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“GLADIATOR II”: Elephantine emptiness

November 22, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

“GLADIATOR II” My rating: C+ (In theaters)

148 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Gladiator II” is pretentious twaddle.

At least it’s brilliantly-produced twaddle.

Director Ridley Scott’s followup to his 2000 Oscar winner (what were they thinking?) is less a sequel than a loose remake.  It’s forever repeating beats from the original.

You see that right in the opening credits, which unfold over a montage of moments from the original “Gladiator,” albeit this time rendered in painterly animation.

Once again we get color-desaturated dream sequences and flashbacks.

Then there’s the plot, which begins with a massive battle, then becomes the story of an honest man reduced to slavery and a life of fighting in the arena. (Remember the gladiator owner played by Oliver Reed the first time around? This time those duties are fulfilled by Denzel Washington.)

The first film had a crazy emperor.  This one has two crazy emperors.

And again there’s an iffy subplot about Roman political machinations with lots of uplifting/dubious oratory espousing democratic ideals that sound more like Thomas Jefferson than Marcus Aurelius. (At one point we even get an “I am Spartacus” moment.)

But here’s the thing: “Gladiator II” is bigger, noisier, faster.  Special effects that looked phony in the original are now so sophisticated that one cannot tell a real rampaging rhino from a digitally created one. The city-scapes are awe-inspiring.

The whole thing pulses with visceral/sensory overload.

And it needs to, because dramatically “Glad II” feels like amateur hour. (The screenplay is by David Scarpa, Peter Craig and David Franzoni.)

Our hero (I never caught his name…I now see that this was deliberate) is played by Paul Mescal. I’ll call him Hero.

Paul Mescal

Hero comes to Rome in chains after a Roman fleet destroyed his city on the coast of North African. Having lost his home and his wife in the battle, Hero carries a chip on his shoulder.  All he wants before dying is revenge on the general who ruined his life.

That would be Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), who is now married to the princess Lucilla (Connie Nielsen, reprising her role from the first film).  Together they are plotting to overthrow the sibling emperors Geta and Caracalla (Joseph Quinn, Fred Hchinger), a debauched pair of painted syphilitic psychos. 

Before it’s all over, Hero’s path will cross those of Marcus and Lucilla in an unexpected (and wildly unlikely) plot reveal. 

But then there’s the spectacle.  Scott and his production designers have outdone themselves in creating the Colosseum in beautiful downtown Rome. 

The first big brawl finds humans battling a troop of killer baboons.  Then we move on to that armored rhinoceros, which is about the size of a Sherman tank.  Most awe inspiring of all is a naval battle staged in the flooded arena. Those Romans thought of everything, including introducing  huge sharks which swim around the galleys to snatch anyone who falls overboard.

The acting?  It’s okay.  Just okay.

Which is disappointing because Mescal has in recent roles (“Aftersun,” “All of Us Strangers,” “Normal People”) displayed a subtly seductive approach.  He’s one of the few actors who can find interesting things to do with “nice” characters.

Ironic, then, that as our vengeful protagonist he’s kind of a one-note creation.  Barely suppressed rage gets tiresome after a while.

Washington has been getting some awards-season buildup for his work as the gladiator master and Machiavellian power broker  Macrinus. I don’t see it.  The character has a few moments of gloating triumph as he turns the tables on Rome’s blue-blooded politicians, but I yearned for Washington to exhibit some wickedly comic impulses. Nope.

Denzel Washington

Everyone else delivers their lines with the sort of bloviating declamatory dialogue that wouldn’t be out of place in an old Hollywood epic from the 1950s.

Here’s the thing:  “Gladiator” is all surface and no substance.  There are no interesting ideas beneath the grandeur and violence, no emotional engagement.

Like Scott’s last film, the curiously untethered “Napoleon,” “Gladiator II” is a display of elephantine emptiness.  No wonder it feels about 45 minutes too long.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Thelma,” “Deadpool & Wolverine”

November 19, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Richard Roundtree, June Squibb

“THELMA” My rating: C+ (Hulu)

98 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

There’s much satisfaction to had in the performances of veteran  actors June Squibb (age 93) and Richard Roundtree (age 81) in “Thelma.”

Squibb has found stardom late in life, but her work goes back decades (she was one of the strippers in the original 1959 Broadway production of “Gypsy”). 

Roundtree, of course, found screen immortality in 1971’s “Shaft.” His death last year adds a touch of haunting melancholy to his work in “Thelma,” his final screen project.

I loved watching them.  I wish I liked the film more.

“Thelma,” the feature debut of writer/director Josh Margolin, is clearly a personal work.  Margolin based his lead character on his own grandmother and in fact incorporated some of her idiosyncratic speaking style into the movie’s dialogue.

But he cannot find the right balance of emotions and emphasis. “Thelma” veers from goofy comedy to sit-commy family dynamics to crime caper to glum end-of-life meditation. It’s enough to cause whiplash.

The central premise, though, is quite workable.  Thelma (Squibb) is scammed out of $10,000  by crooks who call her up pretending to be her grandson in desperate need of bail money.  Panicked, Grandma Thelma immediately mails the money to the kid’s “lawyer.”

Of course her grandson Danny (Fred Hechinger) is not in jail. He is,  however, a mess — an insecure, sweet-tempered twentysomething man child with no discernible skills or ambitions and a head that has never seen a comb. 

But, boy, he loves his Grandma.

Then there’s Danny’s folks, Thelma’s daughter Gail (Parker Posey) and her husband Alan (Clark Gregg), a pair of hovering helicopter do-gooders who are always intruding on Danny and Thelma’s business.

The film’s narrative centers on Thelma’s determination to get her money back.  With old friend Ben (Richard Roundtree) as her sidekick, she tools around L.A. on a motorized wheelchair-scooter, sifting clues and staking out the mail drop where her money was sent. 

Watching the two solve the mystery is by far  the most interesting thing on screen — certainly better than the old-age navel gazing Margolin periodically delivers.

Malcolm McDowell has a nifty last-reel turn as one of the miscreants.

Periodically “Thelma” dives into cuteness and stereotype.  Ben is playing Daddy Warlocks in a nursing home production of “Annie” in which all the roles — including Annie and the orphans — are played by senior citizens. He’s got a roommate who is basically a zombie. And a recurring gag involves old folks’ supposed inability to use a computer.

But Squibb and Roundtree?  Loved ‘em.

Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds

“DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE” My rating: B+ (Disney +)

128 minutes | MPAA rating: R

I’m so over Marvel movies.  It’s not the cost of the ticket…it’s the loss of two-plus hours.

But there is one festering corner of the Marvel Universe where I feel perfectly at home.  

I’m talking, naturally, of Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool character, the profane court jester of Stan Lee’s fantasy world, a hideously scarred wiseass who dons a red suit and mask and…well, I was gonna say he fights evil but he’s not nearly that focused. He just likes fighting…the bloodier the better.

“Deadpool & Wolverine” is a fantastically entertaining team-up, with Reynolds delivering an endless hilarious arsenal of rude, profane, grotesque pronouncements (he co-wrote the script with Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick), while Hugh Jackman’s sour-tempered Logan snarls and flexes.

It’s a buddy film of unsurpassed crudeness, filled with knowing putdowns of all things Marvel and an insouciant attitude that has the characters often breaking down the fourth wall to comment directly to the viewer.

In other words, “D & W” has it both ways, exhibiting an encyclopedic knowledge of the comic book universe while simultaneously  roasting it.

The plot? Well even after seeing the movie I’m not sure.  Basically Deadpool resurrects Wolverine (who died at the end of “Logan” back in 2017), and together they are transported by a smug dweeb running the Time Variance Authority (Matthew Macfayden, satirizing his own performance as Tom Wambsgans in “Succession”) to the Void…which is just as unpleasant as it sounds.

There our boys must contend with the universe-destroying plans of Charles Xavier’s long-lost sister Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin, with shaved head).  They also run into Marvel superheroes now in exile: Elektra (Jennifer Garner), Blade (Wesley Snipes), Gambit (Channing Tatum) and Johnny Storm (Chris Evans). Listen carefully and you may hear the voices of Nathan Fillion, Blake Lively (aka Mrs. Ryan Reynolds)  and Matthew McConaughey.

With the exceptions of some unnecessarily sappy digressions into our two heroes’ tortured pasts, director Sean Levy keeps the yarn churning along at a breakneck pace.  

And late in the film he delivers an epic battle between our two protagonists and an army of Deadpool variants that is one of the best action sequences ever.  Think “The Wild Bunch” played for laughs.

| Robert W. Butler

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“EMILIA PEREZ”: Crazily ambitious

November 16, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofia Gascon

“EMILIA PEREZ” My rating: B (Netflix)

132 minutes | MPAA rating: R

By all rights “Emilia Perez” should collapse under the weight of its borderline crazy ambitions.

That it doesn’t, that in fact it keeps us from sneering despite a staggering level of telenovela-level melodrama, is one of those weird wonders that makes watching movies so much fun.

This Spanish-language effort from French director Jacques Audiard (he shares screenplay credit with Thomas Bidegain and Lea Mysius) is many things all at once.

Gangster picture. Social commentary. A tale of personal (and sexual) liberation.

Oh…and did I mention it’s a musical?

The yarn starts out with Mexico City criminal lawyer Rita Castro (a makeup-free Zoe Saldana) hitting a personal and professional dead end. She hates her job getting bad people off the hook, venting her frustrations in an opening musical number.  

(Throughout the film Camille Clement Ducal’s songs are employed to reveal the psychology of the various characters.  There’s very little in a traditional musical comedy sense; the emphasis is less on melody than on percussive delivery and a kind of repetitive chanting. In many instances backup singers deliver what can only be described as choral raps. Visually the restless approach to these numbers reminds of Baz Luhrman’s work on “Moulin Rouge.”)

Looking for something new, Rita agrees to meet with a shadowy new client, and finds herself grabbed and blindfolded. When the hood comes off she’s sitting opposite one of Mexico’s most notorious drug lords, Manitas Del Monte, a bearded, tattooed terror with a long history of murders.

Manitas has a very special job for Rita.  He has for years desired a sex change operation, and wants his new attorney to search the world for medical clinics where he can undergo the transition in ultimate privacy. This is all top secret…not even his wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their two young children know of Daddy’s double life.  And all the while his freedom and very existence are threatened by the authorities and rival gangs.

The upshot is that Manitas fakes his own death, goes to Israel for months of surgery and therapy, and emerges as Emilia Perez.

Here’s what’s mind boggling…both the scarily masculine Manitas and the very feminine Emilia are portrayed by Karla Sofia Gascon, a Spanish actress who made the transition from man to woman several years ago. She is utterly convincing with either persona.

Manitas/Emilia returns to Mexico and with Rita’s help tries to atone for her sins by creating a non-profit that works to determine the fates of thousands of citizens who have vanished in Mexico’s never-ending drug wars.  Manitas was responsible for not a few of those deaths. There’s a documentary-style montage in which imprisoned sicarios testify to the atrocities in which they have participated.

Selena Gomez

On a personal note, Emilia finds love with the grieving mother (Adriana Paz) of a missing teenage boy. 

And, posing as Manitas’ cousin, she invites Jessi and the kids to live with her.  This way Emilia can be close to the children she was forced to abandon, and she can keep tabs on how Jessi is handling the considerable fortune her “dead” husband left behind.

Yeah, that’s a lot.  And there’s more, but this isn’t the place for a litany of plot points. Let’s just say that “Emilia Perez” had me glued to the screen even when my b.s. meter was sending up red flares.

But the acting…Holy Cow!!   No wonder Saldana, Gomez (doing a 180 from her buttoned-up character in “Only Murders…”), Paz and especially Gascon were jointly named best actress at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where “Emilia…” also won the jury prize as best film.

Different segments of the film feel like reflections of other movies (trans drama, gangster epic, family trauma, Almodovar’s “The Skin I Live In”), yet the way these familiar elements have been combined feels surprisingly original.  And here’s where the musical elements play a big role — by having the characters periodically break into song writer/director Audiard signals early on that we’re dealing with a heightened realism, that while the film may appear to be rooted in the real world, it’s operating on an entirely different emotional and intellectual plain.

I can honestly say I’ve seen nothing quite like it.

| Robert W. Butler

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WHAT I’M WATCHING: “The Penguin,” “The Diplomat”

November 4, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Cristin Milioti, Colin Farrell

“THE PENGUIN’  (Max+)

Earlier this year I opined that Colin Farrell might never again be as good as he is in “Sugar,” a mind-bending Netflix series that blends the usual private eye tropes with “The Man Who Fell to Earth” weirdness.

But I hadn’t anticipated the jaw-dropping wonder that is “The Penguin,” a spinoff of the “Batman” franchise featuring Farrell in one of the greatest performances the small screen has ever seen.

Here Farrell  takes his brief appearance as gangster Oswald Cobb (aka The Penguin) in 2022’s “The Batman” and fills it with Shakespearean depths.  

This epic crime drama (it’s a very different show from “The Godfather” but carries much of the same dramatic weight) allows a famous actor to absolutely get lost in a character.

Usually when actors — especially handsome ones — submit to a latex-and-prosthetics transformation there’s a whiff of look-at-me-Mom cheese wafting through the proceedings.

Not here.

If you didn’t know it was Colin Farrell beneath that makeup you’d never guess. Hell, you’d not guess that it was makeup. It’s a metamorphosis so complete that even after watching the entire first season I can’t wrap my brain around it.

But it’s more than paint and putty, more than the avian waddling gait (Oz wears a leg brace, the legacy of a childhood injury).  Farrell’s Penguin is an ugly duckling determined to be a king, a complex character who one moment can be a seemingly caring mentor to a young recruit to crime, and the next can immolate a mother and son.

This Oswald Cobb may be ugly, but he can be as charming as Iago. He’s a Machiavellian marvel, a self-serving plotter and killer, a liar on a  Trumpian scale who in middle age remains a Mama’s boy. Every time you think you’ve got his number, he pulls the rug out.

Here’s the thing…Farrell’s Penguin is only one of two great performances in the series.  The other belongs to Cristin Milioti, who plays Sofia Falcone, his sometimes ally, sometimes nemesis.

The heir to a criminal empire, Sofia was framed for serial murder by her conniving family and spent a decade in a madhouse for the criminally insane. Finally released, she has become an avenging angel — half ruthless killer, half broken child. 

The bulk of the first season of “The Penguin” finds Oz and Sofia jostling for control of Gotham’s drug trade. Both are reprehensible, but also scarily compelling. 

They’re backed by a deep cast of familiar faces, among them Theo Rossi, Clancy Brown, Michael Kelly, Shohreh Aghdashloo and, in a turn that has Tony written all over it, Deirdre O’Connell as Oz’s demanding, dementia-warped mother.

And where is the Batman in all this?  Nowhere.  There’s been absolutely no mention of the Caped Crusader in Season One…whether he exists in this timeline or will show up in later seasons I don’t know.  

But he’s not missed…there’s more than enough to chew on in this bat-free wonder.  At some point the series’ unrelenting darkness may start to wear thiin…but right now I’m nowhere near that point. 

≈

Allison Janney, Rupert Sewell, Keri Russell

“THE DIPLOMAT’  (Netflix)

The new season of “The Diplomat” picks up with the car bomb explosion that ended Season One and never slows down.

For my money this Keri Russell starrer is a political thriller on the level of “The West Wing” (not only were both series directed by Alex Graves, but Alison Janney shows up late in Season Two to blow our minds).

This season finds Ambassador Kate Wyler (Russell) grappling with the aftermath of a London bombing that kills one of her staff.  Meanwhile she ’s trying to decide if a fatal attack on a British naval vessel was actually a black flag operation approved by the British P.M. (Roy Kinnear) looking to shore up his failing numbers with a manufactured national crisis.

“The Diplomat” will keep you guessing with narrative twists and turns (it’s got one of the greatest end-of-season revelations ever), but while the big story arc plays out, there are all sorts of terrific little dramas.

Ambassador Wyler and her sexy/mansplaining husband (Rufus Sewell) continue to navigate their marital difficulties, while Embassy staffer Stuart (Ato Essandoh) hits a stone wall in his affair with CIA hard-ass Eidra (Ali Aha).

And Celia Imrie has a delicious recurring role as a shadowy British mover and shaker who may be the key to the mystery.

Great pacing, scintillating dialogue, dead-on performances, subtle characterizations and a tongue-in-cheek approach that manages to find humor even in the grimmest circumstances…they all come together for a hugely-satisfying viewing experience.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Outside,” “MaXXXine”

October 28, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Left to right: Aiden Tyler Patdu, Beauty Gonzalez, Sid Lucero, Marco Masa

“OUTSIDE” My rating: B+ (Netflix)

142 minutes | No MPAA rating

If Eugene O’Neill had written a horror script it would play like “Outside,” a Philippine production in which family dysfunction is even more terrifying than the flesh-chomping undead.

Think of it as “Long Day’s Journey into Zombie-ism.”

Writer/director Carlo Ledesma wastes no time on preliminaries. The film opens with a much-battered family van (it’s covered in bloody handprints) chugging down a country road.

Inside are father Francis (Sid Lucero), mother Iris (Beauty Gonzalez) and their two boys, teenage Josh (Marco Masa) and little brother Lucas (Aiden Tyler Patdu).

They’re fleeing the city, headed for the sugar cane farm on which Francis grew up.  Once there they discover Grandpa dead from a self-inflicted gunshot; Grandma is a rapidly decaying wraith.

Francis gets to work burying the bodies and turning the farmhouse into a fortress.  There are fewer zombies in the sticks (fewer people, yes?) but they’re fast and hungry and attracted by loud noises.

The problem is that Dad’s idea of a secure space feels a whole lot like a prison.

With his wire-rimmed glasses and soft tummy, Francis is the very embodiment of an unassertive suburban Dad.  But in a weird way the zombie apocalypse has transformed him into an alpha male. Now he gets to call the shots.

Turns out Francis is carrying a whole load of baggage.  As a boy he was frequently locked in a dank cellar and raped by his father, and being back in that environment has set his paranoia to tingling.

And then there’s his relationship with the Missus.  Iris comes off as shellshocked and innervated…it’s all she can do to cook rice for the family.  Later we’ll learn the clan’s darkest secret…Francis is sure the two boys are the result of his wife’s infidelity.

Dad’s rapidly advancing mania (in many aspects the plot echoes “The Shining”) has him rejecting Iris’ and Josh’s pleas to drive north to what is reputed to be a zombie-free zone.  He’s not above sabotage to keep them under his thumb.

Every now and then we get a close call with the zombies, but “Outside”  plays down the usual horror tropes in favor of psychological realism.  

It’s been spectacularly well acted — this sort of subtlety is almost unknown in horror — and the two-hour-plus running time zips by.

Mia Goth (left)

“MAXXXINE” My rating: C+ (Hulu)

101 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The collaborations of writer/director Ty West and leading lady Mia Goth (“Pearl,” “X”)  have been hailed in some quarters as as the new best hope for the horror genre.

I’m not so sure…and “MaXXXine” hasn’t convinced me.

This latest effort finds West working with some really big names (Elizabeth Debicki, Giancarlo Esposito, Kevin Bacon, Bobby Canavale, Michelle Monaghan, Lily Collins).  But all that talent is frittered away on a cheesy premise.

Maxine (Goth) is a Dixie chick who came to LA and ended up in porn.  Now past 30, she recognizes that her expiration date in the flesh industry is fast approaching. She needs to pivot to a “real” movie with a “real” director.

After giving a killer audition, this tart-talkin’ Southern gal seems poised to realize her dream. But even as she launches her new legit career  Maxine finds herself being stalked by an unseen killer who seems to follow her every move and begins picking off her friends and acquaintances.

Set int the late 1970s, “MaXXXine” is nothing if not ambitious.   West wants to comment on unbridled ambition and the whole star-making apparatus, and much of the movie unfolds on studio back lots familiar from other films. There’s a sequence set in the Bates house from Hitchcock’s “Psycho”; the final confrontation with the mysterious killer unfolds at night at the foot of the famed Hollywood sign.

But it doesn’t add up to much, largely because the character of Maxine feels painfully undernourished.  There’s not a smidgen of humor or even irony in Goth’s joyless performance. Maxine starts out thick-skinned and hard-assed and never evolves into anything more. 

C’mon. Watching a thriller is supposed to be fun, but there’s not much pleasure to be had from “MaXXXine.”

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Woman of the Hour,” “Late Night with the Devil”

October 26, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Tony Hale, Anna Kendrick, Daniel Zovatto

“WOMAN OF THE HOUR” My rating: B (Netflix)

95 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Actress Anna Kendrick makes a way-more-than-adequate directing debut with “Woman of the Hour,” a chilling retelling of one of American pop culture’s more bizarre incidents.

Kendrick’s subject is serial killer Rodney Alcala, who in the middle of a long murder spree appeared as a contestant on the “Dating Game” TV show.

Ian McDonald’s screenplay cleverly exploits two plot threads.  In one, struggling actress Sheryl (Kendrick) attempts to navigate the treacherous waters of 1970s Hollywood. The casting agents are asses, her semi-clumsy neighbor (Pete Holmes) is putting the moves on her, and she’s running out of money.

So when her agent lands her an “easy” gig on “The Dating Game” she can hardly refuse.

Interwoven with all this are incidents from the murderous career of Alcala (a skin-crawling Daniel Zovatto), who uses his camera and charming personality (he could give Ted Bundy lessons) to lure in insecure, homeless and otherwise vulnerable women.

The central chunk of the film is the “Dating Game” broadcast, in which Sheryl, figuring she has nothing to lose, infuriates the show’s host (Tony Hale) by ignoring the “script” and going rogue, asking of her three unseen suitors questions designed to explode their macho poses.

Guess which of the three is chosen by our leading lady.

If a scriptwriter had dreamt all this up you’d probably sneer. The fact that it is all based on fact gives “Woman of the Hour” skin-crawling intensity.

Alcala was finally caught, thanks to the smarts of one of his intended victims, a runaway  perfectly played by Autumn Best.

Rodney Acala died in 2021 after 40 years in prison.  Authorities believe he may have been responsible for more than 100 murders.

Ingrid Torelli, David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon

“LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL” My rating: B- (Hulu)

93 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Found-footage horror went global with “The Blair Witch Project” and has been a staple of the genre ever since. Now we have “Late Night with the Devil,” which purports to be the unedited videotapes of a TV talk show featuring an honest-to-God demonic possession.

Writers/directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes have come up with a fiendishly clever setup.  On Halloween night in 1977 a struggling late night network TV talk show (it can never catch up with Carson) has as its guests a debunker of the paranormal (think the Amazing Randi) and a teenage girl only recently rescued from the satanic cult that raised her.

The debunker (Carmichael Haig) is a sneeringly pompous rationalist.  The girl (Ingrid Torelli) exhibits no particular personality…at least until her psychologist guardian (Laura Gordon) attempts an on-air hypnosis session, at which point all hell literally breaks loose in the TV studio.

Overseeing the mayhem is host Jack Delroy (K.C. native David Dastmalchian), a man struggling not only with mediocre ratings but also with the recent death of his beloved wife.

Aside from a couple of jump scares “Late Night…” didn’t particularly terrorize me. But I was absolutely mesmerized by the filmmakers’ recreation of a time and place.  

Everything about this production — from the set’s pastel rainbow design to the interplay between the host and his second banana (Rhys Auteri), the attitudes of the on-stage band members, the onscreen graphics, the vintage equipment, the themesong — feels absolutely dead on. It’s like taking a trip in a time machine.

| Robert W. Butler

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The Nicolas Cage Dilemma: “Mandy,” “Sympathy for the Devil”

October 21, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Nicolas Cage as Red in “Mandy”

“MANDY” My rating: A- (Hulu) 

121 minutes | No MPAA rating

“SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL”My rating: B- (Hulu)  

90 minutes | No MPAA rating

The prevailing wisdom is that Nicolas Cage will make any movie if the price is right, that you needn’t send him the script until the check has cleared.

And looking at his output over the last decade, that summation seems fairly accurate.  

For every noteworthy title on his resume (“Pig,” “Dream Scenario,” “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent”) there are a half dozen half-baked and utterly forgettable genre flicks (mostly revenge melodramas) that in a previous era would have gone straight to video.

Today, of course, they go straight to streaming.  

If the quality of Cage’s output is questionable, the quantity is staggering.  Since 2015 he has racked up more than 40 film credits, usually as the lead actor.  This would be regarded as Herculean for any performer, but Cage’s batting average is further enhanced by the fact that for nearly three of those years Hollywood was in a covid shutdown. 

Now I cannot claim to have seen all of Cage’s recent work (life’s too short, you know?) but I’ve been doing some surfing around the streaming services and have stumbled across a couple of titles that previously eluded me.

First off, from 2018, is “Mandy,” a revenge melodrama (check) that practically pulsates with human agony (thanks to Cage’s performance) while radiating a psychological/surreal intensity that is simultaneously seductive and repellant. 

This might be great filmmaking.  It might be trash. I could make a case for either.

The real star here is writer/director Panos Cosmatos, who creates a nightmare world rooted in the eccentric weirdness of Nicolas Winding Refn and accented with the surreal beauty of Lars Van Trier’s “Melancholia.” There’s even a nod here to Bergman’s “Persona.”

“Mandy” is crammed with laughable pulp fiction tropes, but even when it tosses in the odd playful  moment you’ll find yourself a prisoner of its somber intensity.

The setup:  Lumberjack Red (Nicolas Cage) lives in a comfy cabin in the north woods with his squeeze Mandy (Andrea Riseborough),

Linus Roache is Jeremiah, the bonkers head of a religious cult (he’s positively Koresh-ian) whose followers think only of satisfying his psychological and sexual needs.

Jeremiah spots Mandy on one of his drives and orders his minions to kidnap her. This they do, but not before torturing Red, whom they leave for dead.

They should have made sure.

There’s stuff going on here that just shouldn’t work…like a gang of bikers (are they human or demons?) whose costuming makes them look like the love children of “Hellraiser’s” Pinhead and “Pulp Fiction’s” Geek.

As the batshit crazy Jeremiah, Roache (who spent several seasons as a prosecutor on “Law & Order”) gets to dig into some mind-blowing bloviatory dialogue.  There’s a touch of Robert Mitchum’s killer preacher from “Night of the Hunter.” It’s totally unlike anything he’s ever done.

And that’s another unexpected thing. On top of its visual/aural splendors, “Mandy” has been fabulously well acted.  

The great Bill Duke makes a rare on-screen appearance as Red’s buddy, who keeps an impressive cache of weaponry in his mobile home. And as cult members the veteran actors Olwen Fouere, Richard Brake, Line Pallet and Ned Dennehy (you may not know the names but you’ll recognize the faces) give remarkably nuanced and unnerving performances.

But holding it all together is Cage.  It’s a pitiless performance…in one harrowing segment the camera zooms in on Red’s bloodied features and stays there for what seems like minutes as he screams in emotional (the love of his life has been taken) and physical pain (he awakens to find he’s been bundled in barbed wire and one hand has been nailed to the floor).

“Mandy” is exhausting and draining, but I’d happily watch it again.  

Nicolas Cage as The Passenger in “Sympathy for the Devil”

Then there’s “Sympathy for the Devil,” a 2023 drama in which Cage appears as a gun-toting killer who carjacks a suburban dad and forces him to cruise around nighttime Las Vegas.

When we first see Cage’s character (identified in the credits as The Passenger) he’s like the cartoon embodiment of Sin City’s underbelly.  With hair dyed to match the day-glo maroon of his tuxedo jacket and a Mephistophelean goatee, the guy comes off  like a cheesy stage magician who might keep a dead hooker in his car trunk. (He even forces his victim to participate in a card trick.)

The Driver (Joel Kinnaman) has just pulled into a hospital parking garage. His wife is upstairs giving birth to their second child — all he wants is to be at her side.

But, no, he’s forced at gunpoint to drive his captor out of town for…well, let’s not ruin anything.

Yuval Adler’s film is basically a claustrophobic two-hander.  There are encounters with other citizens — an unfortunate cop, the terrified travelers at an all-night highway diner — must mostly it’s just these two guys in a car surrounded by  the desert night.

Was the kidnapping arbitrary? A wrong place, wrong time thing? The Passenger is a smirking, taunting presence. The Driver claims there’s been a mistake, that he’s just a working jerk. 

But maybe there’s something in the pasts of these two that made this  evening inevitable?

Luke Paradise’s screenplay manages a magic trick of its own, turning the Passenger over time from a holy terror to a man with a painful past…which is how we end up sympathizing with this particular devil. (Viewers familiar with Cronenberg’s “A History of Violence” may guess where this is all going.)

Thanks to Cage it almost works.  The Passenger is a preposterous character who really doesn’t wash, psychologically speaking.  But watching Cage tear into this material it almost doesn’t matter.  The guy is out there sweating to turn straw into gold. In the end he turns that straw into brass, but it’s still a wonder to behold.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Will & Harper,” “Wolfs,” “His Three Daughters”

October 1, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Harper Steele, Will Ferrell

“WILL & HARPER”  My rating: B+ (Netflix)

114 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Will & Harper” is both a hugely emotional paen to friendship and a sobering/reassuring look at grassroots America.

It’ll have you sobbing one minute, furious the next.

The Will of the title is Will Ferrell, famous comic actor.  Harper is the former Andrew Steele, a long-time writer for “Saturday Night Live” who at age 61 decided to transition.

At the outset of Josh Greenbaum’s documentary, Ferrell recalls getting an email from Steele announcing her new status as a woman.  Farrell never saw it coming.

But Will Ferrell is a very good friend.  Knowing that as a man Harper had often driven across America, hanging out in seedy motels and nefarious watering holes, Ferrell suggested the two buds take a road trip. 

It would give them plenty of time to explore their new relationship while seeing how, if at all, Harper would be accepted  by the everyday folk being bombarded with anti-trans propaganda.

There’s good news and bad news. At an Oklahoma road house Harper is serenaded by a group of Native American men who employ a plastic tub as a tom tom to chant a welcoming song.  Awwww.

The next day, in Texas, the two travelers take center stage at a crowded highway restaurant.  Clearly, the local folk are impressed at having a celeb in their midst, but many fire off a slew of cruel anti-trans tweets aimed at the comic’s companion.

But perhaps the most devastating part of the journey is hearing Harper speak of the many years in which she fought against recognizing her true sexual identity. It’s sad and inspiring.

Which is not to say that “Will & Harper” is a downer.  Ferrell and Steele have earned their livings by making other people laugh, and their banter has plenty of drollery sprinkled among the truth nuggets.

I believe I’m a better person for having watched it.

Brad Pitt, George Clooney

“WOLFS” My rating: B (Apple+)

108 minutes | MPAA rating: R

It really doesn’t go anywhere, but you’ve gotta enjoy the ride provided by “Wolfs,” a lean, funny crime dramedy fueled by Tarantino-esque banter.

The premise of writer/director Jon Watts’ film:  Two mob cleaners (they are hired to discreetly remove evidence — like dead  bodies — after violent encounters) find themselves working on the same assignment.

It must be a mistake because these unnamed dudes (played by George Clooney and Brad Pitt) always work alone and are fiercely protective of their trade secrets. (They’re “lone wolfs.”)

Nevertheless, here they both are in an expensive hotel room to remove the body of a young man who, while cavorting with an older woman (Amy Ryan), bounced off the bed and into a glass coffee table.

These wolfs don’t play well with each other.  The older one (Clooney) is a brooding grump. The younger (Pitt) is a cocky wise ass.  

Oil and water.

And then there’s the vinegar. (Here comes a spoiler but I don’t know how to avoid it.)

That would be “the kid” (Austin Abrams), the supposedly dead body that returns to life mid-disposal.  He’s a goofy college student who got picked up by the cougar while running an errand for a friend…an errand that involves a backpack full of drugs.

Now the two fixers and the kid are trying to return the illegal pharmaceuticals to their criminal owners without getting killed.

But not before an awesome chase through NYC with the two wolfs pursuing the whacked-out kid, who is racing gazelle-like through a snowstorm in his tidy whities. 

Remember Nicolas Cage’s quest for baby diapers in “Raising Arizona”?  It’s that good.

The thorny plot twists of “Wolfs” may not stand up to close scrutiny, but viewer doubts probably won’t kick in until after the final credits.  For the most part the flick is just plain fun.

Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, Carrie Coon

“HIS THREE DAUGHTERS” My rating: B+ (Netflix)

101 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Getting married. Having a kid. Losing a parent.

These are three of the most impactful experiences in a human life. Azazel Jacobs’ “His Three Daughters” examines the third event through a pressure-cooker environment and three astonishing performances.

The daughters are Katie (Carrie Coon), Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) and Christina (Elizabeth Olsen). The siblings have gathered in the New York apartment of their father, who lies dying in his bedroom (we won’t actually see him until the final moments of the film).

Though all were raised by the same single dad, the women have radically different personalities.

Katie, the oldest, is a brittle, opinionated woman who tries to come off as helpful but actually is merely bossy. Katie has rarely visited her father in recent months but now wants to dictate how this whole business of dying will unfold. The problem, of course, is that death doesn’t operate on a convenient schedule.

Christina has a husband and young daughter back in Ohio. She’s painfully insecure, always sharing appallingly sappy phone calls with her kid and shying away from argument and controversy.

Rachel is the family bohemian. She’s been living with her father for years, taking care of him in his decline. She appears not to have a real job and frequently lets off steam with a joint or two, both life choices that infuriate the judgmental Katie.

“…Sisters” unfolds almost entirely in the living room and kitchen of the apartment, creating a claustrophobic intensity that magnifies the points of conflict among the women.

Every few hours a hospice worker (Rudy Galvan) checks in; at one point Rachel’s boyfriend (Jovan Adepo) shows up to give her a bit of moral support and to unload on Katie and Christina, whom he (rightly) believes have shirked their familial responsibilities while Rachel got stuck with the role of caregiver.

“His Three Daughters” could quite easily have been conceived as a stage play rather than a film. The dialogue is tight and polished and wastes little time in exposing the character’s conflicted essences. Sometimes it sounds a bit artificial and forced, but any misgivings are quiickly dispersed by the power and subtlety of the performances.

Most of the film is brutally realistic. But in the final moments, when we finally meet the women’s father (Jay O. Sanders), it becomes borderline metaphysical. I can’t say more without ruining the effect…let’s just say that despite often rubbing our noses in dysfunction, “His Three Daughters” leaves us with a whiff of hope.

| Robert W. Butler

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WHAT I’M WATCHING: “Bad Monkey,” “A Perfect Couple,” “Evil”

September 28, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Vince Vaughn

“BAD MONKEY” (Apple +)

Vince Vaughn has been waiting more than 20 years for a role that would perfectly mesh with his droll, super-dry persona.  In “Bad Monkey” he finds it.

As disgraced Key West police detective Andrew Yancy, Vaughn seduces us with virtually every line of dialogue and deadpan expression.  He’s like a beach bum with a badge.

He’s surrounded by a cast of entertaining eccentrics  courtesy of novelist Carl Hiaasen, a former Miami Herald writer whose novels provide a wickedly jaundiced view of Florida’s human fauna.

Created by the great Bill Lawrence (“Scrubs,” “Ted Lasso”), this series opens with the discovery of a severed human arm snagged on a fishing line. The sets in motion Yancy’s quest to track down a missing con man and his scheming trophy wife. His search will take him from Key West to Miami to the Bahamas.

Satisfying from a mystery/comedy aspect, “Bad Monkey” also captures the captivating weirdness of the Sunshine State, that blend of redneck bohemia and big-money crassness mined so well in Hiaasen’s novels. 

Fleshed out with first-rate supporting players — among them Michelle Monaghan, Rob Delaney, Alex Moffat and Scott Glenn, just for starters — and you’ve got a show so good you don’t care if they ever solve the mystery.

Liev Schreiber, Nicole Kidman

“THE PERFECT COUPLE”(Netflix)

Okay, I get it.  Rich people are assholes.

 I’m just not sure I needed six hours of immersion in said asshole-ism .

“The Perfect Couple” is a murder mystery set on Nantucket Island during an obscenely expensive  wedding celebration.  At the end of the first episode, after a night of partying, one of the guests washes up dead on the beach.

The local police chief (Michel Beach) and a chijp-on-her-shoulder  detective (Donna Lynne Champlin) have plenty of suspects to suss out, and each of the ensuing five episodes centers on one  or two of the potential killers. 

The groom’s parents are the perfect couple of the title, though that’s a carefully curated illusion. The haughty/brittle Greer (Nicole Kidman) writes popular mystery novels, while hubby Tag (Liev Schreiber) smokes pot, lobs golf balls into the sea and spends wifey’s money on other women.

Their son the groom (Billy Howie) is actually a pretty decent guy; his bride-to-be  (Eve Hewson) is a middle-class girl uncomfortable with the ostentation in which she finds herself drowning.

The groom’s older brother (Jack Reynor) is a spoiled jerk and financial disaster; his preggers wife (Dakota Fanning)  is a social climber who puts up with her husband’s philandering because, well, he’s rich.

The maid of honor (Meghann Fahy) is a party girl; the best man (Ishaan Knatter) appears to be a surf bum but is actually a millionaire. And there’s a predatory and witheringly ironic French lady (Isabelle Adjani) who seems to have bedded most of the men in the wedding party.

There’s amusing interplay between the working-stiff cops and the nose-in-the-air suspects. But there are way too many superfluous subplots, digressions, red herrings and narrative dead ends. For much of the series I felt I was treading water…getting in my exercise but going nowhere.

Still, the performances are good (I especially dug Schreiber’s laid-back kept man) and the faces and figures attractive.

Aasif Mandi, Mike Colter, Katja Herbers

“EVIL” (Paramount +)

After three hugely satisfying seasons of “Evil” I’d like to hang out with series creators Michelle and Robert King. I mean, people who can effortlessly mix demonic possession and insouciant humor are bound to be fine dinner companions.

The series’s premise is simple yet deeply nuanced.  Three investigators are hired by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New  York to investigate reports of the supernatural.

They are seminarian David Acosta (Mike Colter), clinical psychologist and agnostic Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers) and lapsed Muslim and hardcore scientific rationalist Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandi).

There’s huge fun in watching the three play off each other…lots of good-natured banter as their conflicting world views collide (think Scully and Mulder plus one). And every week, of course, they have a new mystery to unravel, whether it’s a ghostly apparition, a fierce mutant pig or an ancient relic housing a malevolent spirit.

Creepy special effects and skin-crawling atmosphere aside, it’s the personal stories that really fuel the show.  Foremost is the simmering intensity between Colton’s priest-in-training and Herbers’ mother of four (or is it five?) that will have audiences simultaneously rooting for them to hit the hay together and dreading the repercussions.

There are numerous amusing supporting characters, especially Andrea Martin as a no-nonsense nun with the ability to see demons, Christine Lahti as Kristen’s cougar-ish mother and Michael Emerson as her boyfriend, a slimy psychiatrist heading a secret cabal of Satanists preparing for the birth of the antichrist.

And there are a whole mess of demons who’ll leave you torn between shuddering and giggling…who knew that Satan’s minions were disgruntled  working stiffs like the rest of us?

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Civil War,” “Drive-Away Dolls”

September 19, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny

“CIVIL WAR” My rating: C+(Max)

109 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The journalistic challenges of covering a civil war have long fascinated filmmakers. 

Back in the ‘80s we had Oliver Stone’s “Salvador” and Roger Spottiswoode’s “Under Fire.”  More recently Rosamund Pike portrayed real-life photojournalist Marie Colvin in the excellent “A Private War.”

Alex Garland’s “Civil War” returns to the topic but with a major twist.  Instead of playing out in a Third World country, this yarn is set in the good ol’ U.S.A. during what can only be described as the second American Revolution.

This is both the film’s most intriguing element…and its most frustrating one.

Narratively it’s a big road trip.  Four journalists in a car with “Press” embossed on the doors set out from NYC to the nation’s capital, where the President and his supporters are making a last stand against the forces of the “Western Alliance,” a secessionist army manned mostly by Texans and Californians (talk about strange bedfellows!).

Our protagonists are photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst), who is close to burning out on the horrors she has witnessed in her career; reporter Joel (Wagner Moura), a cynic determined to get what may be the last interview ever with the President; the seventysomething Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), who’s clearly too old for this sort of enterprise; and baby-faced Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), just starting out in the biz and perhaps too eager to see action.

The unarmed newsmen journey through burned-out burgs and bucolic landscapes, both of which conceal untold dangers and numerous ways to die.  They spend a night in a crumbling football stadium now housing hundreds of refugees. They encounter vigilantes who are torturing suspected looters, disciplined military units and scarily undisciplined militia members.

Being neutral journalists they’re able to observe both sides in the fight.  Not that their press credentials can protect them from gun-toting morons who for the first time can swagger and kill with impunity. (An uncredited Jesse Plemons makes a brief but scarily memorable appearance as a morally unhinged partisan — though we can’t be sure which side he’s on.)

It’s a world-turned-upside-down scenario in which chaos reigns. Which army are we embedded with today? And the usual rules of war no longer apply.

Garland’s screenplay is a series of episodes, but there’s not much in the way of narrative. Mostly he’s interested in establishing a world in which everything that makes us feel secure has been turned inside out. To the extent that it depicts a society imploding into near-anarchy,
“Civil War” works pretty well.  It’s the sort of thing that could be set in any war-torn country.

Except that it’s not just any country.  It’s the United States of America. Garland seems poised to be make political points, to show how our current political dysfunction could lead to something far worse…but he never follows through.

TV and radio addresses by the President (Nick Offerman) show a leader keeping up the facade of success even as the world crumbles around him…there’s a vaguely Trumpian element to the character’s hyperbolic statements and resistance to facts.  But is this President of the right or the left?  Don’t know.

Nor do we learn anything about the political stance of the rebels besieging Washington. They’re described as secessionists, but there’s no mention of what drove them to that state or what kind of government they propose to establish.

Moreover, there are some big gaps in the film’s internal logic.  Our protagonists may be motoring through one of the most densely populated areas in America, but usually they’re the only car on the highway (though there are vast parking lots of abandoned or burned-out vehicles).  So where are all the people?

In the end “Civil War” dishes some good action sequences and a suffocating sense of danger, but never answers the big questions it sets up. 

Geraldine Viswanathan, Margaret Qually

“DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS” My rating: B- (Prime)

84 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Drive-Away Dolls” wants to be the great American lesbian road picture.

It almost gets there.

The latest from director Ethan Coen (here working without his usual partner, brother Joel) and co-writer Tricia Cooke is a raunchy, muff-gobbling comedy.  

Sorry if that last phrase offends, but it’s exactly the attitude on display. Imagine Andrew Dice Clay as a gay woman. “Drive-Away Dolls” is so in-yer-face blue that it’s kinda refreshing.

Taking top honors here is Margaret Quallly as Jamie, a drawling Texas lesbian with a a mouthful of rude down-home-isms and a fierce sexual appetite. She talks her straight-laced gal pal Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) into taking a road trip down south…they sign up to deliver a car to its new owner several states away.

Except that they end up in a vehicle that is part of a criminal plot.  In the trunk is a briefcase with an arresting array of dildos (you know they will not go unused) and an old-fashioned hatbox holding a human head on ice (the noggin belongs to Pedro Pascal…gotta be the least-challenging role of his career).

In pursuit are a couple of bumbling thugs (Joey Slotnick, C.J. Wilson) who have their own Mutt and Jeff routine going on. 

The screenplay overflows with hard-core dyke humor (again, not being disrespectful…that’s just the dynamic on display) and the cast is crammed with brief comic appearances by familiar faces: Beanie Feldstein, Colman Domingo, Bill Camp, Matt Damon.

Trashy fun.

| Robert W. Butler

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