Because I missed the window when this first one came out. I figured, “Oh, there’ll be another long before Halloween,” and skipped posting it.
Looks provocative, gives us a sample of SOME of the cast (lots of Oprah). But a second one might give more encouragement about the tone or at least nail it down.
The new adaptation of “A Wrinkle in Time” comes our way next spring.
It’s not the primary focus of “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women,” but the film’s depiction of the early days of American comic book history may be its most eye-opening revelations. Few, aside from those curious enough to know the early years of Mad Magazine, know about the salacious and subversive subtexts that America’s prim guardians of moral turpitude picked up on from those wildly popular “corrupters of our youth.”
There was public outcry, then Catholic condemnation and eventually even Congressional hearings on the matter, along with reforms, a “code” and attempts at oversight.
Just as with the movie industry.
And the most subversive super hero , the one whose exploits were most often-labeled perversion, led to the biggest box office hit of 2017. Because that super hero was a heroine created by a “free love” alternate thinker/psychologist who built the character around his theories of “dominance” and “submission to loving authority,” and who based her on the two “Wonder Women” he loved, impregnated and shared a most unconventional menage a trois Big Love with.
Oh yeah. Here’s a movie James Cameron needs to see before saying one more word about what he gets out of “Wonder Woman.”
Luke Evans (“Dracula Untold”) is the title character, a Harvard-educated theorist, teacher and developer of the lie-detector. William Marston is married to the equally brilliant Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall, of “The Town” and “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” — superb), a caustic, funny and profane partner who bristles at the sexism of their age (between the World Wars), which keeps her from her own Harvard Phd.
We meet them as they amusingly dissect the mating rituals at the college where he teaches and she shares his research. He wants a subject/lab assistant to study in relation to his “DISC Theory” of human emotion and psycho-sexual happiness. “Dominance,” “Submission,” “Induction” (seduction-persuasion) and “Compliance” drive the human animal, he thinks, not Freud’s notion that women really envy men their penises. His wife agrees — to a degree.
“Men’s minds are far too limited,” Professor Marston declares. “That’s why we need women!”
In the beautiful but perhaps “trapped” by her beauty Olive (Bella Heathcote, “Fifty Shades Darker”) they see their perfect subject. “Look how the boys and girls circle around her…Watch how she averts her eyes.”
Through her, they get deeper into DISC theory, sneak into demeaning and slightly kinky sorority initiation rituals and test and perfect the ways a lie-detector should be used. And both fall in love with her.
In the accomplished and dominant Brit Elizabeth and smart, pure of heart and open-minded Olive, Marston sees “the perfect woman.” And from that composite, through years of scandal over the “unconventional” relationship, their exposure to the still-illegal world of pornography and nascent and underground S & M industry and lifestyle, “Wonder Woman” was born.
Writer/director Angela Robinson of TV’s “The L Word,” “D.E.B.S.” and “Herbie Fully Loaded” leans heavily on the human sexuality component of the story, and the social mores being tested. The tale is framed within a “Decency” league interrogation of the comic book writer (Connie Britton is his Catholic inquisitor). Robinson’s film blends elements of “Kinsey” and the sad, little-seen portrait of the creator of “Conan the Barbarian” — “The Whole Wide World.”
The fiercely funny Hall, wide-eyed and eager Evans and earthy beauty Heathcote cannot play the material wholly straight. It’s funny, intentionally and at times unintentionally so, partly owing to the credulous way these folks behave in this WAY ahead-of-their-times exploration of what our Puritanical culture has allowed, and what is still frowned-upon.
The timing of “Professor Marston” lays bare some of its own subversive intentions. See what you and your “Wonder Woman” loving kids have wholly bought into? Guess where it came from, what its REALLY selling! There’s a “normalization” at work here that will offend the sexually offended. Having Marson testify, point blank, that he’s creating “propaganda” built “to foster the case of equal rights for women” rattled cages then, and now adds to the sense that there’s an “agenda” in play.
Mostly though, “Marston” is more surprising than sexually salacious, more romp than tragedy, with its crusty comic book publisher (Oliver Platt is a stitch as E.C. Gaines, who brought “Superman” and “Wonder Woman” to America) and dorky enthusiast portrait of Marston.
If you don’t know this history, and neither I nor James Cameron (apparently) did, the dazzling “wonder women” behind “Wonder Woman” will make your draw drop.
MPAA Rating: R for strong sexual content including brief graphic images, and language.
Cast: Luke Evans, Bella Heathcote, Rebecca Hall, Connie Britton, Oliver Platt
Credits:Written and directed by Angela Robinson. An Annapurna release.
Running time: 1:48
I wanted to love “The Stray,” and I’d have been satisfied if it had reached as high as “liked.”
Because if you’ve ever shared your life with a dog, you’re a sucker for a movie about that “special” dog — “Max,” “My Dog Skip,” “A Dog’s Purpose,” “Marley & Me,” even “Air Bud” has its qualities.
And being about a stray dog that kids have prayed will come into their lives, who becomes a boy’s bully Equalizer, a toddler’s fearsome protector, a dad’s exercise coach and the couple’s marriage counselor, this one had possibilities.
But from the no-budget “snowstorm” opening scene, followed by the years of flashbacks of how Pluto — a “damned good dog” as they say where I come from– changes the Davis family’s lives, “The Stray” never rises to the level of maudlin.
Those flashbacks show how this dog just showed up back, in answer to the prayers of the Davis kids, as they live in California. It’s 1991, and Mitch (Michael Cassidy) is a script reader for a movie studio. They’ve sold their home in Colorado, paid to get him into USC’s film school, and all he has to show for it is a studio job that demands 20 hours a day of reading, writing “coverage” of scripts and being a “yes man” at the meetings.’
The only funny things Mitch gets to say in the picture are mixed with his endless, interrupting phone calls with colleagues — “It’s ‘Gilligan’s Island on Mars!'” “I don’t think anyone will BELIEVE Julia Roberts is a prostitute.”
Remember, it’s 1991. And Mitch is the fool who wants to turn down “Pretty Woman.”
“And Richard Gere’s old enough to be her DAD.”
Wife and mother Michelle (Sarah Lancaster) is losing patience over the absentee husband. Son Christian (Connor Corum) has no friends, nobody to teach him to throw a baseball, and has bully issues.
Maybe a dog? “If a stray shows up at our door, sure,” Michelle says. Prompting her youngest to pray for one, right in front of her.
And then this gorgeous Australian shepherd-looking animal just pops up at school. Bullies are thwarted, and soon “Pluto,” as he’s named, is making his mark on this family, even if they don’t notice this right off the bat.
A return to Colorado, where Mitch tries to write and cope with the usual menacing redneck rube neighbor — “Your dawg gets in with my sheep? I’m’o shoot’em.” — and Pluto pitches in where needed with one and all, and you’ve got yourself a heart-warmer.
Of course, it isn’t. Not this time. The acting really falls off among bit players, the story beats are cant and the film fixates on “Marley & Me/A Dog’s Purpose” bathos.
Yes, dogs die, and as sad as that is, it’s one of the best reasons to share your life with one. An animal who lives in the moment, who lives to play and shower you with kisses is to be treasured. Because you know — or will learn if you’re a child — that he or she isn’t going to be with you forever.
When you frame your picture in a grim moment of dog death, you’re saddling it with a reaction most normal viewers will recoil from. Wrapping that in a “guardian angel” allegory may comfort the kids, but speaking from experience, that’s not enough.
MPAA Rating:PG for thematic elements including a perilous situation.
Cast: Michael Cassidy, Sarah Lancaster, Connor Corum
Credits:Directed by Mitch Davis, script by Mitch Davis, Parker Davis. A PureFlix release.
Running time: 1:32
Let’s keep this short, right?
If you’re over the age of five, and you’re not taking someone UNDER the age of five to see “My Little Pony: The Movie,” you’re in the wrong theater
Unless you’re a “Brony,” so let’s no do anything that gets moms to go call the manager, eh?
It doesn’t matter that “My Little Pont: The Movie,” like the TV series it spun from, is insipid pap. It’s not for you. Any more than the toys that inspired it all.
It doesn’t matter that only one character is credited with the voice of Broadway pixie Kristen Chenoweth. ALL the ponies sound like Kristen Chenoweth, even the ones voiced by the likes of Emily Blunt. And there’s a hint of Chenoweth in Liev Schreiber, Sia and Michael Pena’s voice performances, too.
That’s what happens with Pony-exposure in Equitania, where gravity and physics and character development and the rules of story don’t apply, when you’re reading lines like “Everybody’s happiness is resting in your hooves!”
Or when you’re singing “We got this, you got this, We’ve got this TOGETHER” to any problem — even the assault of the Storm King and his minions. Who want that Pony magic, man.
Because everybody’s a princess and everybody already has “all the magic you need.”
The animators? They could have used more magic to smooth out the movement, add shadings and depth of field to their flat, gummy-bear colored poppycock. It’s garishly, mechanically drawn and colored, barely up to “animated quickie” big-screen fare.
Back to direct-to-video with you, Princess Unicorny or whatever your name is. Small children won’t mind your shortcomings. Anybody older than a tiny child endorsing this? Come on, now./
MPAA Rating: PG for mild action
Cast: The voices of Emily Blunt, Kristen Chenoweth, Zoe Saldana, Taye Diggs, Sia, Michael Pena, Liev Schreiber
Credits:Directed by Jayson Thiessen, script by Meghan McCarthy, Rita Hsiao and Michael Vogel, based on the TV series. A Lionsgate release.
Running time: 1:39
Wondrously eccentric director Todd Haynes, of “Far From Heaven” and “I’m Not There” and “Carol” adapted the Brian Selznick best seller about a tale of two deaf children in different periods in time seeking the answer to a personal mystery.
Considering Haynes’ earlier work, I’m curious to see his treatment of the material and if he plays up any non-straight sexuality angle, as is his trademark.
But as it’s based on a kids’ novel by the author of “Hugo” (Cabret), we’ll see. “Wonderstruck” opens over the next month.
Chadwick Boseman adds to his growing repertoire of Great Figures in African American History with “Marshall,” a light and thoroughly entertaining historical drama about a trial that helped make future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall’s reputation.
Its subject and themes — racial injustice, the importance of the rule of law and fighting for civil rights — give it the inspiring feel of “A movie America needs to see Right Now.” And Boseman as Marshall may be regal, smart and aloof to the point of patronizing. But the actor’s not above giving us that mischievous sideways glance that let us in on the fun in “42” (as Jackie Robinson) and “Get On Up” (as James Brown).
In 1941, Marshall was the sole hotshot attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), traveling the country, grandstanding in court in cases he and his boss (Roger Guenveur Smith) figure can make some larger political point even as he’s struggling to save unjustly accused black person or right one festering social wound.
When a black chauffeur (Sterling K. Brown) is accused of raping a rich white woman in tony Greenwich, Connecticut, that’s where Marshall goes. This isn’t just about another “To Kill a Mockingbird” (before that book was published) case. Black servants all over the supposedly liberal north will lose their jobs if white employers up there believe they’re capable of such monstrous, high-profile crimes.
But Marshall needs a local attorney to vouch for him before the judge, to be co-counsel in the Bridgeport court. And that’s where the small-time sell-out Sam Friedman, laboring in the soul-dead world of civil insurance law.
Josh Gad and the screenwriters make Friedman an EveryMensch, a little (big) man easily buffaloed by the Big City lawyer who’s argued before the Supreme Court. The last thing a Jewish immigrant lawyer in WASP country wants is to get “a reputation” via Marshall, for rocking the boat.
And yes, what’s happening to Jews in Europe is on his mind, too.
“Find someone who wants this attention…This is NOT my PROBLEM.”
But Marshall ignores him. He talks the accused into accepting their services, orders Sam’s more Civil Rights conscious brother (John Magaro) about and starts making statements to the press.
“The Constitution was not written for US, but from this moment on, we claim it as our own!”
All before the Old Money Judge (James Cromwell, perfect) denies him the right to speak in court. All before the jury is seated. All before the Senate-bound prosecutor (Dan Stevens of “Downton Abbey,” venom delivered in a velvet glove) unloads his arsenal on “this heinous crime.”
“Marshall” gives us just enough of the world the man circulated in to make its points. “Whites Only” waterfountains, black lawyers forced to work as taxi drivers in states where they could not practice law, a traveling black attorney forced to stay with a local black family because no hotel would accept him.
And there’s a hint of the exciting social and cultural milieu that made the man, New York clubs where he could rub elbows and swap put-downs with the famed poet Langston Hughes, only to have Zora Neale Hurston show up and change the stakes.
Comedy vet Reginald Hudlin (“Boomerang,” “Serving Sara,” lots of sitcom episodes) only lets on that gravitas isn’t his thing with the film’s laugh-out-loud courtroom “gotchas” and the light touch he brings to even the inevitable racist beatdowns. He seems to forget the stakes involved, that this is a RAPE TRIAL, and goes for the easy laugh almost every time.
That said, “Marshall” makes for an entertaining take on history and Boseman’s winning performance a playful spin on an icon the passing decades have chiseled in stone as a Great Man and one of the giants of American legal history.
And if you can’t figure out why this story and this man and this piece of history are worth remembering now — of all times — you must be living under a rock.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic content, sexuality, violence and some strong language.
Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Josh Gad, Kate Hudson, James Cromwell, Sterling K. Brown, Dan Stevens.
Credits: Directed by Reginald Hudlin, script by Jacob Koskoff, Michael Koskoff. An Open Road release.
Running time: 1:58
Every action star has to change his repertoire when he clears 60.
Brawls characters played by Stallone, Gibson, Neeson, Willis and Schwarzenegger used to settle with their fists start relying on duffel bags filled with guns and grenades. The theme becomes vengeance, the pictures turn pitiless, the violence sadistic.
Even for the great and once seemingly ageless Jackie Chan.
One of the world’s lightest, most likable movie stars turns dark as a father hellbent on revenge in “The Foreigner,” a long and generally unpleasant “First Blood/Death Wish/Taken” turn for an actor whose fights are now exercises in creative editing with the unmistakable air of stunt doubles. At 63, playing a Vietnam War vet terrorizing Irish politicians with lingering ties to the old IRA, Chan shows us something we hadn’t really noticed when he was having beautifully-staged slap fights with bad guys and playing straight man to the likes of Chris Tucker and Owen Wilson.
He can’t act.
Quan Ngoc Minh runs a Chinese restaurant in London and dotes on his only daughter (Katie Leung). Then she dies in a bomb blast. The news tells him “The Authentic IRA” did it, and quotes a Northern Irish politician (Pierce Brosnan), formerly of Sinn Fein and the old Irish Republican Army, that he and his generation know nothing about the bombing, that it was carried out “by hotheads who don’t know any better,” young people out to wreck the 19 year-old Irish Peace Accord.
And Quan doesn’t buy it. He tries to bribe the head police inspector (Ray Fearon) for information. Then he starts hassling Deputy Minister Hennessy (Brosnan).
“You know something,” he insists, when he’s actually put on the phone with the guy. “I want names.”
“Names” he says when he comes by the guy’s office. Hennessy, whom we’ve seen rattled and taken aback by the attack, whom we watch call meetings, harangue subordinates and cajole his British bosses in an effort to get A) to the bottom of this and B) make some political hay out of it, assures Mr. Quan “I can’t help you” even as he’s angling to “take care of this…INTERNALLY” and in the old ways.
So Quan stalks him and sends him indiscreet pictures of the man and his mistress. In the manner of every “Man of Violence Returns to His Violent Past,” he packs his duffel bags with the tools of his old trade and walks away from his modest business.
He blows up Hennessy’s office. “I want names.” Then his Northern Irish farmhouse. “Give me names.” His Jaguar? “Names.”
Through all this mayhem, Chan wears one stone-faced expression, a strained attempt at showing grief — a man drained of emotion. It’s the best he can manage.
The action sequences, showing Quan’s old Vietnam War tricks (punji sticks, hand-made bombs, gunplay) are standard issue Rambo stuff. He is the omniscient, omnipotent foe “with very particular skills,” as Liam Neeson’s character always put it in “Taken.” He can find out anything, guess EXACTLY where those tracking him will go, get into any secured location and dress any wound (the “self-surgery” scene mandatory for films of this genre).
Whatever action Bond, Zorro and “Green Lantern” directing vet Martin Campbell cooks up, whatever complications this layered thriller of assorted Irish folk fighting “that bloody Chinaman” delivers, the scenes of the actual bombers holed up in a London apartment, none of it involves urgency.
Brosnan, channeling his best brogue, may act rings around Chan. But we never sense panic. Characters under direct threat, bombs going off moments earlier right in their personal space, walk and gripe out in the open, stand in front of exposed windows and crawl into bed for a good night’s sleep after their lives have been directly threatened by this or that deafening blast.
The film’s lack of sophistication extends the caricaturing from Quan — Vietnamese but called “that bloody Chinaman” — to the murderously old school whiskey-belting Irish and the torture-and-execution happy Brits.
All of which points to a movie built on ancient Western action tropes, but aimed at placating the Chinese and Asian market, where the all-knowing Man of Peace, Man of Asia, teaches Europe a thing or two.
And that, along with the once-sweet Chan’s sour turn, is a turn-off.
MPAA Rating: R for violence, language and some sexual material
Cast: Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan, Katie Leung, Charlie Murphy, Ray Fearon, Orla Brady
Credits: Directed by Martin Campbell, script by David Marconi, based on a Stephen Leather novel. An STX release.
Running time: 1:54
J.K. Simmons has steered his Oscar-winning career from scary guys (“Whiplash,” TV’s “Oz”) to whimsical ones (“Juno,” and the definitive J.J. Jameson in the Tobey Maguire “Spider-Man” movies).
But of late, he’s sought out vulnerable, damaged characters, none more damaged than Bill, a father broken by the death of his wife in “The Bachelors.” First reel to last, Simmons’ Bill seems medicated or on the verge of tears. In the very first scene, his first words lay out his entire state of mind to his son (Josh Wiggins of “Max”) and the viewer in just a sentence.
“I can’t stay here any more.”
Whatever teenage Wes is going through, Dad is bereft. He quits his teaching job and the house that they shared with his late wife and start over. Kevin Dunn is Paul, the old college buddy now running a fancy private school for “spoiled little snots” in the big city. Bill will be his pity hire.
St. Martins is where the deeply depressed father will get back into teaching math, earn the interest of the available French teacher (the always beguiling Julie Delpy) and finally get some help (Harold Perrineau plays his medication-happy shrink).
It’s also where Wes, who can’t afford to grieve thanks to his dad’s state, has to find new friends (Tyrel Jackson Williams of TV’s “Brockmire”) and his place in the jock-centric culture. Again, it’s the French teacher who intervenes, putting her “advanced” newcomer in charge of getting the brooding, failing Lacy (Odeya Rush) fluent.
The story progresses along predictable but sympathetically acted lines, with Bill trying to keep his shaky psyche together and Wes trying to figure out what the deal with this disturbed, rich “Princess of Darkness” who won’t give him the time of day — in French.
Writer-director Kurt Voelker scripted the leaden “Sweet November” and the cheap-jack cartoon “Rock Dog.” Saying he traffics in cliches, tropes and archetypes might insult his USC education, but it’s accurate. Punk jock besmirches Lacy’s honor in the cafeteria? You know what Wes is going to do, and what he’s going to do it with.
“The Bachelors” is movie romance comfort food, rarely surprising, rarely upsetting in the places it takes its couples.
But the players rise above the material, with Wiggins and Rush setting off sparks and Simmons and Delpy maintaining the mystery of their attraction, keeping the emotions that brings up close to the surface.
And Simmons makes the deflating exhaustion of grief palpable.
MPAA Rating: Unrated, adult situations
Cast: J.K. Simmons, Josh Wiggins, Odeya Rush, Julie Delpy, Harold Perrineau, Kevin Dunn
Credits: Written and directed by Kurt Voelker, A Freestyle release.
Running time: 1:40
There’s an economy to the writing that marks the earliest moments of “Walking Out,” another winter survival tale — this time involving injured father and son hunters struggling to escape the Montana wilderness.
David (Josh Wiggins) gets off a plane, and his dad (Matt Bomer) tells us all we need to know about this relationship with one question.
“You have a good year?”
They’re estranged, with the father — a real hunter-gatherer type — not seeing the teenage boy more than once a year. He may put a civilized, romantic emphasis on what the boy’s mother now looks like, how she’s faring. But something about his open topped Land Rover (in the Montana winter) and insistence on how he and his kid spend their yearly visit together tells us most of what we need to know there, too.
“I don’t WANT to kill a moose!”
There’s little in this latest slice of frontier life and values from the Smith brothers, Alex and Andrew, to give away that they’re 50 and British. Until Cal, the father with the passion for guns, tendency to nip from a flask and “taste for killin'” starts filling the frosty air with words. The Smiths don’t know from Western Stoicism, the “silent types” the region is famous for.
But Cal, scary eyes or no, has woodlore and wisdom he wants to pass along, grouse-shooting he wants the boy to learn and a .30-30 he got from his father that he wants to give to the boy. As their trip to “get your moose” progresses, father talks and talks and talks to the boy, impressing upon him what he learned from his old man, respect for the wilderness and wildlife, the difference between “hunting and killing.”
Bomer, of TV’s “White Collar” and “The Last Tycoon,” brings a vulnerable earnestness to the macho Cal, who keeps encouraging his city-raised (Briarwood-Dallas) kid with “You’re stronger than you know,” before marching them into deepening snow on a stalk.
Cal explains everything — “Don’t ‘skyline yourself. Stay low!” — “Walk five, wait one!” He gets at the reason all this is so important to him, talking about fathers wanting, more than anything else, for sons to “know” them.
It’s like a talking cure, therapy in the language of self-help. And it pretty much spoils the character and derails the movie before the melodramatic third-act incidents that injure them both and put David in the predictable dilemma of having to apply everything he’s been told in the first hour to their survival situation.
The scenery is startling and the cinematography by Todd McMullen striking.
Young Wiggins (“Max”) finds a sullen silence, with flashes of “let’s TRY to please Dad” to his resistance to the whole idea of this trip.
But the filmmakers, adapting a short story by David Quammen, emphasize the sensitive — and the tendency to talk about feelings, in the father and the late grandfather (Bill Pullman, seen in flashbacks). A young Eastwood would have taken a pen and X’d out this often-superfluous and generally undermining chattiness and rendered this leaner and meaner, perhaps less subtle, but more iconic.
Because that economy of words that the Smiths find so bracing in the early scenes just highlight how far they go off track in what should have been a simpler, more visceral and quieter quest in the wilderness.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for bloody injury images, some thematic elements and brief strong language
Cast: Matt Bomer, Josh Wiggins and Bill Pullman.
Credits: Written and directed by Alex Smith, Andrew J. Smith. An IFC release.
Running time: 1:38
The action beats promise more of “Star Wars’ Greatest Hits.” More supernatural mumbo jumbo about “The Force” and “Ultimate Power.” And even though he seems to be filling out in terms of gravitas for this sequel, even the most optimistic studio boss would have to say “Adam Driver’s cooled off CONSIDERABLY” as future-star material.
A farewell to Carrie Fisher, a bow for Mark Hamill, battles on the snow, in asteroid fields, etc.
Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, and Daisy Ridley, trying to measure up to Felicity Jones in the superb “Rogue One,” come our way this Christmas.
Movie Nation 