Movie Nation

After a decade when the only person to take her seriously was Woody Allen, Scarlett Johansson seems to have found her groove of late, with the new actioner “Lucy” as further confirmation of her niche.
She’s been a poker-faced Russian comic book heroine in “The Avengers” universe, a murderously humorless alien in “Under the Skin” and a voice a guy could fall in love with in “Her.” And that’s the polished skill-set she brings to “Lucy,” a vulnerable college student whose poor choice in beaus gets her tangled up with a Korean/Taiwanese mob about to unleash an irresistible new drug on Europe.
Lucy resists the pleas of Richard (Pilou Asbæk) to deliver this briefcase, so he just handcuffs it to her and sends her in to meet her fate with Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi).
Jang’s bloody hands and the bodies he steps over to get to her make Lucy whimper in fear. And that’s before she realizes what his associate, “The Limey” (Julian Rhind-Tutt) has in store. They need to transport this potent new drug and she’s to be one of the couriers. They knock her out and sew it into her intestines.
“I’m afraid it’s our business model.”
But an unexpected beating makes the drug leak into her system, and that’s when Lucy starts to discover how “limitless” her potential truly is.
That “We only use ten percent of our brain” stuff, basically recycled from the Bradley Cooper thriller “Limitless,” is delivered by Morgan Freeman in a lecture in Paris, while Lucy struggles to survive Taipei long enough to get on a plane to meet him.
Johansson gets a marvelous, simple phone call scene where she tells her mother, “I feel everything — space, time…the rotation of the Earth, the heat leaving my body.” And that’s just the beginning. Big numbers on the screen tell us when she clears 20% brain usage, 40%, and so on.
French action auteur Luc Besson, who turned to producing with the “Transporter” and “Taken” movies, mounts a dazzling fast-motion car chase through Paris and scintillating Scar-Jo slo-mo face-offs with legions of bad guys in this insanely ambitious popcorn popper.
Effects get across the evolved state Lucy is headed for, and simple, comical intercuts of animal kingdom footage show leopards hunting gazelles and the like, just to underline the predatory nature of Lucy’s first encounters with the bad guys.
Amr Waked plays a befuddled French cop caught up in her quest, and things turns deliriously silly and metaphysical as the film veers into Johnny Depp “Transcendence” omnipotence.
But Johansson never wavers, never varies the confident, robotic monotone that Lucy adapts as she controls her mind, her body and then others, and finally gravity and physics itself. She lets her hair fall, strategically, over her right eye and doesn’t blink or wrinkle her short skirts as she guns down or psycho-kinetically punches out or levitates the bad guys. It’s not a great performance, just a perfectly consistent one.
Besson’s script may let her (and Freeman) down in the third act, but the 89 minute long “Lucy” is so brisk it’ll give you whiplash. Even marginal thrillers benefit from a director and star who have a sense of urgency and are as hellbent as this on not overstaying their welcome.

(Related, “Lucy” is a box office smash!)
MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, disturbing images, and sexuality
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman,Min-sik Choi, Amr Waked, Julian Rhind-Tutt
Credits: Written and directed by Luc Besson. A Universal release.
Running time: 1:29

You can sense a John le Carre spy novel adaptation, often before his name turns up in the credits. The hero’s cynicism at war with his skepticism, the professionalism at war with personal demons — in the spy master’s gloomy, overcast world they’re all spies “Who Came in from the Cold.”

That’s especially true in “A Most Wanted Man,” a New World Order/Old School espionage thriller built around one last magnificent performance by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.

It’s a modern story of spy games in post-9/11 Hamburg, set in a secret German unit that looks at “every dark-skinned man as someone who wants to kill us.” That’s the nightmare of Gunther Bachman (Hoffman), in his less-guarded moments, lets us see — the terror of having another 9/11 happen on his watch.

A bearded Chechen Muslim (Grigoriy Dobrygin) swims ashore from a merchant ship, keeps his hoodie pulled low over his haunted/demented eyes, and tries to blend into the port city. Gunther’s team (Nina Hoss and Daniel Bruhl among them) is on the guy the moment he visits a public space.

Why is he here? Gunther is curious enough follow him without picking him up, to try to keep his hated state police rival at bay. But what about the American “observer” (Robin Wright), the embassy liaison who cleverly steers conversations clear of confrontation and toward cooperation — cooperation that benefits the U.S.?

Meanwhile, our crazy-eyed Islamist is hiding out amongst Germany’s large Turkish population which enlists a civil liberties lawyer (Rachel McAdams) to help. Is she naive enough to not ask the right questions? Can she spot trouble when she sees him?

Gunther & Co. are also after the Arabic head of an Islamic charity whom Gunther is sure uses it to funnel money to terrorists. And there’s a Hamburg banker, played by Willem Dafoe, the heir to an institution with a long history of doing below-the-table deals with whatever foe the West has at the moment — Soviets, then, Islamo-fascists now? Polished, rich, but a little nervous, he’s worth leaning on, laying out just what dirt you have on him.

“You’re THREATENING me!”

“Just sympathizing,” Gunther purrs.

Hoffman is merely the first among equals in a stellar cast. Everybody speaks English (snatches of Turkish and Arabic pop up) with a hint of a German accent, and Hoffman gives Gunther the guttural growl of Richard Burton doing a German accent. It conjures up memories of half a century of le Carre adaptations, from “Tinker Tailor, Soldier Spy” and “The Constant Gardener” to “The Russia House.”

Wright is delicious as a smiling puppet mistress who, being American, calls more of the shots than the Germans would like to admit.

Dafoe beautifully plays a powerful man trying to hide how rattled he is, and McAdams, the closest this cast has to not-quite-right casting, is beguiling enough to make us wonder where her lawyer is foolishly idealist or cunning.

Screenwriter Andrew Bovell (“Lantana”) gives Gunther an ever-present cigarette as well as a regular seat at pretty much every bar in Hamburg. And director Anton Corbijn (George Clooney’s assassin thriller, “The American”) and his team paint a Hamburg with both a seedy, seaport side and the sheen of great wealth and power.

John le Carre’s novels dwell on the greys in a black and white world where “You’re either for us or against us” is a naive luxury no one can afford. “A Most Wanted Man” brings us into a new version of that world, where Islamists are the new Soviets and Germans have the role of patient, methodical plodders that Her Majesty’s Secret Service usually fulfill in his stories, doing the legwork, running informers and following the faces and the money as they try to get to something bigger than any impulsive American drone strike would deliver.

And Hoffman, in last great performance, embodies that patience, that professional annoyance at others’ impatience, and just a hint of worry that his “be patient” gamble could let a potential threat escape his clutches and cause the next terrorist incident in a world fearfully awaiting it.

MPAA Rating: R for language

Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright, Willem Dafoe, Grigoriy Dobrygin

Credits: Directed by Anton Corbijn, script by Andrew Bovell , based on a John le Carre novel. A Roadside Attractions release.

Running time: 2:00

Director Mike Cahill has spent a lot of time, the past couple of years, thinking about coincidences, “big ideas” and the human eye.

“There’s magic in real life,” the director of “Another Earth” says. “I’ve had more coincidences than any other person in history. So I sometimes wonder just how ‘real’ this ‘real world’ is.”

He’s in search of film projects “where big ideas turn up in intimate stories — this notion of what happens when you die, what our deepest fears are, losing someone you love. Embed those in a personal, intimate story, that’s kind of where I live as a filmmaker.”

And for his latest film, “I Origins” he had to find a cast with the deepest, most immersive eyes he could find.

“If you look very carefully into someone’s eyes, you can see their being, their feelings and their emotions. Great actors give you even more than that. It’s the most restrained kind of acting, doing it with just their eyes.”

Where “Another Earth” used the idea that an alternate Earth appears in the sky, freeing a guilt-stricken woman (Brit Marling) from the grief of having caused other people’s deaths because the “other her” might have not been to blame, “I Origins” explores what happens when a molecular biologist is confronted with a hint that science doesn’t explain everything. Dr. Ian Gray (Michael Pitt) whose focus is on the eye, aims to close the “loophole” that creationism exploits about the novelty in “design” of the eye, by finding an evolutionary missing link. He has success, only to wonder if the late love of his life and her unique eyes have turned up in another human being.

Cahill needed a star who could manage “the most restrained kind of acting, doing it with just their eyes. In this movie, we get the whole arc of the of the character Ian is revealed in Michael’s eyes. That’s a tremendous talent, for someone to be able to pull off showing ‘arriving’ at this, the end of his story arc, in just his eyes, without speaking a word.”

According to Pitt, that’s not just an accident of nature, that eye-empathy that some actors have and many don’t. The 33 year-old, best known for dark, twisted roles in “Boardwalk Empire” and such films as “Seven Psychopaths” and the recent “Rob the Mob” relished the chance to draw the viewer in with just his eyes. “You do have control over it…(Laurence) Olivier used to say that he would look right off the lens, and if you do that in cinema that you connected more with the audience. I absolutely believe that and I can feel it working when I’m doing it.”

Cahill cooked this tale up with specific actors and their eyes in mind. Marling, his frequent collaborator since college, has a supporting role. Astrid Berges-Frisbey plays the great love of Ian Gray’s life. Pitt and Cahill created Gray together. “This character was really his creation, based on my concept,” Cahill says. The result is a disquieting slice of romantic science fiction that collected the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, given to thought-provoking indie films that focus on science and scientists.

Critics, wrestling with the movie’s concepts and ideas, haven’t come to a consensus on the merits of “I Origins,” with the Christian Science Monitor praising its “deep-dish philosophizing” but The New York Times sniffing that “It may blow your mind, but only if you’re not in the habit of using it.”

Pitt isn’t disappointed in that reaction.

“It’s easier to make movies that don’t make a person think. But audiences are like actors, I think. They crave good material, just like I do. They get more out of it.”

Cahill, 35, makes light of the mixed reviews, saying “I believe there are movie-goers out there who like to think. And if three of them, just three, watch the movie and connect with it, than I will be happy. The best part of life is finding those like-minded individuals. And if only three ‘get it,’ those three are invited to

Here’s the shot — one of several — that director, franchise-reviver J.J. Abrams posted from the new “Star Wars” film set. OK, it’s full sized, it looks pretty much exactly like the ones Lucas & Co. introduced. Been the “Star Wars” celebration conventions. Seen it.

There’s something about a good spy novel that says “fall,” and the best films in that genre reflect this. The skies are overcast, a sort of pale gun-metal grey. Everything is rain and shadows, all the better for skulking about under the ever-present pall of death
Photographer turned filmmaker Anton Corbijn gets this. He saw John le Carre’s “A Most Wanted Man” as an “autumnal sort of story.” A post Cold War tale about terrorism, a Muslim immigrant who sneaks into Hamburg and the urgent but never frantic search for his contacts, Corbijn “insisted we film it in the autumn, and that it goes into wide release in most of the world this autumn,” and in the U.S. in late summer.
“The events of this movie make it feel like this is sort of autumn for mankind, as well,” Corbijn adds. And then there’s the fact that the film’s star, the much heralded actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, died of an overdose before it was released.
Hoffman, in what many are calling “his last, great performance” is Bachman, a world weary German anti-terrorism chief anxious to follow this possibly radicalized young illegal to his money people and his probable control agents. Rachel McAdams is an idealistic young attorney whose job it is to protect the rights of immigrants, and Willem Dafoe is a banker who doesn’t worry too much about where the money comes from or goes to, so long as it passes through his bank.
“This story feels like it has something to do with our lives, at the moment,” Corbijn (“The American,” “Control”) says. “After 9/11, the world changed quite a bit. I felt that this polarized world, in which we see so much in black and white terms, could use more grey in it. That’s what le Carre does.”
Dafoe appreciates le Carre’s “attention to detail, the authority the man has over the material. He knows this world, having been in the intelligence community.” John le Carre, whose spy novels have been Hollywood favorites since “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” on through “The Constant Gardener,” “The Tailor of Panama” and the recent hit “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy,” is the pen name of David John Moore Cornwell, who began writing his fiction while still employed by Her Majesty’s spy agencies, MI5 and MI6.
“This man specializes in being able to tell a story, through the characters, from many different points of view,” Dafoe says. “And during the process of telling that story, we take everyone’s side, at one point or another. That’s really the case with this film, and it’s marvelous. Clearly, there are all these people trying to do the right thing, and they are kind of sucked into the events that happen around this illegal immigrant. They’re all flawed, even though each thinks he or she is doing the right thing. As we see those flaws, we empathize with first this person, then that one.”
Hoffman, playing a rumpled chain-smoking drinker seemingly toting the weight of the world his shoulders “carried a certain physicality that I wanted for Bachman character,” Corbijn says. “He’s a good man, with good intentions. He’s done this for a while and he tries to go after the people who really matter, not the small timers.”
“Philip put some pretty extreme characters on the screen, over the years,” Corbijn says. “We remember them because of how big and vivid they were. But the sign of a great actor is being able to tone that down, play someone ‘normal’ with such depth and soul and hidden anger and fear. It’s beautiful to watch. ”
Dafoe, who turns 59 at the end of July, says he relished the chance to work “with one of the really good ones,” Hoffman. The two actors didn’t know each other, “just each other’s work. Guys like Phil you seek out in this business.”
Hoffman died of an overdose last February, weeks after appearing to promote the film at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. But those who worked with him see the film as a fitting tribute to an exacting actor. Both director and co-star say they were struck by Hoffman’s level of devotion to a role.
“He struggled at what he was great at, and that’s what made him remarkable,” Corbijn says.
“I didn’t even try to figure out what his game was,” Dafoe says. “When an actor’s that good, that flexible, you feel like you’ve known each other forever, and that makes acting in a film comfortable.”
Corbijn cast both Dafoe and Hoffman, who share several blackmail scenes where Hoffman’s agent threatens the banker into setting up the suspected terrorist. But Corbijn got so immersed in the performances, he forgot himself, which he sees as the best tribute you can pay an actor.
“I recall watching the film during editing with Phil, and I had gotten so used to the Bachman character that I could not believe that was actually Phil sitting next to me. Here was the same guy who is so convincing on the screen, so complete, that you forget he was created by an actor. Phil and Willem can both do that. That’s the mark of genius.”

A second big weekend for “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” arrives as Friday night audiences eat up the box office again. Deadline.com figures that’ll translate out to a $30-34 million weekend, a 50-60% from last weekend’s opening.

The sleeper hit of last summer, “The Purge,” is riding weaker reviews but stronger brand ID to a healthy $25-28 million opening. Considering how little was spent on it, it’ll be in the black by next weekend.

The other wide opening for the weekend of July 18-20 is “Sex Tape,” which despite suffering from rather inept marketing is looking toward a meekly respectable $17-18 million opening. The movie isn’t very good, so word of mouth may smack it Saturday-Sunday.

“Jersey Boys” has exited the top ten, as did “Begin Again. Dinesh D’Souza’s “America” documentary should clear the $10 million mark this weekend, provided more of its audience doesn’t wind up in the obituaries before getting around to it.

But Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood,” expanding to 33 screens from its opening 5, is still showing a very strong per-screen average and will have made its first million by Sunday night.

Jon Favreau’s “Chef” cleared the $25 million mark, “Belle” cleared $10 and “Godzilla” will fall just a teensy bit shy of being another of the year’s rare $200 million hits, as it loses its last few screens.

The Alamo Drafthouse down Austin way has long had a way with PSAs asking patrons to STFU or face the consequences.

Here’s Richard Linklater, the Godfather of Austin’s slackers and indie film scene, giving advice on how to deal with people who cannot put a sock in it during a movie, on behalf of the Alamo (Drafthouse).

Rare is the weekend when every single new movie opening carries no bragging rights or “fresh” ratings on Rottentomatoes or passing grades on Metacritic.

I liked “Wish I Was Here” more than most. Here’s a movie being criticized for its funding and the self-indulgence of its star/co-writer/director. Seriously, the fact that his fans felt like funding his not-quite-vanity project shouldn’t enter into it. And you have to judge every Kate Hudson performance on its own merits, not hold a lot of best of a series of bad choices roles in bad rom-coms against her. She’s very good in “Wish I Was Here,” the kids aren’t bad. It’s all over the place, Braff leans on his “Scrubs” timing a bit too much. But funny and watchable.

Then there is “Planes: Fire & Rescue,” a sequel that improves on an AWFUL original “Cars” spinoff. This one has more jokes, John Ratzenberger (Pixar good luck charm) and a better story. It’s better, not good. Reviews overall reflect this. Another “fail” from Disney animation, which is in quite a slump (as is Pixar).

“The Purge: Anarchy” is a different spin on that one percent having to face an annual “purge” of legalized slaughter. This time, it’s the poor, in the form of a no name cast, out to survive a game that the rich have rigged against them. Preachier and worse, I thought. Split reviews on this one.

“Sex Tape” is a raunchy erotic comedy where the erotica is at a minimum, the raunch is tepid and tame (explicit, but not “hot” despite the presence of Cameron Diaz). A few laughs, a weak supporting cast (Rob Lowe scores, Rob Corddry doesn’t) — poor to mixed reviews for “Sex Tape.”

Limited releases “I Origins” and “Mood Indigo” aren’t landing a lot of love, either. I really liked the former and did not care for the latter, but neither is rating as “fresh.”

“Persecuted” is earning the worst reviews of the year, a faithless faith-based rant (government conspiracy frames a famous TV preacher).

“Purge” could manage $30 million at the box office, based on the brand name and pent up demand for horror. “Planes2” could manage $22 and “Sex Tape” $24.

Box Office Mojo predicts $30, Box Office Guru figures $24 for “Purge” $22 and “Planes” $16.

The clever conceit behind James DeMonaco’s 2013 sleeper hit “The Purge” was not that American society had resolved its crime/inequality/population problems with an annual free-pass-for-murder “purge.” It was that this hell night came home to roost on isolated, gated suburbanites, ostensibly liberal people above this annual bloodletting, immune to its impact, but benefiting and even profiting from the mayhem — until it invades their community and their homes.
“The Purge: Anarchy” abandons that sly and disturbing message for a straightforward quest — people trapped outside when the annual “release the beast” commences, people who fall in with a bloody-minded man, bent on vengeance. It’s preachier, more diverse in its casting. All of which make it more specific and limit it. Throw in generally lackluster performances and illogical plot twists and “Anarchy” is seriously crippled.
It goes wrong right from the start, with the title. Years into this annual purge, it’s become widely accepted. Anarchic? No. There are organized gangs, piling into armored school buses, roid-raging skinheads and tractor trailers full of jackbooted thugs. Images of the Rwandan genocide, or of packs of gun nuts toting their semiautomatic weapons through discount stores come to mind.
“Stay safe” everybody says, but most don’t mean it.
A black revolutionary with the basketball hog-friendly name Carmelo (Michael K. Williams) is preaching against the purge, calling it a racist way the rich and powerful use to cull the minority population.
But all waitress Eva (Carmen Ejogo) wants to do is keep her daughter (Zoe Soul) safe for the night and her aged dad (John Beasley) out of trouble. Then trouble blows down their door.
Liz (Kiele Sanchez) and Shane (Zach Gilford) are a bickering couple who only want to finish their shopping and drive home. But their car is sabotaged, and when darkness hits, black kids in whiteface with machetes and machine guns are after them.
One scowling stranger (Frank Grillo) has armed himself to the teeth, armored his Dodge Charger and set out for revenge this night. But these people in jeopardy fall into his path and interfere with his plans.
“Purge 2” is more overtly about race and class as our mixed group of five tries to make its way to the safety of dawn (when The Purge ends) without getting slaughtered by a mysterious “army” or murderous oligarchs or black revolutionaries. It’s closer to a sermon. And it’s very close to being an utter bore.
DeMonaco, who has written thrillers such as “The Negotiator,” plainly was given this sequel order as a rush job and the lack of polish shows. Characters act against their self-interest as well as their morals. They stop to bicker in deadly situations and clumsily act as if they’ve read the dull, tin-eared script and know they aren’t in danger in this sequence, so they can chatter and traipse through this alley or down that subway tunnel without a care in the world.
To a one, they’re blase, only summoning up rage or terror once or twice in the third act. We don’t care for any one of them, and Grillo plays his hard-hearted killer with barely a hint of wit or heart.
That reduces this sequel to a first-person shooter video game with a dose of politics added. Maybe that’s the only way to experience “Anarchy,” with the viewer doing the shooting. Let’s hope DeMonaco has a piece of the spin-off game action, because “The Purge” has pretty much run its course as a violent big screen social satire.
　
MPAA Rating: R for strong disturbing violence, and for language
Cast: Frank Grillo, Carmen Ejogo, Zach Gilford, Zoe Soul, Kiele Sanchez
Credits: Written and directed by James DeMonaco. A Universal release.
Running time: 1:40

The unholy bond between religion and politics is the background for “Persecuted,” a confused and confusing thriller about a TV preacher ruined by a sinister government plot.
Written and directed by Daniel Lusko, who has Christian documentaries among his credits, and having ex-GOP senator Fred Dalton Thompson and Fox News personality Gretchen Carlson in its cast, you can guess its politics.
But the targets are less clearly defined than you might expect. There are evil Feds, and righteous ones. There are veiled attacks on a Congressional effort to give all religions equal standing, and Federal tax money. The president is a devious Clinton look-alike. But Big Time Religion takes it on the chin, too. The most sinister scenes in it take place in the boardroom of a multi-million dollar TV ministry.
So, “Fair and balanced,” right? Not exactly.
James Remar, who broke out in films 35 years ago with “The Warriors” and later as the villain of “48 Hours,” is cast against type as John Luther, an ex-drug addict who now leads Truth Live!, a crusade that he aims to keep above politics, above religious denominations.
Sinister Senator Harrison (Bruce Davison) is pressuring Luther to endorse The Faith and Fairness Act, something backed by a Coexista-oriented organization called SUMAC. It’s incredibly vague what this will do, but it seems to be some sort of religious tolerance/equality act that will give all religions equal standing and all religions equal access to adherents to other faiths. Luther isn’t having it. But he’s been warned.
A drive home takes a turn toward the honey trap they’ve set for him. A girl dies. Luther is on the lam, hunted by the law, as his ministry tumbles into the hands of his opportunistic second-in-command (Christian comic Brad Stine, pretty good).
Luther turns to his wise old dad (Thompson), who happens to be a Catholic priest, another bit of back story that is unexplained.
“Those who believe in nothing must bring you down,” Dad warns. “You’re just a pawn in a political game.”
The safe way to approach this is as the thriller it is supposed to be, and as such, “Persecuted” is pretty limp. There’s no urgency to the performances, no ticking clock to Luther’s desperate bid to clear his name. Remar, a fine character actor, is utterly miscast as a preacher. He doesn’t have the pulpit presence.
Cops don’t stop to question a guy (Luther) sitting in a darkened car, wearing a hoodie and watching a suburban house, even though they see him. A hotel clerk is so anxious to turn Luther in that she dials up the cops while Luther is waiting for his room key. Missteps like that abound.
More interesting are Luther’s repeated entreaties to a supernatural being that isn’t keeping him or his family safe, shouted prayers that go unanswered. Luther, however, doesn’t lose faith, even when he’s confronting the Senator.
“Remember what the Lord said…”
“Oh STOP with the Lord!”
This slapdash script fail to articulate its basic complaint or identify who, exactly, is persecuting them. Government? The culture? Liberals? Humanists? Jews? U-2’s Bono, champion of the Coexista bumper-sticker?
You wonder, because you can’t help but notice this movie’s almost all-white cast around the time we see the evangelical son of the Catholic priest rub his Rosary beads one last time, and pick up a gun.
　
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence and thematic elements
Cast: James Remar, Bruce Davison, Fred Dalton Thompson, Gretchen Carlson, Brad Stine
Credits: Written and directed by Daniel Lusko. A Millennium release.
Running time: 1:31