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Archive for March, 2019

“THE MUSTANG”: Animals

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 28, 2019| Leave a Comment »

“THE MUSTANG”  My rating: B+ 

96 minutes | MPAA rating: R

A violent, alienated man and an equally angry horse form an unexpected bond in “The Mustang,” an understated effort that often plays like documentary but carries the emotional weight of a classic drama.

Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s film opens with a roundup of wild mustangs in a vast Western landscape. The animals are herded by  helicopters into stock pens. From there they are loaded onto trucks.

Cut to a Nevada prison where Roman Coleman (Matthias Schoenaerts) has just joined the general population after  months in solitary confinement.  We never learn what he did to merit that treatment; all he’ll say is that he’s not good with people.

The prison psychologist (Connie Britton) struggles to get a word out of the sullen, withdrawn inmate. She’s trying to find a prison job or activity that will interest him. Finally she settles on the horse-training program, which takes recently captured wild mustangs and turns them into well-behaved riding horses that can be sold at auction.

Not that Roman overnight becomes a cowboy.  His main job involves shoveling shit. But he’s intrigued by the violent horse that occupies a metal shed on the prison grounds. The animal inside spends all day banging on the walls and shrieking its defiance. It’s a kindred spirit.

The old hand who runs the program (Bruce Dern) believes the horse is too mean to be domesticated, but gives Roman — who has absolutely no background with these animals — a chance to train the beast. If it doesn’t kill him first.

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“THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT”: Race against (and for) time

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 28, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Jesse Eisenberg, Alexander Skarsgard

“THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT” My rating: C+ 
110 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“The Hummingbird Project” could be described as a race-against-time movie.

Two cousins risk everything to build a high-speed internet “highway” between Kansas and the East Coast, all to shave a few microseconds off the time required to send the latest stock market updates halfway across the continent.

Why bother? Because a microsecond head start on the competition — the time it takes for a hummingbird to flap its wings just once — could mean millions in profits.

Kim Nguyen’s drama is acceptable if unremarkable in most respects. It  features a vintage Jesse Eisenberg performance (i.e., arrogant nerd) and an atypical one from Salma Hayek (here toning down the sexuality to play a Wall Street shark).

Where “Hummingbird…” really shines, though, is in the work of Alexander Skarsgard, an actor who mostly has been seen as a hunky type (a charismatic vampire in “True Blood,” a predatory stepdad in “Diary of a Teenage Girl,” an abusive husband in “Big Little Lies,” a muscled tree swinger in “The Legend of Tarzan”).

Here Skarsgard plays an antisocial dweeb, a bald, soft-bellied algorithm cruncher more comfortable with his computer screen than other human beings. It’s such a startling transformation that initially he’s unrecognizable. It’s a classic case of an actor getting lost in his role.

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“US”: We have met the enemy…and they are us

Posted in Popcorn movies, tagged , , , on March 21, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Lupita Nyong’o

“US” My rating: B+

117 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Humor and horror are strange bedfellows. Usually one negates the other.

But in “Us,” writer/director Jordan Peele’s followup to the spectacular “Get Out,” finds just the right balance between the goofy and the ghastly. The result is a horror movie quite unlike anything we’ve seen, one that mixes a family survival tale with supernatural elements and wraps it all up in a mind-boggling apocalypse.

All while leaving you chuckling.

The story begins in the mid-80’s when little Adelaide (Madison Curry) wanders away from her parents at a beachside amusement park in Santa Cruz. She finds her way to a creepy mirrored funhouse where she encounters her own doppleganger…a little girl who looks exactly like her.

Jump to the present, where the adult Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) is vacationing with her family — husband Gabe (Winston Duke), teen Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and little Jason (Evan Alex) — at her late grandmother’s semi-remote house in the forest outside Santa Cruz.

After the creepiness of the prologue Peele plunges into a family comedy.  Dad is a big friendly doofus, the sort of guy who is always humiliating his adolescent daughter, who rarely looks up from her smart phone. Little Jason is a weird kid who goes through life wearing what looks like a snarling gorilla mask.

As for mother Adelaide…well, she does the usual mom stuff. But being so close to the scene of her childhood trauma — after which she didn’t speak for months — has her cringing.  A trip to the beach finds her suppressing hysteria despite the presence of old friends Kitty and Josh (Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker) and their twin teen daughters.

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“GLORIA BELL”: Dancer from the dance

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 21, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Julianne Moore, John Turturro

“GLORIA BELL” My rating: B-

102 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Julianne Moore elevates every film she’s in, and she’s pretty much the reason to see “Gloria Bell,” an American remake by Sebastian Lelio of his 2013 Chilean drama “Gloria.”

As the title character — a middle-aged divorcee whose main pleasure is hanging around L.A.’s retro disco dance clubs with other folk her age   — Moore hides behind outsized glasses and a semi-mousey makeup job…neither of which begin to hide her star quality.

Gloria’s fixation on ’80s dance music — she’s in constant singalong mode whenever cruising with the car radio — softens the hard edges of her life.

She’s been single for a dozen years. Her son (Michael Cera) is currently a solo dad (his wife apparently has abandoned the family);  her daughter (Caren Pistorius) is in a long-distance romance with an extreme surfer from Sweden.  Neither offspring seems particularly warm toward her.

She works at an insurance company where her specialty is coddling customers shaken by auto accidents.

The script by Lelio and Alice Johnson Boher is a love story…sorta.  Alice meets newly divorced Arnold (John Tuturro) at a dance club where he stares at her from afar and defuses her sullen mood by asking if she’s always so happy.

He woos Alice with  paintball (he owns a paintball preserve; she turns out to be a dead shot) and their shared love of boogying down on the dance floor. And he reads funny/romantic poetry to her.

But there’s a problem. Arnold cannot break away from his needy ex and their even more needy daughters.  He’s at their mercy day and night, and it doesn’t take Alice long to figure out she’s always going to be a runner up in the race for his affections.

“Grow a pair,” she tells him.

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“DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE”: Bloody knees

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on March 21, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Mel Gibson, Vince Vaughn

“DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE” My rating: B+

159 minutes | MPAA rating: R

With its loquacious cops and crooks and pages of dialogue devoted to the amusingly mundane (Quarter Pounders with cheese, egg salad sandwiches), “Dragged Across Concrete” will remind many of a Quentin Tarantino film, especially “Pulp Fiction.”

But it also bears comparison to Michael Mann’s “Heat,” for this curiously affecting crime epic (nearly three hours) is less about black and white than shades of gray.

Add to the mix Mel Gibson chewing on his best role in ages, and the latest from writer/director S. Craig Zahler (“Bone Tomahawk”) shapes up as an unexpected treat that digs into the viewer’s head and hangs around long after the lights come up.

At the center of this sprawling tale are a couple of police detectives — Ridgeman and Lurasetti (Gibson and Vince Vaughn) — who’ve drawn long unpaid suspensions for brutalizing a suspect.  Desperate for money, Ridgeman talks his reluctant partner into tailing a suave  criminal (Thomas Kretschmann); the hope is that he will lead the pair to some sort of drug deal or robbery that they can interrupt, making off with the cash and contraband.

Ultimately the two cops find themselves wading through the aftermath of a bloody bank heist. Few are left standing.

But around this dramatic core Zahler has introduced a big cast of characters — lawmen, criminals and common citizens caught in the crossfire — and given each enough backstory that we begin to identify with them on a much deeper level.

Gibson’s Ridgeman, for instance, is a tough street cop bitter that his refusal to schmooze has left his career in the dust. Now he’s coping with an ailing wife (Laurie Holden) and a teenage daughter terrified of the only neighborhood they can afford to live in. On the job Ridgeman may seem like semi-racist thug; at home we see a different side of the man.

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“THE WEDDING GUEST”: Love on the run

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 21, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Dev Patel

“THE WEDDING GUEST” My rating: B-

97 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Since breaking onto the world cinema scene as a struggling Indian Everyman in “Slumdog Millionaire,” Deval Patel has been methodically expanding his repertoire, from broad comedy (the “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” franchise) to straight drama (“Lion”).

With Michael Winterbottom’s “The Wedding Guest” he takes a detour into genre, portraying a ruthlessly efficient man of mystery.

As the film begins Patel’s Jay flies from London to Pakistan.  That’s he’s not your usual tourist quickly becomes apparent: Jay has multiple passports, goes shopping for a small arsenal of handguns and rents two cars.

An anxious pall hangs over the film’s opening sequences.  Is Jay a terrorist bent on mayhem?  A paid assassin on assignment?

Things get a bit clearer when he begins keeping tabs on Samira (Radhika Apte), the daughter of the local gentry preparing for an elaborate arranged marriage. Jay tells people he encounters that he’s one of the wedding guests, but In the dead of night he slips into the family compound and kidnaps the girl, gunning down an armed guard to make his escape.

Samira is at first terrified. Then Jay explains that the kidnapping was arranged by her London-based lover, who hired Jay to spirit her away from her tradition-bound family.

Now the two are on the run, moving across Pakistan and into India toward a rendezvous with Samira’s squeeze. (On one level “Wedding Guest” is practically a travelogue.)

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“TRANSIT”: Waiting to leave

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 21, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Paula Beer, Franz Rogowski

“TRANSIT” My rating: C+

101 minutes | No MPAA rating

“Transit” is a great idea that runs itself into the ground.

The opening moments of Christian Petzold’s film (he adapted it from Anna Seghers’ novel) take place in Paris under the German occupation.

Except that the setting isn’t the 1940s…it’s today.

The cars, the clothing, even the flat-screen TVs scream 21st century. But things are missing. Like computers and cel phones.

Our hero, Georg (Franz Rogowski), is part of an underground movement and desperate to get out of the country.  The police are making sweeps of blocks, sending undesirables off to hastily-erected camps.

The film never really lays out its geopolitical roots. Is this a new fascist movement that has swept the country? Was there a physical invasion of France? Is the year 2018 or are we supposed to imagine that somehow it’s still the ’40s?  (Hitler is never mentioned, nor is National Socialism. No German helmets or swastikas.)

Anyway, Georg manages to hide in a boxcar on a train heading to Marseilles. Once in the port city he joins the ranks of thousands of others lining up at the U.S. and Mexican consulates hoping to get transit papers that will allow them to board a ship for freedom (apparently there are no airlines in this alternative reality).

Georg is better off than most. He’s managed to assume the identity of a semi-famous writer, Weisel,  who has committed suicide; his newly-assumed standing as a man of letters moves him to the front of the immigration line.

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“BIRDS OF PASSAGE”: Beginning of the end

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , , , on March 14, 2019| Leave a Comment »

“BIRDS OF PASSAGE” My rating: B

125 minutes | No MPAA rating

Crime story and folklore entwine in “Birds of Passage,” Colombia’s nominee for this year’s foreign language film Oscar.

Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerre’s decades-spanning saga, which follows the creation of that country’s drug trade in the late 1960s by indigenous peoples, blends stark realism with magic realism for an experience that plays less like “The Godfather” than “Days of Heaven.”

Initially the film resembles a documentary about the Wayúu tribe occupying a remote, desert-like stretch of northern Colombia. A celebration is in progress, a sort of bat mitzvah to welcome the beautiful Zaida (Natalia Reyes) to her status as a grown woman.  She’s now available for marriage and almost immediately she is claimed by Rapayet (Jose Acosta), a handsome young man from a neighboring family.

Zaire’s mother Ursula (Carmina Martinez), the clan’s matriarch, isn’t impressed with Rapayet’s credentials and sets an impossibly high dowry for her daughter’s hand. Rapayet doesn’t know how he’ll find the resources…until he runs into a couple of young Peace Corps volunteers looking to score weed.

Rapayet has some friends who grow the stuff up in the mountains, and with his colorful bud Moises (Jhon Narvaez) starts a distribution business that not only brings him Zaire’s hand but unanticipated riches.  Eager gringos scoop up Rapayet’s marijuana and fly it to the U.S.; before long Rapayet and Zaire are living in a very modern new mansion (which, weirdly enough, is situated on a vast, dried-up mud flat — I kept wondering about water and sewage issues).

But Rapayet’s business corrupts not only himself but an entire way of life. Steeped in tradition and devoted to ideas of honor and sacrifice, the Wayúu quickly succumb to the get-rich-quick, trigger-happy mentality that spreads like a cancer throughout the tribe.

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“FINDING STEVE McQUEEN”: Big-time losers

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 14, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Travis Fimmell

“FINDING STEVE McQUEEN”  My rating: C+

108 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Give the makers of “Finding Steve McQueen” credit for at least shaking up the parameters of your standard heist movie.

For starters, this fact-based caper film about the biggest bank haul in U.S. history is thick with comic overtones thanks to a doofus of a leading man and a goofy gang of miscreants.

For another, it employs a scrambled narrative that hopscotches back and forth in time.

“Finding Steve…” centers on Harry Barber, a minor participant in the event but the only one still around to tell the tale.

Mark Steven Johnson’s film begins with Harry (Travis Fimmel) in the present (actually the early ’80s). He’s agitated. All worked up. Hearing his panicked confession, his girl Molly (Rachael Taylor) — the daughter of a local cop —  freaks out when she realizes the man she’s loved for several years isn’t who he said he was.

He is, in fact, the last free member of a notorious gang, and now his time is running out.

Then we flash back to Ohio in 1972.  Harry — who so worships the films of Steve McQueen that he sports “Bullitt”-ish sunglasses, a blond ‘do and tools around in muscle cars — does jobs for his uncle Enzo (William Fichtner), a veteran thief. Enzo has somehow learned that in a safe deposit box in a little nondescript bank in California there sits millions of dollars in a secret (and illegal) slush fund for President Richard Nixon. (This is true.)

Nixon-hater Enzo decides to rip off Tricky Dick…and posits that since the money is dirty the administration will probably not want to publicize the crime or make too big an effort to identify the perps.

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“CLIMAX”: Dance of chaos

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on March 14, 2019| Leave a Comment »

“CLIMAX” My rating: B-

97 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Climax” may be the most accessible film yet from cinematic evil genius Gaspar Noe (“I Stand Alone,” “Irreversible,” “Enter the Void”). Which is not to say that it is easy movie watching.

“Climax,” like most of Noe’s output, is a celebration of perversity.

It opens with the closing credits (???) and an overhead shot of a scantily clothed and bloodied woman struggling through a field of snow; then shifts into documentary mode before becoming an energetic dance film and ultimately deteriorating into a paranoia-fueled nightmare.

A title card informs us that the story was inspired by actual events in 1996…but I’m not buying that notion any more than I believe “Fargo” was actually based on a real crime.

For 10 or so minutes we get talking-head documentary interviews with a bunch of young French dancers who have auditioned for a special troupe preparing to tour the U.S.A. With few exceptions they lack formal training; most appear to be  kids (all races and ethnicities) who learned their moves on the streets and sidewalks. Some of them are eager and ambitious; others a bit jaded and wary of their newfound legitimacy.

Noe then cuts to a long (like, 15 minutes) single-shot rehearsal in which the youngsters do an elaborate routine that allows for plenty of individual riffing (lots of spectacular hip-hop: locking, popping, cranking) all set to a deafening and hypnotic techno beat.

It’s exhilarating and wildly entertaining, and when it’s over the viewer — like the dancers themselves — is spent and ready for a bit of r&r.

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