (Damon) restores a painting to it's place on the wall of an apartment in which a deported Jewish family used to live-- as if that solved the issue.
George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville, Bob Balaban
Fictionalized account of a true meeting between Mohammed Ali, Sam Cooke, James Brown, and Malcolm X, at a motel room in Miami in 1964, on February 25. We don't need to know what was real and what is imagined: that's not the point. The point is that the four men each had their own unique take on dealing with the racist society that sought to celebrate and exploit them, and, at the same, perpetuate the institutions that restricted their opportunities. Here Regina King is a bit heavy handed: don't tell me Jim Brown didn't know he wasn't going to be invited into the house of his former coach, as the movie shows us. But the discussions, especially between Malcolm X and Sam Cooke are powerful and relevant and-- depressingly--as relevant today as they were in 1964. Best of all, the characters are more than genotypes of black identity: they have personalities and characters and quirks and impulsive moments. They are fully realized as persons, which is more than most films on this topic achieve. And even with the restricted staginess of the script (it is obviously based on a play) the drama does not feel constricted or confined. A bit too cute, perhaps, with Sam Cooke performing "A Change is Gonna Come" on Carson after the meeting: it didn't happen that way. Cooke wrote the song earlier, after being turned away from a Holiday Inn in Louisiana because of his race. But the exceptional performances and provocative script more than make up for such lapses.
Ben-Adir Kingsley, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, Leslie Odom Jr., Lance Reddick, Christian Magby, Nicolette Robinson, Joaquina Kalukango
Not really a documentary: some scenes were set up and the "agent", Sergio Chamy, was auditioned for the part. But it works as a quiet little drama about nursing homes, loneliness, abandonment, and the human need for companionship and recognition. The daughter of a resident of a nursing home hires a private detective to investigate the home to ensure that her mother is receiving good care. He hires Sergio, and 81-year-old retiree who is still very fit, to infiltrate the home and report on his observations. Sergio is a gem and independently minded. He notes that the daughter never visits the mother she claims to care so much for. He also attends to the needs of other residents as well as he can, while fending off the amorous desires of one particular woman. Amusing and hilarious at times, and touching at others, as when he talks with a woman whose children never visit and obtains photos of them for her. A sad little film of dubious pedigreed but worth a view.
Sergio Chamy, Romulo Aitken, Marta Olivares, Berta Ureta, Zoila Gonzalez
Vastly over-rated documentary about how Craig Foster found himself so fascinating he decided to tell us all just how fascinated he was to see himself being fascinating on film. All right-- it's not entirely that bad. But it follows the recent trend of documentary film-makers making their own feelings and comments the focus of the film even when, as in this case, their observations and intuitions are banal. He also uses the cheap the tactic of bookending the film with his "struggle" to connect with his family after caring too much for his work. I don't buy that part-- it reeks of contrivance. But there is some interest in his year-long closely observed study of the octopus.
Craig Foster
Make no mistake about it: there is no single visionary creative writer for this film: there is the Disney Corporation, doing everything they can to homogenize the story into the lowest common denominator, while employing the most innovative technologies imaginable to present it. Joe Gardner is a black jazz pianist-- ha ha ha-- who is stuck in the drudgery of teaching grade school band class. He finally gets his dream gig, but dies before he gets a chance to play it. In the afterworld, he meets 22, a soul that has not yet found its "spark"-- no, I don't want to go there, really. The concept of spark and purpose and joy is so depressingly emasculated that I don't even want to bother describing what Disney thinks it is. Let's just say that 22, played by a middle-aged white actress, who used her privilege to insert her own lines-- must teach the black jazz pianist the meaning of life. Seriously. But don't listen to the controversialists: Disney bent over more than backwards to accommodate cultural race sensitivities but some people are determined to make an issue regardless because they can and because they know that Disney cares. Anyway, the animation is brilliant, though somewhere on the near side of the uncanny valley, and the dialogue is sometimes witty, occasionally fun, and often calculated and coy. And, as everyone should have known, the "jazz" becomes less and less "jazz" the closer we get to the penultimate moment. Could they not have even bothered to show us how Joe is going to get paid for his gig? And how a star like Dorothea Williams would always have an aide who would take care of details like that? The most authentic and daring moment in the film is 22 in Joe's body in the shower announcing that he had washed his butt. 22 appears to be a young girl, folks. I'm all for it, but where were the puritanical zealots of sexual purity when this line landed?
Jaime Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton, Rachel House, Angela Bassett, Alice Braga
The most common mistake in bio-pics is the slide into a schematic listing of key events regardless of how connected they are, or how well they expand on an idea or impression in a sequence. So this biopic-- aside from being based on a bit of a hatchet job on Picasso-- occasionally is side-tracked into irrelevant detail in order to cover all the hot topics, rather than expand a single idea or revelation. Thus we learn about other abusive incidents, about Picasso's cruelty to his own children, and his abuse of Dora Maar, his ambiguous relationship to Marie-Therese, and so on. At the core of these relationships is Picasso's cruel proclivity for playing one woman against another, and using humiliation and manipulation to keep them in line. Francoise Gilot was probably the most self- confident and independent of the dozens and dozens of women who fell under Picasso's spell, and this is largely her story. Fortunately, Ivory doesn't spend too much time congratulating her on proving some feminist point. The trouble is, virtually all of the other women in Picasso's life proved the opposite point: that they welcome being doormats, and they will tolerate scads of abuse because they are too weak to stand up to this asshole. So we see that Gilot had some class and some independence and finally said no and so salvaged a life apart from Picasso. Hopkins is brilliant as Picasso and that redeems this film to some extent, as do the lavish sequences filmed in France. But the women, especially Natascha McElhone, are markedly weak, oddly in contrast to Hopkins. It's as if the director had no ideas for them, and they didn't have any for themselves. Gilot should have been more Emma Peel than "Without a Clue"; she is glib and happy and smiling, like a school girl daring to play strip poker, rather than an intelligent young woman who dared to match wits with a legend. Moore is complete out of her depth as Dora Maar, which is a surprise: she brings nothing to the role.
Anthony Hopkins, Natascha McElhone, Julianne Moore, Joss Ackland, Peter Eyre, Peter Gerety, Susannah Harker, Jane Lapotaire, Joseph Maher, Dominic West, Joan Plowright, Laura Aikman, Diane Venora
Four male high school teachers decide to test a theory: that it is "normal" for men to have .05% alcohol in their blood, for a balanced, positive attitude towards life, to enhance creativity and productivity, and pleasure. They all thereby begin drinking regularly, even at school, trying to reach that threshold. And at first, it seems to work. Gradually, however, they can't resist increasing the levels until they begin to stumble, and even become addicted. "Another Round" isn't a fable. It's not going to give you a moral to this story. It is clear that the alcohol has a destructive influence, and it's also clear that Vinterberg believes the men have more life and live with greater exuberance with a bit of lubrication. In the end, it's not clear where the sympathies of the director lie. There is tragedy, but also Martin dancing wildly at his student's graduation. And it is the last segment that lifts the movie from something that grew a bit tiresome the more they drank to something a little transcendent and profound.. and inconclusive.
Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millang, Lars Ranthe, Maria Bonnevie, Helene Reingaard Neumann
Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman are both brilliant in this drama (obviously based on a play) about and old man confronting the onset of dementia, largely from his point of view. Anthony is living on his own but his daughter is increasingly concerned about his memory lapses and increasing paranoia-- he is convinced his support aide has stolen his watch. We see his dementia from his side: his daughter appears to be a different person at times, and a dead daughter reappears as a prospective aide. His son-in-law also changes, and sometimes hectors him about having to move in with him and his daughter, because he's selfish and won't go into a home. His daughter wants to move to Paris but can't unless he learns to accept help from the aide, but he doesn't think he needs the help. Chilling at times, and wonderfully realized in the balance between what we know and what Anthony thinks he knows, and how we learn what is really happening.
Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Coleman, Mark Gatiss, Imogene Poots, Rufus Sewell
On October 30, 2015, a fire tore through an underground music club in the basement of a factory in Bucharest. There were no fire exits. Twenty-seven people died in the fire itself while another 37 died in hospitals afterwards. How could that be? Most of them did not die of their burns but of infections. The editor of a sports magazine attended a news conference on the issue and became skeptical of the official explanations. Director Nanau followed him throughout the next couple of years as his investigation uncovered scandal after scandal, and as more and more whistle-blowers came forward to tell him what they knew about the medical system in Romania. Eventually, it is always political: an appointed Health minister, Vlad Voiculescu, with integrity who confronts the corruption head on (but without illusions) becomes the hero of the story though we learn, sadly, that his reforms may not persist after the next elections. But the most chilling scene is a whistle-blower doctor telling the Health minister that doctors "don't give a fuck" about patients; only money. They accept bribes from patients to ensure they receive decent care, and ask to be transferred to surgery departments because that's where the most money can be made.
Liviu Iolu, Razvan Lutac, Mirela Neag, Vlad Voiculescu
Maggie Cheung is Maggie Cheung, a Chinese actress (from Hong Kong) hired to appear in a remake of a French classic, "Les Vampyres" - a real film) for director Rene Vidal, who is having an emotional and artistic crisis. Cheung is cool, sanguine, and competent, and becomes the rational center of the crew as they struggle with personal issues, the director's conflicting directions, and logistical confusion. All of it is very "Day for Night" though Assayas claims "Beware of a Holy Whore" is a more important source. Well-acted, almost certainly heavily improvised, and generally pretty fun.
Maggie Cheung, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Nathalie Richard, Antoine Basler, Nathalie Boutefeu, Alex Descas, Arsinee Khanjian
Dr. Kostis Makridis, hired to fill in as resident doctor of a Greek resort town on an island, is a middling, mediocre man, with no obvious attachments or social skills. When a group of young people, who see him for a minor motorcycle accident, invite him to join them at the beach one day, he accepts the invitation. They find him amusing on some level, but the girls are kind to him and playful and he mistakes their generosity for real affection, especially from Anna. Inevitably, tensions will develop. Kostis really doesn't have the chill to deal with these frivolous, impulsive, exuberant, beautiful young adults. When they go visit another island without inviting him, because they felt no obligation to do so, he is hurt and offended. When Anna indulges him sexually, once, and promises to do it again but doesn't, he is wounded and angered. He neglects his work. He starts drinking a lot. He makes a series of moves that inevitably drive him towards tragedy and disaster. He could be a model for a modern incel (involuntarily celibate) male, who feels justified in lashing out at the women who tempt him but refuse his advances. It's a portrait of a bitterly lonely man who has no path to assuage his isolation and disconnectedness.
Makis Papadimitriou, Elli Tringou, Hara Kotsali, Milou Van Groesen, Dimi Hart, Marcus Collen, Pavlos Orkopoulos
Badly directed and acted but lavishly located in numerous exotic locations, and fascinating in spite of itself-- story about a con-man and murderer Charles Sobhraj and his submissive co-conspirator, Marie-Andree Leclerc. The two of them would strike up acquaintanceships with tourists newly arriving in Bangkok (or Hong Kong, or Delhi, or other places), and rob them of cash and passports. They would often drug their victims first. Sometimes they would keep them around for a time and incorporate them into their little coven. Other times, they would murder them. A Dutch diplomat following up on the disappearance of two Dutch tourists, eventually accumulated enough evidence to initiate police action, but "The Serpent" is mostly about how Herman Knippenberg was the only man who cared, about the only serious crime going on in the world at that time, and how greatly he suffered because no one else cared as much as he did. The disturbing and annoying part of all this is the question of just how stupid Knippenberg was about the police regimes in the nations he was posted to. In the film, he acts as if it is shocking that the Thai police don't immediately seize Sobhraj and lock him up, on the word of a Dutch diplomat whose evidence is not all that conclusive. That said, Sobhraj was slippery, clever about bribing corrupt police and guards, and seemed to have a weird kind of charisma that threw people off. Which leads me to another deficiency in this drama: the horrible whisper method acting that permeates, especially, Rahim's performance as Sobhraj. On the plus side, the exotic locations are entrancing at times.
Tahar Rahim, Billy Howle, Jenna Coleman, Ellie Bamber, Mathilde Warnier, Gregoire Isvarine, Tim McInnerny, Amesh Edireweera
Very very clever but only in the way it undermines expectations by arbitrarily defying the most obvious trajectories. Okay-- there's something fresh in the choice of who done it, and the script is perhaps unusually clever in terms of dialogue and wit, except for one absolutely moronic passage involving donuts which, tragically, Daniel Craig succeeded in lobbying the director to keep in. And seriously-- nobody in the family wants a lawyer present while being questioned by the police? And the police don't mind a private detective running the interrogations? Or gathering all the suspects together at once? A bit ridiculous and tiresome and not nearly as clever, really, as it thinks it is. It's warmed over-- badly-- Agatha Christie.
Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Anna de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Lakeith Stanfiled, Christopher Plummer
Carey Mulligan is given the flattering role of an allegedly ravishing young woman who goes to bars, gets knocked-out drunk, gets taken home by opportunistic men, and then suddenly--evidently sober-- challenges them with, "what do you think you're doing?". It is part of her campaign to punish the gender responsible for the suicide of her friend Nina in medical school after she was raped and videoed by a group of otherwise "respectable" males, none of whom faced consequences. The trouble is, for this plot to work, as righteousness and justice, the story has to be slightly rigged here and there, and for Cassandra's schemes to work, she has to count on the cooperative behavior from the victims, which looks more and more unlikely as the story progresses. It's an uneasy balance and "Promising Young Woman" makes a few concessions to reality: her primary target has obviously reformed to some extent. But she also plays the drunk in the bars as flat and lumpy and disinterested. She can't appear to be too interested in sex or it undermines her argument. Seriously? I am skeptical. Cassandra is also a pathological liar, raising questions about just how much more virtuous she is than the men she savages. And the chancellor of the medical school doesn't at once state the most obvious argument in her defense: that was then, this is now. Obviously, we'd handle it differently today, but back then, most institutions followed the same general procedures.
Carey Mulligan, Adam Brody, Timothy E. Goodwin, Laverne Cox, Alfred Molina
Serviceable if dutiful true story about Fred Hampton, the Black Panthers leader who was assassinated by the police and FBI in Chicago in 1969. Touches all the bases but never really comes to life. In fairness, Hampton's radicalism is not toned down, but FBI agent Roy Mitchell is clearly somewhat rehabilitated by this version. He has a bit of a crisis of conscience about his role in recruiting the informant: clearly, a fictionalized account. The FBI itself reported that the Black Panthers in Chicago were mainly up to providing free breakfasts for poor kids and brokering peace between rival gangs (successfully). But the essential story, about one of the most violent, outrageous, criminal acts by the U.S. government is important.
Daniel Kaluuya, LaKeith Stanfield, Jesse Plemons, Dominique Fishback, Ashton Sanders, Martin Sheen
In Yorkshire, in North-Eastern England, a sheep farmer named Johnny Saxby endures a drab life with his hostile parents, binge-drinking, having casual sex with the gay men he meets at auctions and bars, and grudgingly carrying out his farming chores while his disabled father and disapproving mother nag him. Then Gheorghe Ionescu, a Romanian farm-hand arrives. In another story, Gheorghe would be the woman and Johnny meets Gheorghe, Johnny gets Gheorghe, Johnny loses Gheorghe. Aside from the gay aspect, the template is remarkably faithful to the Hollywood trope, and the freshness of the story comes from the authentic and detailed farm work. Gheorghe brings a softening to Johnny's life, and even to his parents. His easy attitude and gentle manners and sensitivity awaken long-lost affections and Johnny realizes he wants more than he had. The actors spend time doing some actual sheep-farming and it shows, in their casual familiarity with the animals and machinery. Francis Lee based the film on his own experience working a farm in Yorkshire, and, apparently, his relationship with a Romanian farmhand. If anything, that slightly diminishes the quality of the drama: it is, after all, a bit of a romantic fantasy: Gheorghe is almost too perfect, and it's hard to see what he sees in Johnny.
Josh O'Conner, Alec Secareanu, Ian Hart, Gemma Jones, Harry Lister Smith, Patsy Ferran,
Clarence Worley, who improbably (by the standards of later developments in the film) comes off as a mealy-mouthed loser, encounters a beautiful girl at the theatre who wants to sleep with him. And so it starts, a chain of events that will lead him acquiring a suitcase full of cocaine and the girlfriend, and a trip to Los Angeles to try to fence the cocaine. Worley is unexpectedly ruthless at times, and unsurprisingly stupid at others. He checks with his father ( who has connections to the police) to see if he is on the radar of local law-enforcement, but then he gives his father the address of his connection in LA. This is a Tarantino film, but Scott is also a brilliant director (watch the Sicilian scene for a generous sample of brilliant direction and acting) and the acting is uniformly brilliant-- with one notable exception. Christian Slater. I am completely allergic to whatever charms as an actor he possesses. To me, he never comes off as not putting it on, even when he is supposed to be conveying sincerity. His looks strike me as sugar-coated, how a lousy criminal would make his face look, if could, while melding into a shopping mall crowd. But Arquette and the others are so good, you can ignore Slater and still enjoy the movie. This is smart action, bloody (yes, truthfully, over the top, like most Tarantino films), but convincing enough to keep you watching.
Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Bronson Pinchot, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Rapaport, Saul Rubinek, James Gandolfini
Based on a book by Doug Smith-- really? there is an actual book?-- tells the non-story of Doug Smith, who really couldn't even skate until he was about 20-- a boxer and part-time cop who took his fighting skills to the ice and became an enforcer with about 5 different minor league teams. Should or would anyone really care about this story? Is there any aspect of it that is actually interesting? Who the hell thought Jay Baruchel should ever write anything, beyond his name on a plea-agreement? Who thought anyone would want to see a film that is as mediocre artistically as hockey goons are athletically? And yet, this film got 3 out of 4 stars from Roger Ebert, and favorable reviews from the Globe & Mail and even on Rotten Tomatoes. (The National Post, correctly, gave it 1/4 stars). This kind of misjudgment is Movie Review malpractice. That said, the actual hockey sequences make "Slapshot" look constipated. But the fights are vastly, ridiculously, absurdly over-played. It is not even amusing on the level of parody, as if there was anything left to parody in that area. I am totally opposed to black-lists but anything that could be done to stop Jay Baruchel from ever making another movie should be on the table.
Seann William Scott, Jay Baruchel, Alison Pill, Liev Schreiber, Eugene Levey, Marc-Andre Grondin, Kim Coates, Nicholas Campbell
Documentary on social media and it's impact on culture and politics. Oddly circumspect about specifics though they do make reference to Qanon and anti-vaccination movements. Oddly hermetic and antiseptic. There is a parallel dramatic enactment of social media's impact on a particular family: it's embarrassingly bad. A teenager supposedly gives up his cell phone for a week-- but they don't even answer the question of whether or not he has a laptop or tablet or access to workstation at school. Then the imaginary algorithms, personified by actor Vincent Kartheiser, stunning manages to contact him even though he's not using his phone. How? By using his phone. But the biggest flaw is that they attribute a ridiculous amount of power to the social media companies and their algorithms as if we are all just sitting in front of our computers passively absorbing whatever they direct us towards. I suspect that a fair number of users are like me: annoyed by ads that are linked to previous searches on Amazon or Google, and often subject to misfires: right now, the New York Times website keeps showing me-- incessantly-- ads for yoga pants. I never click on any offerings on Facebook, and Netflix's "suggestions" are mostly ridiculously inept. The other major flaw is that the whole thing sounds uncannily like "Future Shock" and "The Plug-in Drug" and even "Reefer Madness". Of course, this time it's different. How? They didn't make a very good case for that, especially when one of the speakers blunders into the assertion that we never allowed advertising directed towards children during Saturday morning children's cartoons. (Well, Quebec doesn't allow it.) Most of the interviewees are young and it shows: they seem to have no awareness of how radio and television were perceived to have the same catastrophic impact on culture and education and children's development. None of them discussed the possibility of using a technology like Blockchain to allow users to retain control of their data, though they raised the general issue. When these pundits repeated the phrase, "you are the product" I thought of "the Medium is the Message". A lot of what was said was not wrong, but neither was a lot of it particularly astute or insightful or imaginative. Not one of them raised the possibility that the way people make use of the internet and social media could change dramatically in the near future. And what does it mean, really, to say "you are the product"? It's glib and punchy but it's really just a more sophisticated and less useful way of saying "you are the recipient of targeted advertising based on your tracked behavior on the internet".
Jarod Lanier, Tristan Harris, Jeff Seibert, Baily Richardson, JOe Toscano, Sandy Parakilas, Jaron Lanier
Odd, unpredictable story about a drummer, Ruben, in a touring metal band (consisting only of him and his girlfriend, Lou) suddenly losing most of his hearing. He resists real help--a residential service that requires him to turn over his keys and cell phone for unexplained reasons-- and wants expensive cochlear implants, but eventually recognizes his limited options. Lou, meantime, has moved to Paris to live with her French father-- though we understand she is not really French, having lived with her mother-- who committed suicide-- in America most of her life. The early scenes with Lou and Ruben are utterly compelling, richly nuanced, and strikingly expressive of young relationships and their fragility and intensity. Lou badly wants Ruben to address the issue realistically and he resists until Lou gives him an ultimatum. The scenes in the residence are almost from a different movie. The residence director is almost creepy in his assured attitudes towards this difficult individual, but Ruben responds to the training in sign language and establishes a relationship with the children in the attached school. But he still yearns for a return to the life of a touring band. All of the characters-- many of whom are deaf in real life-- are believable and convincing. "Sound of Metal" is riveting almost from beginning to end-- there are moments in the middle where I wondered if it shouldn't have been a separate movie. There are scenes near the end that are so delicate and subtle you almost want to cry, for the fragility of relationships and life itself.
Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci, Lauren Ridloff, Mathieu Amalric
The brothers Connie and Nick rob a bank. The loot is rigged with exploding dye and they are both covered with it. They flee the police but Nick is caught and now Connie-- who loves his brother-- must raise an additional $10K to bail out his brother. He goes to his girlfriend. He inadvertently frees a man he thinks is his brother from the hospital and together they chase down some LSD Connie hopes to sell. The movie is all about the acting and the action and marred by several sequences that are simply improbable. The brothers succeed in washing off the dye in a restaurant bathroom, Connie doesn't recognize that the man he rescues from the hospital is not his brother, and he believes that Caliph will want to buy back his own LSD from Connie and Ray. Crystal's grandmother leaves her 16-year-old grand-daughter alone in her apartment with a strange man who knocked on her door. It all doesn't hang together very well, though some critics feel that Pattinson's performance, and the frenetic action sequences, out-weigh preposterous plot. The truth is , Nick Nikas, as Benny, gives a better performance than Pattinson, and, no, the improbabilities are not easily over-looked. Still, a pretty good film, and an entertaining 90 minutes or so if you can cut it some slack. Many of the characters, including the Bail Bondsman, and mall police, were played by real people in those roles. Many scenes were shot guerilla style on the streets, and much of the dialogue, aside from Connie and Nick's, were noticeably improvised.
Robert Pattinson, Benny Safdie, Buddy Duress, Taliah Webster, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Barkhad Abdi, Necro
Borat, who has been serving hard time for disgracing his native Kazakhstan with his first film, is sent on a mission to America, to offer the gift of genius monkey to the administration in order to restore Kazakhstan's prestige and good graces. His daughter is a stowaway and eats the monkey, and Borat adapts, offering his daughter to Mike Pence instead of the monkey. He infiltrates a Republican Women's tea, obtains the assistance of a PMS store clerk to fax messages back to his controller, signs his daughter up for a make-over and etiquette lessons, and so on. The movie hangs together on the idea of his daughter, Tutar, discovering that girls in America can drive and own cars and speak and work. She is stunned, after her oppressive experience in Kazakhstan where she was chained in a shed waiting to be gifted to some old man. Borat too learns something about liberation, while brutally satirizing Trump culture, particularly in segments where he is invited into the home of a pair of rabid QAnon enthusiasts who devoutly believe that Hilary Clinton drinks the blood of sacrificed children. It's all amusing and sometimes very funny, and disturbing. Some people have no trouble going along with his abusive acts, including writing "Jews Will Not Replace Us" on a chocolate cake for Tutar.
Sacha Baron Cohen, Maria Bakalova, Dani Popescu, Manuel Vieru
Seriously? Full of cardboard cut-outs and cliche-ridden plot developments and targeting the broadest, least complicated moral hypocrisies available, this turkey barely squeaks through enough dialogue to last 78 minutes. Poorly acted, poorly filmed, and poorly written it is frankly most interesting as an artifact of someone's sophomoric enlightenment. The thing is, the kind of retreat they try to dramatize can be, in real life, one of those powerful, influential experiences in a young Catholic or Protestant's life, and that would have been an interesting subject. Not this.
Ntalia Dyer, Timothy Simons, Wolfgang Novogratz, Francesca Reale, Susan Blackwell, Alisha Boe, Parker Wierling
Largely a vehicle for Jennifer Lopez to try on an endless series of fabulous looks, all of which calculated to display her goods to the most advantage. And the visual effects, which are, most the most part, fairly interesting. All tied to a murder plot which obviously borrows from "Silence of the Lambs". A psychotic serial killer who devises monstrous machines to slowly fill a cell with water until the victim drowns has been captured but suffers an attack of an entirely fictional disease that makes him semi-comatose; but one victim remains and she will die in 24 hours unless someone, somehow, can get into Carl Stargher's catatonic head and get his subconscious to give up the location. Enter Catherine Deane who has special skills in this department, with the aid of a high tech neurological transference device of some kind. Her skills are so special that, later, an ordinary detective can be hooked up with useful results. Unusual in one sense: there is conspicuous sympathy for the boy Stargher once was, and for Stargher, who is shown to be a victim of horrendous abuse-- and religious fanaticism. Disturbing in the sense that audiences often eat up this kind of display of sadistic violence as if it plays to some dark hidden urges in all of us, and is acceptable to us as long as there is some kind of shallow moral resolution in the end. Worst mistake in the film was casting Vince Vaughn in a role that is miles over his head, and Jennifer Lopez using her geisha voice. Best thing in the film: D'Onofrio as Stargher.
Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn, Vincent D'Onofrio, Dylan Baker, Gerry Becker, Dean Norris
Bol and Rial Majur are refugees from South Sudan who have made it, after an arduous journey, to London. Their application for refugee status has been tentatively accepted, conditional on the results of a hearing, and they are given an apartment and an allowance. But something haunts them. Horrifying apparitions appear in the walls and then in the apartment itself, including a figure claiming to be the devil and demanding the return or exchange for what has been taken. "His House" is an odd combination of the horrifying and magical and the everyday-- it's not really a horror movie so much as a story of how a single decisive action can have terrible emotional and psychological consequences. Very well acted and written and well-filmed, and as timely as ever. Not a moral fable about how we need to regard immigrants so much as it is about the cost of fleeing your home because of violence and terror, and how you probably never really escape that home no matter where you end up.
Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Malika Wakoli-Abigaba, Matt Smith, Vivienne Soan, Javier Botet
We are supposed to buy this. That Radha Blank is so fascinating, she should be on the screen for 90% of the movie, and an attractive, hip man should fall for her, and she is so uncompromising that she baits a white promoter into staging her play and then gives a big speech attacking him on the night of it's premiere just so she can have it both ways: the play is a success but she's not a sell-out. Well, Radha Blank is directing, so, like Amy Schumer, she gets to be so sexy that at least one man can't resist. Allegedly a true story about a 39-year-old woman in crisis: should be a brilliant, successful hip-hop star or a brilliant, successful playwright? The acting is generally rote, except for her funny agent, Archie, who is a bit less funny for being predictably gay, and the dialogue is not exactly scintillating, so I forget what it is we are supposed to find so interesting about this movie. It would have been far, far more interesting if we would have seen her accept the compromises necessary to get her play performed, or the real consequences of her brief moment of integrity. It would also be more interesting if someone could convince me that hip-hop is more than just a series of stolen riffs and obscenity-laced tirades about everything and nothing, which can be evaluated by having two adherents attack each other in a boxing ring.
Radha Blank, Peter Kim, Oswin Benjamin, Imani Lewis, Reed Birney
Why is Andy Samberg in this movie? Why is he in any movie? How did Cristin Milioti get this role? Allegedly inspired by "Groundhog Day" but more of an inferior remake, with occasional wit but little charm. Nyles has accidentally entered an infinite time loop at a friend's wedding. Every time he goes to sleep or dies, he wakes up again, at exactly the same time, on the same day. This is American humour, of course, so you know that this story will end with some wholesome resolution and while bodies may splatter there will be nary a naked breast in the entire proceeding. In fact, Milioti barely even takes off her overcoat for the only sex scene. So when Nyles tries to make out with Sarah at the wedding she is drawn into the loop as well and unlike Nyles, who has given up, she is determined to find a way to break the loop. There are a lot of elements in common with "Grounddog Day", but Andy Samberg is no Bill Murray, and Cristin Milioti is nowhere near Andee McDowell.
Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, J.K. Simmons, Peter Gallagher, Meredith Hagner, Camila Mendes, Tyler Hoechlin, Jena Friedman
Lisa Cohen is a beautiful, bratty high school student troubled by everything. One day, she sees a bus driver wearing a cowboy hat she wants and runs alongside the moving bus waving and gesticulating to the driver. He is paying more attention to her than the lights and crosses an intersection on red and strikes-- and kills-- a woman. Lisa ends up holding the hand of the dying woman and promising to call her daughter, but when the police interview he on the scene she gives a statement that the bus went through a green light. It was an accident. No one was at fault. This increasingly troubles her and we ride along as she attends school, flirts with a boy, flirts with a teacher, flirts with another boy, offers her virginity to one of them, ridicules her mother, screams at her brother, screams at a Syrian classmate for arguing that Moslems do have a justified grievance against America, and just carries on tormenting herself and the world around her. Few films present as unfiltered and caustic a view of humanity. Almost everyone she appeals to for righteousness or justice is compromised or compromising, or just motivated by selfish interests. She acknowledges her own guilt, but is never confronted with the possibility of her punishment for her actions-- he only wants the driver to suffer. The mysterious conclusion-- attending an opera with her mother -- Renée Fleming and Susan Graham singing "Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour" from Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann. It seems to imply a reconciliation with the ways of the world. It brings her to tears, this realization, and the embrace of her mother with whom she has been feuding constantly. Commenting on the music, Carl Dahlhaus said "Offenbach used the Barcarolle's very consonance to give a sinister feel to the act throughout which it recurs." Dahlhaus attributes this effect to the contrast between the "physical" presence of the vocal line and the ethereal feel of the instrumental introduction, creating a "mirage." "Beneath the music we hear, there seems to be a second musical level descending into the abyss."
Anna Paquin, J. Smith-Cameron, Mark Ruffalo, Jeannie Berlin, Jean Reno, John Gallagher, Allison Janney, Kieran Culkin, Matt Damon, Matthew Broderick, Hina Abdullah, Kenneth Lonergan
From an article by Matthew Teague, one of the producers, but not really very faithful to it. Once again, we are told that this movie, with a plot that seems likely to be laced with clichés and contrivances, is "different". This one is more honest and authentic. This one is fresh and tasteful. No, it is not. Matthew and Nicole are married with two cute daughters. Nicole acts in community theatre while Matthew is a famous journalist. Nicole gets cancer. Everyone is sad. The supposed novelty here is that Dane, a friend of Matthew's and Nicole's, moves in to be wonderful aide and caregiver and substitute mom to the kids. The problem is that Dane actually comes off as creepy and needy and pushy. It might have worked had there been real actors in this film, but none of the relationships are convincing. Matt and Dane don't seem much like buddies, and Nicole keeps responding to some imaginary Dane who is charming and fun and affectionate; not the guy who moves into their guest room to stay, takes away her cell phone and computer, and wallows in barely concealed self-pity. We don't get any explanation about why Nicole's family seems to have abandoned her, only to show up at the end as if they just noticed she was ill. We see Dane and Matthew shuffle the kids off as the end approaches because they project their own anxieties on them. We see Nicole remain cosmetically attractive at a time when her body is supposedly being ravaged by cancer. And we are treated to an embarrassing singing performance by Dakota Johnson that doesn't work on any level: it's not heart-breaking, or triumphant, or raw. It's just bad. The hospice nurse, Elaine, barges in to take care of medical details as if fresh from the Hollywood factory for strong, supportive, older women who are fondly amused at the ineptitude of male care-givers and miraculously know all the details of care for this particular patient without even consulting the doctor. There is an instance of adultery but Nicole's reaction to being confronted about it is so unconvincing you almost forget about it completely by the end of the film. In real life, the college girls at the waterfalls skinny-dipped, but in the movie they keep their bathing suits on. This is, in the truest sense of the word, a childish film that can't really bear to depict its subject in all it's heartless ruthlessness. It's antiseptic and safe and limp.
Casey Affleck, Dakota Johnson, Jason Siegel, Denee Benton, Isabella Kai, Violet McGraw, Marguerite Pons
Entitled, thin story about a young woman in Singapore who wants to make movies and the mysterious American who helps her realize her dream only to disappear with the reels after production is completed. But there are so many holes in this story that it's hard to credit anything Tan tells you about herself, or the American, or her friends (who do tell us that, frankly, Tan is an asshole). There is nothing in the clips from the film she made that would lead one to conclude that there was anything really intriguing about the film itself. As for the American- - Tan doesn't appear to have taken any steps to recover her film or track him down. She just travels with him in a car all the way across America-- but offers no details about what kind of relationship they really had, where did they stay, who paid for everything, where did the money come from?
Sandi Tan, Jasmine Kin Kia Ng, Philip Cheah, Sophia Harvey, Georges Cardona
Wonderfully anachronistic film about a pair of ten or eleven-year-olds who fall in love: Daniel and Melody. They endure the ridicule of classmates and then their admiration and collaboration. The film is decisively channeled through the perceptions of the children (the director spend months recording children of the age of Melody and Dan in preparation for the film) and vibrates with the children's energy and enthusiasm, irreverence, and physicality. The three leads are charming and convincing (though Ornshaw was played by 17-year-old Jack Wild), and the rest of the students-- played by real students at a local school where it was filmed-- seem totally onboard with the rambunctious feel of the large crowd sequences. There are moments of hilarity and frivolity but also a sensitive, moving moment when Tracy appeals to the adults around her who tell her she can't get married yet: why not? Why are you all trying to stop us from doing the one thing that really means anything to us? The ending is over-the-top, of course, but the film is mythic, after all. Well-filmed-- some breath-taking scenes appear to have been shot guerrilla style, and there are lots of long-lens close-ups of actors obviously unaware they were the focus of the shot.
Mark Lester, Tracy Hyde, Jack Wilde, Colin Barrie, Billy Franks, Sheila Steafel, Kate Williams
Police officer Asger Holm did something bad and he has a court date Monday but expects to be back on regular duty Monday night, because his loyal partner, Rashid, has agreed to cover for him. He hasn't told Rashid, or his supervisor, that his wife, Patricia has left him. Until he is cleared, he is assigned to desk duty, taking emergency calls in a room with other desk jockeys. He is perhaps unusually firm with the callers, telling a drunk he got himself into trouble, and woman with a bicycle injury to call her self an ambulance. But he gets a call from a woman in serious trouble: she has been abducted. She is pretending to talk her child, Matilde, while he cleverly obtains as much information as he could to pass on to the patrol station. The dialogue here is clever, believable, and compelling. In fact, for the entire 90 minutes of the film, we never leave the two rooms in which he works. Asger's desire to help the woman, and her child left alone in her home, leads him to exceed his authority and interfere in ways he and we know he shouldn't. But the situation becomes more complex than he imagined and he stumbles into perplexing conundrums. Brilliantly acted and staged, Moller's camera finds slight variations in angle and distance to build suspense without needing externals or graphics or sweeping vistas. The situation Asger is drawn into subtly parallels his personal situation, his mental state, and his sense of virtue: are his successes due to his good character or blind luck; is his failure due to his bad judgement or also luck-- bad luck. Compelling and never dull.
Jakob Cedergren, Jessica Dinnage, Omar Shargawi, Johan Olsen, Katinka Evers-Jahnsen
As usual for this genre, a beautiful, young, teenage girl is found dead and the manly virtuous hunter driving a pick-up truck will see that justice is served, because, of course, he has a personal connection to the crime, and because we are shown the killer's abject confession so we can rest assured that vigilante justice is justice served justly without annoying self-doubt. In this case, we get a solo FBI agent played by petite, beautiful Elizabeth Olsen-- the fish out of water-- who has to learn about the horrors of life on the reservation. Here's a surprise, because Wind River really exists, and the portrait of life in this indigenous community is unsparingly harsh. "Wind River" earns some praise for actually filming outdoors in the winter, and for a well-staged shoot-out, and for the fact that most of the bad guys are just security guards for a mining company and, with one exception, believably banal. But Elizabeth Olsen is sharply disappointing: this is a young FBI agent who hasn't been trained in a thing and essentially goes "gosh" when she first sees the dead victim. Jeremy Renner pretty well mumbles his way through the film, conveying the usual, standard, required, obligatory world-weariness which could be confused for incuriosity under different circumstances. The ending is simply appalling, but right in the mainstream of the genre. We are first obliged to recognize that the victim is a completely worthless human being, a criminal with bad taste and manners, and ugly, besides, so we can enjoy watching torture and murder. Even worse, the "confession" is adduced under obvious duress and worthless. This is right-wing fantasy and always serves to allow people who still have some shame to enjoy watching violence.
Elizabeth Olsen, Kelsey Asbille, Julia Jones, Teo Briones, Jeremy Renner, First Apesanahkwat, Graham Greene, Tantoo Cardinal, Hugh Dillon, James Jordan, Gabe Casdorph
Minari is a plant that Monica's mother plants along a creek bed near the family farm in Arkansas. Jacob and Monica have moved there from Los Angeles for the promise of a future. They are both chicken sexers, and Monica, is not as adept as Jacob, can make more money there than in Los Angeles where the competition is more fierce. She is ambivalent about the move. Their new home is a trailer. But Jacob is very excited about the possibilities of farming and he sets out to plant diverse crops and look for a market for his goods. Their two young children find the new home both challenging and rewarding, though the younger boy, David, wets his bed, and is not pleased when his grandmother has to share his room. The film unfolds without too many shocking developments. They dream, they struggle, they remain a family. The most striking character is a local religious fanatic who becomes their handyman. Paul resists the stereotypes. He is kind and loyal and works hard, and he speaks in tongues and persuades Jacob and Monica to bring their family to his church, though they also seek friends and connections to the local community. Jacob doesn't want to pay the local dowser and finds his own well but it runs dry, so he steals water from the county. A local reseller hedges on an arranged deal for his crop so he must seek a new arrangement further afield. Wonderful, low-key tone to the film, an intimate portrait and character study that has life to it, even if the performances are not as good as in, say, "The Nest", which we saw the next night.
Steven Yeun, Yeri Han, Youn Yuh-jung, Alan S. Kim, Noel Cho, Will Patton
Rory and Allison O'Hara, with their two children, Sam and Ben, are living prosperously in New York when Rory suddenly decides he could do better in his native London. Rory chooses an extravagant mansion and takes a job with a former employer who may not be entirely taken with his "success". As he desperately tries to sustain a lavish lifestyle with impressive parties and a horse and a Mercedes, his family begins to crumble under the stresses. It's a study of family dysfunction, of trust breaking down, of a pathological liar forcing those he is closest to into increasingly thin affirmations of his role in the family. Allision loses her vocation and tries to rebuild a career as horse trainer; Ben struggles and is bullied at his exclusive public school; Sam tries to connect with some questionable friends who steer her into drugs. Well-acted and written but I was never quite sure what it was about. A study, I suppose, of the family, of the relationships that fray, and of the psychology of man desperate for success but without the real character he would need to achieve and hold it. A study of how deceit corrodes and burns and alienates.
Jude Law, Carrie Coon, OOna Roche, Charlie Shotwell, Wendy Crewson, Michael Culkin, Adeel Akhtar
Stunning exploration of the life of a wandering soul, Fern (Frances McDormand in a stunning performance). Fern was married but her husband died and the sheet-rock factory she worked at shut down-- indeed, the whole town of Empire, Nevada, which depended on it for employment, ceases to exist. So she acquires white van and modifies it and travels around the country, parking where-ever she can (Amazon provides expenses while she works there), and resisting any kind of attachment beyond her friendly interactions with fellow nomads. She works at Amazon for a while (nothing negative is said about her employer) and then travels on, working at a sugar-beet yard, or "harvesting bees", or other seasonal jobs. But the film spends generous time giving space and words to the people she meets, who tell their stories and their tragedies and share their goods. When we see an old, weathered man, with bad teeth and hollow face play piano and sing, we see the pasts of these wanderers in capsule form: at one time they belonged to families, went to school, took lessons, worked jobs, but all of them ended up wandering the back- roads, working occasionally, and resisting attachment. You wonder about the enduring values we think we believe in-- home, job, material acquisitions, health care. I don't think any film I've seen has done a better job of making you actually wonder if there is something to a lifestyle that appears to be wretched and deprived on the surface, especially when one character describes watching swallows nesting in a cliff, the shells of eggs falling into the water, and the birds flocking wildly so that, watching them, you had the illusion of flying yourself. Reminiscent of the exceptional work by Kelly Reichardt and Terence Malick.
Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Gay DeForest, Patricia Grier, Linda May, Charlene Swankie
Superior thriller of little resonance about a woman who visits her family home only to receive a call from 20 years earlier, from a young girl living in the same house, whose mother is abusive. In the process of helping the young girl (by using her knowledge of what happens later), Seo-Yeon invites an evil manipulator into her past and finds her reality crumbling as the vixen takes disturbing actions. It's fun for a while, like an interesting puzzle, but without a real punch or the kind of psychological overtones that give a story more endurance. It's a ride.
Park Shin-Hye, Jong-seo Jun, Sung-ryung Kim, Park Ho-San, El Lee
Superior thriller-comedy about a couple of South Carolina good-ole boys who decide to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway during a big NASCAR race-- yes, following the standard template, the plotting, the onboarding of specialists, the cute girl who can drive, and so on. So the charm is in the characterizations and the humour-- dry, mostly. With intervals of suspenseful activity. Not a bad take on the genre with a few moments of genuine fun. Adam Driver is particularly amusing, and Daniel Craig is lively and handles the witticisms with aplomb.
Daniel Craig, Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Farrah Mackenzie, Jim O'Heir, Katie HOlmes, David Denman, Seth MacFarlane
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