Anthony Ramos, Rebecca Ferguson
“A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE” My rating: B+ (Netflix)
112 minutes | MPAA rating: R
This Halloween season’s scariest movie has nothing to do with ghosts and ghoulies. It will nonetheless induce nighmares.
Kathryn Bigelow’s latest directorial effort takes the same 20-minute time frame and retells it repeatedly from different perspectives.
It begins with American military personnel in Alaska detecting an incoming ICBM and ends with the President faced with an impossible decision that could determine the fate of mankind.
Noah Oppenheimer’s screenplay — created with the assistance of former military types who know their stuff — exudes an aura of helplessness that not all our high-tech weaponry can dispel.
The incoming missile was launched from the Pacific, but we don’t know from where, exactly. Without knowing who fired it, our military cannot know against whom to retaliate. The Russians? The North Koreans?
Also. how could it be launched undetected by our surveillance capabilities? Maybe someone inside our defense system is a saboteur?
Two of our missiles are sent to stop the intruder. One breaks down in flight. The other hits its target, but without effect. The missile just keeps coming. The most likely target is Chicago.
With each iteration of the story things get more dire, more tense. How will it end?
“A House or Dynamite” has been crammed with familiar faces (Idris Elba. Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos, Jason Clarke, Greta Lee, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Kaitlyn Dever), many of whom are on screen for only a minute or two.
They’re all solid, but I found myself being drawn to many of the background characters, soldiers and White House staffers caught in the awful realization that the horrors they trained for have now come to pass. Some maintain their by-the-book demeanor. Others come close to panicking. Many call their families and friends with dire warnings to evacuate or simply to say “I love you.”
Bigelow cannily employs handheld cameras to capture a documentary feel; as the film progresses the tension reaches near unbearable levels.
Maybe don’t watch this one before going to bed.
“JOHN CANDY: I LIKE ME” My rating: B (Prime)
113 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
The late John Candy was a very funny man, but the overwhelming feeling percolating through this documentary is one of profound loss.
Director Colin Hanks (yes, Tom’s son) seems to have interviewed virtually everyone who moved in Candy’s orbit. Among the famous talking heads represented here are Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Dave Thomas, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Steve Martin, Conan O’Brien, Mel Brooks and Macaulay Culkin.
Not to mention Candy’s widow, children and siblings.
To an individual they describe a prince of a guy — warm, empathic, considerate. Bill Murray struggles mightily to find something negative to say (conflict is vital to drama, right?) but in the end can’t deliver.
But we learn a lot about Candy here. His father died of a heart attack when he was just a boy…ironically Candy would die of a heart attack at age 43.
He wasn’t comfortable with his image as a jolly fat man; interviewers back in the day subjected Candy to a not-terribly-subtle form of fat shaming that would get them fired today. He never struck out at them…just smiled thinly and carried on.
There are, of course, a ton of clips from his stint with “SCTV” and from his many feature films, including “Planes, Trains & Automobiles,” in which Candy delivered a performance of such humor and humanity that in retrospect you’ve got to wonder what the Academy folk were thinking in not giving him a nomination.
All in all this is a warm tribute to a very good man.
Keira Knightley, Guy Pearce
“THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10” My rating: C (Netflix)
93 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Reporter Laura Blacklock (Keira Knightley) is invited to cover the maiden voyage of a super yacht whose owners — a dying billionairess and her husband (Guy Pearce) — want to draw attention to their new charity.
The proletarian Laura feels painfully out of place among these rich creeps (Hannah Waddingham, David Morrissey, etc.), and when she reports that the woman in the cabin next to hers has fallen (or was thrown) overboard, she becomes the object of suspicion and ridicule.
Apparently Cabin 10 was never occupied.
I was kinda bored by the first third of Simon Stone’s thriller (the screenplay is by Stone, Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse). The middle section, in which Laura hides on the boat from unseen killers, has a sort of “Die Hard” tension going on.
It’s all wrapped up with a posh gala on a Norwegian fiord that deteriorates into a sort of soggy Velveeta pizza. Didn’t believe a word of it.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 