Movie Nation

Here it is, every arrow in the Butterscotch Stallion’s quiver.

With “No Escape” dumped in the No Hit Zone of the end of August (Aug. 26), Wilson is in the latter stages of his film stardom. But here’s a video tribute to his favorite lines. Songwriters used to pitch tunes in Nashville by writing songs that had words and phrases they knew this star or that one loved to sing (Eddie Arnold, “Woooooorld” is the most famous).

So it is with Wilson. Enjoy.

“The Keeping Room” is a self-consciously gritty and minimalist female empowerment thriller that could have just been three pretty actresses getting down and Scarlett O’Hara dirty in the waning days of the Civil War.
But those three players transcend this picture’s arty trappings and deliver a taut (somewhat) and violent period piece not afraid to punch the viewer in the gut.
In South Carolina, in the last months of the war, Augusta (Brit Marling), her sister Louise (Hailee Steinfeld of “True Grit”) and their maid Mad (Muna Otaru of “Lions for Lambs”) struggle to eek out subsistence on the farm. The land has been emptied of healthy men, and women are starving or worse all around them. The isolation means they have no one to turn to for help. The lack of news makes them wonder how far beyond the horizon their horror extends.
“What if it’s the end of the world, and we’re the last one’s left?”
Louise is young and somewhat simple. Mad has an inkling that the old order has overturned. And even if it hasn’t, in this desperate situation, the mistress-slave relationship is finished.
Every man is a threat, especially the two murderous Yankee deserters (Sam Worthington and Kyle Soller) we’ve met in the opening scenes. Anarchy has set in, and when they get wind of these women and their plight, the worst is on its way.
“It’s our home,” Augusta drawls, knowing that “We” means her, and with luck, Mad. “We gon’ have to fight.”
For a story politically out-of-step in post-Confederate Flag America, “Keeping Room” is surprisingly affecting.
Marling’s runway-ready beauty is rawboned here, and she gets across an impressively hard-won competence as Augusta. She may have had her “Fiddle dee dee” years, but the war has forced her to take on every job a man had to do there. Marling (“The East”, “Arbitrage”) is becoming a brand-name that you look for in the credits of any indie drama you hope might be worth watching.
Steinfeld’s Louise is also a “type,” but Otaru’s Mad is harder to read — a woman whose loyalty is being tested daily, who may be wondering if she has any choice about staying or fleeing.
Director Daniel Barber, who made the similarly lean and mean “Harry Brown” with Michael Caine, stages the confrontation with the marauders with blood, and without much pity. Worthington suggests menace with a hint of humanity, but Soller is pure brown-teeth evil playing a man war has turned into a murderous opportunist, without compassionate cell in his body.
The “Survivor” elements which drive the middle of the film — the mundane tasks that women with little livestock and little experience in farming must accomplish to feed themselves — drag a bit. But the finale Barber and actress-turned-screenwriter Julia Hart deliver is righteously, remorselessly satisfying.

MPAA Rating: R for strong violence including a sexual assault

Cast: Brit Marling, Muna Otaru, Sam Worthington, Hailee Steinfeld,
Credits: Directed by Daniel Barber, script by Julia Hart.

A Drafthouse release.

Running time: 1:35

That headline says it all.

F. Gary Gray’s bio film of the seminal gangsta rap group N.W.A. is exceeding expectations and blowing up August. It did over $22 late night Thursday and all day Friday, and could clear $55 million by Sunday night.

“Incidents” at theaters? Not that I’ve heard about. That was an issue, back when “Boyz N The Hood” opened. But I am guessing there’s a representative older audience here, judging by the preview crowd I saw it with. Not a volatile younger audience with gang members included, but a blend of the curious young and old fans.

That’s a big deal.

“The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” on the other hand, won’t reach $15 million. Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer have an almost unblemished track record when it comes to flops.

Guy Ritchie doesn’t have another franchise on his hands. Yet.

“Fantastic Four” lost an epic 78% on Friday, and won’t clear $10 million on its second weekend.

“The Gift” fell off a bit, “Mission:Impossible” fell off some more, “Trainwreck” is close to $100 million. Maybe by Tuesday AM.

Let’s parse these Tomatometer numbers on “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” an August thriller (as in, not good enough to land an audience in the more competitive May-July window) if ever there was one.

I mean, it’s blandly amusing, here and there. But 66% positive reviews? WTHey?

My theory? The British critics have tilted this one into positive territory. There are pans from The Daily Mail and Radio Times, but endorsements from The Daily Telegraph, Empire Magazine, Independent, The London Times, The BBC, assorted others. Overwhelmingly positive reviews from Guy Ritchie, Henry Cavill, Hugh Grant and Jared Harris’ countrymen.

The wankers.
There are Toronto Sun and a Toronto Globe & Mail endorsements. Canadians wish they were Brits.  And the usual collection of Aussie raves. Fox, owned by an Aussie, typically opens its movies there — reliable, Fosters Drunk lapdogs, their critics are. In the bag for the Warner Brothers Brit-pix, too. Apparently.

Nobody’s a bigger Anglophile than me. Love that ’60s vibe and design. IN THE TV COMMERCIALS. The movie doesn’t do much to deliver that. Different songs, slower pacing (naturally), not enough vintage cars from that Cold War era. Miscast in several regards. Will anybody see it?

As usual, Metacritic betters that imbalance by design. A more select group sampling, a lower score. Leave out the Brits, Canucks and Bruces and Sheilas, get to the meat of the matter.The “Straight Outta Compton” endorsements are easier to understand. It’s too long and more conventional than artistic. But it’s a good example of the bio-pic form, inferior to “Notorious” or “Walk the Line,” on a par with “Get on Up.”

Everybody loves Greta Gerwig, so “Mistress America,” her teaming with beau Noah Baumbach, scores.

http://www.mrqe.com “People Places Things,” A slight rom-com with him playing a forlorn comic book author, earns a pass from film reviewers, far and wide. Yeah, the Kiwis went for him, but there aren’t enough of them to tilt reviews into positive territory.

Lesser films opening today include “Big Sky,” a watchaby predictable B-movie (thriller), “Amnesiac,” a failed teaming between Kate Bosworth and her man, one of the directing Polish brothers.

The deadpan charms of Kiwi comic Jemaine Clements are the chief recommendation of “People Places Things,” a droll New York romantic comedy that feels like 240 indie rom-coms that preceded it.
Not that it doesn’t have its novelties. OK, novelty. That would be Clement, and his character — Will Henry.
Will’s a failing graphic novelist. OK, as he admits, “comic book” writer-illustrator, thus settling that semantic dodge once and for all.
He walks in on his blame-him-for-everything girlfriend (Stephanie Allynne) having sex at their twin daughters’ fifth birthday party.
“You pushed me into this!”
That inspires Will’s epiphany.
“Happiness is not really a sustainable condition.”
A year later, he’s splitting custody of the kids while the ex plans her future with the unscrupulous lump (Michael Chernus of “Orange is the New Black”) she was in flagrante delicto  with back at the birthday party.
Will is depressed, not that his “How to Create a Graphic Novel” class has a lot of sympathy. They’re scratching their heads over his “Why Does Life Suck So Hard?” on the blackboard, his lack of enthusiasm for…everything.
“I’m OK. Just having a hard life. It’ll all be over…eventually.”
But a student (Jessica Williams of “The Daily Show”) takes pity and tries to fix him up with her mom (Regina Hall of the “Think Like a Man” movies). A big problem? Mom teaches REAL literature at Columbia, a REAL university. She’s not sold on what her daughter wants to do for a living, and what Will dares to compare to the fiction she teaches. That makes for a testy first and possibly last date.
But it’s a romantic comedy, so we know they’ll figure out someway past their failed “meet cute” moments.

If you ever wonder why so many indie romances are set in New York in the summer, “People Places Things” lays it all out for you. Mostly TV actors, in New York, on hiatus between seasons of their shows, people this movie and scads like it. Not that this is a failing, but it’s the easiest sort of movie to sell an actor on making in a short period of time between bread-and-butter jobs.

Writer-director James C. Strouse (“Grace is Gone”) fills in the 85 minutes around that conventional plotline with some clever and informative stuff about visual storytelling in comic book — sorry, “Graphic Novel” — form. Clement pulls off these classroom scenes — the students are a grab bag of comic book nerd cliches, with a few hotties thrown in — and makes us buy into the worthiness of the conventions of comic book writing.
That helps, because Diane (Hall) seems to abandon her closely-held principles about what constitutes “literature” rather abruptly. And it ain’t because the guy is dashing, clever, clean-shaven and rich. Will is none of these.
But he’s a wonderful dad and an empathetic soul, too sensitive for the ex who keeps pushing him around and controlling his future. He gives her way too much credit in the breakup.
“She just stopped talking, and I enjoyed the silent too much.”
Clement, of “Flight of the Conchords” and “Dinner for Schmucks,” dials the daffy down for a performance that is more vulnerable than hilarious. But he holds this slight comedy together — the women in it, from the kids to the paramours, are here to just make him credible — and makes it worth watching.

MPAA Rating: R for language including some sexual references, and brief nudity

Cast: Jemaine Clement, Regina Hall, Stephanie Allynne, Jessica Williams
Credits: Written and directed by James C. Strouse. A Film Arcade release.

Running time: 1:27

Greta Gerwig has the title role in the manic and maniacally funny “Mistress America,” a chatty, shrewdly observant comedy about a New York/social media “type” anybody with a cell phone will recognize.
Tracy (Lola Kirke of “Gone Girl”) certainly has. She’s a frustrated writer-wannabe who hasn’t cracked the literary circles of elite Barnard College. But her mother (Kathryn Erbe) is about to marry a guy with a 30 year-old daughter living in New York. That’s how Tracy meets Brooke (Gerwig).
Brooke is a blonde whirlwind of positivity, a self-educated self-described polymath. She coaches a spin class, tutors middle school kids, gets up on stage and sings with a band and is well on her way to launching a conceptual restaurant she will call “Moms’, possessive.”
She flits from passion to passing fancy, never quite following through but supremely confident in all she does. Her special skill? Drawing a crowd.
“I keep the hearth. That’s a word, right? Hearth?”
Tracy is “Baby Tracy,” to Brooke. And the lonely but cute coed is utterly smitten with this Holly Golightly she’d love to have breakfast at Tiffany’s with. Brooke isn’t just a cool older-sister-to-be. She’s material, fodder for a writer.
“Her youth had died,” she narrates into a short story, “and she was dragging around the rotting carcass.”
In 80 or so brisk minutes, Brooke consults her spirit advisor, gets locked out of her “zoned commercial” Times Square apartment, faces the end of her dreams and hilariously confronts a nemesis (Heather Lind) she insists stole her cats, her future husband and her first big business idea from her.
Gerwig, who helped invent the talk-and-nothing-but “mumblecore” genre, has become the muse to director Noah Baumbach (“While We’re Young”), and this film is a fusion of their styles. Brooke is a fascinating, exhausting character with a dizzy patter, which she’s happy to share with Tracy and her college freshman peers.
“There is no ‘cheating’ when you’re 18! You should all be touching each other all the time!”
With all its Baumbach and Gerwig mumblecore underpinnings, “Mistress America” is Baumbach’s version of a Wes Anderson comedy. Strip away the gaudy colors, snippets of animation and earnest loopiness and you get lots of witty banter, breathlessly delivered by an engaging cast of believable and unbelievably glib characters.
And Brooke? We don’t have to know her to “know” her. There she is on Gawker or Wonkette or Perez Hilton’s websites, flighty, attention-grabbing and cute. For just as long as she can drag that carcass of her youth around with her.

MPAA Rating: R for language including some sexual references

Cast: Greta Gerwig, Lola Kirke, Kathryn Erbe
Credits: Directed by Noah Baumbach, script by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach. A Fox Searchlight release.

Running time: 1:26