The year of “Captain Marvel” and “Birds of Prey” begins with “Dark Phoenix,” a new X-Men feature which brings back the non-Wolverine/Fassbender-McAvoy-J. Lawrence cast for a Fox payday and a fresh start.
Sophie Turner’s Jean Gray, who turns bad badder baddest as “Dark Phoenix.”
Just in time for Valentine’s Day.
Vanessa Grasse stars as a young woman who cannot escape her horrific past in “Open 24 Hours.”
Making quite the career for herself, covered in blood (“Leatherface”).
This just played at Fantastic Fest. Looks visceral.
Think of “Bleach” as the Harry Potter of manga, the epic Japanese illustrated books (comics) that inspire many an anime outing.
It’s a fantastical struggle between good and many faces of evil waged by teenagers who could hold second jobs as models on Instagram idols.
And boy, do the Japanese have down Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” down cold.
Consider — a little boy and his mother are walking home through the rain. Ichigo takes her hand and says “I’ll protect you.” Then he breaks free, runs ahead to offer him umbrella to a strange little girl standing beside a lake. Mom dies, and the boy carries the guilt with him the rest of his life.
In Karakura Town, a fictive present day of strange sinkholes and mysterious calamities is just everyday life for the school kids, including pop idol hunky Ichigo (Sôta Fukushi), an androgynous dreamboat with flaming hair and a special power.
He can see ghosts. Disrespect a roadside shrine for, say, a little boy who died after being hit by a car, and you have to answer to Ichigo. Bullies kowtow before his mad martial arts skillz.
“Don’t hang around here,” he lectures the child only he can see. “Go to heaven.”
That sort of thing will get you noticed by the supernatural powers that be. When his family is menaced by this giant birdlike masked monster, he’s gutsy enough to fight to rescue his sister.
But it is this samurai-clad badass named Rukia (Hana Sugisaki) who saves the day. She is handy with a sword and quick to wield whatever it takes to hold a fellow teenager’s attention.
“BINDING SPELL!” she shouts (in Japanese, with English subtitles). He’s tied up with strands of psychotronic electricity to hold him still while she explains she is a “Soul Reaper.” What attacked him and his family was a Hollow. He can fight the beast all he wants, “but only a Soul Reaper can destroy a Hollow.”
There’s this Grand Fisher of the Hollows who threatens humanity, this race of wiped-out spirit warriors called Quincy (M.E.?) and a power struggle within the Soul Reapers about the rules and what not.
Which Rukia flouts as she passes her powers on to Ichigo. she will train him, use this “Ghost” style bit of shoving to bring out his inner warrior — and use pitching machines to train his reflexes.
The kid gets a REALLY big sword in the bargain.
It’s all cheesy, good-natured fun — even the occasional impaling. The Hollows, who like The Grinch have this big hole where their hearts should be (Awwww) are fanciful creations, animals in nature Kabuki-converted into monsters — tentacles, spiders with spear-pointed legs, etc.
There is noble sacrifice and second chances to be the hero mixed in with epic swordfights, colorful settings and like any good Godzilla movie — a lot of destruction of private property.
Director Shinsuke Sato of “The Library Wars” movies (got your attention there) ladles out effects with care, giving us an action fantasy that tosses cars and buses around, turns swordfighters into twirling tops and uh, uses canned smoke when needed.
It’s not to be taken seriously, though movies like this one can make for an amusing window into the soul of a culture.
Which is to say, I’m not familiar with the bats of Japan, but I know they must have them. Every now and then they give the world something that can only be described as “bat-s— crazy.” Like “Bleach.”
MPAA Rating: unrated
Cast: Sôta Fukushi, Miyavi, Hana Sugisaki,
Credits:Directed by Shinsuke Sato script by Daisuke Habara, base on the manga by Tite Kubo. A Warner Brothers/Netflix release.
Running time: 1:48
October 1, Universal is putting Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy’s Oscar hopes in front of the fans, as they host nationwide “preview” screenings of “First Man,” the Neil Armstrong/Apollo picture.
Here’s where it is happening. No, I didn’t alphabetize the list, Universal took a stab at that.
Markets that will host the special FIRST MAN screenings on October 1 include Phoenix, AZ; Orange County, CA; Palm Desert, CA; Riverside, CA; Sacramento, CA; San Diego, CA; San Francisco, CA; Simi Valley, CA; Ventura County, CA; Denver, CO; Hartford, CT; Washington, D.C.; Ft. Myers, FL; Miami, FL; Orlando, FL; Tampa, FL; West Palm Beach, FL; Atlanta, GA; Chicago, IL; Indianapolis, IN; Baltimore, MD; Boston, MA; Detroit, MI; Minneapolis, MN; Kansas City, MO; St. Louis, MO; Las Vegas, NV; Albuquerque, NM; Buffalo, NY; New York, NY; Charlotte, NC; Raleigh, NC; Cleveland, OH; Cincinnati, OH; Columbus, OH; Oklahoma City, OK; Toronto, ON; Portland, OR; Philadelphia, PA; Pittsburg, PA; Nashville, TN; Austin TX; Dallas, TX; Houston, TX; San Antonio, TX; Salt Lake City, UT; Norfolk, VA; Seattle, WA; and Milwaukee, WI.
The showtimes, theaters and RSVP forms for getting in the assorted cities is accessible here.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead made a magnificent drunk in “Smashed,” so it should be no surprise that she kills as a stand-up comic in “All About Nina.”
Drunken/druggy, needy and emotionally-crippled comics are a cultural cliche, like critics “in it for the hate.” And Winstead makes the most of her best big screen role since “Smashed,” one that builds of her formidable “Fargo” turn. She plays Nina Geld, a veteran stand-up hoping, at last, to land that big break “and not screw it up.”
Her material is killer, and let’s give a round of applause to writer-director Eva Vives for that. And Winstead, as Nina, plays it with the confidence of a queen bee who knows she stands out in a male-dominated field because she’s not just raw and funny, she’s beautiful.
How raw? Her act is blue and sex-heavy and her menstruating routine references it happening “right now” and dives into “Saving Private Ryan” comparisons.
How beautiful? She can sidle up to any bar in New York and makes her interest known — “Hey, wanna buy me a drink?” She’s just like she comes off on stage — direct, not interested in “dating.” Sexual.
How damaged? She throws up the moment she’s offstage, has screwed up her other big chances by screwing anything that moves — the doorman at the venue, anybody. Well, not the even more grizzled stand-up Mike (Jay Mohr). She has her standards.
Her latest bimbo bar pick-up meets the guy she’s been trying not to see any more (Chace Crawford) — at her apartment.
“He’s a cop, so yeah, he hits me.”
He’s also married with kids, so maybe a change of scene, maybe trying LA again, hoping for a Comedy Prime TV showcase — every comic’s dream.
Vives, whose biggest previous credit was writing the story of “Raising Victor Vargas,” stumbles into assorted Angelino cliches as Nina gets to play the jaded, superior New Yorker mocking the “feel your energy” writer/crystals-consulting screwball who hosts her (Kate del Castillo, quite funny).
And Nina also meets a guy she “won’t have sex with,” a “nice guy” (she thinks), down to Earth and all that. Common brings an easy charm to Rafe, a contractor curious enough to see “which is the real you,” Nina’s blunt, bluff and funny stage persona, or the brittle and equally blunt, but vulnerable and prone to drunken lash-outs woman she is without a microphone. Rafe’s background has its messiness, too.
Nothing in “All About Nina” is all that surprising. They just handed out a bunch of Emmys to TV’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” after all. But this detour into relationship land is least surprising of all.
As the scenes on stage, in the clubs, bantering and competing with the other women in her field for that “one spot” a comedy network has set aside for a “girl comic, “crackle with showbiz energy and “Punchline/Comedian” bite, the lovey-dovey stuff tends to drag the movie to a halt.
If Ms. Vives can write that well about comedy and create an act with this much pop, how can she not see that the love affair isn’t what the movie is about? Common is rarely this at home in a part, but less of him might’ve let this movie reach the realm of something special. Sex scenes, lovers’ quarrels and tender dates stop the picture. Leaning into a feminine sensibility works against “All About Nina.”
Scenes with her very pregnant workaholic agent (Angelique Cabral, alternately no-nonsense and nurturing) , her equally distracted mother (Camryn Manheim), other comics and even a buttoned-down network chief (Beau Bridges) have more substance.
Winstead/Nina in that world is fascinating — talking through new material in her apartment, naked, dismissing the boys of her profession, cutthroat with the other “girl comics.” When “All About Nina” drifts away from that, so does our interest.
MPAA Rating: R for strong sexual content and language throughout, some nudity and brief drug use
Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Common, Camryn Manheim, Chace Crawford, Jay Mohr, Clea Duvall, Kate DelCastillo, Mindy Sterling
Credits: Written and directed by Eva Vives. An Orchard release.
Running time: 1:40
A zombie end-times musical?
Already fanboy endorsed at South by Southwest and Fantastic Fest.
But they’re soulless zombies themselves, on occasion. Lemmings, actually, and they do love them some hot starlets singing about zombies. So we’ll see about that.
It looks quite mad, I’ll give’em that.
“Anna and the Apocalypse” opens in early November in the UK, late November in the US
Kevin Hart giveth and Kevin Hart taketh away in “Night School.”
He never seems more generous than when he’s stepping back, taking on the Ice Cube role in “Ride Along,” reacting and playing the straight man for Tiffany Haddish and especially Romany Malco.
And he never seems smaller than when the star and producer insists this interminable, only occasionally tolerable farce about “second chances” goes on and on past its climax to give his character a gratuitous prologue and epilogue to complete his “character arc.”
It isn’t necessary. And it doesn’t help.
Hart mugs and riffs and tries to wring a giggle out of the five-handed script that still needed work. Scenes go on past their payoff, gags are flogged to death after the punch line. Haddish hurts herself attempting to share the heavy lifting. When you’re repeating your catch phrase from “Girls Trip,” you know girlfriend has run through her repertoire.
“Booty hole!”
Teddy Walters (Hart) ends up in “Night School” because he didn’t finish high school. His no-nonsense dad (Keith David, hilariously profane) knew he was in trouble before Teddy blew the proficiency test required for graduation.
“I’m gonna succeed in the SCHOOL OF LIFE!” Teddy declares, storming out.
And he does. Selling is his calling, and he’s cock of the walk at Atlanta’s Joe’s BBQ City. He’s willing to be called “My own little Gary Coleman” if it means the owner leaves the running of the business to him when he retires.
He’s driving a Porsche and dating WAY out of his league and height (Megalyn Echikunwoke). Then he screws it all up.
He can join his high school buddy (Ben Schwartz) in financial planning (stock and annuities) if he can just swing a GED. He’ll just sweet-talk/sell himself to the principal at his old high school…
No dice. The “smart kid” he hated (Taran Killam) is now principal, and he’s “a principal with principles!” And that mouthy woman he bickered with in traffic, the one who called him “a burnt leprechaun?” She’s Carrie (Haddish), the night school teacher.
“No short cuts!”
Thus is Teddy with his collection of learning disorders thrust into a class with a Mexican waiter he got fired (Al Madrigal, flirting with stereotyping), a Molly-moving punk (Anne Winters), a dimwitted mover (Rob Riggles), an inmate in prison (Jacob Batalon) taking the class via Skype, a downtrodden but “blessed” housewife (Mary Lynn Rajskub) and a bottling plant layoff who came to realize “The Terminator” wasn’t just a movie, “it was PROPHECY!”
Jalen (Malco, of “Weeds” and “The 40 Year Old Virgin”) declares “the revolution will NOT be roboticized!” And every damn line out of his mouth is funny. Malco all but steals the picture, giving advice — “If you’re lying WITH her don’t lie TO her” — making even the lamest running gag catch-phrase funny.
“THAT’s what’s up.”
Romany Malco crushes it.
The best efforts of the rest of the cast don’t add up to more than a random good joke here — teacher telling Ms. “Blessed,” “Aww, look at you, all cute and makin’ America ‘Great Again.'” — and Hart sight gags. Teddy has to wear a chicken costume “marketing” a Christian Fried Chicken joint’s menu to passing traffic — “It’s chicken from THE LORD!”
It’s probably not worth going after this movie for Teacher Haddish’s solution to Teddy’s dyslexia and dyscalculia (inability to comprehend math). She takes him into the MMA hexagon at a local gym, quizzes him and screams “FOCUS” as she pummels him every time he gives the wrong answer.
I don’t think that medical or school board approved.
But Haddish’s profane high school teacher who butchers the Queen’s English is something of a stretch from the start. It’s a make-or-break autumn for her, with three movies coming out. Maybe that’s why she’s run out of fresh material already. I kept seeing the late LaWanda Page of “Sanford & Son,” in her increasingly broad, desperately lowbrow shtick this time out.
It’s Hart’s party, though, and even if the strain and effort shows, he works up a sweat to give the people what we want – making face and overreaching for much of “Night School’s” nearly-two hours.
But the funniest single moment might be a busted take. The Christian Chicken crew is holding hands for their AM prayer, and Teddy twitches and twists and kvetches about how tightly the little old lady cook is holding his. Look at the extra playing the cook. She’s fighting a losing battle with cracking up.
If only we could share her joy.
MPAA Rating:PG – 13 for crude and sexual content throughout, language, some drug references and violence
Cast: Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish, Keith David, Taran Killum, Anne Winters, Romany Malco, Rob Riggles
Credits:Directed by Malcolm D. Lee, script by Kevin Hart, Harry Ratchford, Joey Wells, Nicholas Stoller, John Hamburg . A Universal release.
Running time: 1:51
Two striking things stand out about the meticulously realized 19th century in Craig William Macneill’s film, “Lizzie,” about the infamous Lizzie Borden ax murders in Fall River, Massachusetts.
One is the surreal quiet that a world before telephones, electronic gadgets and non-stop media. Even without the distractions, family communication or any communication at all could be a strained, tricky thing.
And the other detail is the presence of axes. In a world where wood was still the main heating source and where home butchering of chickens was the norm, every house had axes everywhere.
The recent book, “The Man from the Train” investigated a possible late 19th century serial killer who generally did his victims in with an ax, and chose to storm into houses near train stations.
But even without that probable murder’s total, ax murders were far from a rare thing, even before Lizzie Borden allegedly “took an ax and gave her Mother” you-know-the-rest.
Macneill (“The Boy” was his) working from a Bryce Kass script, gives us tame-until-it-is-shocking film, glacially slow even as it makes that fateful turn we all know is coming. The Borden House is a seemingly serene setting fraught with tensions unseen and rarely expressed. The upper class Bordens, in this telling, are a family with secrets, motives and deep-seeded grudges.
And then a new maid (Kristen Stewart) shows up. Poor Bridget, Irish and labeled “Maggie” by the Irish-hating lady of the house (Fiona Shaw) has no idea what she’s let herself in for.
Father (Jamey Sheridan) is married to his second wife, a wealthy real estate speculator with a stern way with his two spinster daughters. Emma (Kim Dickens) stoically bears it. Lizzie (Chlöe Sevigny) doesn’t.
Father lectures her on attending the theater by herself, her “wanton displays” being “a public spectacle” (Lizzie has seizures) are “not helping your cause.” She is drifting past marriage age, and cavalier about it, further infuriating him.
But maybe she just hasn’t met Miss Right.
She asks for Bridget’s “proper name,” wonders if she can read and proceeds to take an interest in teaching her. Lizzie can hold her own with the sniping socialites she meets in public, and wears her father down in the simpler battle of wills.
Her bigger concern is what happens when he’s gone — not just his estate, but her own status. In a creaky, dead-silent wood frame house, there are no real secrets. The word “institutionalization” pops up.
And creepy Uncle John (Denis OHare, vulpine and stubbly) is sticking his nose in things, like Dad’s will.
The script frames this story as a flashback, telling us what happened in the months leading up to August 4, 1892. Macneill slow-walks us toward Lizzie’s date with destiny, and the speculative love affair that the film suggests was part of the day’s intrigues.
Stewart keeps Bridget passive, averting her eyes, always conscious of her place. It’s a compact performance, loneliness and powerlessness (Old Man Borden is a creeper) playing into her connection with Lizzie.
Sheridan is properly repressed, cruel and imperious, the “man in his castle” who probably has made many enemies with his real-estate dealings — somebody is sending threatening notes — “Your sin will kill you…The end is near.”
Sevigny’s Borden is altogether too colorless here to be a dazzling villain or victim, depending on how you want to interpret events. Her repressed defiance is more passive than steely and doesn’t completely come off, as Lizzie seems everything her doctor, father, stepmother and uncle believe — naive, highly strung, overconfident of her own cunning. She can be bullied, but she is a poor judge of when she can’t. She stages a stupidly obvious burglary at one point, desperate to secure funds to escape being put away.
Decades of horror cinema behind us, and the nature of the crime — here given a lurid twist by following one theory of how no blood was on the alleged killer’s clothes — still has the power to stun in their violence.
Macneill may impress us with his patience, the chilling quiet of it all, the occasional furtive camera placement capturing the beginnings of a lifeboat romance, two lost souls struggling to hang on to each other in a hell house in Fall River.
Mainly though, he underwhelms. The casting seems right, the pacing washes out the overbearing nature of these lives and waters down the motivations this script seems intent on providing.
It’s a hard sell, that “they have it coming.” Because as Eastwood’s soul-scorched bad man Bill Munny in taught us in “Unforgiven,” “We ALL do.” But nobody short of the most inhuman of human monsters deserved this.
MPAA Rating: R for violence and grisly images, nudity, a scene of sexuality and some language
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Chlöe Sevigny, Fiona Shaw, Jamey Sheridan, Kim Dickens
Credits:Directed by Craig William Macneill , script by Bryce Kass. A Roadside Attractions release.
Running time: 1:43
Great to see Danny T get a Western.
Always good to see Lou Diamond Phillips and Jason Patric on the screen.
The actual “stars,” including director Scott Martin, are younger and far less known. Christoph Sanders has TV’s “Last Man Standing” in his credits. Clint Hummel’s got production designer credits.
Martin? Mostly producing credits, the odd B-movie (“Battle Force”). Doesn’t mean “Big Kill” can’t be a good one. Does suggest maybe it won’t be.
“55 Steps” almost certainly started life with “Oscar bait” in its pitch. Getting a digital release ahead of theatrical kind of tosses that out the window.
Helena Bonham Carter as “we’ve never seen her for,” a mental patient whose test case results in rights for others, with two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank (HBC should have one by now) as the lawyer who fought for her in court.
Bille August directed this Oct./Nov. release.
Boy, LOOK at the way they bury Jeffrey Tambor in this trailer.
Movie Nation 