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Posts Tagged ‘Miles Teller’

SHORT TAKES: “After the Hunt,” “Eternity”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 11, 2025| 1 Comment »

Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri

“AFTER THE HUNT” My rating: B (Prime)

138 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The latest from the prolific Luca Guadagnino (“Challengers,” “Call Me By Your Name,” “Bones and All,” “Suspiria”) is an academic “Rashomon,” a she said/he said puzzle populated by presumably smart people who do some really dumb things.


“After the Hunt” opens in the off-campus apartment of Yale philosophy professor Alma (Julia Roberts) and her psychiatrist husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg).  They’re hosting a soiree for friends, colleagues and students, and just about everybody is conversing in pompous academia speak.  They’re really, really irritating.

Among the partiers are Alma’s colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield), the kind of guy who puts his feet up on other folks’ furniture while waxing eloquently on existentialism.  And then there’s Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), a grad student in philosophy (and daughter of one of the university’s biggest donors); everyone expects her Ph.D. dissertation to make a big splash.

“After the Hunt” centers on an accusation of sexual assault.  The day after the party Maggie confides to  Alma that Hank drove her home and, well, you know. (Actually we don’t know, because Nora Garrett’s screenplay is so fiendishly effective at suggesting things without actually getting down to the nitty gritty.)

But here’s the thing.  Maggie is gay and may be secretly infatuated with Alma. And she recently uncovered evidence suggesting that Alma and Hank have been having an affair behind Frederik’s back. (Again, it’s suggested.Maybe it was just intense flirting.)

So perhaps the accusation of assault is a way to eliminate a competitor for Alma’s affections.

Hank, it turns out, is his own worst enemy.  He’s evasive about just what went on with Maggie.  And in his defense he says that he has accused Maggie of plagiarizing material for her dissertation.  This may be her way of discrediting him before he can go public with his suspicions.

Alma is caught in the middle…no matter what she does one of these two will see it as a betrayal.  In fact, Maggie submits to a newspaper interview in which she scorches Alma for her lack of support.  Could racism be a part of it? (Maggie is black, you see.)

Pile on top of that Alma’s disdain for the self-righteous entitlement exuded by many of her students, and you can see a career collapse coming down the road.

And then there’s her health issues…Alma only recently returned to class after a health crisis and she’s coping with pain that has her doubling up in a fetal position.  So she does something really dumb…she steals a prescription pad from the desk of her psychiatrist friend Kim (Chloe Sevigny) and fakes a script for opiates.

“After the Hunt” (a cryptic title I’m still trying to figure out) manages to be gripping even while withholding key pieces of information.  This has not a little to do with Roberts’ performance, which gos from haughty to wretched wreck. She can look great or ghastly. 

But everyone is solid, especially Stuhlbarg’s husband; Guadagnino seems to turn to this actor whenever he needs someone to represent non-flashy decency.

Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, Callum Turner

“ETERNITY” My rating: C (In theaters)

114 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

I really wanted to like the end-of-life romcom “Eternity,” but in the end it just made me want to rewatch Albert Brooks’ “Defending Your Life.”

In this supernatural love story from David Freyne an old man chokes on a pretzel and awakens on a train pulling into the afterlife. Larry (MilesTeller) finds he’s back in his 30-year-old body.  His afterlife counselor (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) informs him that he must pick an eternity to reside in.  

Turns out heaven has multiple destinations, from a beach world where  it’s always sunny to library world (apparently not a very popular eternity).  The trick is that once you’ve chosen, there’s no changing your mind.

Anyway, the newly dead must spend their first week at a sort of gigantic trade fair in which all the various eternities have set up booths to distributed enticing pamphlets and show fun-filled videos.

Some of this is kinda cute.

The film’s main plot, though, concerns the arrival of Larry’s wife Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) and a major complication.  Joan’s first husband Luke (Callum Turner) has been hanging around in limbo for 70 years (he died in the Korean War), awaiting Joan’s arrival.

And now Larry and Luke must compete to see which one of them Joan will choose as an enternal partner.

Quite the conundrum…and one that Freyne and co-writer Patrick Cunnane can’t really finesse.

Part of the problem is that “Eternity” is nearly 30 minutes too long; after a while it starts to feel like an eternity watching it.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Flow,” “The Gorge”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »

“FLOW” My rating: B+  (Apple TV +)

85 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

There is not one word of dialogue in the  Czech animation feature “Flow,” which is up for Oscars in both the Animated Film and International Feature categories.

Which means a viewer has to pay attention.  No looking out the window and expecting the soundtrack to carry you along.

Happily, concentrating on “Flow” is no problem, since creator Gints Zilbalodis packs his feature with so much intoxicating visual information and so many interesting characters and situations that our attention never wanders.

The film unfolds in a vaguely Asian landscape.  There are bamboo huts and Ankor Wat-style temples and even an exotic city.  These speak of human habitation, but we never do see an example of homo sapiens.

Instead we find ourselves on a grand adventure with a cat who initially survives a tsunami that floods the jungle, then hitches a ride on a drifting boat to be carried wherever the current takes him (or her).

Our feline protagonist is accompanied by a small menagerie of other animals seeking refuge from the waters. Among them a shuffling capybara (think large groundhog), a pack of dogs who put aside their cat-hunting proclivities for the sake of mutual survival, a magisterial crane, and a lemur obsessed with collecting items (he becomes frantic upon discovering one of his precious finds is missing…I call him Gollum).

We get to know them not from what they say (again, no dialogue) but by their actions, which have been brilliantly envisioned to be both sentient and animal.

“Flow” has no plot. It’s a series of episodes. There’s  no explanation of the disaster that befalls the characters, no clue as to where all the people have gone.  The movie doesn’t so much end as drift away.

So if you’re looking for a tidy package wrapped up with a bow, you’ll be frustrated.

If, however, you’re ready for something you’ve never seen before, dive into this brave new world.

Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy

“THE GORGE” My rating: C+ (Apple TV +)

127 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13)

“The Gorge” has a nifty premise and a really solid opening 40 minutes. 

After that it’s a bit of a mess.

Sniper Levi (Miles Teller) is tormented by the many people he has killed, both as a Marine and more recently as a paid mercenary.  Looking for a change, he’s intrigued by a offer proffered by an obviously high-ranking government mover and shaker (Sigourney Weaver).

How would Levi like to spend a year in isolation, getting his head together while employing  his skills as a marksman?  

It’s all very mysterious, and after a long plane ride during which he was drugged Levi ends up in a concrete sentry tower overlooking a vast fog-filled chasm.  His job is to use the resources he’s been given — long-range rifles,  explosive mines dangled over the precipice, automated machine guns — to keep whatever is making eerie noises down there from getting out.

Oh…and about a mile away on the other side of the canyon is another sentry tower, this one occupied by Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy), who like Levi has enjoyed a career of long-distance assassinations…albeit her employers were Eastern Bloc types.

Despite orders not to fraternize, the two snipers begin communicating via binoculars and messages written on big sheets of paper.   It’s kind of a chaste courtship…at least until Levi uses a bazooka and metal cable to string a zip line above the roiling clouds.

So far so good.   But the meet-cute romance that develops doesn’t convince (these two are too hard core to get their kicks dancing to ‘80s pop) and the mystery of just what is happening down below is a whole lot of nothing.

We’re talking about a long-ago government experiment that went south, creating an environment filled with mutant creatures (kinda reminds of the Skull Island sequence in “King Kong”).

Teller and Taylor-Joy are both fine performers, but Zach Dean’s script and Scott Derrickson’s direction give them little to work with.

Production  values are solid, but “The Gorge” suffers from the great gaping hole that afflicts so many sci-fi/horror entries — a great buildup to a mediocre reveal.

| Robert W. Butler

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“SPIDERHEAD”: Mood enhancer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 21, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Chris Hemsworth

“SPIDERHEAD” My rating: C (Netflix)

106 minutes | MPAA rating: R

A promising premise goes nowhere in “Spiderhead,” a si-fy-ish melodrama that at least allows Chris Hemsworth to play something not of the Marvel Universe.

Scripted by George Saunders, Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese (on whose short story it is based), the film unfolds in a futuristic concrete edifice perched on the edge of an island.

Inside it looks like maybe a posh-if-sterile spa melded with a swingers’ resort. There are video games for the residents to play, good food and apparently a hands-off attitude when it comes to romantic connections between the participants.

But we soon discover that this is actually a high-tech prison dedicated to medical experiments. The residents/subjects are inmates from the mainland who have volunteered to be guinea pigs in return for a more relaxed environment: no armed guards, no bars, no locked doors. Moreover, most of the men and women are non-violent offenders.

We learn about the place through Jeff (Miles Teller), who was convicted of vehicular manslaughter. Most of the time he cohabits with Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett), who serves as chef in a well-equipped kitchen.

But periodically Jeff is called to the Spiderhead, a testing center run by Steve Abnesti (Hemsworth), a bespectacled brainiac who is clearly working hard to exude an aura of frat-bro affability. He treats his inmate/subjects like buddies…until it no longer serves his purposes.

Steve is a pharmaceutical wiz who has formulated a wide array of mood-altering drugs. His subjects — all volunteers, remember — never know what they’ll be dosed with when they start a session. It might be potion that makes them laugh uproariously at even the lamest joke. For that matter, under the influence thy will find even human suffering hilarious.

There’s a drug that makes two strangers fall almost instantly and carnally in love…although when the effect has worn off there are no residual feelings of romance or lust.

The worst tests, though, involve Darkenfloss, which plunges the subject into the deepest imaginable depression.

That’s where Jeff has issues. He is expected to collaborate with Steve on who gets Darkenfloss and the dosage to be administered…and he’s deeply disturbed at seeing his fellow human beings in the throes of crippling, even suicidal, downers.

A contest of wills develops between Jeff and Steve…at which point Steve shows his true fascistic colors.

The notion of drugs that can drastically change a person’s mood — almost like a hypnotic suggestion — should be fertile ground for some interesting scenes — everything from comedy to tragedy.

And yet “Spiderhead” — which was directed by Joseph Kosinski of “Top Gun: Maverick” fame — never really takes advantage of the possibilities. In a lot of ways it’s a standard-issue mad-scientist flick.

Let’s give some credit, though, to Hemsworth, who seems to have de-bulked for his role (he never takes his shirt off) and offers a physical vulnerability that is in sharp contrast with his Thor persona. He does a good job of nailing Steve’s malevolent scheming while hiding behind the guise of an apologetic and sympathetic sort.

| Robert W. Butler

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“TOO OLD TO DIE YOUNG”: Too weird to stop watching

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 24, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Miles Teller

I’m not sure I like Amazon Prime’s “Too Old to Die Young,” but I’m damned if I can stop watching it.

Of course, you could say that about any effort from the supremely downbeat Nichoas Winding Refn.

Over the last 20 years Refn has gone from nihilistic Danish productions like the “Pusher” series, “Bronson” (Tom Hardy) and “Valhalla Rising” (Mads Mikkelsen)  to nihilistic American productions like “Drive” (Ryan Gosling) and  the much-despised “Only God Forgives” (Gosling again), with a sidestep into nihilistic pop culture in “The Neon Demon” (Elle Fanning).

Note the recurring word “nihilistic.” Get used to it.

“Too Old…” is Refn on steroids, a 10-part crime drama (each episode is about 90 minutes) that takes all the things people love (and hate) about his  oeuvre and pumps them up to the exploding point (though it rarely explodes; mostly it simmers).

Augusto Aguilera, Cristina Rodlo

Our protagonist (hero is way too strong a word) is Martin Jones (Miles Teller), a deputy with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department.  Martin is, to put it bluntly, corrupt (but then so is just about every law enforcement officer depicted here).  He has a side job as an an enforcer/assassin for a Jamaican gang. Also, he’s dating a high-school senior, Janey  (Nell Tiger Free), whose creepy billionaire  father (William Baldwin in a career-high perf) can barely communicate through a bad case of the cocaine sniffles.

Martin’s nemesis is Jesus (Augusto Aguilera), the son of a beautiful cartel queen Martin assassinated before the series begins. The entire second episode is devoted to Jesus’ sojourn with his mother’s family in Mexico, where he gets steeped in the clan’s culture. He returns to the U.S. with his new wife (and adopted sister/cousin) Yaritza (Critina Rodlo), who claims to be a powerful witch. Naturally they’re sworn to exact revenge on Martin.

In the fourth or fifth episode we’re introduced to Viggo (John Hawkes), a terminally ill former FBI agent now devoted to vigilantism. He gets his targets from woo-woo woman Diana (Jena Malone), who as a counselor for victims of crime has a long list of child rapists and other offenders who require elimination.

Eventually Martin decides to stop killing mere gangsters and join Viggo in going after the real monsters. (more…)

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“WHIPLASH”: Monster mentor

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 17, 2014| 2 Comments »

Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons

Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons

“WHIPLASH”  My rating: B+

106 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) conducts the elite studio jazz band at New York City’s most prestigious conservatory of music.  He’s a musician and educator, though you might be forgiven for mistaking him for a Marine drill instructor…or perhaps a serial killer.

Fletcher enters the rehearsal room with the swagger of a gunslinger flinging open swinging saloon doors. His students don’t make eye contact.  They gaze at the floor or at their charts.  Nobody wants to draw the alpha wolf’s reptilian stare.

But that won’t save them. Fletcher is routinely profane, insulting, and capable of reducing a young musician to sobs. He seems to take great pleasure in finding a victim at every rehearsal.

“Either  you’re out of tune and deliberately sabotaging my band, or you don’t know you’re out of tune — and that’s worse.”

He’s smug, cruel and probably sexist, given his treatment of a woman player in a freshman ensemble: “You’re in first chair. Let’s see if it’s just because you’re cute.”

He punishes those who disappoint him not with pushups but with rehearsals that go on into the wee hours: “We will stay here as long as it takes for one of you faggots to play in time.”

(more…)

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