”Wicker” is a great idea that after a promising beginning doesn’t go anywhere.
Co-directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson (they based their screenplay on a short story by Ursula Wills), the film can boast of a great cast (Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgard, Peter Dinklage) and Oscar-worthy production design that beautifully evokes its fairy tale-ish setting.
But the film sets us up for a great romance, and then yanks the carpet out from under us.
The middle-aged Fisherwoman played by Olivia Colman (none of the characters have real names…instead they are identified by their professions) is the object of ridicule in her little thatched-hut village. The locals make fun of her unmarried status, her fishy smell and her general lack of hygiene.
She’s endured their gibes for years, but after witnessing the burg’s latest wedding (instead of a ring on her finger the groom places a metal collar around his new wife’s neck…a not-so-subtle comment on the sexual pecking order) she decides to show her critics what’s what.
So she approaches the local Basketmaker (Peter Dinklage) and pays him to build her a husband.
Apparently the Basketmaker is some kind of wizard, because he fashions from wood and reed an astonishingly handsome Wicker Man (Alexander Skarsgard, all but unrecognizable beneath makeup and prosthetics that are absolutely mesmerizing).
From the moment of his creation, apparently, the Wicker Man is devoted to the Fisherwoman. In many ways he is childlike and polite, learning the ways of the humans around him.
But when it comes to sex, well, he brings new meaning to the word “wood.” The frumpy Fisherwoman finds herself with a lover so devoted as to require frequent repairs to her bed. Almost overnight she shifts from an object of ridicule to one of envy — and resentment.
While concentrating on the couple’s physical and emotional intimacy “Wicker” is a sweet delight. But all too soon the yarn becomes a downer. The village women, lead by the scheming Tailor’s Wife (Elizabeth Debicki), resent the Fisherwoman’s happiness when compared to their own drab love lives. They try to pry the happy couple apart.
“Wicker” promises a soul-stirring love ballad fueled by the interaction of the comically inclined Colman and the stiff but compliant Skarsgard. Alas, it soon devolves into an examination of sexual politics seasoned with jealousy and venality. You want it to sing…but it only grumbles.
The problem may be that the source material — a short story — didn’t have enough depth to flesh out an entire feature. It might have been better as a short film.
That said, production designer Renato Cseh and costumers Toth Andras Daniel and Godena-Juhasz Attila have fashioned for us a fantastic world that effortlessly incorporates eras from the Medieval to the Edwardian.
And the Wicker costume, created over 18 months by New Zealand’s Weta Workshop, could very well become as iconic as the storm troopers from the “Star Wars” universe.
“YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING” My rating: A-(In theaters)
175 minutes | MPAA rating: R
It’s a documentary, sure, albeit one with a second-act twist guaranteed to tie your mind and emotions into knots.
It’s a comedy of sorts, with a filmmaker becoming an uneasy character in a real-life psychodrama.
And it’s a deep-dive character study which, like most great examples of the genre, leaves us with as many questions as answers.
And here’s a guarantee: After experiencing the nearly three hours of “You Can See Everything” (don’t worry…the time flies by) you’ll spend hours and days sorting all the pieces of this fascinating, maddening jigsaw puzzle.
First things first. Filmmakers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheimer were given 24/7 access to Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her family in the month leading up to her serving an 11-year sentence in a federal prison on a fraud conviction.
Holmes, of course, was the cover girl entrepreneur whose creation — a desktop machine that from a single drop of human blood could detect dozens of diseases and conditions — has been dismissed as a giant con job.
Why would anyone so embroiled in legal issues want their lives placed under a cinematic microscope? Holmes claims that she has nothing to hide and wants to counter the lies she says have been spread about her and her work…although clearly this could backfire.
And so here we are, more or less residing with Holmes, her fiancé Billy Evans and their two small children in a rented beach house near San Diego.
Director Oppenheimer stays behind the camera (cameras, actually,…there seem to have several running at all times). His colleague Fielder — a sometimes comedy actor who in the past has specialized in cheekily subversive interviews — is front and center, sleeping in the guest room, hovering over family gatherings, asking questions, making comments.
On occasion Fielder has a sort of Woody Allen moment when it’s obvious that he’s not entirely comfortable with his fly-on-the-wall vantage point. He’s particularly nervous standing by as Holmes’ partner takes a shower (the full frontal nudity earned the doc an R rating). You’ve got to ask: Did Holmes’ mean for her promise that “You can see everything” to include her fiance’s penis? Did Evans ask (or even demand) to be filmed naked? Hmmm…
At first, anyway, the family dynamic seems pretty normal. The kids are obviously loved and well cared for. Holmes and Evans cook and clean and play with their offspring on the beach.
Fielder’s interviews with Holmes are both revelatory and frustrating. After being confronted with her unblinking baby blues and seeming lack of guile, one understands how big brains like Henry Kissinger could have been schmoozed into supporting her Theranos project. She’s a True Believer.
Holmes maintains her innocence, stating flatly that the Theranos technology is valid and that if there was fraud being perpetrated it was the fault of her former boyfriend and business partner, Ramesh Balwani (who plays no part in this film).
For a woman facing prison she’s surprisingly upbeat. Oh, there are a few tearful moments, but more often than not her face exhibits a smile of hopeful anticipation. She seems preternaturally calm. In fact, her emotional range appears stunted.
Fielder shows her a video of the old Abbott & Costello routine “Who’s on First” and while recognizing that it’s funny (you can hear an audience roaring on the clip) Holmes cannot say why. She doesn’t understand that “Who” is the name of the player on first base.
Is she on the spectrum? And if so, does that mean that she’s vulnerable to emotional manipulation despite her apparent high IQ?
Fielder also devotes much time to Evans, a handsome and vaguely imperious fellow who says the couple fell in love at first sight and are such soulmates that they speak for each other. We’ll find out later that mostly he speaks for her.
Billy Evans, Elizabeth Holmes
At one point Fielder asks Holmes to watch actress Amanda Seyfried (who won both an Emmy and a Golden Globe) portraying her in the 2022 miniseries “The Dropout.” It’s too much for Holmes, who folds into a fetal retreat.
This first act ends with Holmes entering a prison in Texas. But “You Can See Everything” is just starting to get interesting.
Clearly the filmmakers had hit an impasse. Once behind bars their access to Holmes was limited. Fielder could visit her in prison but filming or taping her was prohibited.
They continued to follow Evans, who is collecting technology and money to launch a new 2.0 version of Theranos. They talk to his investors and collaborators, all of whom see the original Theranos as a promising but mishandled blip in the march of progress. (What the hell…I hope they’re onto something. If it works it will revolutionize diagnostic medicine.)
And they reveal that Evans — seemingly without Holmes knowing about it — strong-armed the movie studio A24 into giving him a percentage of the documentary’s profits…a virtually unheard of concession. (A final postscript informs us that eventually Evans dropped his demand for money.)
But how to deal with the absent Elizabeth Holmes?
Here Oppenheimer and Fielder pull an insanely clever rabbit our of their hat. The core of their approach is to re-enact Fielder’s jailhouse meetings with Holmes using elaborate sets and professional actors. I’d love to spill the beans on just who is portraying Holmes, but that would ruin one of the film’s great surprises.
Let’s just say that the moments that ensue take the idea of “meta” and multiply it about a hundredfold. We’re talking conceits within conceits within conceits. It’s dizzying but delightful.
And perplexing. Because the final word on Elizabeth Holmes, Billy Evans and Theranos is yet to be written. Everyone will come to their own conclusions…though in my case I find closure hard to come by.
Ultimately “You Can See Everything” is about nothing less than the elusive nature of “truth” and the unknowable complexity of the human psyche. All while being pretty damn entertaining.
Like most folk, I know the late Martin Mull as a comic force from television (“Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” “Fernwood Tonight,” “Roseanne” and as a long-time guest host on “The Tonight Show”), films (“Mr. Mom,” “Clue”), recordings (six albums mixing comedy and music — “A Girl Named Johnny Cash”) and live performances (caught his act years ago at the Uptown Theatre. It was magical.)
And now I find, thanks to “Who is Martin Mull?”, that he didn’t give a hoot for any of that. Performing was a way of underwriting his art career.
This doc began as a project by Mull’s good friend and fellow comic, Bob Saget. The two sat down for a series of filmed conversations interrupted by Saget’s death in 2022.
After Mull’s death in 2024 filmmaker Neil Berkeley (who’s done docs on comics Maria Bamford and Gilbert Gottfried) picked up that footage, augmenting it with talking-head interviews with Mull’s friends and admirers (Steve Martin, Patton Oswalt, David Alan Grier, Eric Idle and Laurie Metcalf…just for starters) and a slew of movie, TV and performance clips,
The results are revelatory and just plain wonderful.
“I guess documentaries are done about people who’ve done something extremely well,” Mull apologizes to the camera. “But in my case, I think it’s like that I did a number of different things… and got at least passing grades in all of them. I don’t have a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art. I don’t have an Oscar. I don’t have a Grammy… that’s a problem in a documentary.”
Mull’s stage persona — that of a vaguely smarmy egotist — was a part of his personality, certainly. But it was also a cover.
He grew up virtually ignored by his father (he was jealous because the Old Man would beat up his brother, but not Marty) and feeling out of whack with his red-white-and-blue suburban environment.
Of his years at the Rhode Island School of Design (“It made me what I am…or destroyed what I was”) convinced him that he should devote his life to art. Except that art didn’t pay.
Which is how Mull drifted into the folk scene, mixing music with standup elements (or rather sit-down elements…he performed in an overstuffed chair he lugged from show to show), then got into television and all those other outlets.
He was doing well, but was miserable, describing himself as a functioning alcoholic. Eventually he turned his life around with an assist from longtime friend and bandmate Wendy Haas, who would become his wife.
Anyway, performing allowed him to spend his spare time painting. And Holy Shit, was he good!
“Tea Party” by Martin Mull (2010)
The suburban world in which he felt so out of place became the subject of countless surreal canvases mixing photo-realism against pop art backgrounds that sometimes looked like paint-by-numbers landscapes. He combined oil with collages, often incorporating imagery from old children’s books, magazines and family snapshots.
It’s an astounding body of work which will be celebrated next summer at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in the show “Martin Mull: The Joys of Indoor/Outdoor Living.”
Kerry Washington, Ben Affleck
“ANIMALS” My rating: C(Netflix)
106 minutes | MPAA rating: R
It features Gillian Anderson in a gratifyingly bizarre performance, but other than that “Animals” is a sad ripoff.
Directed by Ben Affleck and written by Affleck, Connor O. McIntyre and Billy Ray, “Animals” is a shameless steal from Kurosawa’s acclaimed 1963 kidnap drama “High and Low,” which was remade last year by Spike Lee with the title “Highest 2 Lowest.” Lee had the decency to credit his movie as “based on” the Kurosawa classic; Affleck and his co-conspirators apparently lack that quality.
Affleck stars as attorney Mark Kimball, currently in the final stages of his campaign for mayor of Los Angeles.
Kimball is so obsessed with winning that he spends most of his time with his scheming campaign manager, Sam (Steven Yuen), more or less ignoring his wife Abigail (Kerry Washington), who is having a secret affair with another man, and their son Denny (Christopher Woodley). There’s also the uncomfortable fact that without telling his family Kimball has mortgaged everything they own to finance his run.
But that’s all background. The yarn kicks into gear when Denny fails to return home from trick-or-treating and they get a mysterious call from a man who claims to have taken the boy. He wants millions for the kid’s return.
As was the case with the Kurosawa film, the bad guy has snatched the wrong child. Instead of Denny he’s taken the son of the Kimballs’ housekeeper (Adriana Paz) and gardener (Luis Geraro Mendez). After way too much soul searching the couple decide they must step up and pay the ransom.
Gillian Anderson
Except…they no longer have any money. Enter Anderson as Dayle Burton, some sort of high society fixer who cruises around in a stretch limo (her driver is also an assassin), dresses all in white and shows the emotional range of an ice cube.
As written the role is ridiculous — Dayle just happens to have several million in cash in her car trunk and apparently knows more about kidnapping schemes than any cop. Also she’s demanding major interest on her “loan” to the Kimballs.
Thing is, Anderson’s perf is so fascinating that she lifts the film out of it cliched quagmire. Believable? Not for a minute. But with an empty enterprise like this one you take what comfort you can.
The Kimballs come off as wealthy, self-obsessed assholes. Whether this was Affleck and Crew’s intention I don’t know. But “Animals” gives us few characters to root for.
“THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE” My rating: C(Netflix)
202 minutes | MPAA rating: R
It’s hard to sympathize with Nazis — but that was before Guy Ritchie’s “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.”
In this stiff-upper-lip variation on “The Dirty Dozen” a crew of British military prisoners — members of the armed services who have been condemned for their bloodthirsty ways — are sent out to sabotage a ship carrying vital supplies for Hitler’s U-Boat fleet.
Apparently the film has some basis in fact. We’re told newly declassified documents have revealed that during WWII Winston Churchill authorized a clandestine group of killers. The unit’s methodology was so appallingly brutal that their activities were kept a secret from the British public. In fact, only a few highly-placed military men knew of it.
Ritchie’s retelling (the script is by Paul Tammy, Eric Johnson and Arash Amel) offers seemingly endless action scenes seasoned with big dose of black humor and a nihilist sensibility.
Not to mention the torn corpses of countless Germans unlucky enough to encounter our heroes, who positively relish the mayhem.
Leading the band of merry murderers is Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill with luxurious beard) and a towering Swede (Alan Ritchson) who enjoys thinking up the most painful and personal ways to dispatch Germans. Alex Pettyfer, Hero Fiennes Tiffin and Henry Golding round out the crew. Taken as a whole, they look like carousing male models.
Much of the film unfolds on the high seas as our guys pose as fishermen in an effort to sneak up on their target.
Meanwhile they have help from a couple of spies (Eliza Gonzalez and Babe Olusanmokun) who have infliltrated a German-occupied seaport on the West African coast. There they get things ready for our guys and deal with a sadistic (is there any other kind in the movies?) German officer (Til Schweiger).
We also have Rory Kinnear as Churchill (a usually reliable actor who here didn’t convince me for a minute), Freddie Fox as Ian Fleming (yes, the creator of James Bond) and Cary Elwes as Brigadier Gubbins, the model for the Bond series’ “M.”
Viewers looking for a big fix of bloody action will get that and more. Violence usually doesn’t bother me, but the murderous glee on display here really rubbed me the wrong way.
Bob Odenkirk
“NORMAL” My rating: C+(HBO Max)
91 minutes | MPAA rating: R
The transformation of funny guy Bob Odenkirk into a full-fledged action star (“Nobody,” “Nobody 2”) continues with “Normal,” the latest from Brit auteur Ben Wheatley (“Kill List,” “A Field In England”).
The setting is Normal, a Midwestern farm burg in the dead of winter. Odenkirk plays Ulysses Richardson, a law enforcement floater who has been temporarily assigned to take over the sheriff’s department after the mysterious death of the old sheriff.
Ulysses is an underachiever waiting to reach retirement age. Turns out he picked the wrong town in which to lay low.
The script by Derek Kolstad and Odenkirk kicks into gear with an attempted robbery of the local bank. That act triggers an eruption of murder, culminating with the town being invaded by an army of Japanese Yakuza.
In a sort of perverse variation on “High Noon” Ulysses finds he cannot rely on this fellow citizens for help…not because they’re cowards but because they’re all working for the bad guys.
“Normal” features a couple of sneaky guest appearances (Henry Winkler, Lena Headey) and a whole lot of spectacularly staged violence. The tone is tongue-in-cheek, plenty of action but not the kind to leave a bad taste in your mouth.
“STAR WARS: THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU” My rating: C(Disney+)
132 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
We might as well accept that “Andor” was so freaking good that no other “Star Wars” spinoff comes even close to matching it.
Certainly not “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” a feature-length addition to the “Mandalorian” saga that never rises above the level of kiddie matinee filler.
Oh, it’s a technical marvel, sure. Great sets and costuming, killer S/F and some pretty good fight scenes.
But the script (from director Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor) isn’t even up to the standards of the streaming series.
Maybe it’s the length…each half-hour “Mandalorian” episode successfully stood alone while contributing to an expanded narrative. (They also has nifty references to past cinematic landmarks.) But at two hours plus the film’s near-complete lack of forward momentum becomes exhausting.
The plot, to the extant the movie has one, finds Mando (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) in the hire of the New Republic. They’re bounty hunters assigned with rounding up former bigwigs of the defeated Galactic Empire who are still making trouble in various corners of the universe.
A huge chunk of the film is devoted to their attempt to rescue Rotta Hutt (voiced by Jeremy Allen White), nephew of the late Jabba and now a gladiatorial slave on a distant planet. Rotta, of course, is one of those big slug creatures whose fighting style is part sumo wrestler and part steamroller.
There are also a crew of sawed-off space mechanics who seem derived from both the Ewoks and the cartoon Minions.
Among the few recognizable human faces is that of Sigourney Weaver, playing the Republic colonel in charge of the sweep effort…she looks really bored. Various voices are supplied by Martin Scorsese, Shirley Henderson, Stephen McKinley Henderson and others.
The yarn finds little Grogu growing into his role. He doesn’t speak, and he still has a childlike curiosity and ravenous appetite that are forever getting him into trouble, but he’s learning to use his Jedi powers. One comes to this effort hoping for more comic interplay between Mando and his little green sidekick, but it’s all pretty weak tea.
Pascal has only one scene without his helmet. Mostly he provides Mando’s voice. Two other performers, Lateef Crowder and Brendan Wayne, are credited respectively as Mandalorian Stunt Performer and Mandalorian Suit Performer.
Which I guess means that Pascal recorded his dialogue but was rarely on the set.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
“BACKROOMS” My rating: B-(Rent on Prime)
126 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Kane Parsons’ “Backrooms” defies explanation. So if you like your mysteries wrapped up with a nice tidy bow, you’re in for a long night.
Still, few films can match “Backrooms” for establishing and maintaining a waking dream from which there is no escape.
The operator of a shabby discount mall furniture store (Chiwetel Ejiofor) discovers in the basement a portal into a series of backrooms…a maze of what looks like an abandoned strip mall office spaces and hallways that goes on endlessly. Everything is painted in a sickly pastel yellow and lit by fluorescent ceiling fixtures.
It’s almost as hellish as a real strip mall office.
The deeper he ventures into this alternative universe, the more bizarre the architectural elements. Doors on ceilings, slanted floors, furniture that appears to have melded with the surrounding surfaces. In the distance we can hear voices muttering in different languages.
(Just a moment here to applaud the work of production designer Danny Vermette, who has created a sprawling backrooms world so big that it can be traversed by camera in a seemingly endless single take.)
The screenplay by Parsons and Will Soodik establishes early on that our protagonist, Clark, is a troubled soul. In sessions with his psychiatrist (the great Renate Reinsve, late of the Oscar-nominated “Sentimental Value”) Clark talks about his failed marriage, his struggling business and his long-dashed dream of becoming an architect.
Weirdly, his experiences in the backrooms appear to reflect— in hugely distorted form — those failures.
Eventually Clark pulls a couple of his twentysomething employees (Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell) into an exploration of the backrooms, an experiment that proves deadly. And late in the film the shrink finds herself trapped in her patient’s bizarre environment.
What does it all mean? Well, that’s the question.
A few years back Parsons produced a “Backrooms” internet series, and folks who are familiar with that says it goes a long way toward explaining what’s happening in the film. But I can only go on what we’re given…including occasional appearances by Mark Duplass as Phil, who watches all this unfold on a closed-circuit TV network. Apparently the backrooms are being studied by some shadowy corporation.
“Backrooms” never quiet satisfies narratively, but environmentally speaking it is a world unto itself. Glad I visited. Would hate to live there.
Female rage is front and center in the aptly named “Furious,” a female revenge tale that is both cathartic and deeply disturbing.
This eight-part Hulu offering owes a lot to 1987’s “Black Widow,” the Debra Winger/Theresa Russell thriller about a female serial killer who marries wealthy men and then sneakily murders them for their fortunes.
This time around the serial killer is the streetwise Catherine (Lola Petticrew), who as a teen was sex trafficked by rich and powerful men (think Epstein) and now employs an arsenal of characters and disguises to seduce and murder the guys who done her wrong.
On her tail is Alice Black (Emmy Rossum), a one-time NYPD detective now starting her career with the FBI. Alice serves on a joint task force with Manhattan cop Danny (Scoot McNairy) and FBI agent Nora (Quincy Tyler Bernadine), who has spent her career down in the basement investigating sex crimes.
The two women are damaged goods. Alice was frequently physically abused by her former policeman boyfriend (Jake Lacy), while Nora is a raging alcoholic, thanks in part to a job that has her watching and cataloging kiddie porn day after day.
Both women carry a tankful of contempt for the men they work with…well. all men, actually. Danny is the sole exception, being a soulful guy who has long adored Alice from afar.
The plot of “Furious” centers on the authorities’ efforts to identify and capture the killer. But what really gives the show depth are the deep, soul-shredding performances of the three female leads.
Catherine has been driven borderline crazy by what she endured as a young woman. But neither Alice or Nora is your usual cop-show heroine. Both are deeply troubled and do things that repel us even as we recognize how they got to this state.
Bernadine’s Nora is particularly effective, displaying a biting sense of humor and a “screw you” attitude toward her patronizing bosses. Despite the overall grimness of the show you’ll find yourself laughing at her savage put-downs.
Lola Petticrew
Even the merciless Catherine is fully rounded. She survives as a caregiver for a wheelchair-bound young man (comic Steve Way, whose muscular dystrophy forces him to emote through an oxygen mask). On some level theirs is a love story.
Even the smaller roles are exquisitely cast and performed: Campbell Scott and Rob Delaney as two of Catherine’s targets; PeterMcRobbie as a dying industrialist addicted to watching old sex videos of himself and his victims, and Hope Davis as his daughter and partner in crime.
The show’s six writers and four directors display a deft touch in juggling moods, and as a study in the lingering fallout of abuse “Furious” s in a class of its own.
“DANCE LIFE” (Prime Video)
Back in the bad old days dancers ran the risk of being called sissies. If you ever thought that depiction accurate, the Aussie documentary series “Dance Life” will pretty much twist your head around.
Luke Cornish’s five-part series follows first-year dance students at Australia’s Brent Academy, an arts school not unlike that depicted in the “Fame” movie and TV series.
What sticks with you from the show — even more than the spectacularly performed and filmed dance segments — is the students’ devotion to their art through pain, injury and emotional turmoil.
The primary teacher is choreographer and dancer Cassie Bartho, a familiar presence on Down Under dance stages, who combines tough love and a surprising vulnerability in guiding her students through a killer curriculum.
The kids’ stories are varied and frequently moving. One girl dances through a congenital spinal injury. Broken toes and bloody feet are everyday occurrences.
Every viewer will develop his or her own favorites. I found myself being particularly drawn to Emily Smith, whose physique is just about the opposite of your typical reed-thin ballerina. While everyone else is in shorts and halter tops, Emily hides her figure in bulky sweatshirts…clearly she has a bad case of body image. What’s surprising then, are her eruptions of energy in hiphop and breaking routines — she’s like a tsunami of determined movement.
And then there’s Archer Rose, a trans dancer whose willowy figure and long blonde hair make him an icon of sexual ambiguity.
The series follows the kids through training, rehearsals and big public performances. By the time it’s all over you don’t just want to watch them…you want to be them.
That’s the inescapable lesson of Ridley Scott’s “The Dog Stars,” an overcooked adaptation of Peter Heller’s end-of-the-world novel.
On the printed page “Dog Stars” is apocalypse on an intimate scale, fueled not by big action moments but by a creeping sense of loss. But Mark L. Smith’s screenplay pumps things up in an effort to please the lowest common denominator and the results have more in common with your average zombie flick than, say, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
Ten years after a pandemic has wiped out most of humanity, Hig (Jacob Elori) and Bangley (Josh Brolin) eke out a living on an abandoned airstrip in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
Hig is a pilot who has managed to keep one Cessna running; he periodically flies into what’s left of Denver to collect food and other necessities. He seems to be a decent guy. Hig loves his dog and visits a Mennonite community in a nearby valley to deliver food and medicine.
Bangley, on the other hand, is a long-time survivalist (no doubt he’s ex-military) who thrives on isolation. Early on he uses his long-range rifle to kill a couple of teens who have wandered into his domain. His approach is to shoot first and question the corpses later.
The plot centers on Hig’s determination to reach Grand Junction after hearing a broadcast from that town’s airport. Forced down by engine trouble, he stumbles upon a father and daughter (Guy Pearce, Margaret Qualley) who have been living peacefully deep in the mountains. The old man is suspicious of this interloper but the woman sees in Hig a last chance for a more-or-less normal existence.
The film’s first half is actually pretty good. Then things go downhill fast.
Screenwriter Smith suddenly changes gears. All that melancholy moodiness is tossed out on its ear in favor of two huge action sequences. In one Hig and his newfound friends must outrace a mounted band called the Scavengers to his newly-repaired airplane. Meanwhile Bangley undergoes a siege by a small army of tattooed berserkers.
Jacob Elori, Margaret Qualley
Things get even more ridiculous when Hig and his new comrades set down in Grand Junction to find the place a fiefdom presided over by the bonkers Darlene (Allison Janney in scenery-chewing overdrive), who wears a spotless airline hostess outfit from the 1970s (love the pillbox hat) and has developed an unconventional diet for her doped-up minions. (Use your imagination.)
At one point we’re supposed to believe that three hand grenades have the destructive power of a small thermonuclear device.
“The Dog Stars” at least looks good, thanks to Erik Messerschmidt’s cinematography — though Italy’s Dolomite Mountains don’t really look much like the American Rockies.
Acting honors go to Brolin for his tough-minded, utterly unsentimental Bangley, whose brusque approach to every action provides the film’s only brief flashes of humor.
Curry Baker’s “Obsession” (he wrote, directed and edited) has been getting lots of love, and not just from horror geeks.
It deserves it.
The setup is as old as the Midas myth…a wish comes true but brings with it unexpected consequences. The delivery, though, is a slow-burn dose of creepiness featuring a couple of killer performances.
Bear (Michael Johnston, who looks like he could be Daniel Radcliffe’s little bro) has long been infatuated with his co-worker Nikki (India Navarette) but fears scaring her off if he reveals his feelings. Bear’s pretty unsure of himself…he might still be a virgin.
But one day at a funky gift shop he picks up a novelty item called the One Wish Willow. According to the label on the box if you take out the stick inside, snap it in two, and make a wish…well, that wish will come true.
So he wishes that Nikki would love him more than anyone else in the world.
Oh-oh.
Baker’s screenplay is a model of careful observation and unexpected eruptions.
Nikki does indeed announce her love for Bear, and they are almost immediately in a passionate romance. She moves into his house. She caters to his every whim.
So far, so good.
But in short order her love has turned oppressive. She’s a whimpering mess when not in his presence. She even tries to seal his front door with masking tape to keep him at home. On her day off she stands unmoving in his living room, a sickly smile of hopeful anticipation frozen on her face and a puddle of urine at her feet, until he comes back from work.
She gets jealous — murderously so.
“Obsession” is creepy as hell. It’s also weirdly funny. A desperate Bear calls up the manufacturer of the One Wish Willow only to have the voice on other end (director Baker in a bored/stoned fugue) tell him that he only way to undo his wish is to die. And Darin Toonder is grimly funny as the gift shop clerk who’s had it up to here with customers bitching about the One Wish Willow.
One generally does not turn to horror for great performances, but Navarette approaches Oscar-level intensity as Nikki, turning on a dime from caring cajoling to screaming threat.
Be careful what you wish for.
Cooper Hoffmann, David Jonsson
“THE LONG WALK” My rating: B(Hulu)
108 minutes | MPAA rating: R
One might easily dismiss “The Long Walk” as a “Hunger Games”/“Battle Royale” clone designed as fodder for the YA market. Especially since it was directed by “Hunger Games” veteran Francis Lawrence.
So it comes as a surprise to discover a personality-and-dialogue-driven melodrama that carries an unexpected emotional heft.
Cooper Hoffmann (yes, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s kid…you may recognize him from “Licorice Pizza”) stars as Raymond, who as the film begins is preparing to participate in The Long Walk.
We learn (in bits and pieces sprinkled throughout the film) that 20 years ago the USA was engaged in a civil war and ever since has suffered through Depression-era hard times.
But each year the citizenry is rallied by a competition in which 50 young volunteers — one young man from each state — set off on a walk. Special wristwatches measure their speed…if they fall below three miles per hour they run the risk of being shot by the mute and stony-faced soldiers who accompany this parade.
There is no stopping, no sleeping, no leaving the pavement of the rural highway they are traversing. Eat, drink and defecate while maintaining a brisk pace. Eventually — after days of nonstop movement through sun and rain— one lone survivor will be crowned the winner.
J.T. Mollner’s screenplay (based on a Stephen King novel) is remarkable in that the characters are developed almost exclusively through dialogue. This is a walk-and-talk film…literally. The performances are an intriguing blend of stream-of-consciousness chatter and segments in which the dialogue seems as carefully crafted as that of a stage play or classic ‘50s film.
Raymond is almost immediately befriended by Peter (David Jonsson), a black kid whose garrulous personality makes the unending drudgery of walking a bit less oppressive. Indeed, the contestants are a regular smorgasbord of American youth — Asian, white, black, Native American. Intellectually they range from standard-issue rednecks to an aspiring author who hopes to turn his experience into a book.
What’s kinda unsettling is the way in which we the audience find ourselves participants in this exercise, sharing the ever-creeping exhaustion and growing desperation of the young men. There’s a kind of purity in the film’s narrow focus, a sort of cinematic minimalism that feels weirdly revelatory.The effect is not unlike that of “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”
Drawbacks? Well, Mark Hamill’s performance as The Major — the officer in charge of the operation —might seem a caricature, a parody of the military martinet oozing motivational gung-ho. But the Major is also the key to understanding what the US has become. Clearly the civil war was not won by the humanists.
Not a happy film, but one that sticks with you long after the lights go out.
Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci
“THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2” My rating: B-(Hulu)
119 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
Do we really need “The Devil Wears Prada 2”? Especially those of us — meaning me — who lack the fashionista gene?
So let’s admit that as time killers go, this sequel (directed by David Frankel, who helmed the original) is kinda charming.
Not for the too-familiar plotting or the clothes, but for the people.
I’m talking here mostly about Meryl Streep reprising her role as chilly, arrogant magazine editor Miranda Priestly and Stanley Tucci as her loyal doormat Nigel. (Is he gay? Straight? Sexless?)
In a weird way neither character is complete without the other. It’s a real oddball pairing, but I’d forgotten how terrific these two were together.
Of course Anne Hathaway is back as Andy. Twenty years ago she was Miranda’s much-abused gofer girl; now she returns as a prize-winning journalist left jobless by media upheaval and hired to give Runway magazine a socially conscious vibe to go with the fashion and fluff.
Andy considered herself a serious journalist, something Miranda and Co. have little use or tolerance for. Humorous situations develop. Not to mention a hostile takeover of the mag.
Returning also is Emily Blunt as Emily, one-time Miranda acolyte now running a high-end boutique. She’s engaged to a dweeby tech billionaire (Justin Theroux, cast against type and having the time of his life) but is at heart still a scheming witch. She also gets the best line in Lauren Weisberger and Aline Brosh McKenna’s screenplay:
“May the bridges I burn light the way.”
Has a character ever been so succinctly limned in just eight words?
Toss into the brew Kenneth Branagh and Lucy Liu and you’ve got a ridiculously attractive murderer’s row.
“Prada 2” isn’t entirely frivolous. The film strives for relevance by protesting the demise of American journalism and the rise of the misinformed multitudes…well, it’s not so much a protest as a grumpy observation stirred in with the fun and fashion.
Hey, audiences for this film didn’t come for a civics lesson.
Four women come to grips with their futures (and mortality) in Alice Winocour’s “Couture,” set in the Paris during Fashion Week.
The film is ambitious, wearing its feminism on its sleeve, but unfocused, with some of the characters developing genuinely involving situations and others merely treading water.
American filmmaker Maxine Walker (Anglina Jolie), who usually specializes in horror, has signed on to direct a short film to open the runway show of a major label. It’s a high-tension job in the best of circumstances, but Maxine has just discovered a health crisis that threatens to upend her life.
Ada (Anyier Anei) îs a naive 18-year-old refugee from the war in Sudan. Recruited by video, she soon finds herself both delighted and intimidated by the big city, especially the catty attitudes of the other models with whom she shares an apartment. She has a short learning curve but has to nail it…otherwise it’s back to a questionable fate in Africa.
Angele (Ella Rumpf) is a makeup artist kept busy zipping from one show top the next. Her real love, though, is writing. Early on an agent shoots down her manuscript and she now must come up with a new idea.
Finally there’s Garance Marillier as Christine, a young seamstress facing a deadline to finish work on the dress that will open her fashion house’s big show.
Of these four plot threads only Maxine’s is fully worked out. Faced with the need for an immediate surgery, she goes through all the stages of grief in just a couple of days. . The fact that Jolie is herself a breast cancer survivor gives extra oomph to her heart-wringing performance.
There are a couple of male roles…Vincent Lindon is quietly reassuring as Maxine’s new MD, and Louis Garrel is both sexy and sincere as a co-worker with who she has one last fling before surgery.
The highlight of the film — aside from Jolie’s perf — is it’s depiction of a runway show staged in a forest an nearly ruined by a thunderstorm.
Sam Rockwell (center)
“GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE” My rating: B (Hulu)
124 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Sam Rockwell gets the best opening scene of any movie in ages with “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die,” a mind-bender that’s part apocalyptic sci-fi, part fiendish social satire, and part action epic.
It’s late at night in a Los Angeles diner. There’s a flash of light outside the window and in walks the Man from the Future” (Rockwell), a bearded ragamuffin wrapped in a transparent raincoat and covered with wires, blinking lights and, it turns out, several bombs.
The Man greets the diners, calling some of them by name, even predicting what they’ll do or say next. He is, he says, from the future. This is the 117th time he’s appeared at the diner to recruit a half-dozen eaters to go on a mission to destroy the AI that is poised to ruin the world.
So far the Man and those he’s chosen to accompany him (they’re different on every iteration of the mission) have failed miserably…killed and apparently resurrected as time resets. But the sardonic, wise-cracking Man has to keep at it, learning from each mistake and getting ever closer to destroying the source of the electronic hell that is his future.
On this night he’ll find just the right combination of subjects to pull it all off. And through a series of clever flashbacks we’ll learn how these folk became qualified for the gig.
Mark and Janet (Michael Pena, Zazie Beetz) are high school teachers terrified that their cellphone-addicted students are just a text away from becoming a sort of zombie mob.
Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson) is a bad-tempered goth girl who works as a fairy princess for little girls’ birthday parties. She’s allergic to most kinds of electronic gizmos…being too near a cell phone gives her a nosebleed.
Susan (Juno Temple) lost her teenage son to a school shooter. Recently she paid to have him cloned…though this new version of him is more robotic than human.
Together they will battle mysterious assassins, armies of hypnotized teenagers — even a giant creature that is part horse and part cat. But will they be able to stop the inexorable creep of the electronic “other”?
“Good Luck…” — written by Matthew Robinson and directed by Gore Verbinski — is by turns funny and a bit frightening. Granted, it cannot keep up the high level of comedy/wonder that Rockwell establishes in the opening moments, but even in the slow moments it’s fun to watch.
And when it’s all over it leaves us satisfied, yet cautious. We’re led to believe that our heroes have stymied AI…but perhaps even their presumed victory has been staged as part of vast virtual reality experiment. Who knows?
“Spider-Noir” is such a promising variation on the usual superhero tropes that I probably stuck with it longer than it merits.
Oren Uziel’s 8-part miniseries gives us Nicolas Cage as Ben Reilly, a down-on-his-luck private eye in Depression-era NYC who is also a web-slinging crime fighter.
Or was. Ben burned out and hasn’t done the Spidey-thing for several years. Maybe it has to do with the fact that his costume consists of a Sam Spade-ish trench coat and a Spy-vs-Spy fedora…not exactly the ideal duds for aerial acrobatics.
Anyway, Ben is a crotchety font of sardonic bad vibes, full of amusing too-weary-to-be-a-tough-guy banter. I loved getting to know him.
But the sad truth is that “Spider-Noir” ran out of compelling ideas after the first two or three episodes. I lost interest.
The plot? Well, turns out the Big Apple is suddenly inundated with crooks flashing all sort of superpowers. Their origin story — and Ben’s — leads back to German experiments on Allied POWs during the Great War.
Ben must return to his Spider persona to battle this army of mutants, which is led by crime boss Silvermane (Brendan Gleeson, a good actor stuck here with comic book villainy). There’s a love interest in the form of nightclub singer Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li), but that fizzles in the absence of any erotic chemistry between Cage and Li.
There are a couple of nice supporting perfs by Jack Huston as a mutant undergoing a crisis of conscience, and from Karen Rodriguez as Ben’s long-suffering Girl Friday.
The real heroes here are production designer Warren Alan Young and cinematographers Darran Tiernan and Peter Deming, who give the series a ravishing look that reminds of “Ripley.” Prime Video has done something quite wonderful by allowing viewers to choose between color and black-and-white versions of the show. I much prefer the shadowy, atmospheric B&W, which perfectly captures the atmosphere of film noir classics from Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Anna Maxwell-Harris
“STAR CITY” (Apple+)
For several seasons “For All Mankind” has given us an alternative history of the U.S. space program, beginning with the early Mercury missions and moving on to the moon landings.
But whereas in real life NASA reined in its explorations for nearly nearly 40 years, in this version we race on to establish bases on the moon, on Mars, and on asteroids being mined for rare minerals needed back on Earth.
The series appears to be scrupulously scientific in its approach. What makes it really interesting, though, are the ways we carry our human foibles with us to the stars. Science advances. Human nature…not so much.
One of more disturbing aspects of “For All Mankind” is its notion that the Soviet Union, far from breaking up, became more controlling than ever.
This notion is taken to the limit in “Star City,” a companion piece that follows the space race from the Russian POV.
Star City is the newly-built, top-secret complex where the Soviet space program does its work.
Rhys Ifans stars as the Chief Designer, determined to expand the USSR’s grasp of the cosmos even when he runs afoul of a stifling party apparatus. His main nemesis is a uniformed security official (Anna Maxwell-Harris) whose dedication to the Party is such that she will kill even a famous cosmonaut who runs afoul of the rules. Not even national heroes are safe.
“Star City” is a vast canvas that pits scientific outreach against the controlling interests of a police state. We’re talking about hidden microphones in every apartment, neighbors who inform on neighbors, contraband records of American pop groups that can get you permanently exiled to a Siberian work camp.
Despite this downer premise, the series gives us a whole slew of interesting characters, many of whom we end rooting for despite their country’s soul-sucking repression.
Peter Capaldi
“CRIMINAL RECORD” (Apple+)
Peter Capaldi first hit the radar of cineastes as the goofy/gangly sidekick in Bill Forstythe’s “Local Hero” (1983) and over the last 50 years has racked up numerous film and TV appearances, including a 43-episode stint as Dr. Who.
A few years back his career shifted from charming to chilling…he was a prison inmate with possible supernatural abilities in 2022’s “The Devil’s Hour,” and puts his gray hair and cadaverous features to good use in “Criminal Record,” playing a Brit police detective who may be as evil and conniving as the killers he goes after. (Nowadays he reminds me of John Carradine’s Dracula…a role he really ought to tackle.)
Cush Jumbo (“The Good Wife,” “The Good Fight”) stars as June Lenker, a cop who stumbles across evidence suggesting that a man doing life in prison for murder is in fact innocent. The cop who put together the case is Daniel Hegarty (Capaldi), an old wolf on the force (meaning possibly racist and misogynist) who isn’t happy with this young woman questioning his arrest record.
Circumstances force June and Hegarty to work together…and she can never be sure that he isn’t planting little mines to explode in her lap.
Paul Rutman’s series covers two seasons (in the second our heroes take on a right-wing conspirators who plan to use stolen military detonators to blow up London landmarks), but the scripts also find time to delve into the characters’ personal issues. Hegarty has a twentysometing daughter with a heroin habit, while June finds her devotion to the job taking a toll with her live-in boyfriend and teenage son from a failed marriage.
Jumbo makes for an intriguing protagonist (she has just enough foibles to keep her from being a goody-goody) and Capaldi keeps us wondering about where his loyalties lie.
