Movie Nation

Gabriel Byrne is the bank boss/heavy. Gad Elmaleh is the guy with idealism. Bit of a hard sell, in a trailer. The legend Costa-Gavras directed it. “Capital” opens Nov. 1.

There’s little justice in “12 Years a Slave.” And there’s not a hint of “Django Unchained” revenge in it, no scenes where a born-free New Yorker — kidnapped and enslaved — shoots, slices or strangles his tormentors.
The film’s star says that  fits the man whose autobiography it was based on — Solomon Northup. Revenge just wasn’t in his makeup.
“There’s something about his humanity, his lack of hatred even as he’s writing about these awful things that happen to him,” says Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays him in the new film. “He was a person with a profound love of life. Not in a skippy, happy way. He just loved life in a deep, reflective way. That shimmers through the entire autobiography. That was something I tried to add to the script in my interpretation of him.”
A searing, unblinking portrayal of one literate, 19th century black man’s experience of a life in bondage, “12 Years a Slave” is already an Oscar favorite with critics falling all over themselves to sing its praises.
“Epic,” says Time magazine. “A great film,” adds Time Out New York. “Believe the Oscar buzz,” raves the Toronto Star.
It took two Brits — the London born son of Nigerian parents (Ejiofor) and a director whose parents were West Indian (Steve McQueen) to make a definitive movie about slavery in America.
“I’m at the heart of the story, as are so many people all over the world,” says McQueen, whose movies (“Hunger” about an IRA prisoner’s hunger strike, and “Shame,” about sexual addiction) do not shy away from the ugly. “My parents are from Granada, where Malcolm X’s mother was born. And my mother was born in Trinidad, where Stokely Carmichael, who coined the phrase ‘Black Power,” is from.
“Slavery wasn’t just about shipping black slaves to North America. My ancestors were dropped off along the way to America. It was a global trade, with repercussions and former slaves settling all around the world. Part of that diaspora is my story.”
Ejiofor, 36, would seem even further removed from the story they’re telling. A London native, an acclaimed stage actor and a rising film star, with “Kinky Boots,” “Children of Men” and “2012” among his credits, he was nevertheless drawn to the story McQueen felt compelled to tell.
“I think every African person is connected to slavery,” Ejiofor says. “My family comes from the southeast of Nigeria, the Igbo  Tribe. I was in Nigeria, shooting another film before making ’12 Years a Slave.’ The last stop I made before heading out was to the slavery museum in Calabar. You see the roll call of people, hundreds of thousands of them, taken out of Calabar. The next day, I took a flight to Louisiana, the same place many of them were sent. It was eerie, in a way. I’ve always felt deeply connected to what happened there, and the lives they led in America.”
Northup was a married, father of two and a Saratoga, New York musician. He was tricked into taking a gig in Washington D.C. and kidnapped in 1841. Working with history meant both director and star would have to go deep into research to make the film. Despite all that’s been written about slavery over the decades, each found himself taken aback by some corner of the institution that isn’t common knowledge.
“We always think of slavery as this amorphous experience,” Ejiofor says. “You don’t think of specifics, little freedoms. The difficulty of obtaining a pen and paper, how a bar of soap can have life or death implications, the distinction between slaves who cut timber and cut sugar cane and those who picked cotton. Those industries could create completely different lives on their respective plantations. The violence of one wouldn’t necessarily be present on the other.”
McQueen, 43, was surprised by “how the boundaries of slavery were sort of constantly moving. For example, Mrs. Shaw (played by Alfre Woodard in the film). She’s married to a white slave owner. She started out a slave, and now she owns slaves. There were many slaves in the South, or former slaves, who owned slaves. They were able, on occasion, to buy back their relatives. The relationships were far murkier than simple black and white. I had no idea of the complexity, the things that were allowed here, not allowed there, the ways the rules bent this way and that.”
And most surprising of all to the director?
“How could I not have heard of this book? NO ONE had heard of it! My wife found it. To me, this is a story to rival and compare to Anne Frank. His story became the story I had to tell.”
Ejiofor sees “12 Years a Slave” as a chance to not merely revisit the horrors of the past, but to mark how the world has changed. In an age when everything from personal liberty to instant communication, the rule of law to freedom of movement is taken for granted, here’s a new appreciation of how hopeless people trapped in slavery could feel and how extraordinary they had to be to survive it.
“Northup’s book is one of those  great historical documents that take you deep inside the slave experience,” Ejiofor says. “His voice is crying out from the past. It’s a gift from him to us, in the modern world, to open these discussions of what it was really like.”

(Roger Moore’s review of “12 Years a Slave” is here.)

“Captain Phillips” has its doubters. But they are few. Great performances, a compelling and largely true story, with surprising bits of it that we haven’t heard before. The great Paul Greengrass directed, Hanks has an Oscar nomination sewed up, this is the MUST see movie of this weekend.

“Machete Kills” is more grind-housie than the first film and isn’t as bad as I’d feared. The studio, Open Road, earned a bit of ill will for it by hiding it until Wednesday night. Not very good, but I’ve seen worse. Danny Trejo is like the big, leather-clad hulk standing in the middle of it all as stuff blows up and actual acting (he’s a stiff, a sweetheart, but a stiff) happens around him. Reviews reflect the fact that Robert Rodriguez has worn the joke out.

“Romeo & Juliet” is a lovely looking, beautifully set take on the Shakespeare play with a Juliet who generates zero heat. The pretty boy Romeo could be straight or gay, but stirring his loins over this too-young, cute but no hottie Juliet was too much to ask. Poor reviews for this one. Any “R&J” where Friar Lawrence (Paul Giamatti) steals the show is a failure.

“All the Boys Love Mandy Lane” is an Amber Heard horror picture made before she was a star, by the director who went on to do “The Wackness” and “Warm Bodies.” It sat on the shelf for seven years. Now it’s coming out, with Amber in “Machete” and with her name supposedly able to sell tickets. Not terrible enough to abandon, but not that good, either.

There’s also this little film that director George Tillman Jr. did, “The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete.” Sort of a more precious “Precious,” two inner city kids struggling to survive when their hooker/junky moms abandon them. Reasonably compelling, some decent performances, a lot of very good actors in the supporting cast — Jennifer Hudson, Anthony Mackie and Jeffrey Wright (Jordin Sparks was sort of written into it, pointlessly). Good to very good reviews, overall, for this one.

“The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete” is a rough and rough around the edges tale of children growing up on the mean streets of the wrong side of Brooklyn. It’s a coming of age story of a self-absorbed, downtrodden punk with a dream who learns about the love that comes with responsibility.
“Mister” Winfield (Skylan Brooks) is a movie buff and a skate boarder, but not an easy kid to like. Sullen, foul-mouthed and scrawny, he must be the smallest kid in his class. He’s just failed eighth grade, and his response is to lash out at the one caring teacher who gave him the deciding F.
Mister has issues. And he’s got real problems. That graffiti scrawled on the bathroom wall — “For a gud time, call Misters Mom”? It’s accurate. She (Jennifer Hudson) is a junky and a hooker who can’t keep him fed, spending her hustled money on drugs, tattoos and clothes.
She shoots up right in front of him, and right in front of Pete (Ethan Dizon) the son of a fellow hooker whom she’s babysitting. Mister doesn’t care for Pete, feuds with the local Pakistani mini-mart owner and scowls in hatred at mom’s pimp, played by Anthony Mackie in a Mohawk and King Nebuchadnezzar beard.
When mom is busted, Mister resolves to keep himself and Pete fed and afloat until she gets out. Then, he’ll go to a kid actor casting call where fame, fortune and Beverly Hills are his for the taking.
“We can’t tell anybody,” he says. “We’re on our own.”
Director George Tillman Jr. (“Notorious,” “Soul Food”) and screenwriter Michael Starrbury hurl every temptation and impediment in these kids’ paths that you can think of — petty theft and illness, burglary and starvation. The story staggers from bleakness to bleakness as Mister struggles to keep both of them out of the dreaded children’s detention center.
The best scenes feature young Skylan Brooks (a TV regular, and he was in “Our Family Wedding”) swapping bitter lines with the Oscar winner, Hudson, or Mackie or Jeffrey Wright, playing a panhandler the kid also feuds with.  Jordin Sparks plays a character set up as some sort of guardian angel who pops up, from time to time, to rescue Mister.
It’s a film as untidy as its title — with slow transitions separating the winning moments of tension, drama or just kids being kids. Brooks, whose character memorizes lines from “Trading Places” and “Fargo,” has more to play and is a far better actor than young Mr. Dizon, and that imbalance works against the film.
But as “inevitable” as this tale of woe sometimes feels, there’s just enough novelty in the script to let us see what all these very good supporting players saw in it. And that makes us root against the “Defeat of Mister & Pete,” which is all this modest film asks for.

MPAA Rating: R for language, some drug use and sexual content
Cast: Skylan Brooks, Ethan Dizon, Jennifer Hudson,  Jeffrey Wright, Anthony Mackie, Jordin Sparks. 
Credits: Directed by George Tillman Jr., written by Michael Starrbury. A Lionsgate release. 
Running time: 1:46

It’s heartening to see how gorgeous the Italian cities of Verona and Mantua still are in the new “Romeo & Juliet,” so well-preserved that the Immortal Bard himself would recognize them — if he actually traveled through Europe.
Those stunning locations — Renaissance ballrooms and porticoes, squares, bridges, gardens and parlors —  almost make up for the rather disastrous casting at the heart of this production. How 17 year -ld Hailee Steinfeld managed to look younger and more romantically innocent than she did in “True Grit”, which filmed four years ago, is anybody’s guess.
Almost as big a mystery as to why they cast this overmatched actress as the teen who inspires this immortal line — “I never knew true beauty until this night.” Romeo (Douglas Booth) doesn’t get out much. Apparently.
The callow boy has tossed aside his infatuation for one forbidden girl from the Capulet clan for another, and as cruel as it is say so, Steinfeld doesn’t justify it. She rushes her lines, kisses like a rank amateur (which kind of fits, she’s supposed to be quite young) and tries not to shiver in all the unheated rooms where we see her breath as she wonders “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?”
Booth is the real beauty here, a model-pretty toy boy who doesn’t have a lot of camera charisma, either. The two of them make for a bland, lines-mumbling couple in an otherwise lovely and lively take on the classic play.
Paul Giamatti steals the picture as the helpful Friar Lawrence, trying not to stand in the way of love, aware of how funny he is when he tries to fight the hormones that draw the Montague boy to the Capulet girl.
“I pray you were not playing in Satan’s game,” he purrs. Not until they’re married, anyway.
Damien Lewis manages some fury and fun as Juliet’s father, and Natasha McElhone is his too-sexy wife, too understanding of Juliet’s reluctance to enter into an arranged marriage at such an early age.
Ed Westwick and Christian Cooke are matched hotheads Tybalt and Mercutio, practically foaming at the mouth to take the Capulet-Montague feud, the thing that keeps our young couple apart, to a new, bloodier level.
Julian Fellowes (“Downton Abbey”) did this adaptation, with Italian director Carlo Carlei, best known for the dead-guy-comes-back-as-a-dog dramedy “Fluke” ,utterly in over his head as director. It’s not that the movie isn’t great looking, with stunning sets, sword fights and a nice serving of horse play. But getting his baby-faced actors comfortable or compelling was beyond him.
So as much as every generation deserves it’s own “Romeo & Juliet,” this latest one does nothing to make anyone older than Hailee Steinfeld forget the heat of Baz Lurhmann’s far sexier, noisier and passionate modern dress version of 1996, where Claire Danes and Leo DiCaprio completely convinced us that they knew how to “play Satan’s game.” And how.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some violence and thematic elements
Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, Douglas Booth, Paul Giamatti, Damien Lewis, Stellan Skarsgard. 
Credits: Directed by Carlo Carlei, written by Julian Fellowes, based on the play by William Shakespeare. A Relativity release. 
Running time: 1:58