Movie Nation

Disney has decided that the Oscar nominated, months-long top ten box office presence of “Frozen” needs a little cherry on top of the icing of this $338 million-and-counting hit. So Jan. 31, they’re releasing digital sing-along prints of it — lyrics for kids (and others) to read and sing along with the mostly-forgettable tunes. There are a couple of winners in there, and I could see this one taking best original song, maybe even Best Animated film in a crowded but underwhelming field.

But was this “sing along” really necessary? Will it boost it back into the Top Five? Not likely.

And the folks who unleashed “The Nut Job” to a decent but not epic opening last weekend (reviews were weak, I thought it worked for what it is) have announced “Nut Job 2” for the same weekend in 2016. The film’s yet to clear the $30 million mark, which is should before this weekend. But still, this is nobody’s idea of a blockbuster. Open Road is calling it a win and putting a sequel into the pipeline.

He’s come a long way from being a British TV actor who could never, ever escape the ghost of Alan Partridge.

Steve Coogan once mocked that trap in “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story,” mocked the sanctity of Shakespeare with “Hamlet 2,” palled around with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson for the “Night at the Museum” movies, and “Tropic Thunder,” and started down the road to “Philomena,” which he had a hand in writing, producing and co-stars in, with films such as “In the Loop,” through “What Maisey Knew Yeah, he revisited Alan Partridge along the way, and had parts in “My Idiot Brother” and “The Other Guys.” And “The Trip,” with his foil Rob Bryden.

But now, Oscar nominations, as co-writer and producer, critical acclaim, sharing most every scene with Judi Dench. Yeah, he’s the Oscar underdog. I tend to track those long shots down this time of year.

We’re talking Friday. Suggested questions for Steve? Comment below.

“Gimme Shelter” is a simplistic, faintly emotional account of a pregnant teen’s desperate search for help, support and compassion with the huge decision she faces. It’s simplistic because the script discounts debate over that decision and glosses over the messy details of the path she chooses. But it’s emotional because we, and plainly some of the characters, know those messy details, even if other characters do not.
Agnes (Vanessa Hudgens) is 16 and poor, the daughter of a drug addict (Rosario Dawson) who had her too young. Agnes, who decides she wants to be called “Apple,” is all piercings, ill-fitting dirty clothes and tattoos. And if she needs a case study in how life can go wrong by having a baby at that tender age, she can look at mom — a raging, staggering, yellow-toothed horror in her early 30s.
But Apple, with no more warning than an “I’m OUT,” runs away — fist fighting her mother to get through the door. With just a little cash, the clothes on her back and a crumpled old envelope with an address on it, she sets out in search of the father she’s never met.
There are misadventures along the way — sleeping in a car she breaks into, threats from a pimp, a car crash, an arrest. Her affluent, suburban dad (Brendan Fraser) has two kids, a gorgeous French wife (Stephanie Szostak) and enough guilt to take her in. But the wife won’t stand for it.
“She’s trying to get between us!”
Hudgens seems to revel in playing Apple, a hostile, ill-mannered and impulsive Every Teen — not at all the sort of girl you’d want around if you’re worried about your own children. The character attracts violence and seems capable of it, too. And she is just clueless.
“I’m fine, just by myself.”
Where can she go, who is left to turn to? Her mother, wanting that extra welfare check, is tracking her down. As street-savvy as this sullen, stand-offish girl is, she’s in way over her head here.
“Gimme Shelter” has many of the hallmarks of a faith-based film, the ways it lays out Apple’s dilemma, the grim details of her life that Hudgens milks for all they’re worth, the people of faith who offer her hope and her resistance to their ministry.
A priest (James Earl Jones) and a shelter run by the understanding but no-nonsense Kathy (Ann Dowd of “Side Effects” and “Compliance”) offer Apple sanctuary. Does she have the good sense to take it, or will she bring the problems of her world crashing into theirs?
Writer-director Ron Krauss embraces the grit but fails to find much that surprises here. He attracted a good cast, and Hudgens, hell-bent on leaving her Disney “High School Musical” image behind, dives into the street language and angry, downcast look of a defiant girl who doesn’t know how little she knows about how bad things are and how much worse they could get. With this film, following “Sucker Punch,” “Spring Breakers” and “The Frozen Ground” (she played a young hooker in that one), Hudgens has had a lot of practice dressing down and exploring the ugly side of life.
A better film would have made more of the dilemmas, been more honest with the many dead ends facing Apple. This shelter doesn’t seem to do much other than house pregnant girls, no schooling, vocational training, state assistance.
It’s the sort of movie whose finale leaves you wondering, “Why do they always leave out what happens next?”

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic material involving mistreatment, some drug content, violence and language – all concerning teens.
Cast: Vanessa Hudgens, James Earl Jones, Rosario Dawson, Ann Dowd, Brendan Fraser
Credits: Written and directed by Ron Krauss. A Roadside Attractions release.
Running time: 1:40

(Roger Moore’s interview with Vanessa Hudgens is here)

Writer-director Ron Krauss ran through more than a few Hollywood starlets in trying to cast the homeless pregnant teen, Apple, in his debut feature film — “Gimme Shelter.” He’d spent more than a year getting to know such women and those who ran the Several Sources Shelters in New Jersey, the project had become a cause to him and he had to get this casting right.
“Finally, I sent a video link to some girls staying in a shelter and they looked at several auditions,” Krauss recalls. “They didn’t know the young women auditioning. The girls didn’t know ‘High School Musical.’ And they picked Vanessa Hudgens.”
Hudgens, the former Disney Channel sweetheart, might have seemed an odd choice for the frumpy, pierced and pregnant runaway in search of a father she never knew. “Hollywood people I told went, ‘That Disney girl? Are you crazy?'” Krauss says. But Hudgens, at 25, has been putting those Disney years far behind her with films as gritty, edgy and R-rated as “Sucker Punch,””Spring Breakers” and “The Frozen Ground.”
“There’s nothing cooler than looking into a mirror and not seeing yourself,” Hudgens says. “The scripts that you get are always similar to the last project somebody saw me in. But that just means that I want nothing to do with it. I like variety. I don’t like being stagnant, sticking with the same thing.”
She won’t come right out and say it, but after a few years of “sweet girl” roles after the wildly popular “High School Musical” ended, movies such as “Beastly” and “Bandslam,” Hudgens has set her mind to doing more adult roles in films that demolish that old image.
“Sucker Punch” saw her as an inmate in a mental institution whose escape is envisioning herself (and her fellow inmates) as scantily clad hookers avenging themselves on the evil men in their lives. “Spring Breakers” put her in another ensemble of young women behaving badly, cutting loose and committing crimes on spring break. “The Frozen Ground” showcased Hudgens as a teen prostitute who survives a serial killer attack.
Hudgens whacked off her hair, gained weight, wore piercings and “lived in a shelter for three weeks,” Krauss marvels. “I never thought a Hollywood actress could play this role, that the movie star would show through. But she had swagger to her, she can hide her beauty. She was showing a part of herself she’s never shown before.”
None of her recent films has been a breakout hit. But Hudgens has been earning good reviews on this journey to the dark side, with Digital Spy describing her turn in “The Frozen Ground” as having “child-like wonder” but “harrowing to watch.”
“Gimme Shelter,” which is based on a true story and uses real shelters and girls staying in them as its backdrop, offered the actress the chance to work with James Earl Jones (as a priest) and Ann Dowd as the firm but compassionate operator of the shelter Apple winds up in. It’s the sort of indie film where “You get to push yourself out of your comfort zone,” Hudgens says. “It’s work, but it’s work that’s fun. It’s the sort of thing you look for in order to grow.”
“Gimme Shelter” comes out at a time when poverty is back in the national conversation. It’s being embraced as a faith-based film, as the shelters it is set in are Catholic sponsored and abortion is never a seriously-considered option for a pregnant teen with no home, no job and few prospects. Hudgens says she embraces the messages of the movie, “a script that had a lot of courage about it, I think. You’ve got abortion and child abandonment and homelessness and abuse. Tough subjects.”
But after this latest walk on the dark side, Hudgens was ready to mix things up again for her next picture. She knows she may lose her longtime fans, alienating some as she tries to reach that broader audience that leads to career longevity. Her next film, “Kitchen Sink” is about a time “when zombies and vampires and humans are trying to co-exist in peace,” Hudgens says, laughing.
“Every role you want, every change in direction you make, is always a hunt and a struggle, and that’s the way it should be,” she says. That leap from child star to adult actress has never been easy, especially with the levels of stardom that child TV/music stars today can achieve. Overcoming that “brand” in the public’s mind is harder than never. “You have to fight for the things you want. We’re all trying to create our own path. So you admire what somebody else has done or is doing, but you want to write your own story.”

(Roger Moore’s review of “Gimme Shelter” is here)

Aaron Eckhart has some advice for monster movie and Mary Shelley purists who might quibble with “I, Frankenstein,” his futuristic movie version of creature that features Eckhart as the monster almost 100 years in the future.
“Get on Twitter,” he chuckles, suggesting the best place to complain. “They already ARE! Believe me.”
None of that 19th century piecing together human body parts, harnessing of lightning, jolting a creature to life in this “Frankenstein.” Frankenstein’s monster in “I Frankenstein,” is 200 years old and called “Adam.” He’s survived into a future dystopia where he gets caught up gargoyle/demon wars.
Sure, it’s a genre picture, Eckhart laughs. But if he was to take to Twitter himself to try and sell it, here’s his 144 character-or-so pitch.
“It’s a monster movie with a human soul. Fans of this genre may care about that, but a lot of people just don’t. They care about the action, the effects. If I’m selling this movie on a tweet, it’s ‘Man in search of his purpose.'”
Eckhart found that something he could relate to. At 45, he’s never broken out as a headliner, a box office attraction who can open a film based on his name alone. His screen presence is formidable, thanks to a deep voice, soulful eyes and a face Seattle Times critic Moira McDonald once said “looks as if a computer designed it…His jaw is absurdly square, his nose long and aristocratic, his eyes are small but glitter intelligently.” He broke into movies with the help of playwright-director and friend Neil LaBute (“In the Company of Men”) and has had scattered success in the 15 years since.
Supporting roles in blockbusters from “Erin Brockovich” to “The Dark Knight” films (as Harvey “Two-Face” Dent), leads in more daring fare such as “Thank You for Smoking,” “Towelhead” and “Rabbit Hole” have never added up to an escape from B-movies or actioners (“Olympus Has Fallen”). Still, he takes even the genre pictures on with as much good humor as he can muster.
“I’ve never been an actor who lets himself get shoved into a corner,” Eckhart says. “I don’t really have a body of work that shows me as who I am and what I believe. I’m not showing that. I’ve never been one of those actors.”
He’s serious enough to work out a back story to his character, even if that character is as iconic as Frankenstein’s monster.
“He’s been rejected by his father and has to work out his place in the world. He’s a survivalist, made that way by being cast out by his father to live in the mountains. He basically learned from the animals. In Mary Shelley’s novel, he’s always on the edge of society, on the periphery looking in. In our movie, he’s had 200 years of learning and gaining skills and becoming articulate. I needed to delve into Mary Shelley’s version of him, figure out why she created him. What does she want to say? Is that still relevant today? It is. This is an archetypal man’s journey through life asking himself those same questions every man must ask — ‘Where did I come from, why am I here and where am I going?’
Eckhart is one of those character actors who turns up in several films a year, most years. And “I’m making a lot more movies in 2014. Hey, it’s not like I love to work or anything. I just can’t afford not to.”
There’s a sequel to the hit “Olympus Has Fallen” with Gerard Butler, tentatively titled “London Has Fallen.” And “I just finished ‘Incarnate,’ another genre movie. I play a wheelchair bound alcoholic exorcist! That was a lot of fun.”
If he’s forced to find a connection, a through-line to a career that takes him from cynical villains (“The Rum Diary”) to stoic soldiers (“Battle Los Angeles”), sad-eyed romantics (“Love Happens”, “Rabbit Hole”) to characters-with-a-message (“Towelhead”), it is this — a shared humanity.

“If I’m going to go to all the trouble of making the movie and you’re going to go see it, is there a lesson to be learned from the film about how you can become a better person?
“Movies are about entertaining, first of all, the fantasy that we lose ourselves in. But they’re also about storytelling and growing. So I look for the humanity in the character, the lessons we can learn from his journey.” Even if the character is covered in makeup, a 200 year-old monster.

The weekend’s round of awards shows produced one modest surprise. The Screen Actor’s Guild gave best supporting actress to Adepero Oduye from “12 Years a Slave.” That’s a performance that critics have boosted into the limelight, and it’s nice to see her recognized.

SAG also honored the stars of “Dallas Buyer’s Club” — best actor Matthew McConaughey, best supporting actor Jared Leto, with Cate Blanchett sweeping in to take another “Blue Jasmine” honor.

“American Hustle” took best ensemble.

That puts the Producers Guild split vote of “Gravity” and “12 Years a Slave” in a new light. Is this now a three way best picture race? Yes it is.

In her youth, Gloria hit the discos and danced the Chilean nights away, grooving to the Andrea True Connection and Umberto Tozzi’s song that used her name.
“Gloria”, a song later remade in America by Laura Brannigan, is an ear bug. Try to get it out of your head after seeing “Gloria,” the movie about this divorcee who finds herself reliving her past in the over-50 dating scene of modern day Chile.
Gloria, played by Paulina Garcia with a sort of fierce victimhood, still listens to the songs of her youth, still picks up men — now, it’s at senior dances, where music of her era is played. She’s pushing 60 and still doing the occasional Walk of Shame.
She has lost some of her looks, but not her vivaciousness. Sebastian Lelio’s film is about starting over, about how 60 is the new 40 and about how a woman of a certain age keeps her optimism and her sense of self worth when society (and cinema) has traditionally put such women out to pasture.
“Are you always this happy?” Rodolfo (Sergio Hernández) wants to know on meeting her. Maybe he has number. Or maybe that’s just an “alias” she’s been living under.
As Rodolfo, successful, 60something and plainly smitten, pursues her and in between the work days and beauty regimen, the wining and dining and youthful paintball battles, we start to understand the weight of sadness behind this sunny exterior.
Some of that you can lay at the feet of Rodolfo. He is an enthusiastic lover, but so guarded about their relationship that Gloria turns suspicious. That gives the film a melodramatic edge.
She has other priorities – a daughter about to move overseas with her Swedish beau, a weepy ex-husband. And Rodolfo is a reminder of everything about her past — drunken bar pickups, the excitement of a new sexual partner, casual pot use, the awkwardness of “relationship” conversations — and the unbridged maturity gap between men and women.
“Gloria” has a palpable loneliness about it, and Garcia makes us feel that and fear the emptiness that is staring Gloria in the face. Not a lot happens in this closely-observed character study, but few recent movies have dared to show this stage of life, the creeping solitude that memories of your disco past cannot fend off.

(Roger Moore’s interview with Paulina Garcia in Chile is here)

MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, some graphic nudity, drug use and language
Cast: Paulina García, Sergio Hernández, Diego Fontecilla
Credits: Directed by Sebastián Lelio, written by Sebastián Lelio and Gonzalo Maza. A Roadside Attractions release.
Running time: 1:49

“Run & Jump” is an uncommonly offbeat and charmingly unconventional romance, an Irish comedy that lets itself get very serious, now and again, and is all the richer for it.

Vanetia (Maxine Peake) is a vivacious 30something mother of two, a pragmatic optimist whose optimism has been sorely tested by her husband’s stroke. Conor (Edward MacLiam) survived and has spent a few months in rehab. He’s functioning, but he’s not himself.

Not to worry, Dr. Ted (Will Forte), an American researcher, is coming to stay with them, to observe Conor, videotape him and write about his condition. Surely he’ll help.

“Just here to observe,” he corrects.

Oh, but surely…

“Conor will not return to his old self,” Ted says, with all the compassion and bedside manner of a research scientist.

Conor used to be a woodworker and he goes through the motions of his old craft. But he develops obsessions, with animals, or wooden spheres. And he has new quirks — tearing apart new chairs because “I need the wood” to make…new chairs. He struggles with his speech, struggles with his memory and struggles with his self-control. He throws tantrums and keeps blurting out “Penny” when he’s talking about their son, Lenny (Brendan Morris), not the thing a confused teen needs to hear.

Conor’s own father hectors his son about manners and manliness, things Conor’s lost in the stroke.

And Ted observes, and tapes. Which starts to get to Vanetia, a woman who dances through her housework with her headphones on, but who is dying a little bit because she has, in essence, lost her husband. She needs something, someone, because her life isn’t over.

“An empty dance floor is a wound that needs healing.”

Peake, a redhead who has light-up-the-screen presence, suggests Vanetia’s vitality under the cover of a repressed, overwhelmed woman’s worries. She beautifully underplays her flirtation with Ted. Forte, on a roll since “Nebraska,” makes Ted a shy, stumbling academic who cannot keep his humanity in check as he sees and starts to sympathize with what this entire family, Conor included, is going through.

MacLiam suggests violent frustration in his scenes, making Conor an explosion waiting to happen. Seeing Conor and his kids around all the power tools Conor insists on using give those moments an edge of fear, the accident waiting to happen.

First time feature director Steph Green, working from Irish screenwriter  Ailbhe Keogan‘s script, makes “Run & Jump” just Irish enough to flirt with twee, but never lets it descend into broad, conventional comedy. Life and loyalty, death and sexuality have their parts to play in this comic tragedy, dramatic comedy and intimate tale of lonely, broken people trying to mend in County Kerry.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with sexual situations, drug and alcohol use and profanity

Cast: Maxine Peake, Edward MacLiam, Will Forte

Credits: Directed by Steph Green, written by Ailbhe Keogan. An IFC/Sundance Selects release.

Running time: 1:41

Paulina Garcia took the best actress prize at last year’s prestigious Berlin Film Festival for her performance in the title role in “Gloria.” And as Irish Times film critic Donald Clarke enthused, “It is hard to imagine the jury deliberated for long.” Garcia, 53, is a veteran of Chilean film and theater and makes the most of a character written with her in mind, a lonely but vital 50something divorcee who refuses to settle.” In “Gloria,” which opens in the U.S. Jan. 24, she “brings a welcome, defiant sense of brio to a complex role” Film Comment raved.
We reached Garcia in Santiago, Chile.
Who is Gloria?
Garcia: “She is this shy woman, nervous, the kind of person who is always in the back of the room. Never getting attention for herself. She just watches the world go on around her. This movie is about her walk, little by little, from the back to the front of the room, out of the shadows. It’s a fantastic journey for an actress of any age, to work from the back of the house and into the spotlight. That is Gloria. She is empowered by this journey, by making it at the age she is.”
What did you decide that she wants out of life?
Garcia: “Like everybody else, she is looking for happiness. It’s not success or love or companionship or having friends, but about ‘What are you doing with your life, to make your life happier?’

“She is trying to change her life, doing all the things you do — going out, meeting people, trying new things. Is she desperate? Sometimes, you despair of ever being happy, and sometimes you just go with what life offers you. She seems anxious and impatient, wanting all these things to happen faster, wanting to get happy faster. Everything comes easier when you are calm, centered in mind, body and soul. It’s absurd! You need to be happy today, not tomorrow.”
“Life is longer, she has more time, this walk from the back of the house to the front can take place later in her life because she has more time. Her decisions have different consequences at this age. She understands this. But she wants the same things she wanted at 20. She made bad decisions back then, but she will not let that keep her from making bad decisions again.”
Is she a universal character, or is there something particularly Chilean about her?
“She is like a lot of women in Chile. She is not an intellectual. She doesn’t think very much about who she is or what she wants. Very ordinary.
“She is very Chilean because she is a woman who looks and watches other people making lives for themselves. She just watches. And waits. She’s not making things happen, and that seems very Chilean to me. It is only when she changes that that she moves to the front of the line.”
Any advice to your fellow actresses over 50 who might consider doing, as you did, a nude love scene?
“Once you have decided to do this, to be an actor showing life at all ages, you want to do this. You have to let it happen. It’s never too late. But don’t wait too long!”

(Roger Moore’s review of “Gloria” is here)