Movie Nation

The Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal always seems on the lookout for movies with a message. And in films such as “No,” about an ad writer who concocts a strategy for defeating the Chilean dictatorship at the polls, or “Babel” or “The Motorcycle Diaries” or “Rosewater,” that paid off.
But with “Ardor,” about an avenger protecting threatened peasant farmers from the murderous predations of Big Ag, that instinct lets him down. A cheat of a thriller about rescuing a young farm woman (Alice Braga) after hired thugs make her father sign over his land at gunpoint, then kill him and kidnap her, it pitches itself as something more mystical and higher-minded than it actually is.
The “cheat” begins with the opening titles, a myth about “beings” summoned by jungle people to aid them against “invaders.” Then we see those invaders — mercenaries (Claudio Tolcachir plays their leader,  Tarquinho ) who lose one of their number (or a hostage) to some savage jungle beast.
“Tiger,”  Tarquinho says, in subtitled Spanish. “Jaguar” he meant to say.
He and his small band of lightly-armed murderers visit jungle farmers, force them to sign over their land and commit the occasional atrocity just for fun.
Kai (Bernal), the Bare Chested Avenger, walks up to such a farm. He has mysterious tattoos on his back and legs. The farmer (Chico Diaz) warns him, “They will come.”
“Good,” Kai replies. But when the men come, he is no help. All he can do is hide, and set out to free the farmer’s kidnapped daughter (Braga) before the inevitable rape scene.
There’s nothing mystical or mysterious about what follows. Kai strains to outwit and outfight the kidnapper/murderers. The daughter yearns to have sex with him after she is almost raped by the bad guys.
As the story unravels, the action beats take over. A farmstead firefight is arrestingly staged like an Old West (movie) showdown. And Bernal broods, brawls and tells us bits of his story, how he came to be this Shirtless Shane of Amazonia.
“Ardor,” in the end, has little ardor, or originality or magic about it. It’s just a mundane C-movie action picture that tries to pass itself off as something deeper.

MPAA Rating:  R for violence, some gruesome images and a scene of sexuality

Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Alice Braga, Claudio Tolcachir
Credits: Written and directed by  Pablo Fendrik. A Participant release.

Running time: 1:41

August of 1971, 24 male students of Stanford University acted out the roles of guards and inmates at a “prison” created for a psychological experiment. “The flip of a coin” determined who was to be a guard and who portrayed inmates in this study of human behavior under the duress of confinement or the duress of confining, degrading and abusing other people.
The results of “The Stanford Prison Experiment” are still taught in psychology courses today. You want to understand Gulags, “reeducation camps,” Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo or San Quentin, it’s all there in Dr. Philip Zimbardo’s eye-opening exercise in power, control and psychosis.
A very good cast headed by Billy Crudup, Michael Angarano and Tye Sheridan stars in “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” a film as straight-forward and clinically chilling as its title.
Crudup is Zimbardo, leading a team of graduate assistants in grilling potential candidates for this $15 a day job of play acting.
“Have you ever attempted to kill yourself?” they want to know, among other details. Important screening questions, as it turns out.
Twenty-four young men are chosen. The “prisoners” are “arrested” at their homes — the first in a series of humiliations. They’re stripped and ordered to wear nightshirts that look like dresses. The others, given only the most rudimentary instructions (“No hitting.”), put on uniforms and sunglasses and become guards. Zimbardo and his grad students watch on video as the experiment begins and the guards figure things out as they go.
“Don’t we have to de-louse them first?”
Some of the “guards” are visibly uneasy at having this power over their peers. The prisoners smirk at the routine efforts to feminize and dehumanize them. At first.
Angarano has the showiest role, that of a prison guard who affects a drawl and has a little too much of “Cool Hand Luke” memorized. He slides into intimidation, degradation and punishment with psychotic ease.
Within hours, dynamics are established. Punishments are being doled out. Men find themselves doing push ups, or are stuck in “The Hole.” Some act out and resist. Some submit. Within a day, things turn abusive. Prisoners started conspiring to fight back, or began to crack up.
This story has been told in a couple of earlier films, but this one benefits from a “found footage” veracity and age-appropriate cast. Nelsan Ellis is sharp and guarded as a “consultant” brought in to verify the authenticity of the prison experience. Olivia Thirlby is the student-girlfriend of Zimbardo who acts as his conscience when the stress of this research — sleep deprivation goes on inside and outside of “the prison”– gets to him.
It’s not a new story, but it is one that holds up on the retelling. And in sticking closer to the actual facts of the event make this “Stanford Prison Experiment” worth showing in the very classrooms where the actual experiment and its ground-breaking conclusions are taught.

MPAA Rating: R for language including abusive behavior and some sexual references

Cast: Billy Crudup, Michael Angarano, Tye Sheridan, Olivia Thirlby, Nelsan Ellis, Thomas Mann.
Credits: Directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez, script by Tim Talbott. An IFC release.

Running time: 2:02

The striking desert around Joshua Tree National Monument and the lovely lighthouses of California provide postcard pretty settings for “Safelight,” a tepid romantic melodrama about two young people looking for one shot at being normal.
Evan Peters is Charles, labeled “Cripple” by his high school classmates, a guy bullied with the old “You think you’re better than us” rationale.
Because he is. Because he’s sensitive and a photographer. Because making movies give screenwriters the last laugh on unpleasant childhoods.
Juno Temple is Vicky, a young prostitute who plies her trade at the truck stop where Charles works. Kevin Alejandro is Skid, her abusive pimp/boyfriend. Christine Lahti is Charles’ sassy boss, and Jason Beghe plays his dying but sensitive dad.
Charles sticks up for Vicky with Skid, Vicky sticks up for Charles with the bullies. She comes to grip with her past and the boy breaks out his late brother’s camera for a photo essay contest, with Vicky driving him to the Lighthouses of California. She does it in vintage muscle cars because this is an early ’80s period piece.
In fairness, “Safelight” sounds more trite than it is. But there’s not much surprising writer-director Tony Aloupis’s tale. Temple and Peters don’t have any special chemistry, and neither character is a stretch.
The film shows flashes of life around the edges, in Alejandro’s mercurial and mean Skid and Lahti’s been-around-the-track-few-times barfly.
Mainly, though, “Safelight” is just a California tourism travelogue — See Scenic Joshua Tree, Visit the Lighthouses of Southern California. Which we do, in 80 odd-but-not-odd-enough minutes.

MPAA Rating: R for language throughout including some sexual references

Cast: Evan Peters, Juno Temple, Kevin Alejandro, Christine Lahti, Jason Beghe
Credits: Written and directed by Tony Aloupis. An ARC Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:22

“Man has always quested for some version of immortality, through theology or science.”
No, Ryan Reynolds isn’t reading from a prepared statement. Nobody’s given him talking points for his new body-switch thriller, “Self/less,” a film about a dying tycoon (Ben Kingsley) who spends a fortune to buy a new body (Reynolds) to extend his life. But if they had, he’s more than ready to go off-script.
“Thinking about it, it’s probably the most vain, arrogant, out of control desire that anybody can have, the most INSANE thing that somebody with way too much money could want. Immortality. It’s ludicrous to want it, let alone to buy your way into it. That’s a whole other LEVEL of crazy.”
“Self/less” could have just been the latest in a long line of body switch thrillers, one that traces its origins to the 1966 John Frankenheimer cult film “Seconds.” But it has a certain timeliness, with the world’s attention focused on just how much the system seems rigged in favor of the ultra rich. Reynolds picked up on that as production was about to begin.
“I met a couple of these guys — you’d have to characterize them as billionaires — right at the beginning of the shoot. We were talking about renting out their apartments for a couple of scenes, penthouses of New York high rises. Every single one of them asked about this procedure (called “shedding” in the film), wondering if it actually exists or was in the works. Every one of them.”
Reynolds laughs.
“We’ve tapped into something that, old or young, the super rich would be interested in — the possibility of immortality, treated in a practical scientific way, that somebody with enough money could buy. That gave me inspiration for the character, in a way. He would jump at this. Maybe he’d only think about the consequences later.”
Reynolds has been doing a lot of jumping himself of late. He was in “Woman in Gold” earlier this year, and “Mississippi Grind,” an indie picture, opens after “Self/less.” Then there’s the long-anticipated comic book adaptation “Deadpool” due out early in 2016. “Criminal,” a film about a CIA agent whose skills/memories are implanted into the mind of a condemned killer, follows that and sounds suspiciously like “Self/less.” You cannot say the man doesn’t have a work ethic.
But I’m catching up with him in Bangkok, and no, he’s not there for work. Or for the other things Bangkok is known for. He’s there with wife Blake Lively, looking after their child while mom films “All I See is You.”
“I know I won’t be lying on my death bed, no less than 60 years from now, wishing I’d done another three movies, or spent another three months in Prague,” Reynolds jokes. “I’m in my late 30s now. I have a greater appreciation for those quiet moments with family than I did when I was 22.”
For now, he’s sitting back, taking stock. He turns 39 in October. “Deadpool” was a project that took eleven years to get made, “and getting that thing you’ve been striving for finished and done is a good time for that — stopping to figure out what you want to do next. Whatever it is, I know it’ll be small.”
Reviews of “Self/less” might aid that. They’re mixed, with critics to a one, calling Reynolds “likeable” and “resourceful” (Variety), but “miscast.”
At least the “likable” label sticks. The public Reynolds has a refreshing humility that belies his stardom, or the fact that he’s been married to two of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood (He’s divorced from Scarlett Johansson).
“Everybody who does this has their peaks and valleys,” he says. “And the valleys are a lot deeper if you’re an SOB to work with. You’ve got to remember that. It’s the one bit of advice I let myself say to young actors I’m on the set with. ‘You know? Just be NICE!'”

The reviews weren’t rapturous, in that We Approve of Pixar way.

But Universal’s “Despicable Me” prequel, “Minions,” did $45 million in business Friday, with a notion of hitting that same number Saturday and a big chunk of that 0n Sunday and is headed toward a possible $120 million weekend.

Why not? Teeny tots need their own movie, and this one plays to that pre-verbal set with those R2D2/Esperanto spouting nimrods as their heroes. Adorbs.

Will they catch “Inside Out”?? Not likely. That one’s over $300 million and will have better WOM, to go with its much better reviews.

“Jurassic World” is #2.  Generations have forgotten the original film that it copies, almost scene for scene. And apparently are forgetting it week to week, as this one holds down a top spot well after opening night.

“The Gallows” is the second best new release, in terms of box office. Awful reviews — well, the Fresno Bee liked it — didn’t keep it from what looks like an $11 million opening weekend.

“Self/less” opened weak, under $6, maybe under $5. Not particularly original or riveting body switch thriller, reviews didn’t help.

The rest of the top ten is fading films from late May/early June.

“Magic Mike XXL” lost 30% and is holding up well enough.

Theaters are such naturally spooky places — with their high, creaking catwalks, echoing stages and trap doors — that it’s no wonder that ghostly superstitions have found a home there.
So it takes some effort to make a laughably bad horror movie set in one. “The Gallows” manages just that, eighty minutes of contrived jolts built into a plot so obvious even the mouth-breather sitting behind you will be able to yell “Foreshadowing” at his even dimmer date.
A Nebraska high school is inexplicably mounting a production of a play that once killed an actor, infamously, on stage in 1993. Four students, some with designs on sabotaging the new production, wind up trapped in the school, after hours, unable to call out or get out as someone — someTHING — comes after them with a noose.
Scare-EEE.
It’s another found-footage horror flick with four actors using their real names — Reese, the would-be jock turned failing thespian (Reese Mishler), Pfeifer (Pfeifer Brown), the “drama queen” and leading lady, Cassidy (Cassidy Gifford), the perky slacker in tight top and tighter shorts, all documented by the loathsomely cynical Ryan (Ryan Shoos), who drags them to school, late at night, with lights and cameras and the idea that they wreck the set to this idiotic and dangerous period piece the school is set to present.
“You’re a terrible actor,” Ryan says to Reese. This is before Reese’s feeble efforts to open the “locked” doors that keep them inside.
“Isn’t this embarassing, dude?” he wants to know. It is.
Reese seizes up, every time he dons the period piece knickers his character in the period piece is meant to be wearing when he’s hung for some crime in the play. He can’t speak to Pfeifer, his over-emoting leading lady. He’s “choking like Charlie” up there, Ryan teases.
Ryan loves to tease. And everybody in town knows what it means to “choke like Charlie.” Charlie was the kid strangled in a prop accident, on stage, in 1993, in an accident videotaped by friends and family. His “ghost” must haunt the theater, which is why Ryan taunts it by shouting his name to the rafters.
Every theater worth its greasepaint is haunted, so all co-writers/directors Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing had to do with invent a clever origin story that brings menace home to modern day student actors. And they can’t. What drama teacher would be able to get a stage revival of a deadly play past her or his school board?
The cast doesn’t help, failing to get across any rising sense of terror about what starts happening to them in the bowels of this dimly-lit high school.
If you’re not laughing at this, early and often, you’re made of sterner stuff than the players they paid to show up for this, but didn’t.

MPAA Rating: R for some disturbing violent content and terror

Cast: Reese Mishler, Pfeifer Brown, Ryan Shoos, Cassidy Gifford
Credits: Written and directed by Travis Cluff, Chris Lofing. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 1:21

“Minions” is ninety minutes of random wackiness, a pleasantly harmless and inconsequential origin story for those tiny, yellow goggle-eyed sidekicks to “Despicable Me,” aka evil genius Gru.
Built on an across-the-epochs search for the ultimate villainous “Boss,” from T-Rex through Sandra Bullock, it plays to the youngest movie goers, who’ll giggle at the sight gags and get the jokes, even if they’re told in gibberish that the adorable little freaks use to communicate.
Geoffrey Rush narrates a brisk opening, which takes Minions out of the primordial muck and into the ill-fated service of cavemen, dinosaurs and abominable snowmen. Their bosses always seem to get squished.
Then in the Swinging ’60s, the intrepid trio of Kevin, Bob and Stuart leave their ice cave paradise in search of new employment. They hear of Villain Con, a convention of evil geniuses. That’s where they’ll go to find their future and save their little tribe by scoring an offer from one of the many Supervillains who attend.
Some bits work on an adult level. They hitch a lift with a cheery, convention-bound family (Allison Janney and Michael Keaton provide the voices) who turn out to be bank robbers — even the kids.
They’re headed to Orlando, home to many of the nerdiest “Cons” (conventions), even in those pre-Disney, pre-Universal Studios days. Apparently.
And then there’s the villain who hires them. Scarlet Overkill (Bullock) is way over the top, Queen of the Bad Guys. With the aid of her gadget guru spouse (Jon Hamm, unrecognizable and hammily hilarious), she wants to be Queen of England. As a test, she sends the trio in yellow off to steal the crown of a feisty Elizabeth II (Jennifer Saunders).
No, the kids won’t get the “Mind the gap” or Beatles’ “Abbey Road” gags, but they will snicker through assorted royalty riffs. And the Minions’ gibberish, sort of an R2-D2/Esperanto polyglot with snatches of Japanese and Hebrew mixed with generous helpings of Spanish and Italian, is deployed to good effect.
“Kumbaya!”
The real rib-splitter here is that somebody got a screenwriting credit for this mishmash, and that they had the gall to slap 3D ticket prices on it. But “Minions” will tickle the very young and has roughly twice as many laughs as those Disney “Planes” pictures, or Pixar’s “Monster’s University.” So “Kumbaya,” kids, kumbaya.

MPAA Rating: PG for action and rude humor

Cast: The voices of Sandra Bullock, Jon Hamm, Allison Janney, Michael Keaton, Geoffrey Rush, Jennifer Saunders
Credits: Directed by Kyle Balda, Pierre Coffin, script by Brian Lynch. Universal release.

Running time: 1:31

When you’ve run through so many alternate timelines and time-travel-to-prevent-the-future scenarios that you wind up betraying the fine, lean lines of the original “Terminator…”

When you’ve run through Michael Biehn, Christian Bale and Sam Worthington, and the only actors left to play your “heroes” are little-known Aussies from “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (Jason Clarke) and the “Insurgent” series (Jai Courtney)…

When the best director available is Alan “Thor: The Dark World” Taylor.

When you’ve reduced the Teutonic Body Builder-turned Menace Arnold Schwarzenegger to an old man Terminator the others call “Pops…”

When your thinking has gone so soft that you think soft-and-supple Brit Emilia Clarke is any sort of replacement for Linda Hamilton…

When the best you can say about back-engineering, recycling one-liners, joking up and generally botching your way to a fourth “Terminator” movie, after a “Terminator” TV series, is that “It’s like ‘Terminator’s Greatest Hits!'”

When you’ve already put two sequels to this atrocity into the pre-production pipeline…

Maybe you should stop. Or maybe the rest of us, the movie-going, sci-fi loving, “Terminator” adoring public have to be the ones to say it.

“This ends here.”

MPAA Rating: PG – 13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and gunplay throughout, partial nudity and brief strong language

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Clarke. Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney, Courtney B. Vance, J.K. Simmons
Credits: Directed by Alan Taylor, script by Laeta Kalogridis, Patrick Lussier . A Paramount

release.

Running time: 2:06

When the big breakthrough comes, will most of the world even hear about it? If it’s an expensive, life-extension-by-transplanting-memories procedure , will the mega-rich even let the word get out?
That’s the premise behind “Self/less,” a generic but still thought-provoking variation on science fiction’s body switch formula.
Ben Kingsley plays Damian, a sickly titan of New York real estate, estranged from his daughter (Michelle Dockery of “Downton Abbey”), with only a close business associate (Victor Garber) to confide in during his last days. But that associate, knowing Damian’s proximity to death, slips him a card. There’s this thing called “shedding,” he’s told. He should look into it.
Damian does, and that leads him to Albright, given a silky salesman’s purr by Matthew Goode.
“We cater to the great, the visionary,” Albright tells him. In other words, the filthy rich. For $250 million, Damian can start over, with most of his money, all his memories and, it turns out, Ryan Reynold’s body.
That’s who Damian wakes up as. But there are conditions, rules and medications. The odd scar and occasional violent flashbacks make us, and Damian, wonder just whose body he got and how he came to get it.
Director Tarsem Singh (“Immortals,””Mirror Mirror”) doles out the clues sparingly. Eventually, this is going to turn into an action film, but he takes his time getting to the chases, shootouts, explosions and big revelations. Damian enjoys all the indulgences that having a new, healthy, handsome and rich body offers in the Sin City of the South — New Orleans. Then things get “real.”
“Self/less” doesn’t offer many surprises. It’s a lot like other body-switch thrillers, and is practically a remake of the 1966 John Frankenheimer  rich-guy-buys-handsome-young-body tale “Seconds.” But it has generous pleasures — Reynolds’ inherent empathy, his wry way with a look or a line, Goode’s oily salesman-of-science turn, Kingsley’s hint that as ruthless as Damian might have been, impending death has awakened his humanity. That makes the play-on-words title pay off.

Derek Luke turns up in a choice supporting role and other characters are introduced to bring pathos to what is essentially a lightweight genre actioner.
“Self/less” doesn’t re-invent the body-switch movie so much as make it relevant, place it within the zeitgeist and make us wonder how close we are to this kind of immortality, and how long after that the super rich will let it slip that they’re the only ones who can afford it.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of violence, some sexuality, and language

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Ben Kingsley, Matthew Goode, Natalie Martinez
Credits: Directed by Tarsem Singh, script by David and Alex Pastor. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:56