This comic novel adaptation, about an elderly couple who take an ancient RV from Massachusetts to Hemingway’s House down in Key West, may give dementia a “cute” veneer.
But when you’ve got Dame Helen Mirren and the durable Donald Sutherland behind the wheel, there’s the promise of something magical. Good to see the Oscar winner’s still tackling indie films. Good to see Sutherland survived “The Hunger Games” and is as game as ever.
The first images of “The Case for Pot” documentary “The Legend of 420” are a joke — World War II footage re-purposed as a narrator makes the case that Hitler lost the war in the haze of a a mellowing hashish addiction.
The second scene is a joke, too. We follow a “transporter” named Butterfly Jones as he hauls Hefty bags full of Humboldt County pot south to Los Angeles.
The rules of moving marijuana in a nation where not every state considers it legal?
“Have a buyer. Have a supplier. Don’t get popped.”
And how does one “not get popped?” “Don’t stand out,” he offers, donning a loud, striped poncho, fluffing his voluminous dreadlocks and hurtling down the highway in a late model Subaru with the “check engine” light glowing on the dash.
“Legend” may settle down into an assortment of “the thousands of uses” — medical and otherwise — of pot and hemp and tearful testimonials from users whose health medical marijuana has benefited (including rock star and cancer survivor Melissa Etheridge). But those serious notes are always followed by a laugh — stand-up comics doing “pot sets” at a San Francisco area club. And there’s humor even in its choice of (rare) contrary voices — comically shrill shills like Scott Chipman of something called “Citizens Against Legalization of Marijuana.”
Filmmaker/music biz insider Peter Spirer (the classic hip hop doc “Rhyme and Reason” was his) and his team interviewed everyone from Tommy Chong and Henry Rollins to NORML activists (National Organization for the Repeal of Marijuana Laws), High Times (a pot mag) employees and faculty at Oaksterdam U., the world’s first cannabis college — teaching how to grow it, how it may be used, etc., to a growing population of entrepreneurs breaking into the legal marijuana industry.
Cannabis-infused coffees and cannabis cuisine are explored, activists rattle off a few of the “400 maladies” pot usage can treat, a veterinarian marvels at how the active ingredient in hemp can be used in drugs to treat sick dogs (Canine cannabis!) without injurious side-effects, a Colorado legislator declares there’s no measurable downside to legalization and there’s brief discussion of America’s future as a Hemp Industrial Complex (it has many non medical or recreational uses, as a plant).
With rarely a discouraging word. The old straw man “gateway drug” is resurrected and swatted down, with ease. When several people say “Nobody ODs on pot,” or robs anyone to get that “next fix,” or sells his or her body on the street to afford an ounce or an eighth, it’s hard to argue that pot should be treated any differently than alcohol or cigarettes.
No, there are no real “experts” to talk about long-term use and its consequences — just jokes about users “forgetting to vote” when this comes up on the ballot in your state, or an un-ironic trip to a pot-friendly “art show” (think R. Crumb, only more pretentious).
Spirer & Co. may talk about “racist” drug laws and the ugly irony of a nation filled with people of color with police records relating to pot, while “the suits” (white folks with money) are the only ones getting finance to dive into the legal trade. The entire film is almost as white as the sheet one comic suggests pot-hating Attorney General Jeff Sessions wears in his off-duty hours.
Spirer must have lost the phone number of Pot’s Most Famous Musical Activist — Snoop Dogg.
And whitewashed or not, the entire affair is a piece of advocacy cinema, nothing more.
But that said, the documentary isn’t anything resembling an over-reach, trotting out stats, uses, compassionate arguments and “harmless” stances that have been around for decades, and never effectively refuted. It’s all as easy to swallow as a THC-infused brownie.
MPAA Rating: unrated, drug-use and profanity
Cast: Melissa Etheridge, Tommy Chong, Henry Rollins and Michael Des Barres
Credits: Directed by Peter Spirer, script by Andrews. An XLRator release.
Running Time: 1:27
So we won’t know — for sure, until the “actuals” are cooked (ahem) up by the studios, who actually won the last weekend of September box office sweepstakes, some time Monday afternoon.
The liar’s poker bluffs that’re come out today say that “It” did $17.3 million, “American Made” $17.01 million and “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” managed $17. That could change and be subject to a recount.
“American Made” underperformed, a tad, “Kingsman” fell off more than thought, “It” held up better than expected.
“Flatliners” the remake did only $6.7 million, a movie no doubt suppressed by cable repeats of the 1990 Kiefer/Julia Roberts version. Lack of star power deflated the new one, no doubt.
“Til Death Do US Part” and “A Question of Faith,” small studio wide (ish) releases flirted with the top ten.
The Watergate biography “Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the Whjte House” didn’t set the world on fire, weak reviews for Liam Neeson’s prestige pic and light turnout. The latest Pearl Jam doc did not bring out Cubs fans.
Another year, another over-long, obscure (and often as not, European) Palme D’Or winner at the Cannes Film Festival.
This year’s Palme picture is “The Square,” a two and a half hour darkly comic commentary on community, moral responsibility, class and the pretentiousness of modern art.
The latest from writer/director Ruben Ostlund, who created the masterly and more coherent “Force Majeure,” it plays like a performance art piece that outstays its welcome.
That’s what life must feel like for the film’s unheroic lead. Christian Nielsen (Claes Bang) is a hip, posh head of Stockholm’s X-Royal Museum, a modern art repository sitting on the cutting edge of world art culture.
Where else could you go for to see a blockbuster exhibition — “Mirrors & Piles of Gravel?”
They’re pushing hard to answer that eternal question of modern art — “If you place an object in a museum, does that make it art?”
Christian isn’t rattled when he has to explain himself and that credo to a comically underprepared TV reporter (Elizabeth Moss of “The Handmaid’s Tale”). She asks him just that one question.
He’s got to wonder what might be going on when he’s the victim of an elaborate pickpocket scam that features domestic melodrama, the threat of violence and a fellow “bystander” who enlists his help to intervene.
He’s already brushed past the panhandlers who want to know how little he’d pay “to save a human life.”
So it’s confirmed. No human kindness goes unpunished. Or maybe keeping the real world at arm’s length is why he’s been punished.
Something to chew on as the museum prepares to open an impossible-to-market conceptual piece, “The Square,” a four meter by four meter floor installation (bordered by a light strip) where inside it “is a sanctuary of trust and caring. Within it we all share equal rights and obligations.”
In a Sweden with insufferably rude immigrant panhandlers, where an artist’s Q & A is hysterically/horrifically interrupted by an alleged Tourette’s Syndrome sufferer that no one dares asks to leave, where avenging yourself on the petty criminals who picked your pocket is unheard of, where a glamorous gala’s performance art piece is a muscular brute (Terry Notary) aping a gorilla to such a degree he puts helpless art lovers in mortal peril, is there a line between tolerance and the intolerable?
Moss and Dominic West, as the artist whose Q & A is ruined by what could very well be a faker (Is it all just “performance art?”) get high billing, even though neither is in the movie more than two or three scenes.
Bang, largely unknown outside of Sweden, navigates a perilous world with a near-unflappable calm. But he can be flapped. His IT guy (Christopher Laesso) tracks his stolen phone, prompting a late night mail run — threatening notes left at every apartment in the building where the thieves must reside. Christian finds himself forced to do this dirty work by himself.
He’s faced with the consequences — a wrestling match over a used condom — of bedding a willing fan with a nasty edge and questionable motives.
And then there’s that exhibit that nobody could market, but willing Young Turks at their ad firm take a shot, with out-of-their-depth consequences.
Ostlund has Christian flip back and forth between English and Swedish at the oddest times. How’s he know if the street person he asks to watch his bags so he can hunt down his unruly, slipped out of sight teen/tween daughters speaks English?
The director makes pointed comments about “installation” art of the “Give me a break” variety. If a custodian “damages” piles of gravel, who will know?
It all adds up to rather less than the “meaning” loaded onto “The Square,” and its various subplots and digressions — Motorcycle hoodlums, anyone? — is as indulgent as any of the hooey he’s ridiculing in the museum.
Still, there’s a tone, an unsettling and rising sense of desperation in Christian that takes us along for the ride. I mean, who among us would dare cross Elizabeth Moss in a dander, or would be the first to ball up a fist when performance art gets out of hand?
MPAA Rating: R for language, some strong sexual content, and brief violence
Cast: Claes Bang, Elizabeth Miss, Dominic West. Terry Notary
Credits: Written and directed by Ruben Ostlund. A Magnolia release.
Running time: 2:25
Surprised Magnolia let this scene out of the bag, as it’s a highlight of “Lucky.” But if you’re determined to get filmgoers to hunt down a limited release film in the hopes of netting Harry an Oscar nomination, you do what you need to do.
See the film and this arrives at a most unexpected moment, to the delighted reaction of folks onscreen and off. It’s a little boy’s birthday party in the desert Southwest town where Lucky, a lonely creature of habit, lives. Enjoy.
Jason Isaacs dolled up as “Uncle Joe” Stalin, STEVE FREAKING BUSCEMI as Kruschev,” with Andrea Riseborough, Paddy Considine and MICHAEL PALIN — yes, I’m shouting — directed and co-written by the creator of “In the Loop” and “Alan Partridge,” how can this not be hilarious?
It opens in the UK next month, and in the US…soon.
Not a dazzling supporting cast. Kevin Connolly — yes THAT Kevin Connolly, of “Entourage,” directed it. But Travolta takes a big swing at the “Teflon Don” in this modestly-budgeted bio-thriller.
Not sure of the release date. Not sure if they are either. But John T and Kelly Preston and Stacy Keach are aiming high.
This weekend’s generous late-run predictions for Stephen King’s finally-fading “It,” and the horrid “Kingsman” sequel, turn out to have been wrong.
Projections that the non-branded true story comedy thriller “American Made” wouldn’t clear $20 were right on the mark. So Tom Cruise, wearing the best reviews he’s gotten since “Mission: Impossible,” still has a slim chance of claiming a box office win. But with all three of those titles lurking around the $16 million mark, it’s a win by default situation.
Fox Searchlight’s hilarious, uplifting and touching “Battle of the Sexes” charged the net and crashed the mid-ranks of the top ten, a healthy $3-4 million for a title with a more limited opening and more adult appeal.
Remaking “Flatliners” may pay off — if it makes some money overseas. The $20-30 million picture with no big-name stars is underperforming and won’t reach $6 million this weekend. Weak reviews won’t help it.
Spoiler alert. There is absolutely no reason — NONE — for casting Kiefer Sutherland in the remake of “Flatliners” if you’re not going to have him reprise his character from the first film.
He’s a totally new character, the head resident, the adult in the room at the Boston teaching hospital where this new crew of residents flirting with death. And the only reason to have him there, longish hair gone wholly grey, walking with a cane, is the lecture he’s honor bound to give this new quintet of risk-taking whippersnappers “flatlining” for science and an edge on their fellow med students, about “tempting fate” and “Youth is wasted on the young,” and “I KNOW what you’re doing, because…”
I can’t even remember if his character survived the 1990 film, but if he didn’t, why cast him at all?
Aside from that, this rebooted “Flatliners” starring five fresh and exceedingly pretty faces testing, pressuring and reviving each other after stopping each other’s hearts, isn’t half bad. It’s more of a straight spook-fest, a scary movie about the demons deep within our brains that our final moments of brain activity might bring to the fore.
A few hair-raising moments, here and there. A poignant scene or two. And there’s Diego Luna, swaggering in as the older student, the ex-paramedic voice of common sense, arguing against these “experiments” devised by the haunted star student, Courtney.
Ellen Page plays Courtney, who is introduced as she is cell-phone-distracted into the accident that killed her kid sister. Nine years later, she’s a promising doctor-in-training who interrogates any patient whose heart stops.
She wants to know “if you felt anything, you saw anything?”
She’s got to know. So she lures overwhelmed student Sophia (girl-next-door Kiersey Clemons) and on-the-make trust-fund playa Jamie (James Norton) into helping her kill herself.
Because they’re capable of bringing her back. Almost. Only the abrupt arrival of Ray (Luna) saves the day. And he’s followed by hyper-competitive Marlo (Nina Dobrev).
So they’ve all got a secret, one they can’t share with their teachers. But Courtney comes out of this near-death experience a tad manic, with an explosive improvement in memory. Yeah, it turns her into the bestest doctor-in-training ever. The other kids want them a piece of that.
Director Niels Arden Oplev (“Dead Man Down”) is more at home providing frights than building romance, empathy and motivation for the characters. Because as they, one-by-one, flatline, deep-seeded guilt comes to the fore. They experience a momentary afterlife where they’re confronted by those they’ve wronged.
That’s the downside. The upside is that they’re liberated from doubt, freed from foggy memories of their education, masters at diagnostics, healers on steroids.
“I’m JESUS,” Jamie crows. “Everyone I touch today I’m going to HEAL.”
If, that is, he makes it through the day.
The scary stuff is strictly standard issue frights — spectral visitors, nightmares mixed in with the heavenly visions of flying, or motorcycling through scenic Boston. Guilt, mixed with a more supernatural take on what’s going on than the first movie offered, is what this “Flatliners” is about. And that’s about it. Jokes don’t really land, characters don’t connect. The big romantic allure of the first film, which explained why the characters were willing to risk death, is missing.
As I said, it all adds up to “not half-bad,” with Page managing the emotional high point and Clemons and Norton delivering the near-laughs and Luna the sober man-of-science common sense.
Tricky thing about half-bad, though. That means, at its best, it’s only half good.
MPAA Rating: PG – 13 for violence and terror, sexual content, language, thematic material, and some drug references
Cast: Ellen Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, Kiersey Clemons, James Norton, Kiefer Sutherland
Credits:Directed by Niels Arden Oplev, script by Ben Ripley, based on a Peter Filardi story and earlier screenplay. A Sony/Columbia release.
Running time: 1:50
“American Made” is the best-reviewed Tom Cruise movie in ages, a crackling, witty drug trade docudrama about a hot shot pilot who gets himself in the middle of the Iran/Contra Scandal, and Reagan Administration extra-legal shenanigans that flooded the country with cocaine and illegal immigrants.
No, don’t expect a lot of ads for it on Fox News or The Blaze.
But it could in red states and blue, and knock that crappy English import “Kingsman” right off the top of the box office mountain. Or could it?
Box Office Mojo figures “It” has another solid week in the upper $teens in it, and that “Kingsman” will clear $20. “American Made” they figure as not-quite-hitting $17. Not buying that. Word of mouth on “Kingsman” has got to be deadly, this second weekend.
Box Office Guru is calling it “Kingsman” $20, “It” and “American Made” both tracking at $16.
So we’ll see. Cruise isn’t quite over-and-done with as an action star, and his supporting cast has zero star power. The sobering look at the venerated Ron Reagan’s criminal connections (Ollie North is here, sure) will earn some wingnut media pushback. I think “Made” might hit $20+. It’s certainly entertaining enough.
“Flatliners” nobody knows Jack about, save for the fact that it’s a remake/sequel to the Julia Roberts/Kiefer Sutherland young-docs-taste-death thriller of decades ago.
The studio had such confidence in it that they not only didn’t preview it, they didn’t allow theaters to open it Thursday night. Sounds like “This sucks.” But we’ll see. If it does $8 million with that cast, it’ll be champagne all around the office Monday.
