Mathias Schoenaerts stars, Connie Britton’s his shrink and Bruce Dern is the grizzled old horse handler with loads of folksy horse sense in this drama, produced by Robert Redford, about inmates looking to patch the holes in their souls by working as horse trainers.
“The Mustang” opens March 19 in limited release.
Good reviews or bad, “Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse” was sure to own this weekend, as the comic book fanbase is seriously hyped up for this alternate version of the web slinger — which features any number of Spider Women, Spider Noirs and Spider-Hams. And the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive.
I’d been hearing $35-39 million for the opening weekend for this two hour animated film, from Variety and others. It’s already picked up $1.9 million from last weekend’s pre-release release (paid) showings. And it made another $3.5 million Thursday night (I don’t think they add the last weekend total to that.
But Box Office Mojo is saying $40 million is the ceiling, thanks to the hype (I didn’t love it, and will be watching for reports of how wider audiences take its I-say eye-straining action beats and animated focus).
And the Box Office Guru is guessing $41 million for the wide wide wide release.
That should suck ALL of the money away from Fox’s PG-13 “Princess Bride” gag re-release of “Deadpool 2.” The Guru says $5 million is all that’s left in the tank for that late spring release. Box Office Mojo is saying it won’t crack the top ten — $3.2 million or so. So sorry Mr. Pool.
Warner Brothers has downplayed its “other” holiday release — a dark Clint Eastwood drug trade thriller, “The Mule,” which has a touch of “Gran Torino” about its foul and racist old man as drug runner story. Oscar winners and Oscar contenders decorate its cast, but they didn’t preview it in much of the country, especially the corners where Clint is King (Flyover States).
They’re either hiding it because it isn’t great, refusing to promote it at the expense of “A Star is Born” or some hazy version of both. Eastwood himself may have suggested the strategy, as he is now thinking of Bradley Cooper as his Warner Brothers go-to actor/director successor.
In an event, a paucity of reviews greet its opening.
Saving the worst news for last, “Mortal Engines” finally comes to the big screen, the movie Peter Jackson wanted to make before “The Hobbit” ate up his life. He produced the film of Phillip Reeve’s novel, co-wrote the script and one of his production team — his storyboard artist for years and years — gets the directing credit. Steampunk sci-fi riding indifferent reviews into theaters, both the Guru and Mr. Mojo say $11 million is what this YA pic should earn by midnight Sunday.
Box Office Mojo says it’ll do a solid $17 million this weekend. Box Office Guru figures $11 million is all he has left in the tank as a leading man.
A thriller with hints of an administration with a freewheeling view of American nuclear power, a fearmongering politician (Jamie Lee Curtis) who wants to use The Bomb and Tika Sumpter as the aide who helps her sell the threat they’re facing so that she can do it.
What the aide knows could get her killed.
“An Acceptable Loss” has hints of Bush and Obama Administration figures, doctrines and actions — just familiar enough to seem real. It opens Jan. 19.
A bit of science fiction satire aimed at the “state” of things as they are today — privacy, control, “monitoring,” etc.
Vera Farmiga and John Goodman are the big names in the cast of “Captive State” — which is about American ten years after the aliens have taken over.
I’m going to limit this to SAG’s motion picture nominations. The TV stuff is so far removed from the Emmys (as are the Golden Globes’ TV nominations) as to not impact the “real” awards that come from this time of year’s “awards season” buzz.
But if you want to see the TV noms, here’s SAG’s website.
And yes, the SAGs look more than a little bit like the Golden Globes nominations of last week.
No Lucas Hedges notice for “Ben is Back,” “Boy Erased” or “Mid90s.”
But two Emily Blunt nominations, support for “The Quiet Ones,” lead for “Mary Poppins Returns.”
No Ethan Hawke for “First Reformed,” but Sam Elliott gets noticed for his support in “A Star is Born.” No Redford for “Old Man and the Gun.” No Jackman for “The Front Runner.” No Willem Dafoe for “At Eternity’s Gate.”
No Lin Manuel Miranda honor for “Mary Poppins Returns.” See my review for why that might be (Golden Globes nomination aside).
I always like the ensemble nominations, which they throw out there as a sort of “Here’s what WE think qualifies a film for best picture” category.
So they figure…”Bohemian” and “Crazy Rich Asians?” Probably not. Maybe.
All these folks talking up “Roma” for best picture take note. There are no “performances” in the movie that anybody is lauding. None. And if you’ve never watched a black and white movie before and don’t know what a beautifully shot — shades and contrasts, etc. — such film looks like, maybe start to let it go.
There’s nothing here for “If Beale Street Could Talk,” either. There are outlier critics who are shouting this title from the rooftops. To the sound of crickets answering them back.
As insiders always note this time of year, the largest voting bloc in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is made up of actors, Screen Actors’ Guild actors. So these nominations point toward where Oscar is headed more surely than the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globes nominations do, historically speaking.
My take? I almost always go for honoring a lifetime of work, rarely giving in to newcomers who just blow us all away.
Pulling for Glenn Close and Richard E. Grant, Amy Adams. Grant’s been an entertaining character actor for decades and decades, and his clumsy, needy gay BFF and drunk in “Can You Ever Forgive Me” is a delight.
Close is WAY overdue, and “The Wife” is another stellar turn in a career packed with them.
And if Close wins the Oscar, that leaves Amy Adams as the best actress of her generation never to win an Academy Award. There are many, but she’s so good she gets nominated every year. Let’s not let her wait as long as Julianne Moore. Her supporting turn in “Vice” could correct that.
Kind of up in the air for Best Actor, as Annapurna isn’t screening that one in my part of the world and I bailed out of critics’ groups, which is how you get screeners of everything everybody wants to win awards for.
Bale looks brilliant in the “Vice” trailers, but it’d be nice if Dafoe could pull an Oscar nomination out of his turn as Van Gogh. Him, I’d root for.
The Theatrical Motion Picture Nominees are:
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
CHRISTIAN BALE / Dick Cheney – “VICE” (Annapurna Pictures)
BRADLEY COOPER / Jack – “A STAR IS BORN” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
RAMI MALEK / Freddie Mercury – “BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY” (20th Century Fox)
VIGGO MORTENSEN / Tony Lip – “GREEN BOOK” (Universal Pictures)
JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON / Ron Stallworth – “BLACKKKLANSMAN” (Focus Features)
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
EMILY BLUNT / Mary Poppins – “MARY POPPINS RETURNS” (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
GLENN CLOSE / Joan Castleman – “THE WIFE” (Sony Pictures Classics)
OLIVIA COLMAN / Queen Anne – “THE FAVOURITE” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
LADY GAGA / Ally – “A STAR IS BORN” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
MELISSA McCARTHY / Lee Israel – “CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role
MAHERSHALA ALI / Dr. Donald Shirley – “GREEN BOOK” (Universal Pictures)
TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET / Nic Sheff – “BEAUTIFUL BOY” (Amazon Studios)
ADAM DRIVER / Flip Zimmerman – “BLACKKKLANSMAN” (Focus Features)
SAM ELLIOTT / Bobby – “A STAR IS BORN” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
RICHARD E. GRANT / Jack Hock – “CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
AMY ADAMS / Lynne Cheney – “VICE” (Annapurna Pictures)
EMILY BLUNT / Evelyn Abbott – “A QUIET PLACE” (Paramount Pictures)
MARGOT ROBBIE / Queen Elizabeth I – “MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS” (Focus Features)
EMMA STONE / Abigail – “THE FAVOURITE” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
RACHEL WEISZ / Lady Sarah – “THE FAVOURITE” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
A STAR IS BORN (Warner Bros. Pictures)
DAVE CHAPPELLE / George “Noodles” Stone
ANDREW DICE CLAY / Lorenzo
BRADLEY COOPER / Jack
SAM ELLIOTT / Bobby
RAFI GAVRON / Rez Gavron
LADY GAGA / Ally
ANTHONY RAMOS / Ramon
BLACK PANTHER (Marvel Studios)
ANGELA BASSETT / Ramonda
CHADWICK BOSEMAN / T’Challa/Black Panther
STERLING K. BROWN / N’Jobu
WINSTON DUKE / M’Baku
MARTIN FREEMAN / Everett K. Ross
DANAI GURIRA / Okoye
MICHAEL B. JORDAN / Erik Killmonger
DANIEL KALUUYA / W’Kabi
LUPITA NYONG’O / Nakia
ANDY SERKIS / Ulysses Klaue
FOREST WHITAKER / Zuri
LETITIA WRIGHT / Shuri
BLACKKKLANSMAN (Focus Features)
HARRY BELAFONTE / Jerome Turner
ADAM DRIVER / Flip Zimmerman
TOPHER GRACE / David Duke
LAURA HARRIER / Patrice Dumas
COREY HAWKINS / Kwame Ture
JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON / Ron Stallworth
BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY (20th Century Fox)
LUCY BOYNTON / Mary Austin
AIDAN GILLEN / John Reid
BEN HARDY / Roger Taylor
TOM HOLLANDER / Jim Beach
GWILYM LEE / Brian May
ALLEN LEECH / Paul Prenter
RAMI MALEK / Freddie Mercury
JOE MAZZELLO / John Deacon
MIKE MYERS / Ray Foster
CRAZY RICH ASIANS (Warner Bros. Pictures)
AWKWAFINA / Peik Lin Goh
GEMMA CHAN / Astrid Young Teo
HENRY GOLDING / Nick Young
KEN JEONG / Wye Mun Goh
LISA LU / Ah Ma
HARRY SHUM, JR. / Charlie Wu
CONSTANCE WU / Rachel Chu
MICHELLE YEOH / Eleanor Young
Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture
ANT-MAN AND THE WASP (Marvel Studios)
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (Marvel Studios)
THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (Netflix)
BLACK PANTHER (Marvel Studios)
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT (Paramount Pictures)
There’s magic and charm, dazzling dance numbers and a genuine show-stopper in“Mary Poppins Returns.”
But you have to take this overlong and perhaps overdue sequel to Walt Disney’s 1964 classic on its own terms, wash those unforgettable tunes out of your head and maybe forget Julie Andrews’ stern but warm turn in the title role.
It’s more somber and downbeat, more in the tradition of Disney’s sad but droll film about the making of “Mary Poppins,” “Saving Mr. Banks.”
There is no “Spoonful of Sugar” or “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!” or “Chim Chim Cheree” among the nine new songs, though composer Marc Shaiman and lyricist Scott Whittman (Broadway’s “Hairspray”) come up with a couple of minor jewels of their own.
Replacing the joyously rubber-legged hoofer Dick Van Dyke proves to be harder than getting a new Mary Poppins. Lin Manuel Miranda is a “Hamilton” sized talent — at the keyboard. As a singer and dancer, he’s adequate. So try not to notice how much editing there is in his dance numbers.
The New Mary? Let me be Blunt. Emily B. rescues this picture just as surely as Mary Poppins made her name “Saving Mr. Banks.” She puts her stamp on the character — sharp sarcastic edges without the “Spoonful of Sugar” — and ensures Mary Poppins casts her helpful spell on another generation of the hard-luck Banks family.
Decades have passed, and London is in the middle of “The Great Slump,” which we labeled more accurately “The Great Depression” here in America.
Chimney sweeps are rare, but lamplighters are still lighting and dousing the gas streetlamps of smoky, gloomy London. That’s what Jack (Miranda) does for a living. When he’s not singing “(Underneath) The Lovely London Sky,” a rather half-hearted opening (pre-credits) number.
Michael Banks (Ben Whishaw) is newly widowed and depressed, overwhelmed with three kids to raise in the old Banks townhouse on Cherry Lane. His days as “an artist” are over. He clerks at the local bank, which is about to foreclose. His world is unraveling.
His sister Jane (Emily Mortimer) is a labor activist, still single, but doing what she can to help Michael and the dotty and dyspeptic Ellen (the adorable Julie Walters of “Mamma Mia!”) with Anabel (Pixie Davies), John (Nathanael Saleh) and Georgie (Joel Dawson).
But if Dad and Aunt Jane cannot find their father’s old stock certificates, Banker Wilkins (Colin Firth) will have his attorneys (Jeremy Swift, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) take the house. They have a week to track down the paperwork.
It’s a good thing Georgie finds granddad’s old kite, which his father has tossed. A windy day in London town, and there she is — “Mary Poppins Returns,” via a kite string. She’s got a hint of Nanny McPhee to her, which considering the cacophony these kids kick up, is a good thing.
“I’ll thank you not to dawdle.”
Whatever Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) can do to save the adults, the skeptical kids — “We don’t NEED a nanny!” — are won over in an instant. Director Rob Marshall (“Into the Woods,” “Chicago”) pulls out all the Disney stops in her first two absolutely dazzling numbers.
“Can You Imagine That?” sees her taking the unbathed children upon the sea — in their tub, which becomes a dinghy — and under the sea to show them “Everything is possible, even the IMpossible.”
And “The Royal Doulton Music Hall,” my favorite, has Mary leading the children onto the scene depicted on a fine piece of family china (Royal Doulton) the kids have cracked. They’re drawn into an animated rendition of an old fashioned English Music Hall. Old school 2D (hand-drawn cell-style) animation one-ups and two-ups the actor/animation interaction of the original “Mary Poppins.”
The ballad “Where Do the Lost Things Go?” is a lament for the past, childhood and that missing stock certificate. Blunt manages every one of these tunes with panache and skill, even if she is no operetta endorsed soprano with a two-octave+ range, like Andrews.
Fixing the cracked bowl is something that can only be managed by the wildly eccentric Madame Topsy (Meryl Streep, vamping to beat the band), who sings “Turning Turtle,” about the topsy turvy nature of her world (one day a month). Hearing Streep rhyme “turning turtle” with “loose girdle” is one for the ages.
This film’s version of “Chim Chim Cheree” is “Trip a Little Light Fantastic,” and involves Jack and his fellow lamplighters. It’s more visually striking than memorably tuneful. The choreography — dancers hanging from lampposts — is fun, but you can’t help but notice the flurry of edits it took to make the dancing impressive.
It’s a typical modern musical with a multicultural cast and visual grace-notes — a bit with the lamplighters riding off into the foggy gloom on their bicycles (a few BMX tricks included) is stunning.
But whatever it took to make this “Mary Poppins” light on its feet, it’s rare that the tone turns sunny. The gloomy start (I’d have cut that opening number) and pervasive fog and heavy subject matter — death, lost childhood innocence, impending poverty, etc. — never let it soar.
Trotting out a few screen legends — the great David Warner is Admiral Boom, a character straight out of Dickens and the original “Mary Poppins,” Angela Lansbury has a nice closing curtain number — “Nowhere to Go but Up,” and Dick Van Dyke from the 1964 film shows up for a little song and dance — helps.
It’s just so hard to forget that close-to-perfect first film and so very hard for “Mary Poppins Returns” to ever escape its show and trip its own “Light Fantastic.”
MPAA Rating: PG for some mild thematic elements and brief action
Cast: Emily Blunt, Lin Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Julie Walters, Colin Firth, Dick Van Dyke, Angela Lansbury and Meryl Streep
Credits: Directed by Rob Marshall, screenplay by David Magee, based on the Mary Travers books. A Walt Disney release.
Running time: 2:10
Film fans long ago made up their minds about Sally Field. The woman spent the better part of 20 years living down her “You like me…right now you like me” Academy Award acceptance speech, a meme before we were using the word the way we do now.
But the ex-child star, “girl next door,” two time Oscar winner and big and small screen mainstay for over five decades has had a fascinating career of highs and lows, fallow periods followed by triumphs, blunders overcome with movies that endure, and big roles in them.
I was watching a re-broadcast of “Punchline” a few nights ago while reading “In Pieces,” Field’s brittle but breezy autobiography, trying to remember why I preferred that film’s grit to the funnier TV period piece “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” I think it’s the failing. Field has always made failure and struggles seem just like that. When she struggles, missteps (buying jokes) and gets kicked, she lets us see that it hurts. Field always has.
Mrs. Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan)? Not so much. Prettier, younger, funnier — sure. But for all the arch situations the show cooked up, the script and performance with its Lenny Bruce turns, she hasn’t let us see her sweat.
Field, however easy it always seemed — TV’s “Gidget” to “The Flying Nun” to movies to Burt Reynolds to Academy Awards (“Norma Rae,” “Places in the Heart”) and onward — had to work to let us see the effort.
“In Pieces” doesn’t dish about co-stars (much), doesn’t wholly explain the career, the choices, the pitfalls, the struggles and personal trials. The dynamic on the combat zone known as “Steel Magnolias” is worth its own book.
But Field talks about being molested as a child, the rough accommodation she made with her mother over the decades, the fights she had with agent and her molesting actor of a stepdad over TV work she didn’t want to do (“Flying Nun”), the #SallyToo “audition” for her sexpot turn in “Stay Hungry” and the humbling experience of being offered Mary Todd Lincoln by Steven Spielberg, having that offer removed when Liam Neeson dropped out of the film.
She can almost bring you to tears in recalling Daniel Day Lewis’ generosity, somehow sensing that she would kill for the role which she was too old for, especially after he was cast. He agreed to meet her, to hear her out.
Only he turned that into a costumed audition with both of them improvising their way through a few minutes, in character and on tape. Lewis set it up, Spielberg went for it and Field got another great part that on first blush, few would think of her for.
When I say “breezy,” I mean “In Pieces” is a quick read. The book has a little drama and her writing just enough gravity about it when the moment calls for it.
She dismisses much of what she did as a child actress and truthfully, poor mouths the TV work in general, but relishes her first decent movie part (hanging with Robert Mitchum, who marked her for great stardom in adulthood, on the set of “The Way West”) and stayed with TV until that Big Break — “Sybil” — gave her a shot at movies.
Mitchum got to sidle up to her Oscar-winning self much later in life and give her a “What’d I tellya?”
Movie star biographies that don’t kiss and tell (Burt Reynolds didn’t like competing with her, a few details about relationships and marriages) aren’t the most scintillating reading. But Field, like somebody who doesn’t mind us seeing her sweat and watching her fail, retells anecdotes about getting humiliated by Actor’s Studio guru Lee Strasberg in front of a class filled with the less famous, and that late-life humiliation of getting, losing and reclaiming Mary Todd for her own with relish and style.
If you’ve ever been a fan, ever gotten over the hubris of “You really like me,” it’s a pretty good read.
Well, it’s something to see. Producer (and co-screenwriter) Peter Jackson always makes sure of that.
The surprising thing about the film of Phillip Reeve’s “Mortal Engines,” essentially a movie about roving, bulldozing cities that devour small towns, is how long this eye candy holds your interest.
It’s a fascinatingly detailed, gears-and-tech filled wholly realized and just this side of viable steampunk civilization, a dystopia that offers something new.
Well, aside from the endless borrowings from oh, “Star Wars” and “Howl’s Moving Castle” and tech that can seem like props left over from “John Carter” of Mars. Much of that is on Jackson & Co., visual and plotting departures from Reeves’ books.
About 1100 years in the future, humanity is 1000 years past “The 60 Minute War.” Civilizations perished, continents cracked and humanity barely escaped extinction.
People have gotten by on adapting and maintaining old technology, and for that, civilization depends on archaeologists. With their help, engineers have built Traction Cities, mobile tractor-driven complexes with “tiers” of dwelling carving the social hierarchy in stone.
These cities live by moving, rumbling across the mostly-depopulated plains, crossing land bridges created when continents shifted. They weigh so much they leave canyon-sized ravines in their wake as they devour small towns or neighborhoods which had to get themselves rebuilt on bulldozer or earth moving equipment treads or wheels, just to escape the all-devouring cities.
Did Reeve really anticipate the planet’s city/rural conflict this unerringly? Here is every Red State or French State gripe about “elites” in cities, in sci-fi form and parked on top of variations of NASA’s giant rocket-hauling crawler.
If that analogy is too subtle, the Mayor of London (Patrick Malahide of “Game of Thrones”) makes it Brexit obvious.
“We should never have gone into Europe!”
London, or what survived of it (recognizable landmarks are stacked on it, from St. Paul’s to Trafalgar Square’s gigantic lions) has to move and devour to survive — “Municipal Darwinism.” That’s a model that’s unsustainable, and the one guy who seems to get that is archaeologist/fixer Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving). He’s the “hero” of the piece, until we see a Bavarian town chased down and devoured by London, and this girl who was there (Hera Hilmar) stabs Valentine, right in front of his adoring daughter (Leila George) and her new admirer, the curious and politically unconnected museum curator Tom (Robert Sheehan).
He doesn’t have a chance to flirt with the pretty blonde Valentine daughter, as he finds himself with the stabbing girl, Hester, dumped out like garbage into the wastelands that are called “Outlands” because they always are in sci-fi.
They kind of fight each other and fight to stay alive in a world where almost everybody lives in something that clanks across the landscape, or just below it to hide from the Traction Cities. The slave trade there has cannibalism as part of its pricing system (wildlife and livestock seem to have vanished). But there’s an Anti-Traction rebellion (of course). Maybe they can find the warrior rebel Anna Fang (Jihae, the quintessence of sci-fi badass cool) and fight back against the cities.
“We’re not going to tell each other our sad stories,” Hester hisses in the first act, which lets us know she’ll tell hers in the second act. Hester has scars and a history. And part of that history is hunting her down, “Terminator” style. The rebels have style and youth and refuges, like a cloud city held up by balloons, and aircraft that still have their “John Carter” price tags dangling from the wings.
It’s all kind of mindlessly engrossing, the digitally-augmented scale of this enterprise eye-poppingly impressive. For a while, anyway.
It all ends — the immersion, any enjoyment I got out of it, anyway — in an instant.
You’ll know it when it happens. And not just because the picture grinds its gears and starts shaking itself apart right after it. It’s totally a script issue, because Jackson’s favorite storyboard artist Christian Rivers, turned into a director here, makes this thing look like $100 million bucks, start to finish.
Everything — every line, every act, every action — that comes AFTER this #mortalfail is so obviously “Star Wars: A New Hope,” as to irritate. You realize, “Hell, what function DOES Valentine’s daughter serve in all this, except as set-dressing?” You know where the “noble sacrifices” will come from. The performances and the empathy they fail to generate stand out more.
And the moment the phrase “The East” is dropped, you leap to the conclusion, “Here’s where Jackson and Universal (and Reeve, too) throw the Chinese/Pacific Rim market a bone, long before they do. West bad, East good?
Every time that happens, gears aren’t the only thing that grind here.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of futuristic violence and action
Cast: Hera Hilmar, Hugo Weaving, Robert Sheehan, Jihae, Leila George, Colin Salmon, Patrick Malahide, Regé-Jean Page
Credits: Directed by Christian Rivers, script by Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens and Peter Jackson, based on the Phillip Reeve novels. A Universal release.
Running time: 2:08
You had to go and do it, didn’t ya?
Burn through ol’Deadpool’s pool of goodwill with a joke taken too far, a shameless money-grab for the holidays.
The trailers were the highlight of “Once Upon a Deadpool,” a “Princess Bride” re-cutting of the R-rated violence and vulgarity fest that is “Deadpool 2” into a less vulgar (somewhat) PG-13 Xmas season limited release.
They’re funny, and some of us (me included) can never get enough of Ryan Reynolds’ jokey, best-joke-on-set-wins take on the character and the way he promotes the Canadian daylights out of these pictures.
But as everybody EVERYBODY who reviews it is going to say, these little inserts — Deadpool kidnapping and reading the story to the adult (and funny) Fred Savage in bed on his childhood “Princess Bride” bedroom set — was never going to be anything other than a cute added feature for home DVD release.
The inserts are almost all funny, but they stop the picture dead in its tracks. Repeatedly. They ruin the flow, such as it was, and cleaning up the language and throwing alternate jokes (you can see, when Reynolds isn’t in the character mask, him mouthing “the f-word” and other profanities when we’re hearing “hell” overdubbed) doesn’t improve the viewing experience.
Maybe as a drinking game. Which is again, for home video viewers.
I’m going to keep this short as I’ve already reviewed (and liked) “Deadpool 2.” But as I am the professional in the (screening) room — I took notes. So, a few Dead/Kid “Princess” highlights, if you please.
Savage: “You KIDNAPPED me?”
Dead: “I call it unsolicited LOCATION enhancement!”
You’ve seen the “Yeah, but it’s not REALLY Marvel — Marvel licensed by Fox” joke. Which leads into the Nickelback vs. the Beatles riff that so tickled the Internet.
There’s funny deconstruction of the Marvel “multiverse” obsession, much of it provided by Savage (who holds his own with Reynolds, no mean feat). The “lazy writing” riffs that were already in the movie are expounded upon, especially the idea of “reducing the (love interest) to simple (formulaic comic book movie) plot devices.”
There’s a profane chorus singing a profane ode to the character Juggernaut in the third act, which I don’t think was in the original version of the film.
They give Deadpool control of the “bleep” button, because Savage is inclined to go over their “f-bomb” limit, thanks to being kidnapped, duct-taped to a kids’ bed and all.
“EASY there, Sugar Mouth! The only F-word we’re using around here is…FRED Savage!”
The framing device makes the whole thing play like a testier “Mystery Science Theater 3000” take on the movie.
Which is fine. For an added feature on your BluRay disc.
But if you want to bring the drunken party with your friends to the theater (Fudge Cancer gets a portion of the proceeds), be sure to pick a multiplex that serves alcohol. And designate a driver. Uber’s a business model that could crash and leave you stranded just as you’re exploiting the sucker-driver you’ve summoned to take you home.
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Fred Savage, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin, Zazie Beetz, Leslie Uggams
Credits: Directed by David Leitch, script by Rhett Reese, Paul Wurnick and Ryan Reynolds. A Fox/Marvel release.
Running time: 1:59
It’s a conundrum faced on many a political talking heads show.
How do you fight Islamic extremism without violence? How do you have a debate about a faith whose adherents have historically used it for violence (not that they were the only ones) when those adherents are inclined to trot out a “fatwa” or death threat to any “apostate” criticizing it?
“Islam and the Future of Tolerance” is a documentary about the ways debates, collaborations and friendship between a British born former Islamic extremist and an outspoken American atheist may be reshaping the rigid polarization this argument has settled into.
It’s a chatty, thoughtful and hopeful film featuring lots of experts, and centered on two extremely articulate “foes” arguing, thinking and paving the new middle ground upon the fraught intellectual quicksand this conflict has been trapped in forever.
Self-described British-born former Islamic extremist and author Maajid Nawaz and neuroscientist, philosopher and atheist Sam Harris had a testy first meeting in 2010, were chatting like respectful colleagues by 2014 and then produced the book that this documentary is based on and takes its title from — “Islam and the Future of Tolerance.”
The film profiles each man via interviews, clips of their various TV and public speaking appearances and shows how each came to the place where he could listen to the other, hear him out and find common cause — or at least directions for their dialogue to progress that wouldn’t end with them pummeling one another.
Nawaz, a polished public speaker since his days as an activist running for student body president at university and recruiting for Hizb Ut-Tahrir, a caliphate-reviving Islamist organization active worldwide, insists that Islam’s interpretation has been “hijacked by the Bin Ladens of this world,” and advocates debate and breaking “this blasphemy taboo…this idea that people don’t have the right to criticize our faith just like we criticize everything else.”
Harris, already a published author (“The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Search for Reason”) arguing against supernaturalism and religion in general, introduced himself to Nawaz after an Australian debate with “You have the hardest job in the room…Your job is to PRETEND Islam is a religion of peace, when in fact’s it’s not.”
He wasn’t done.
“Is this pretense the remedy, for you? Do you feel if you pretend this enough, that this will be the solution, this will be what modernizes Islam?”
They did not come to blows, though eyewitnesses in the film suggest it was within the realm of possibility.
As Harris says “We live in perpetual choice between conversation and violence,” and Nawaz insists that there is a way for “Islam to reform and adapt to the modern age,” the conversation begins.
An image of a man walking a tightrope accompanies these tentative first steps (a long 2014 recorded phone conversation is part of this process), and they seem to agree that “texts do not speak for themselves” and that “Islam is not Islamists” and “Islamists are a tiny minority” in a religion that yes, has a seriously conservative and intolerant streak towards women, gay rights and other religions built into it.
Nawaz tells a short version of his life story — growing up in Essex, encountering bigotry and outright “Paki bashing” from an early age, radicalized, recruiting for the group he joined far and wide.
On 9/11, he was in Egypt on such a recruiting trip. Within days, he was imprisoned with other jihadists and members of other religious groups. During his four years in jail, the fact that Amnesty International labeled him “a prisoner of conscience” and took up his cause moved him.
In earlier days, he would use the Left’s knee-jerk defense of “tolerance” refusing to consider the extremism that was spreading, with Islam, worldwide, against it.
He echoes Kruschev’s “We will bury you” when he remembers “We would exploit the multi-culturalist tendencies of the left,” free speech “above all,” and use it to make their mark in the West.
He orchestrated a takeover of student government in college, published inflammatory leaflets and made outrageous, sexist women-oppressing declarations. His bodyguard on campus murdered a non-Muslim Nigerian with a machete.
But it took prison for him to see the error of his ways.
Harris is seen bickering with actor Ben Affleck on TV’s “Politically Incorrect” about the violent history, dogma and interpretation of Islam, and recalls the heat he took, among atheists, liberals and leftists, for singling out Islam for special abuse in his speeches and appearances.
Activist author Aayan Hirsi Ali (“Infidel,””Heretic: Why Islam Needs Reformation Now”) chews out Nawaz in a debate about whether the Koran, the Prophet or today’s clerics are the ones who have rendered Islam a violent menace to world peace and civilization itself. Just getting him to admit that “menace” would be a start, she says.
“The sooner you admit that, the sooner I can get rid of my bodyguard.”
Nawaz and Harris unwind the broad spectrum of opinion, devotion and fanaticism within the Muslim world by imagining the layers of concentric circles, starting with the tiny fraction of “jihadists,” working through levels of Islamic conservatism towards the more liberal elements of Islamic society which might be open to “reform.”
Yasmine Mohammed, author of “From Al-Qaeda to Atheism” marvels at the ways this can “build the nuance in the debate” and “stop that polarization” that keeps the opposing sides so far apart.
Ali Rizvi, author of “The Atheist Muslim,” spreads the two thinker’s gospel –“Respect the right of people to believe what they want to believe, but that doesn’t mean we respect the beliefs themselves.”
It’s all a plot, of course, which all these mentions of “Bible Belt” conservatives in America not being that different from the intolerant but not radicalized conservatives of international Islam, buttresses.
They’re suggesting that secularism is the planet’s only hope, that atheists are leading the way.
That won’t play in a lot of places, any more than “Islam and the Search for Tolerance” will play on Christian TV or Fox News in the US.
But co-directors Desh Amila and Jay Shapiro have dangled a little hope in front of us all, presenting a furious, ancient schism and debate often contested with violence as something civilized people can hash out with conversation, ideas and reason.
They’ve made a talkative film in which the very act of talking about this subject is a first tiny victory.
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Cast: Maajid Nawaz, Sam Harris
Credits: Directed by Desh Amila and Jay Shapiro. An Orchard release.
Running time: 1:26
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