Movie Nation

The great Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón has made a long, sprawling and semi-autobiographical movie memoir for Netflix, filmed in black and white and titled “Roma” in homage to Federico Fellini, the Italian master of the personal, the wry and the whimsical.

But if you’ve followed Cuarón from “Y Tu Mamá También” through “Children of Men,” “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and “Gravity,” you know “whimsy” and “wry” aren’t of interest to him. He substitutes layer upon layer of detail and dramatic incidents, large and small in this long, intimate and slow reverie.

In filtering Mexican history of the early 1970s through the lens of his own upbringing, he doesn’t find much that’s funny or satiric in that time, a country roiled by the aftershocks of the ’60s, an upper class family disintegrating, a big house and comfy lifestyle teetering into decline, all of it held together by an impoverished Mixtecan maid and nanny, Cleo.

A native of Oaxaca, Cleo (Yalitza Aparcio) is short, with Indian features. Always smiling, she sings the three little boys and little girl of the house awake in the morning, shepherds the big dog most everybody else ignores and keeps him from making a break for it whenever the gate opens and takes the abuse from the mistress of the house (Marina de Tavira) and her surgeon husband (Fernando Grediaga) about the piles and piles of dog feces littering the courtyard that serves as their carport.

The house, from its cluttered kids’ rooms to crumb-littered tables, is getting away from her and from her friend and confidante, Adela (Nancy García García) the cook.

Señor Antonio (Grediaga) grouses about the poop, and keeps arguing with his wife about this “conference” he is going to in Canada. That’s for the kids. He’s got a mistress and he’s leaving them.

Outside their gates, marching bands of teen scouts can’t gloss over a country on the brink of chaos. Students are taking to the streets, and all the matriarch (Verónica García) and others in the house can do is pray (in Spanish with English subtitles) “that this time the Army doesn’t shoot any of them.”

Mom is desperate for distractions, pushing the kids whom she has not told Daddy’s left into writing him letters “in Canada” to “please come home.” A holiday trip and family reunion in the country is chaotic, fun and dramatic in the under-supervised carelessness young and old display in a shooting party and the forest fire the careless use of fireworks sets off.

But Cleo has her own life, beyond light-hearted sprints to the market and the odd moment of pleasure the unruly, demanding children give her. She is easily seduced by the man-child Fermín (Jorge Antonio Guerrero), who impresses her with his martial arts sword-training bravado, nude and using a shower curtain rod for his sword. He’s cheap and fanatical about more than just martial arts, it will turn out.

Cleo? She finds herself pregnant in the middle of all this chaos, her responsibilities growing as every whim of Señora Sofia (Tavira) means more work and challenges for her.

Cuarón loses himself in recreating this world of vintage Fiats, Fords, VW Beetles and street vendors in a washed-out (video transfer?), limited contrast black and white.

The whistle of the traveling knife-sharpener, the bark of hawkers of candy, toys, clothes and tamales whirls through the soundtrack in ways that will give your Surround Sound a workout.

The roar of a protest brutally broken up by police, producing a riot, and the thunder of the Gulf of Mexico beaches near Veracruz are contrasted with the quiet banality of tedious, hard work — scrubbing poop-stained floors, hand-washing clothes on the roof, waking sleeping children or reining in an unruly dog.

Cuarón finds cruel fun at the expense of the cluelessly cruel Fermín, and laughs in the willfully bad driving of Sra. Sofia — who abuses cars as the man who paid for them is not there to stop her.

But as “Roma” slowly washes over us, you can’t help but notice how every scene — many of them long-takes — carries on long past its payoff, how a 135 minute movie tends to overwhelm a story with just half a dozen dramatic moments in it — bracing though they may be — and other drama left unseen, off screen.

It’s an indulgent film, almost by definition. The “Roma” title and Fellini connection park it in a ’60s-70s cinema of “La Dolce Vita” and “Swept Away,” “Last Year at Marienbad” and “The Go Between” — languorous films whose auteurs refused to cut for clarity and dramatic impetus.

“Roma” is arty and beautiful, but also a bit like sitting on a sofa while Cuarón flips through family photo albums, never narrating or over-explaining any single moment or image.

It’s perfect for Netflix (Dec. 14) as it all but invites you to pause it, or at times, just leave the room for a snack and come back in. It moves that slowly.

MPAA Rating:R for graphic nudity, some disturbing images, and language

Cast:Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey, Carlos Peralta, Marco Graf

Credits:Written and directed by Alfonso Cuaraon. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:15

It’s a story as old as, well, shovels.

Wherever there’s something valuable under the ground, somebody will figure out a way to dig it up. Prospectors will find it, miners will get at it. And wherever there are prospectors, there are claim jumpers.

That’s the nugget of a plot of “Prospect,” a lean sci-fi adventure built on the same premise as “Outland” and “Avatar” and every science fiction TV show or movie that parks miners (“Dune,” “Star Trek,” “Star Wars”) in space. Because as long as humans are around, we’re going to need stuff dug up for us. And we’re  going to be greedy about it.

But co-writer/directors Christopher Caldwell and Zeek Earl, basing this on a short film they made a few years back, have surrounded that thin thruline with mountains of detail, from the space suits, spaceships, props and tech that all look as if they could have come off the shelf of Lowes (or FutureLowes), to the J-Pop of the future, future shorthand, slang and jargon.

They’ve loaded a lot onto a movie that didn’t need it, but the co-directors of “In the Pines” never spoil this teen-girl-holds-her-own-against-cutthroats thriller.

Jay Duplass and Sophie Thatcher (TV’s “Chicago Med”) are  a father and daughter out for a quick score in “The Green,” on  “The Fringe.” They’ve gambled all on a pod drop flight onto this forested, verdant but toxic moon where some subterranean critter is an alien oyster that produces its own version of pearls.

The “gems” look like amber sealed in ambergris.  Harvesting it is tricky, as like everything else on this planet, the gall bladders this stuff is found in are so acidic that the wrong cut in removing it ruins the gem.

Damon (Duplass, usually a writer/director but last seen as an actor in “The Oath”) is teaching Cee (Thatcher) the ropes. She’s a tough but timorous teen, inclined to play it safe, make the quick trip in and out taking just enough to clear their debts.

Dad is looking for “The Queen’s Lair,” a treasure trove of the gems. The promise of that is all he has to offer to save his life when claim jumpers led by Ezra (Pedro Pascal of “Narcos” and “Game of Thrones”) get the jump on him.

Ezra is a chatterbox straight out of a Charles Portis (“True Grit”) novel, trafficking in the arcane futuristic argot that shows off his polysyllabic propensity and faux genteel affected affection for the sound of his own voice.

“I am not fond of intrigue,” he purrs, when Damon tries to bargain out of his gun-point (guns are called “throwers”) fix. “I elect to believe you more out of desire than common sense.”

But risks are taken by those with nothing to lose, and as Ezra is fond of putting it, “Words and metal flew.” He finds himself the last murderer standing in a Mexican Deep Space Standoff with Cee.

They need each other to get home, or at least into orbit for pickup.

“Prospect” plays, first scene to last, like a Western, with our unhappily-linked couple facing a harsh environment, little hope of rescue and peril from ex-miners who have Gone Native (Andre Royo), soldiers with an agenda of their own and a seething mistrust that no charming word out of Ezra’s duplicitous mouth can soften Cee toward him.

“You killed my father!”

“That is…technically true.”

There’s horse trading, without horses, shootouts with a sadistic Russian mercenary woman, fortunes grabbed and dropped and a little field surgery when injuries take their toll.

Western or sci-fi Western, “Prospect” never sets its sights higher than violent, quasi-poetic B-movie and as such does not disappoint.

Thatcher is properly plucky, and Pascal makes a firm bid for “The Next Michael Shannon” status — a villain with genuine malice in his heart, menace in his eyes and a veritable dictionary in his mouth.

MPAA Rating: R (violence)

Cast: Sophie Thatcher, Pedro Pascal, Jay Duplass, Andre Royo, Anwan Glover

Credits: Written and directed by Christopher Caldwell, Zeek Earl. A Gunpowder & Sky release.

Running time: 1:38

First off, though, they REALLY needed a more original title than “Zoo.” Seriously.

Check out IMDb’s listings for that title. 

Anyway, after a little hunting, the proper link to the film this trailer comes from is here. 

It played the right festival (“Sitges”) but this English language Danish farce has no firm release date. Yet. Zombie movies always get released.

Filmed not too far from me, in the swamps and C-movie horror haven of Mount Dora, Florida. And Oakland Park and Miami.

My first thought on glancing at the trailer was, “Is this Australia?” Odd accents abound in “Crocodylus.”

January 1, the world sees for itself.

But yeah, it’s “Fellini-esque,” or promises to be. Plainly the inspiration for it, and thus its title, comes from Federico. 

This black and white personal epic (growing up in Mexico City and environs in the ’70s) looks expensive, but it wasn’t. “Roma” is just the sort of high minded “art” content Netflix is smart spending its money on.

They may get more first weekend traffic from their half-hearted sci-fi or horror, but the genres where there is a niche they can fill — indie dramas and romances, rom-coms — are what I hope they’ll throw money at.

Alfonso Cuaron is the most prestigious “brand name” director they’ve rewarded so far. This looks wonderful. Comes to Netflix next month, and it has awards season pretensions, too.

Unlike that Coen Brothers “Buster Scruggs” bust.

In the documentary “Every Act of Life,” the playwright Terrence McNally admits “my work never gave me pleasure before the last couple of years.”

To which any fan of the theater might spit up her chablis, sputter in his espresso.

A 60 year veteran of the Broadway stage, four time Tony winner, creator of “Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune,””Master Class,” “The Ritz,” “Corpus Christi,” “Love! Valour! Compassion!” and adapter of musicals from “Ragtime” to “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” and the man isn’t enjoying his creations?

Oh. That’s for the rest of us, I guess.

“Every Act of Life” is a sweet spirited genuflection before the master, a man universally adored by those interviewed by filmmaker Jeff Kaufman, quick to admit his failures and those times actors such as Nathan Lane, Christine Baranski, Chita Rivera or John Glover saved his bacon.

The film is a brisk walk-through of McNally’s life, skipping much but getting at what we have to regard as “the important stuff.” He was born in St. Petersburg, Fla. (not mentioned) but crew up in a “sh—y town,” Corpus Christi, Texas, which gave its name to one of his most controversial plays.

His dad was a Schlitz beer distributor, and “there wasn’t a day when my parents weren’t drunk.” Younger brother Peter is here to verify that miserable, abusive childhood.

But that one special teacher, Mrs. Maurine McElroy, whom he has thanked in awards ceremonies, “was the first person who really got me, my humor, got what I’m smart about…and what I’m not smart at.”

She put him on the path that sent him to New York (which he and his Broadway loving parents had visited), Columbia University and A Life in the Theater.

His first serious boyfriend was none other than “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” era Edward Albee, a combative affair that saw Albee hit his peak and McNally get a foot in the door. His 1964 Broadway debut, the critically dismissed “And Things that Go Bump in the Night,” was the first of many failures. But having a famous playwright boyfriend gets you more at-bats.

Maybe he was ahead of his time, but it wasn’t until his plays took on more overtly gay subtexts and subjects that he became the legend he is today. That took years and years.

“Frankie and Johnny” was an early success. Others followed, with the odd dud blended in. Sometimes, multiple duds.

He “gets at the core of the human condition,” and in many different ways, from different angles, says “Master Class” star Audra McDonald.

“He’s had his triumphs, and his huge disappointments,” Baranski (“Lips Together, Teeth Apart”) notes. “That’s a test of character.”

She tested it further, offered a role in his “Lips Together,” when she told him what she thought of the show. He fixed it and it became a triumph.

McNally persevered because through it all, as Nathan Lane (“Love! Valour! Compassion!”) points out, “nobody loves the theater like Terrence.”

“It reinvents itself every night,” McNally says with a smile. Lane helped him cut “Love! Valour!” into a stageable play, after first trying to get absurdly long early drafts up on their feet.

Being the son of alcoholics weighed on him and crippled relationships and may have even hobbled his earliest Broadway shows. But when Angela Lansbury tells you to “sober up,” what Broadway baby could refuse?

McNally started out writing and mounting “operas in our family’s garage,” according to brother Peter. He developed a passion for hunting for “something beautiful and meaningful and putting it on stage.” And he launched some careers (Lane, McDonald) and revived others (Chita, Rita, etc. ).

It’s a celebratory film, plainly directed by a fan. Kaufman has docs on jazz musician Chick Webb and “The State of Marriage” was about the test case that pushed gay marriage into mainstream legal thought to his credit. He doesn’t press hard on the more intriguing corners of McNally’s personal story, and doesn’t really need to.

Because McNally, after cancer scares (He has the same amount of lung tissue as John Wayne did in his final years.), flops and epoch-defining hits, celebrated his 80th birthday Nov. 3, he’s due his accolades and the victory lap Kaufman’s documentary gives him.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Terrence McNally, Edie Falco, Nathan Lane, F. Murray Abraham, Lynn Ahrens, Jon Robin Baitz, Tyne Daley, Christine Baranski, Zoe Caldwell

Credits: Written and directed by Jeff Kaufman. An Orchard release.

Running time: 1:33

For the life of me, I don’t know why they bothered.

Sure, it’s got a stellar voice cast — Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett and Naomie Harris and Benedict Cumberbatch and Andy Serkis and Tom Hollander doing voices for all the digital talking animals.

But why remake this? Again?

You’ll be able to see “Mowgli” Dec. 7 (In theaters? Then streaming?).

Some good analysis/speculation here from Deadline.com on how Universal was able to get the word out on various platforms for “The Grinch.”

It leaves out the obvious, that generations have been aware of and connected to the character since childhood, starting with the book, utterly supplanted by the 1960s TV special, magnified by the 2000 Jim Carrey comedy.

But if marketing wants the credit for using a reliable brand, let’em have it. “The Grinch” is over $67 million for this, its opening weekend. A certified hit, and a big one. Not a great movie. Audiences, which were interested, inclined to love it and paid good money to see it, are only giving it a B Cinemascore. Audiences give everything “A” or “A+.” The dears.

“Overlord” was supposed to do $11-14 million and it will not even reach $10 million. Overpraised by fanboy critics, a middling mash-up script and low-heat cast and direction that leans heavily on dazzling digital effects and explosions recreating D-Day from the air, it’s not all that. And nobody is going to see it.

“The Girl in the Spider’s Web” has Claire Foy, and little else going for it. They’ve watered down the character (not her “queerness,” as some have suggested) and saddled her with a sloppy, chase-happy story that brings out the mother in Lisbeth Salander. It won’t achieve a $9 million opening and looks like a certified Sony bomb.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” experienced a 44% drop off from its opening weekend, $28-29 million. Not bad. It will clear $100 million, US, either tonight or by Monday.

And “The Hate U Give,” one of the best films currently in theaters, enjoys one last weekend in the Top 10, clearing the $26 million mark, over $30 by next weekend, when it will lose screens and fade away unless awards’ season revives it.

A little Bastardized Bard to start your day?

A lot of talent was drawn to this interesting idea in the “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead” vein.

“Star Wars” weak sister Daisy Ridley has the title role, as Prince Hamlet’s cruelly misused lady love “Ophelia.”

I like the idea behind this retelling of the tragedy of “The Melancholy Dane.””George MacKay is Hamlet, Clive Owen is Claudius and Naomi Watts is Gertrude, and Ridley gets to show us something more than the dainty English rose who’s supposed to be all tough and space-experienced in the J.J. Abrams “Star Wars” movies.

It began with a 2015 email from out of the blue to a reporter, Bastian Obermayer, with a newspaper in Munich, Germany.

The author, labeling her or himself “John Doe,” was “just a concerned citizen” seeing ” unbelievable amount of corruption” at this Panamanian law firm and promising a data dump to ensure this got “exposed” and reported.

It was the “world, hidden from most of us” detailing how “French Revolution level income inequality” was being perpetrated by the super rich preying on governments and “We the people” who make up those governments.

It became “the largest leak of secret documents in history,” millions of emails and PDFs detailing offshore tax avoidance, money laundering and criminality ranging from stashing cash for drug kingpins to tax dodging to the money laundering “investments” that get hotels built for a certain future American president.

Dummy corporations and shell companies attached to Syria’s dictator Assad, Saudi sheiks, President Sharif of Pakistan, Prime Minister Gunnlaugsson of Iceland, Putin and Trump, Lionel Messi and the FIFA officials who govern his sport were exposed.

“The Panama Papers,” as they were called, became a scandal unlike any other, global in scale, “revealing a hidden world” where human civilization’s wealthiest codified global income inequality through outright criminal acts, and colluding with other criminals.

Alex Winter’s documentary “The Panama Papers” tells the story of “How we got that story,” names names and gets into the fallout from this story, which wasn’t the easiest to sell to a planet that’s come to see “kleptocracy” as “the new normal.”

Leaders were impeached or resigned, others stonewalled or refused to release their tax returns, and reporters died — killed by the powerful and shady figures (and public ones) whom this story hurled into the spotlight.

The wealthy of 200 countries were tied, via some 11.5 million documents shared by this one anonymous “John Doe,” to the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, since closed, its leader imprisoned. It was a firm married to the mob and mobsters, where “their business was secrets,” a business supposedly incorruptible politicians (David Cameron) felt the need to hire to avoid taxes and launder investments from underworld figures (Donald J. Trump).

The original reporter, Obermayer, started to realize “Maybe it’s not a good idea that only I know.” When you’re reporting on the corruption of murderous Russians and Saudis, of South American drug lords, there’s safety in numbers. He and his newspaper drew in American news organizations, The Guardian newspaper in Britain and papers and reporters in most every country which had famous names locked in that cache of data — Malta and Spain, Iceland and Panama.

Winter, who has used his post “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” years to become a good documentary filmmaker and a sharp interviewer, built his movie on interviews with the reporters, lengthy quotes from “John Doe’s Manifesto,” the whistleblower’s reason for leaking the data (Elijah Wood reads that manifesto in voice-over), graphics and clips from the movie “Scarface,” which touched on how widespread money laundering — the practice of taking illegally-obtained drug or human trafficking, murder for hire, etc. cash, and getting it “cleaned” by pouring it, along with bribes, into allegedly legitimate businesses — is.

One good example, the ways Donald Trump finances hotels with his name on them. Here’s proof that one in Panama used money from unsavory underworld figures to finance and build it, the details of how Trump creates such deals with crooks the world over. The crooks overpay for those investments, and Team Trump gets to skim from that.

We see political leaders confronted and chased from office in some countries (Iceland, Britain, Brazil), hear about Leticia Montoya, a poor secretary with the law firm, who serves on the boards of 10000 paper corporations — not benefiting from this big con one cent herself.

Winter, heard asking smart, pointed questions off camera, celebrates the heroic journalists involved in this story, getting them to give mini-autobiographies before they show and tell how they, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, went through the papers and found the dirt that shook the world.

A couple of folks from McClatchy News Service, which I used to work for, talk about how hard it was to “sell this story to our company. Reporter Kevin Hall notes, “Who’s surprised that bad guys hide their money?”

Marissa Taylor, one of over 100 journalists worldwide involved in the expose, adds “Why are people going to care that the rich don’t pay their taxes and crooks are crooks?”

But they told the story anyway, and in much of the world, heads rolled and continue to roll. In America, we elected a kleptocrat president.

“This story revealed a whole hidden world. This was…the goods,” Taylor says.

Most disturbing of all are the investigative journalists who use the phrase, “state capture” in describing countries where vandal capitalism has put the crooks in charge. Malta, Iceland and Brazil are named, and then U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s sham of a confirmation hearing is repeated, his dodging of questions about sham corporations and tax avoidance and worse (Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is juxtapositioned with Mnuchin) suggesting that this has happened in the United States as well.

With Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, married into a Chinese oligarch family, covering the vast array of crimes and criminal appointments up, we are looking at “Trump cozying of to his fellow kleptocrats as a way of making this the new normal,” former Senate ethics lawyer and tax law specialist Jack Blum declares.

It’s all pretty distressing, and the fact that so many other scandals have chased this epic one off the front pages just adds to to helplessness such exposes cannot help but create. Winter has made an important film, but an exhausting and dispiriting one about a scandal 99% of the world should care about.

While American journalists haven’t been killed (save for one the Saudis murdered in Turkey), you really wonder if we will ever see a story like this brought to light again, and if the world’s embattled news organizations will ever have the resources to stay with this until “justice is done, though the heavens may fall.”

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Luke Harding, Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer, voiceover by Elijah Wood

Credits: Written and directed by Alex Winter. An Epix release.

Running time: 1:40