Movie Nation

His politics make “Peterloo” a natural subject for Mike Leigh. British cinema’s champion of the working classes has celebrated their pluck and plight in films from “High Hopes” and “Life is Sweet” to “Vera Drake” and “Career Girls.”

“Peterloo,” about an infamous British massacre of the working poor by the same redcoats who’d just defeated Napoleon, a slaughter carried out at the behest of factory owners, callous upperclass judges, a judgemental preacher and others of the Manchester ruling classes, fits right into Leigh’s worldview.

And his “Mr. Turner” and “Topsy Turvy” show a love of period detail that blends in with his lifelong obsession with almost unfathomable British accents through the ages.

But the sweep of this great tragedy and epic injustice all but overwhelms a director known for more intimate stories. He does the audience no favors, not identifying characters, rarely casting known-names in key roles and not using cinematic crutches like inter-titles to take us through the events leading up to that fateful day in August of 1819.

As the British have been slow to learn this horrid moment of their own history as well, he’s not leaning on “a story we/they all know” and needed to give us a hand. That can make the two and a half hours of “Peterloo” punishing, a school assignment that will require outside reading to wholly grasp.

That so much of the dialogue is in a spoken “English” so dense and archaic that even the English may wish was subtitled doesn’t help, either.

But a bravura opening sets the scene and a sweeping, heart-breaking finale punches its point home. If we don’t remember this, we should, and just a sketched impression of the principals is all that’s necessary to make its case.

A shellshocked young bugler (David Moorst) staggers to his feet on the field at Waterloo, and has to make his own way home to England, to Manchester. Home is welcoming, but crowded. The newly-industrialized city has the smoke of factories, the deafening roar of cotton looms, and a populace struggling to earn enough to feed, clothe and shelter itself.

There was no “peace dividend” after the Napoleonic Wars, just debts and a new set of “corn laws,” tariffs designed to keep British grain producers (merchants) fat and happy.

The poor start to starve. And agitate.

Leigh’s screenplay takes us into pubs and meeting halls, where middle class moderates try to temper the rising fury of young radicals who call for the “mad king” (George III) and his “fat Prince Regent” (Tim McInnerny, hilarious) to be cut off from the public treasury, or have their heads put on pikes.

The franchise is what they all can agree that they want, first and foremost. From radical leader Samuel Bamford (Neil Bell) to the Manchester Female Reform Society, “One man, one vote!” was common cause.

“Taxation without representation is tyranny,” speakers such as Bamford, John Knight (Philip Jackson) and John Thacker Saxton (John-Paul Hurley) bellowed to every crowd, echoing a cry from their American cousins’ revolution just 40 years before.

“Give me liberty, or give me death!” the younger firebrands thundered.

Joseph Johnson (Tom Gill) and his fellow middle class radicals called for all these things, and the repeal of the Corn Tax, from the pages of their Manchester Observer newspaper. Johnson and the others call for Henry Hunt (Rory Kinnear), “The Orator Hunt,” the famed London speaker on behalf of such causes, to come north to address the public.

Watching this with naked contempt, fear and spittle-spewing fury were the magistrates (Martin Savage, Al Weaver, David Bamber, Fine Time Fontayne, Vincent Franklin, Jeff Rawle, Philip Witchurch and David Fielder) of the city, whom we’ve seen hurl abuse and cruelty at the starving, excessive sentences handed down for petty theft and “idleness.” They may have preachers in their ranks, but they have their “rank” to protect, so no wondering “What would Jesus do?” They fear a repeat of the more recent French Revolution, so they petition the Home Secretary (Karl Johnson) for the right to read “The Riot Act,” and for troops. And so troops are sent.

Spies identify the rabble rousers, letters are intercepted and read and the  threat of violence looms, even as The Orator Hunt insists on keeping calm and not having armed citizens there to protect the crowd from the brutish constable (Victor McGuire) and his minions, or from the local horse militia or the Army itself.

The nation’s press is coming, from London, Liverpool and Leeds. Surely nothing will happen with witnesses present.

What Leigh was shooting for here was a modern “Battleship Potemkin,” a filmic polemic about injustice, the haves slaughtering the have-nots, a parable for a world where nothing’s changed. It’s just that Leigh has never been that kind of kinetic, visceral filmmaker.

The actual “Peterloo Massacre” — a term coined by the journalists the soldiers and drunken “yeomanry” (militia) rode down on — is delivered in a string of body blows, blunt strokes and vignettes of murder intercut with the terror of those experiencing it and the smug, sherry-sipping satisfaction of the magistrates, especially Rev. Mallory (David Bamber, a villain’s villain) who brought “the iron fist” down upon them.

PETERLOO featuring Alicia Turner as Sarah and Maxine Peak as Nellie courtesy of Amazon Studios.

Leigh takes so long to get to this point, taking pains to show us lots and lots of background — the famed General Byng (Alastair McKenzie), leader of the troops, preferring to be at the horse track instead of on duty, restraining his troops– that some of the effect of this wrenching finale is muted.

But the slow buildup to the climax allows the viewer to ponder how little has changed in 200 years, how many times “The People” have come close to having a “real” revolution here, there and everywhere else. And how often the military, built on working class backs and populated with working class recruits, is brought in to carry out the will of those with money.

In America, we had the Textile strikes of 1934 and The Battle of Blair Mountain in America’s “Coal Wars,” when America’s armed forces used planes to bomb and strafe miners battling to organize and strike for better working conditions. West Virginia to Colorado, Manchester to Glasgow, the have-nots always seem to fall just short of Bastille Day/St. Petersburg in the English-speaking world.

In “Peterloo,” Leigh reminds us how wars, and anti-labor massacres, are forgotten in the “history is written by the winners” rules of the game. And even if the film gets away from him, here and there, it’s good to have him remind us the game isn’t actually over. Yet.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for a sequence of violence and chaos

Cast:  Rory Kinnear, Tom Gill, Rachel Finnegan, David Moorst, Maxine Peake, John-Paul Hurley, Karl Johnson, Neil Bell, Philip Jackson and Tim McInnerny

Credits: Written and directed by Mike Leigh.  An Amazon release.

Running time: 2:34

It’s worth remembering that there’s no hard and fast rule that says science fiction cinema has to be entertaining. Thought provoking and challenging are intellectually defensible paths to pursue.

That’s the aim of “High Life,” a science fiction exploration of the fundamental inhumanity of humans, who might be at our best when we’re dealing with our own offspring.

It’s not entertaining. It’s discomforting at times, and at others obtuse and downright icky. But it does leave you with a little to chew on, if somewhat less that its creator presumes.

It was co-written and directed by Claire Denis, that queen of acquired taste among her generation of French filmmakers. She peaked for me with “Chocolat,” NOT the one you’re thinking about, and with another film in Africa, “White Material.”

She’s provocative and thought provoking, although “High Life” aims more for the former and flails away at the latter.

Robert Pattinson stars as Monte. When we meet him, he’s in a low-bid contractor’s idea of a space suit effecting repairs on a block-shaped, no frills spaceship. And he’s cooing at a baby in a DIY crib that he’s left inside but is monitoring via com-link.

It’s adorable, and little Scarlett Lindsey, as baby Willow, may be the cutest infant ever to have a co-starring role in a movie.

The ship has a name, stenciled on its corrugated hull and on every rough-hewn article of fabric Monte wears on board — “7.” Everything about it is similarly spare. It’s grungy, lived-in and breaking down. The on-board garden, intended to help feed them, clean the air and water, is overgrown. Lights flicker, things leak and clutter is piling up.

What happened here?

As Monte files his daily online report, which earns the response that “prolongation of life support systems for 24 hours” is his reward for doing this, we piece things together. There were others. They had a mission. All the others are dead.

In flashbacks, Monte takes us back to his rural childhood and his wayward, impulsive, hop-a-freight-with-stoner-friends teens.

Nothing, not even his doting on this not-walking-yet tyke in his care, says “astronaut” about him. Because he isn’t.

The last piece of plot you need to know is that the others were, like Monte, “sentenced” to be on board this ship, that Juliette Binoche plays Dibs, the on-board physician monitoring their health and their mission, and that other flashbacks will fill in some of the blanks about what happened, if not exactly why.

Denis sets up this mission itself as an act of societal cruelty, and expands on that aspect of human nature with most of those on board — impulsive, violent, medicated to tamp down their psychoses and their tempers. André Benjamin of one-hit wonders OutKast may be the mellowest, sanest one there. Mia Goth’s “Boyse,” young, rash and perpetually enraged, is more typical.

And remember, I’ve already identified Binoche’s Marlene Dietrich turn, Dibs, as a “doctor.”

Violence and a generous spattering of bodily fluids ensues. There’s a notoriously sadomasochistic solo sex scene celebrated by some critics (Brits, mostly) in the film’s version of Woody Allen’s “Orgasmatron” in “Sleeper” sex module.

Characters aren’t so much motivated as driven by instincts, which may be an interesting point to make but guts the film of any emotional connection. Pattinson, making a string of arty choices after cashing his last “Twilight” check, gives us nothing as this blank-faced, emotionally-remote “hero” and narrator.

“She’s mine. I’m hers,” he says of the baby, in a heartless monotone.

The warehouse furnished by Harbor Freight and Home Depot settings weren’t a turn-off to me. That’s my favorite gripe about space-travel movies — the ships are all inefficiently roomy, too shiny for their own good. Not even making an effort to simulate zero gravity (one image) is just lazy and makes the enterprise seem malnourished and theatrical — as in community theater.

But if that’s not a turnoff, the film’s obsession with semen, blood and viscera are. And as it lacks anything remotely like a “turn on” (I’m NOT British) or point of connection, I found the over-praised “High Life” haunting, but mercifully forgettable.

And messy to the point of sticky.

MPAA Rating: R for disturbing sexual and violent content including sexual assault, graphic nudity, and for language

Cast: Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche and Andre Benjamin

Credits: Directed by Claire Denis, script by Geoff Cox, Claire Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:53

I love this Brit radio gimmick. Even when it isn’t as good as J Law and Pratt, it’s funny.

Chris? Make fun of her “vocal fry,” which grows more pronounced by the hour.

ScarJo? Got to be a “When they told me, I thought I was going to work with the ‘Talented’ Hemsworth brother.”

Come on kids, step it up!

“The River and the Wall” is about a 1200 mile journey from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico along the Rio Grande, a trip made on foot, bicycle, horseback and canoe by five friends with a support crew.

The idea, Texan wildlife filmmaker Ben Masters says, was to explore an area he’s been hearing about as being particularly vulnerable, from a biological “physical impact,” to a negative impact of Donald Trump’s planned sea-to-Gulf of Mexico border wall.

Their ranks included filmmakers, a river guide who is the son of immigrants who crossed this very river illegally, an ornithologist and a wildlife/wild spaces advocate.

The sweeping footage they captured is moving in its beauty. But the real reason for the film is “reason.” Ben Masters’ movie talks to stakeholders — ranchers, Border Patrol agents, experts on patterns of migration and immigration along the U.S./Mexico border and members of Congress. And none of them think this wall thing is a very good idea, for reasons ranging from the impracticality of it and the lack of utility (It won’t do the job.) to the sheer desecration of this last wild, scenic part of the Rio Grande valley, on both sides of the border.

“River and the Wall” presents not just the pleasures of mountain biking through a wet December snowstorm and wading through a canal, not just the perils of taking laden canoes through rapids on the Rio Grande.

We see them traverse box canyons and Arroyo, rock faces and a river too dry (thanks to irrigation demands) in many places to travel on by boat.

We’ve heard variations of Congressman and now presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s arguments about the wall’s morality and efficacy.

But hearing GOP Texas Congressman Will Hurd, a veteran of the Secret Service, suggest that “building a wall…in the desert and mountains is just crazy!” is new.

The “campaign promise” looks more and more like a colossal boondoggle, the deeper we get into “The River and the Wall.”

The voyagers pass through what could, in calmer times, be the greatest “Bi-National Park” in the Americas, straddling the U.S./Mexico border at Big Bend Ranch State Park and Big Bend National Park, and the wildness of the place touches the heart.

Seeing big horn sheep, owls and ocelots, all facing displacement if a massive a construction project cuts through, will make you wince. Hearing a Texas wildlife biologist note that hunters there wiped out black bears decades ago, but that they came back into the region, slowly, from Mexico in recent years, pounds home the point.

Wildlife will suffer mightily if this project is pursued.

But hearing ranchers complain about access to border and a million acres of their own land as the wall is to either seize the land or cut off huge swaths of it on the U.S. side of the border, all but ceding valuable farmland to Mexico, is startling.

A montage of news footage, presidents from Reagan onward trying to “fix” the immigration problem and cross-border issues over the decades opens the film. Historians and other experts point to the decades and decades of migrant labor’s freedom of movement to agricultural and other jobs, cut off in 1965, as the real beginning of this vexing national problem.

When you seal the border, people who have to sneak across it are much less likely to go home at the end of a harvest season or at the end of a job.

Using the scenic far reaches of the fourth longest river in America to make their point is a slam dunk.

But when river guide Austin Alvarado, after passing the stretch of river where his parents slipped across, illegally, decades before, stops to climb, in mere SECONDS, a newish section of 20 foot high fencing, showing how easy it is, the more pragmatic appeal is obvious.

It’s expensive and it won’t work.

The quintet and their crew ignore the warning to not “do the river at night,” and get a dose of the drug trafficking and human trafficking that goes on,  what Hurd earlier emphasized as “our need to secure our own borders.”

Yes, beefing up border security with electronics and boots on the ground is a good idea, Hurd and others suggest.

But whatever the evening news may show of Arizona or New Mexico, where landowners speak up about “safety” and the “flood” of people trekking through their land, frightening them and sometimes dying of exposure in the process, Masters finds only Texas ranchers questioning the need for a wall and the cost to them if it’s built.

And “The River and the Wall” includes just enough graphics of  statistics — the plummeting numbers of people coming north — to back them up.

Canoe wrecks and crash course horse-backing riding lessons, mud-clogged bikes and weary backsides aside, Masters & Co. accomplish their mission, which was to see and document “the Rio Grande before it is possibly changed forever.”

Thanks to their cameras, we can, too. And act accordingly.

MPAA Rating: unrated, mild profanity

Credits:Directed by Ben Masters. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:48

For a couple of moments, the Next Teen Idol musical melodrama “Teen Spirit” lets us see inside the unsavory machinery, the exploitation that drives and underscores every TV talent competition you’ve ever heard of.

Judges who profit from record deal/management contracts with the talent, talent turned into carbon copies of the last version of The Next Big Thing by costumers, choreographers and TV — it’s all here.

But those moments pass, and “Teen Spirit” sags back into the shallow, neon-lit bubble-gummy fever-dream that director’s-son-turned-actor-turned-writer/director Max Minghella (he was in “Handmaid’s Tale,” streaming junkies) serves up here.

But the son of the late Anthony Minghella (“The English Patient,” “Cold Mountain”) landed Elle Fanning as his lead, as the lithe Anglo-Polish Violet who hopes singing can rescue her from the blue collar labor and obscurity of her Isle of Wight (Anthony Minghella’s birthplace) and send her to London, fame and riches.

And Elle is almost enough to make one forget the vapid, incomplete story Minghella-the-younger’s stuck her in.

She sings, and lets us see she’s basically an impersonator — channeling Annie Lennox, Gwen Stefani, Robyn Carlsson and other favorites from her iPod. She’s given choreography, and Fanning’s Violet doesn’t hide her tall, lanky awkwardness, not-quite-mastering the moves that kids privileged enough to have dance lessons since birth take to, easily.

Those would be her competitors at various stages of Britain’s “Teen Spirit” competition. To a one, they seem more polished, more posh. Violet always seems like a kid late for her waitressing job — again — because what she really loves is singing, even if it’s just for the old age pensioners at a local pub.

Her religious Polish mother (Agnieszka Grochowska of “Child 44”) needs her around their house and tiny farm. She needs her income. She doesn’t “want to encourage you,” she says, like a thousand parents in the movies before her.

“I don’t vant you to be disappointed.”

“It’s too late for that!”

Violet was born disappointed. But one of those drunken, elderly listeners at the pub, Vlad (Zlatko Buric) says “You haff nice voice.” He’s just encouraging enough that Violet uses him as “guardian” when “Teen Spirit” visits the island, looking for talent. It’s only after he’s signed-off on her competing (Mom cannot know) that Violet realizes his story about once being an opera singer in Croatia is true.

Minghella puts great effort into Violet’s performances at various stages in the competition, complete with her losing herself in her fantasies — imagining she’s singing with a band, decked out, and on TV, or a music video with her and her white horse when in actuality she’s on a stage, alone, trying to carry a tune off a capella.

The temptations of the big city — boys, Mom’s protesting reluctance, betrayals and show judge (Rebecca Hall) chicanery — are all trite plot points Minghella pulled from a grab bag in scripting this.

But he scored when he landed Fanning, that eternally gawky starlet outgrowing teen films but not the tall, lanky awkward girlishness which have been her calling card since breaking into films with “Super 8.”

She and Buric (“2012,” “Pusher”) have a gruff chemistry, and they make this trite-and-true traipse towards musical glory worth sitting through, even if one cannot quite recommend you go out of your way to see it.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some suggestive content, and for teen drinking and smoking

Cast: Elle Fanning, Zlatko Buric, Agnieszka Grochowska ,Rebecca Hall

Credits: Written and directed by Max Minghelle. An LD/Bleecker St release.

Running time: 1:33

Ex-con, drunk, bad mom.

Sounds like a country song, amIright?

Jessie Buckley and Julie Walters stars in this music-stained dramedy from the UK. “Wild Rose” opens in limited release June 14 and looks amazing.

Is a $300 million debut even possible for #AvengersEndgame?

Variety is saying “impossible.” But maybe?

Sign of the Keanu-calypse? In Scotland, of all places. This weekend. “Constantine,” “Speed,” Keanu’s Greatest Hits, all in one festival.

https://nerdist.com/article/keanu-reeves-film-festival-keanucon/

Don’t say it’s not for the fans.

“Avengers: Endgame” is nothing if not the crowd-pleasingest crowd-pleaser in recent cinema history.

Give everybody, and I do mean EVERYbody, a curtain call.

Considering the character clutter in this franchise finale, this final act in the ensemble superhero story thread, this star at last going supernova in its corner of the Marvel universe, it’s a miracle they got the damned thing in at just over three hours.

It’s still shorter than “Lawrence of Arabia.”

“Endgame” can be ponderous and pandering, seemingly assembled by a focus group forced to read every fan comment on every message board for all of the 20-odd Marvel movies that preceded it.

But there’s a marvelous quiet to it, a tone of sentimental farewell as characters exit or return and THEN exit.

There’s a nonsensical illogic at play. But the inevitable brawls have a visual coherence, and the picture is freighted with subtext and meaning, at least in the casting and the characters who matter.

Those would be the women, starting with the new badass on the block, Captain Marvel (Brie Larson). She shows up just AFTER the nick of time, when half the life on Earth has been wiped out by the warrior/god Thanos (Josh Brolin, digitized for our protection). The survivors are glum, and don’t know the flying blonde with the new short haircut. They just see her leaving.

“Where’re you going?”

“To kill Thanos!”

There’s the soulful mistress of time, The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) who stares down The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) like a child she can’t punish but so much. And the big emotional moments — fierce and sad, heartbreaking and resolute — belong to Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and that pop culture punching bag Gwyneth Paltrow, an Oscar winner playing the hell out of Pepper Potts.

They can’t fix the story, which is a laughable children’s playground variation of “Do OVER!” But they give this “time heist” in five acts its heart. And even though the dialogue won’t make anyone forget Joss Whedon’s witty banter, the guys — lots and lots of guys — are good for laughs.

Thanos has won, even though Thanos is quickly dispatched by the team led by Marvel’s version of Superwoman, Captain Marvel, the Earth is a glum place of decay and empty ball parks, retired Avengers raising families or mourning ones (Hawkeye/Jeremy Renner) they lost.

Much of humanity’s energy has been spent building elaborate memorials to “The Vanishing.” that moment when everybody — HALF of everybody — turned to ashes lost in the wind. Well, building memorials and assorted new models of Audis.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has gone on a bender and gone to pot. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and others are entirely too on the nose in calling him “Big Lebowski.” Because he is.

Tony Stark/Iron Man has given up, Captain America (Chris Evans) is at a loss, Hulk has morphed into a sentient giant who looks a little like Mark Ruffalo, and they “lost the kid.” Spider-Man (Tom Holland). And so many others, from boss Nick Fury on down, have vanished.

Rocket Raccoon is the last Guardian of the Galaxy, and he’s just here for exposition. Yeah, they get the damned raccoon to explain stuff, in Bradley Cooper’s voice.

Then darned if that little dickens Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) doesn’t have a proposition. Let’s time travel back to steal those Infinity Stones, a “time heist” to get their “do over.”

Time travel is discussed, in a few sentences with “quantum” this or that in them, and in PARAGRAPHS of “Back to the Future/Terminator/Time After Time” and of course, “Hot Tub Time Machine” riffs. Because any moviegoer knows you’ve got to “strictly follow the rules of time travel” laid out in those pictures. Which got it wrong.

“So ‘Back to the Future’ is basically bulls–t?”

Captain Marvel, who’d have made short work of this time trekking/six stone collecting, is gone for most of the picture. And anybody you’ve missed shows up at just about the point you say, “This’d be a great spot for Black Panther/Spider-Man” et al to show up.

They do this as Avengers bop back and forth in time, and we get a dose of the State of the Art in digital de-aging as this character’s lady love or that one’s dad, this mentor scientist or that Norse God Queen has decades erased from them for their scenes.

Rene Russo, playing Thor’s mom, gets the best of this tech and has the movie’s funniest line, upon seeing her Buddha-bellied Thunder God son.

“Eat a salad!”

Truthfully, there just aren’t enough moments like those to make these three hours fly by. Only half of the big emotional scenes pack any wallop. The Russo Brothers’ direction of this script brings to mind the final Harry Potter movies — “service” every character, give the fans a little of this and that, make the trains run on time, get it over with.

The script’s silliest shortcoming may be giving Thanos’ cyborg daughter Nebula (Karen Gillan) a big and pivotal role. All these characters to do justice to, and she’s who we follow and fret over?

But even with that, even after the longest epilogue since The Book of Revelation, there’s just enough of the characters and just enough of the wonderful cast’s charm in virtually every performance to remind us of how right they were in their roles — from Johansson’s sexy assassin to Jeremy Renner’s fierce and focused archer, Hawkeye, Rudd’s whimsical and accident-prone Ant-Man to Hemsworth’s breezy beefcake blowhard, Thor.

Subtext? Watch the Earth and the America depicted here, in decline in a world where” epic forces of darkness have come into play.” Watch Captain America’s place within this universe shrivel and revive at the memory of what he’s supposed to represent, the best of us. Yeah, the screenplay is sending a message.

This isn’t my favorite genre, but may “Avengers” make another billion or two from the faithful, and these wonderful and now rich actors finally free themselves to make movies less formulaic and more challenging again, and may the Marvel suits realize that letting them go is the right thing to do at the right time to do it.

And before they change their minds about “retiring” the Avengers — for a while, anyway — may they have the common sense to see that comic book movies will never have a cast this dazzling again.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and some language

Cast: Brie Larson, Chris Evans, Chadwick Boseman, Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Scarlett Johansson, Paul Rudd, Mark Ruffalo, Josh Brolin, Danai Gurira, Tilda Swinton, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Renner, Letitia Wright, Gwyneth Paltrow, Dave Bautista, Tom Holland, Elizabeth Olsen, Evangeline Lilly and Benedict Wong. And many others…

Credits: Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, based on the Marvel comic books. A Marvel release.

Running time: 3:01

You mean aside from the blurry imagery and eye straining animation choices? Ok, you my have attention.