Movie Nation

Hugh Bonneville was more than happy to hang up his “monkey suit,” the tuxedos, uniforms and evening clothes he’s oft encased in on “Downton Abbey.” “Oh my heavens, yes!” But it took a movie, “Paddington,” with him co-starring with a cuddly bear, to manage it.
“As much as I love ‘Downton Abbey,'” the actor who embodies the inimitable Lord Grantham says, “it’s nice to put on a sweater. Occasionally.”
Bonneville is Mr. Brown, the stuffed-shirt “risk analyst” father who resists the idea of his family adopting a refugee bear in the charming new film, “Paddington,” based on the much-loved children’s books.  The role, Bonneville confesses, isn’t a huge stretch.
“I think Robert Crawley (Lord Grantham) is a distant cousin of Mr. Brown,” Bonneville says. “I’m not sure Lord Grantham would be caught dead sneaking around the ledges of the Natural History Museum (as Mr. Brown does, in one scene in “Paddington”). But there’s this patriarchal archetype that they both fit into, isn’t there? This buttoned-up father who, like Captain Von Trapp (“The Sound of Music”) or Mr. Banks “(Mary Poppins”), finally learns to ‘fly his kite,’ so to speak. It’s common in so much family literature and entertainment. Even in ‘Peter Pan,’ Mr. Darling is a bit clueless.”
Bonneville, 51, had been plugging along in supporting roles on film (“Notting Hill”, “Iris”) and British TV (“Lost in Austen”) before “Downton” took Britain by storm, and then the world. Lord Grantham, the earl and patriarch who presides over a baronial estate from World War I onward, came into his life and sort of took it over.
“I remember going on ‘The View,’ and Barbara Walters being so VERY disappointed that I was wearing jeans,” Bonneville says. “She tweaked my knee and said that wasn’t allowed, not for me, any more.”
But “Paddington” he just had to do.
“The name “Paddington,” for generations around the world, particularly those of us who grew up in the U.K., is much more than a train station,” he says. “It takes you back to your earliest memories of books, back to your childhood. Those were the first books I was able to read to myself, so he’s held a special place in my heart.”
A veteran of the “Harry Potter” films would produce, co-stars from Sally Hawkins to Oscar winner Jim Broadbent would be in the cast. But Bonneville had his concerns.
“I worried that Paddington would be bastardized in some way, or characters would be skewed beyond recognition. Within the first page, I was laughing. First sight gag, in the script, this ‘modest timepiece’ being carried through the jungle — and it’s a grandfather clock. When you’re laughing on page one, weeping on page eight and laughing again on page ten, that’s a script you want to do.”
“Paddington” arrives in theaters as, by far, the most critically-acclaimed film of the new year. Sandra Hall of Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald
singled out Bonneville’s contribution to that, praising the way he “employs some of the stuffiness of his ‘Downton Abbey’ gig and adds a well-judged dose of self-mockery.”
Bonneville, in a bit of Grantham-esque jingoism, loves the Britain that the film depicts, “a magical version of London, the London we’d all love to think is real.” Bonneville laughs at the “old fashioned London” Paddington has been taught to expect, with it’s “politeness, always tipping your hat, and the ‘107 ways of describing rain.’ It’s a city with its ugly, dirty side, too.”
Still, it’s that bear-out-of-his element story that first grabbed kids when Michael Bond’s “Paddington Bear” books launched in 1958. Paddington’s experience is like a child’s first day at a new school, or a tourist’s first day in a foreign land.
“I always think that your first day in a foreign country, you’re either going to get fleeced or conned,” Bonneville laughs. ” You won’t understand the currency and make some huge mistake. Or the taxi driver in London or Chicago or Paris is going to take you the long way round. By the end of Day One, you’re a little less wet behind the ears. That, to me, is ‘Paddington.'”

(Read Roger Moore’s 3 star review of “Paddington” here)

Bruce Willis has aged into a fit, bald menace, a character actor best-suited for chewy supporting parts in ensemble action pictures. If that makes him a has-been, so be it.
Thomas Jane, on the other hand, is a never-was, or never-quite was. “The Punisher” was something of a high water mark for the grizzled Jane, an actor forever topped by a long, greasy mop of hair, a player doomed to play an endless procession of unshaven cops.
But he is every bit as good as Willis when it comes to delivering a one-liner with panache. Check out Roy, his cop trying to track down an escaped “artificial,” a flesh-and-blood clone/robot used as fodder for sex and violence fantasies at the pricey new resort “Vice,” which Julian Michaels (Willis) runs.
“You wanna make it to bed tonight, do what I ask” Jane, as Roy, growls.
“I know, I know, you’re in love with a robot,” he snarls at another guy with feelings for an automaton.
And as that robot, a perky blonde bartender, Kelly (Ambyr Childers) who often is raped, beaten and killed on “your last night here” as part of clients’ sick fantasies, finds the guy who designed her, Roy has a zinger all loaded up and ready to go.
“It’s not every day one gets to meet his maker!”
“Vice” is a low-budget sci-fi thriller that borrows heavily from “Blade Runner” and “Westworld,” and serves as an answer to the question “How much movie can you get when you shoot your $10 million film in Mobile, Alabama? The answer is, quite a lot — with modernist buildings, striking control room sets and the city’s docks serving as a backdrop.
But “Vice” is a silly movie, one with a villainous businessman whose henchman (Jonathan Schaech) quotes Maya Angelou to his quarry (Kelly) after she starts having flashbacks to all the times she’s been raped or killed, and flees the world of Vice. He figures “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” is apt, considering the artificial blonde’s lifespan and life circumstances. And maybe she’ll be touched and surrender to this guy who “gets” her.
Vice is “a place where there are no laws, no rules and no consequences,” Julian says in its TV ads. But that unfettered giving in to one’s basest desires tends to spill over into the real city, which is sort of a commentary on video game, TV show and movie violence. Only it isn’t. It is, however, why Roy hates the place. His boss refuses to let him go into “Vice” to chase criminals. So naturally, that’s what Roy does, guns and one-liners blazing.
It’s all rather malnourished, but not nearly as sad as sone might expect. Jane turns up in films at this level all the time, and always gives fair value. Willis is just now getting used to the budget and paydays, and if he doesn’t give us more than he figures he was paid for, at least he’s adept at hiding any embarassment at the low rent district his career has parked in.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with violence, nudity, profanity

Cast: Thomas Jane, Bruce Willis, Ambyr Childers, Jonathan Schaech

Credits: Directed by Brian A. Miller, script by Andre Fabrizio, Jeremy Passmore. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:36

“Paddington” brings children’s book hero Paddington Bear to the screen in a movie as sweet as orange marmalade, as sentimental as a stuffed toy from childhood. It’s an utterly charming and endlessly inventive way of bringing a talking bear into present day London, a film that uses all of the magic of the medium and our fond memories of Michael Bond’s beloved bear to give him life.
In a black and white newsreel, we see the bear’s origin story — his “rarest of bears” family discovered by a “Jolly Good” British explorer in “Darkest Peru” in the 1950s. A present day earthquake sadly sends the bear off to London, where the explorer had assured his aunt and uncle bear that Londoners “will not have forgotten how to treat a stranger.”
But they have. With only memorized, dated British slang from a “Advice for the Travellor in London” LP and a supply of his aunt’s orange marmalade (she got the recipe from the explorer), the bear is lost in brusque, busy London. Until the busy busy Browns see him, take pity on him, take him home and name him after a train station.
A simple scene, but having Mrs. Brown played by the eternally sympathetic Sally Hawkins (“Happy”) makes it work. Naturally, her husband (Hugh Bonneville of “Downton Abbey”) is against the idea. He’s an insurance risk analyst.
“Seven percent of ALL accidents begin with jumping,” he chastises their son (Samuel Joslin), who loves the bear in an instant. The snotty teenage daughter (Madeleine Harris) is on dad’s side.
There’s much kid-friendly kerfuffle about a bear lose in a modern toilet (toothbrushes can clean bear ears), a bear discovering vacuum cleaners and tea and cake. There are Brit cameos — new “Doctor Who” Peter Capaldi is a nosy neighbor, Matt “Little Britain” Lucas is a cabbie and Oscar winner Jim Broadbent is a German antiques dealer who may be able to figure out who the explorer was who invited bears to London.
And there’s a villain. Oscar winner Nicole Kidman dons a blonde pageboy wig and turns her sexy whisper into a menacing one as a natural history museum taxidermist who would love to have “this specimen.” Is he an endangered species?
“He is NOW,” she hisses, practicing her knife-throws.
Ben Whishaw, the new “Q” in the James Bond movies, has an innocent, impeccably polite pitch to his voice that very much suits the bear. And the effects that put the bear on the screen are so good as to make you forget he’s animated. This is a big, flowing fur leap from the animated teddy bear of “Ted.”
Yes, this is a kid’s movie and as such, not given to deep thinking or a challenging story. But British puns and British actors and British sights abound. And if you were ever an Anglophile, a fan of the books, or count yourself as a “Downton Abbey” devotee, the sense of place makes London feel inviting, adorable, and “rained, poured, drizzled or ‘chucked it down'” wet.
Screenwriter/director Paul King manages lovely moments — the antiques dealer recalls, in a toy train-sized flashback, his own orphaned journey to Britain before the Holocaust, Paddington’s list of possible explorer addresses are scribbled, with directions, over shots of the London skyline, a Buckingham Palace guard serves Paddington tea and sandwiches he keeps tucked under his hat.
And Bonneville, who did mostly comedy, pre-“Downton,” rediscovers his funny bone describing this ursine house guest to cops and insurers.
“Grizzly? Not particularly. Mind you, I haven’t seen him in the MORNING.”

(Hugh Bonneville talks with Roger Moore about “Paddington” and “Downton Abbey” here).
MPAA Rating: PG for mild action and rude humor

Cast: Sally Hawkins, Hugh Bonneville, Nicole Kidman, Peter Capaldi, and the voice of Ben Whishaw

Credits: Directed by Paul King, screenplay by Paul King, based on the Michael Bond Paddington Bear books. A Weinstein release.

Running time: 1:34

Taylor Negron was  in lot of films and TV shows, most famously “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” “The Last Boy Scout,” “Seinfeld,” “Fresh Prince” etc. He was a stand-up, and a funny, flippant fellow in person.

He died this weekend after a long battle with cancer.

He almost made a movie in Orlando, once, and I caught up with him at a pre-filming fund raising party. It was the infamous “Robodoc,” and he was going to do it, but somehow dodged that bullet.

In an Orlando Sentinel story about him and the movie, I think I referred to his feral appearance, which sort of matches the way he was typically cast. And after the story came out, he called we chatted about how funny he thought that was. A good sport about it, and those dark vulpine (a better word for him, I think) looks kept him steadily employed over the years.

Here’s a piece he wrote, reflecting on his life, death and work. That cancer is a bear, and 57 is way too young to die. RIP, Taylor N.

Here she is, Mother Russia, in all its bloated, drunken, allegorical glory. “Leviathan” is a modern parable of an ancient state and caricatures and stereotypes as old as vodka itself.
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s film is, like the corrupt politician and hapless proles depicted here, a Soviet era throwback, a tale of people resigned to entropy, resigned to a naive belief in the authority of law and the state until they’re confronted with exactly who those laws and who that state are designed to serve.
Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov) is a drunken blowhard living a modestly successful life in a town along the northern coast. He’s quick to anger, quicker with a dope slap to his rude teenage son. Lilya (Elena Lyadova), his second wife, endures the kid who hasn’t quite accepted her and keeps her mechanic and all-around handyman husband’s vodka glass full.
We meet Kolya picking up an old army buddy at the train station. Dmitri (Elena Lyadova) is now a lawyer in Moscow, a man with faith in the rule of law but savvy enough to know how things really work. Kolya, it turns out, needs a lawyer. The mayor (Roman Madyanov) has decided the city — or somebody — needs Kolya’s hilltop-with-ocean-view house. He may face re-election every few years, but the pugnacious Vadim is just an old school “apparatchik” — a functionary kept in place by the top-down oligarchy that replaced the communist party. Vadim is used to getting his way, so it’s no shock that the ruling, rendered in court and delivered in a high-speed drone by a “judge,” goes against Kolya.
But Dmitri has an ace up his sleeve, “dirt” on the mayor that could finish him.
Zvyagintsev frames his story with seascapes, images that capture the decaying fishing boats and exposed whale bones of a world where so little changes that all the average Ivan can do is shrug, sit and drink himself into a stupor — nightly.
A “shooting” picnic with some Russian redneck friends adds to the portrait of life here, and to the tension. Zvyagintsev patiently builds a sense of dread, the fear of what all this thwarted hope, alcohol and firepower can lead to. Volatile people with high velocity ammunition are a deadly combination.
Will the violence come when a drunken Vadim slurs insults at an equally drunk Kolya? Will there be some other accident or an incident to tip these teetering tightrope walkers into the abyss?
Vdovichenkov’s Dmitri is droll and bored, but still dogged enough about the system that he’s willing to jump through the hoops he figures will render justice. He’s like a Dostoevsky hero, the last one to get a clue. The nervous, edgy Serebryakov keeps us on tenterhooks, never knowing what he might do next, how he could lash out.
But Lyadova creates a sad, lonely soul straight out of Chekhov, a beautiful woman in an ugly place, gutting fish for a living, trapped by circumstance, loyalty and love in a marriage that is its own dead end.
The politics are rarely overt. “Pussy Riot” stories pop up on TV, and the Orthodox Church’s role in the hierarchy (cozying up to power, serving as a calming “opiate” to the masses) is mocked. Zvyagintsev is a bit too willing, in this overlong film, to let the landscape, the remote setting and the insular world of crumbling apartment blocks, sagging houses, collapsing churches grey skies shape the film’s message. The little people, with their little problems that become huge as they’re ground up in the maw of the beast? They drink because they know — “What else can I do?”

MPAA Rating: R for language and some sexuality/graphic nudity

Cast: Aleksey Serebryakov, Elena Lyadova, Vladimir Vdovichenkov, Roman Madyanov

Credits: Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev, script by Oleg Negin, Andrey Zvyagintsev . A Sony Classics release.

Running time: 2:20