I wonder if we’ll see this Chinese WWII picture in theaters in the US, or if we’ll be waiting on Netflix/VOD?
Bruce Willis still commands box office name recognition, especially overseas. Ye Liu, Nicholas Tse and Sun Ma are the big names (locally) on “The Bombing.”
This is a Chinese tale of invasion, stoic defense and “Unbreakable Spirit” in the face of Japanese bombing in the Japanese onslaught. It opens in August in China.
Long before I moved to Florida, I knew there was a lot more to the place than Disney World, Miami Beach, Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, thanks to this Errol Morris documentary.
“Vernon, Florida” was the deadpan follow-up to the equally deadpan “Gates of Heaven,” about the then-rare phenomenon of pet cemeteries.
Here was “Cracker” Florida, far from the interstates, the beaches, theme parks and “progress.” This little panhandle berg and its quirky characters were immortalized, Yankee transplants talking about living cheap, a turkey-hunting/turkey-obsessed hunter all dolled up in camo 25 years before “Duck Dynasty” cemented its position along America’s rural/urban political divide.
There’s the critter-coddler with his gopher tortoise and opossum expertise, the “red wiggler, naht-crawler” worm farmer and the “historian” who knows little or nothing about a town he must have moved to upon retiring.
“Vernon” started life as a genuine piece of documentary journalism, about the town’s grimly comical connection to insurance scams that involved people injuring themselves, losing limbs for high-dollar settlements. The film “Nub City” was abandoned, according to legend, after death threats made to the filmmaker.
This was decades before “Redneck Welfare,” Social Security disability scams in rural America, became commonplace.
What Morris turned out instead was a meditation on small-town eccentricity, nothing more exciting than the old mosquito smoker truck working the few streets, the tedium of police work calling in to get the correct time (“That’s a big 10-4, appreciate it.”) or the mundane work of mounting a tire.
The music is the rhythm of country speech, “Kilt my first turkey when I was 10,” seeing “the perfection of God Himself” in a swamp and “Ever see a man’s brains?” The faces are of old white men, a couple of younger ones (and one old woman), barely a full set of teeth on any of them.
The film’s on-the-cusp-of-patronizing tone is “therefore” coupled to the racism and sexism of omission. If it isn’t aging well, those are the reasons. It feels less a portrait than a parody, all these years later.
I have to say, though, my experience visiting, reporting on and interviewing folks in small towns in Florida far-removed from the interstate hasn’t exactly given the lie to the Errol Morris caricature. After cable TV, the drug boom, the real estate busts and booms, there are still little backwater villages just like this one.
Morris, a onetime private investigator, popularized documentaries where the subjects weren’t just observed, cinema verite style (“Grey Gardens,’ etc), they were questioned by an unseen, unheard (in most of his films) interviewer.
Morris went on to win long-overdue recognition from the Academy, making “The Unknown Known,” “The Thin Blue Line” and “The Fog of War,” among many other theatrical films and TV documentaries.
“Vernon, Florida” inspired generations of documentary filmmakers, a classic example of finding the unusual, the comical and anachronistic right under your nose, if you can stop looking down your nose for it.
MPAA Rating: unrated
Cast: Albert Bitterling, Roscoe Collins, George Harris, Snake Reynolds
Credits:Directed by Errol Morris. A WNET/Netflix release.
Running time: :55
Combative, prolific, a one-man argument on subjects beyond number, but specifically the seriousness and importance of science fiction, Harlan Ellison went as gently as was possible for him into that eternal good night. He was 84.
People always introduced him via his TV credits, “The Outer Limits,” “Twilight Zone,” “Star Trek’s” “City on the Edge of Forever,” stories that became “The Terminator” and inspired generations of sci-fi writers, screenwriters and filmmakers (and inspired plagiarism in the case of “Terminator“).
But he cranked out stories and books by the truckload. For decades, he toured sci-fi conventions, colleges and university writers conferences, showing off his pugnacious wit, his militant Jewishness, his outspoken atheism and his height. He traveled with a stunning, artsy and short personal hand-carved lectern that folded into a briefcase, which he’d assemble while regaling the audience with tales of Robin Williams, random encounters, arguments with fans disapproving of his language, “Trek” nerds, the works.
That’s how I encountered him. In the wintry March of 1984, the University of North Dakota Writer’s Conference was wittily built around “1984,” an edition of this long-running gathering of readers, writers and would-be writers that focused on science fiction. Robert Silverberg, Ray Bradbury, Ted and Jane Sturgeon and Ellison were among the luminaries gathered for readings, workshops and panel discussions.
I was in grad school and working at the university’s NPR radio station and in charge of live and taped coverage of the conference. So I had to get Ellison’s signature on a broadcast permission contract and I chatted with him briefly before he started (he was paranoid about copyrights, the product of ugly prior experiences.).
He starts “the show,” does his usual dynamite 45 minutes to a huge, packed house (North Dakota in late winter has few diversions save for hockey). The climax to the evening, “a brand new story, written, in my room at the Super 8 where the university has GRACIOUSLY put me up,” was a tale he titled “Laugh Track.”
But before Ellison begins, he turns to the broadcast team (I had a student assistant with me), makes us stand up, and vow to not release this story for broadcast until it’s been published. A long, profane, “My lawyer used to be with Irgun” threats, hilarious stuff. The audience giggles along.
He finishes comically humiliating us — lots of laughs — and turns on his heels, when I decide this would be a funny moment to bait Harlan Ellison. “SO HELP ME GOD,” I shout at the diminutive, and again “outspoken atheist.”
Roars of laughter. He spins and roars back, “So help me GOD?” Does five furiously funny minutes about religion, encounters with the religious, and finally gets to “Laugh Track.” Eventually. I got a big laugh, his was epic and went on and on.
I taped the whole thing. I still have a cassette copy which I have listened to many times over the years.
He finishes the night to a standing ovation, the crowd thins out, autographing books, etc., and as I am tearing down the radio gear (two 65 pound Otari reel-to-reel machines), he comes over, shakes my hand profusely for the joke set-up, and we chat for a minute or two — about North Dakota, North Dakotans never flushing public toilets, small towns, etc. He gets my name, laughs at it, and uses it back to me the way “How to Win Friends and Influence People” teaches us.
I took the title of his collection, “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” to heart that night, got out of radio and into print and later online journalism. As it says at the top of this page, right hand corner, “Informed criticism, against the grain — Since 1984.”
A few years later, I stumble across an Ellison collection, one of many, in a used book store, and buy it. There’s “Laugh Track,” a tale of a woman who died, but whose distinctive laugh had been preserved at a 1950s live TV recording and re-used on into eternity on TV “sweetening,” laughs added to the soundtracks of bad ”60s and 70s sitcoms. Her ghost is in the machine, and her nephew, the narrator, tracks that ghost down for a chat about TV, eternal life, etc.
But there are two references in the printed version of “Laugh Track” that are not on my “1984” recording of this story’s first ever public appearance. One is a running gag about Pekin, North Dakota. He had a Nodak gag, but changed the name of the town to something funnier pre-publication.
And the other are derisive multiple references to the acting and celebrity of “Roger Moore,” still James Bond at the time the story was written, also the name of the guy who jokingly baited him into going off on religion in the town where the story was written. Again, not in the taped “original.”
Cue “The Twilight Zone” theme, if you wish. I know I did when I read that.
RIP, Harlan Ellison. One of kind. And a great talent we can say with certitude is NOT looking down on us from heaven.
Hyped at Sundance, probably unreleasable (theatrically), weird and gory, at the far end of exotic and odd, “Mandy” folds a Nicolas Cage gonzo turn into a Panos Cosmotos fever dream.
“Mandy” also stars the Great Bill Duke, and Linus Roache and will get minimal theatrical release and VOD treatment on Sept. 18.
There’s a moment, early in the tense French divorce drama “Custody,” when you feel sorry for Antoine, the husband.
He’s sitting in mediation, a lawyer at his side, making his case, a judge hearing it, and his ex-wife and her attorney arguing against joint custody.
Everybody but Antoine is a woman. Is the deck stacked against this bearish father of two? Simple casting (the burly Denis Ménocet plays him) underscores our expectations. We hear a statement from his 11 year-old son. Julien has his mother, his older sister, his grandparents and “lots of friends” where he’s moved.
He doesn’t want to see “that man,” uses words like “harass,” when he talks about how Antoine treats the wife he’s separated from, and finishes with “He wants to hurt her.”
It sounds coached, and the judge says so. Perhaps that guides her hand as she makes a simple ruling ensuring the father’s rights. Perhaps she should have known better.
Perhaps the French should learn that well-worn American phrase, “restraining order.”
“Custody” is a thriller built upon on-the-nose casting. There is little in Antoine that suggests how shocked and enraged his lawyer seems over “the violent, threatening boor portrayed here (in French, with English subtitles).” We believe it. And not just because of his appearance.
We can see it in wife Miriam’s eyes, with actress Léa Drucker conveying, at every turn, the mortal fear of saying or doing something to set him. We see it in son Julien (Thomas Gloria), his eyes-averting terror and resignation getting in the car with Antoine after the joint custody begins.
We sense it even in the older daughter (Mathilde Auneveux), an eighteen year old music student who desperately craves and devours her boyfriend, anything with the promise of an escape from this hell. The fact that her father disapproves and has threatened them adds mortal danger to their affair. The passion may be there, but Antoine has destroyed the joy in their first love and left one and all broken, quivering in fear at his manipulations, stalking and bullying.
His own parents seem to value the grandchildren more than him and have no hope of correcting the volcanic temper we’ve seen flashes of from them.
Writer-director Xavier Legrand expands on is Oscar-nominated short “Just Before Losing Everything” (“Avant que de tout perdre”) for a quiet, grimly realistic thriller that begins with a lot of talk and civilized debate and descends into living with fear pointing to a moment when everybody’s nightmare comes true.
Ménochet manages the script’s odd passive aggressive moment chillingly. But he was cast for brute menace, and he conveys that in every scene. We fear for Miriam and especially Julien, who might just be any kid trapped in the middle of his parents’ divorce, save for Antoine’s blunt threats.
She’s secretly found a new apartment? She might be seeing somebody else? She’s letting their daughter continue to see her boyfriend? She won’t let him have her phone number? She lies every time he calls, about Julien’s “stomach ache” — any excuse the two of them can think up.
“She’ll pay for that, big time.”
Ménochet’s interrogations of his son don’t go as far as water-boarding, but they are torture to sit through. His silent brooding, driving and badgering the kid for an address, a phone number, build the movie’s menace, weekend by weekend.
If there’s an overbearing flaw to “Custody,” it is its lack of surprises. We sense what this guy is capable of. We’ve heard it described. The only question is when and where.
To Legrand’s credit, he conjures suspense out of the horrific reality of it all. Even if we think we’ve gotten ahead of this tale, muttering “foreshadowing” or “here it is” at every possible point our fears could be realized, Legrand teases and taunts us, right down to the ironic choice of song daughter Josephine sings at her birthday party.
We remember Tina Turner’s personal history. Does Josephine?
(See the trailer for the short film “Avant que de tout perdre” here)
MPAA Rating: unrated, adult themes
Cast: Léa Drucker, Denis Ménochet, Thomas Gloria
Credits: Written and directed by Xavier Legrand. A Kino Lorber release.
Running time: 1:33
C
A record breaking summer at the box office slacks off a tad this weekend with “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” plunging over 60%, even though it might stake claim to another $59 million, Deadline.com claims. The Friday to Friday drop was 70%, so we’ll see.
“Incredibles 2” may hit $45+, with Saturday being the big day for families with kids to show up.
“Sicario: Day of the Soldado” did a good Thursday and a very healthy Friday to take the lead among new releases this weekend. Maybe as much as $19 million in the coffers by midnight Sunday.
I was sure “Uncle Drew” would hit that family friendly sweetspot and at least manage Madea money, with the African American audience if no one else. Word or mouth might help it have a big Sat., but the crossover audience isn’t turning out (no white actors, save for Nick Kroll, the villain), so $16 is where things stand at the moment.
“Leave No Trace” is riding very good reviews to a strong but not remotely dazzling $18K per screen average in a couple of cities. Botched marketing, as usual, from that studio. Another good movie nobody will see.
A wide release of a Bollywood title, “Sanju,” has shoved “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” out of the top ten.
This trailer is as self-explanatory as any in theaters these days. “The King of Thieves” opens Sept. 18…in the U.K.
A London rom-com about a sad woman (Rose Byrne) in a dull relationship (With Chris O’Dowd? How is this possible?) who then meets, via a flaming review of her sig other’s FAVORITE indie rock icon (Ethan Hawke) said icon and falls for him.
Looks cute, and as rom-coms that work are as rare as moon rocks, we will keep an eye out for “Juliet Naked” Aug 18.
Julia is just a sex kitten pickpocket, working the lurid clubs and working “it” for a few shekels a night, before heading home to her industrial dump of a loft.
Then she’s abducted, trussed up like Hannibal Lecter at his scariest, another blonde bound for torture porn town, right?
Operating theater, classical quartets playing in the background, brain blasts that force memories out. In “Tau,” beware the creep with the cattle prod.
This minimalist, digital-effects-packed thriller hurles us and Julia into a “Saw” knockoff, where “Jigsaw” is a homicidal robotic house filled with drones, a security robot and oter things that won’t just keep her there, they — “he,” the computer system named “Tau” with the voice of newly-crowned Oscar winner Gary Oldman, or the combat robot Ares — could tear her apart.
Julia’s not the only one gagged and bound here, in this futuretech prison with expressionist lighting, electrified cages, some sort of implant thing on her neck. Who took her, for what reason and what purpose?
She’s tough and resourceful, and quick to come up with a plan. Improvise. Pilfer. And my personal favorite, set something — EVERYthing — on fire.
“Stay away from the gas line or we’ll all go up in flames.”
The thing about “mysterious” abduction tales is that they always work best when you cling to the mystery. Remember “Old Boy,” “10 Cloverfield Lane,” “Split,” the endless “Saw” films, track down Noomi Rapace in “Rupture.” Not knowing who or what has taken the heroine (usually) connects us with their plight, narrows our focus to what they can see, what their panicked priorities are.
Who gives a damn about the kidnapper? Even Jigsaw? A little information goes a long way, even in films in which the ticking clock of this or that chance of escape and thus show us James McAvoy and his alternate personalities chatting with a shrink as his prisoners scramble to get out.
But “Tau” shows us its bespectacled billionaire (Ed Skrein) holding people in his lair, far too early. And even gives us a pedestrian “The rich will kill us if it pays dividends for them” motivation.”
“Tests,” you say? Ones that don’t involve chainsaws?
“Tau” transforms into an over-designed cat-and-mouse game, war of wills. We’ve seen people die, the villain is supposedly super-smart. How can she leverage anything into a chance at escape, a negotiated release, or whatever? Will developing empathy with Tau save her?
Skrein has the right, emotionally-lacking chiseled villain look and air, but inspires zero fear.
Monroe, gripping in the higher-stakes, panic-stricken and sexually charged “It Follows,” is a bland heroine, physically engaged with the role but rarely more than a pretty presence at its center. She seems tougher in the beginning, and more emotionally disengaged from the sci-fi/AI cliches that pass for conservations with the machine.
“What is…a person? Am I…a person? I have more questions.”
Jokes — if you can call them that — disintegrate into the ether.
Tau, visualized s a gigantic, all-sensing/all-seeing talking triangle, gives daily updates for “Subject 3” and her tasks and the “project deadline,” and don’t add urgency.
Still, the production design — digital backdrops augmenting vast living rooms and a library, even — is impressive. It’s rare that production design ever rescues a movie from a script that’s gone down the rabbit hole of ridiculous that “Tau” does.
MPAA Rating: R for some violence and language
Cast: Maika Monroe, Ed Skrein, Gary Oldman
Credits:Directed by Federico D’Alessandro , script by Noga Landau. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:37
Mob mugs are the same the world over. Overdressing, standing around, eating Italian food, bickering about it.
Even in Israel.
“Maktub” is a dark Israeli comedy about sadistic thugs with style, “Master Chef” fans, the foodies Steve and Chuma. They remember their Torah, they expect respect and prompt return on their “investments,” and they know what they like at their favorite Italian eatery. It is “their” restaurant, no matter what the new owner/chef says.
It takes a savage beating to get that point across. Which is where they draw the line.
“Kill him? What are we, animals?”
But “collecting” has suave Steve (Hanan Savyon) feeling unfulfilled. Chuma (Guy Amir), the muscle, is troubled. A fish has fallen from the sky, “a bad sign.”
Every stop it seems, entails a meal. And criticism of that meal. You do NOT want these two at your table. They’ve seen “Goodfellas.” They know ow to make that pause after telling a joke so chilling you might wet your pants.
But surviving a bomb blast as Chuma hellbent on going to the Wailing Wall to give thanks, and has them both feeling they’ve been spared for a reason. The boss (Abraham Celektar) may not understand. Because, you know, that money they were collecting? Maybe it blew up in the blast, maybe they kept it.
And maybe those prayers on signed notes tucked in the cracks of the Wailing Wall can be answered. By two mobsters.
“Don’t freak out. We’re here to help.”
Guy needs a raise to save his marriage? Make his boss an offer he can’t refuse, in Hebrew with English subtitles.
The sexes are separated at The Wailing Wall, so dressing in drag is de rigueur if you’re stealing women’s prayers.
“What? Even the pretty ones have troubles, too!”
Can’t afford a Bar Mitvah for your bullied musician son? Go to The Wailing Wall, leave a prayer. Fuggedaboutit. In Hebrew, with English subtitles.
So what we’re dealing with here is “Letters to God,” with punching and threatening and dangling people out high rise windows. “Letters to God” might’ve worked with this twist.
“Maktub” — the title means “letter” in Uzbek — has complications, characters considering fleeing to America, mob entanglements and romantic ones. It starts out plenty tough, goes utterly soft and then rediscovers the bloody for the third act.
And it would be too much for these devout Jews to do something about the militarized Apartheid state they live in where terrorist bombings are a protest of last resort. I suppose.
But I laughed more than once, and grinned at a couple of adorable surprise twists. Definitely Netflixable.
MPAA Rating: TV-MA
Cast: Guy Amir, Hanan Savyon, Gal Amatai
Credits:Directed by Odez Raz, script by Hanan Savyon, Guy Amir. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:45
Movie Nation 