Movie Nation

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)

Kevin Hart, whatever the effort or lack of effort he’s putting into his movies these days, is box office gold — the new Chris Tucker. He’s made the leap from up and comer, the latest cast member from “Freaks and Geeks” to break out — to fat and happy quicker than anybody could have imagined.

“Ride Along,” his first star vehicle since his concert films turned into surprise hits the past couple of years, should make — get this — $45 million by the end of the long holiday weekend. That’s an MLK Weekend record.

Bad reviews, because it is a crappy movie and he needs to associate himself with writers who can give him funnier things to say and do, did not kill it. “Ride Along” is a smash.

“Lone Survivor” is battling “The Nut Job” (which also got bad reviews) for second place. Both should be in the mid-$20s.

And then there’s “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,” the best-reviewed new movie of the weekend. It isn’t bombing, but $18-19 million by Monday? Not much return on Paramount’s investment. Mishandled.

“The Legend of Hercules” fell out of the top ten. That’s got to be some kind of record, too.

“August: Osage County” and “Her” got nice Oscar nomination bounces. “Saving Mr. Banks” took an Oscar related (no big nominations) hit.

“Devil’s Due,” a weak-tea horror picture, looks to make $10 million by weekend’s end.

Paramount did itself no favors by showing “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” to a few New York and LA and trade publication critics in advance, and stiffing the rest of us with screenings after deadline.

The first wave of reviews — and really, there wasn’t a critic in that lot I’d call “elite” — panned it. But now, after everybody has seen it, it’s sitting in the positive reviews realm. It’s not terrible, and it is a tribute to America’s reviewing class that we didn’t pre-judge the movie as crap simply because Paramount was hiding it. Let’s hope the studio realizes that. Now.

“The Nut Job” is earning awful notices, which I attribute to critics refusing to treat animation as kids’ fare. This one certainly is, and is much more entertaining and audience friendly than much of what’s been shoved down parents’ throats the past year or two. I liked it more than most, but reviews won’t be helping this one.

“Ride Along” is more proof that Kevin Hart has gotten rich and happy and lost a lot of the edge he seemed to have a couple of years ago. A star-vehicle cop buddy movie, and he doesn’t deliver the goods. Not funny, weak writing, a slow-paced film that doesn’t catch him at his most manic. Tim Story deserves a big chunk of the blame here. Terrible reviews for this one, across the board.

“Devil’s Due” is an occasionally scary but uninvolving, soulless “impregnated by the Devil” thriller. Some cool effects, but blase performances create characters we don’t care about. Poor reviews for this one.

The dog knows. The dog always knows in movies about the Devil, because there’s the scent of Satan in the air.

Maverick, a Setter, knows that something’s up with Samantha’s mysterious, post-honeymoon in Santo Domingo pregnancy. Her OB-GYN may not have a clue, and her videotape EVERYthing husband (Zach Gilford of “Friday Night Lights”) may be slow on the uptake.

But Maverick gets it, and long before the Devil’s due date in “Devil’s Due.”

Fifteen years after “The Blair Witch Project” brought “found footage” into the film vocabulary, “Devil’s Due” serves up a “Rosemary’s Baby” variation of the formula. A police interrogation (videotaped) of bloodied, shocked Zach frames the story. And wedding video, home movies, closed circuit supermarket cameras (capturing Samantha devouring raw meat, and the shocked reactions of customers) and Satanist surveillance footage make up most — but not all (the filmmakers break format) — of this rarely hair-raising thriller about the ultimate “problem pregnancy.”

Sam (Allison Miller), an orphan with “no family,” marries Zach and they dash off to the Caribbean for a honeymoon. A night of partying, a too-helpful taxi driver who offers to take them someplace “special” and authentic, and snatches of Zach’s video footage of the ritual that happened to them after they blacked out from the drinks tell us, but not them, what is going on.

A Santo Domingo palm reader tries to warn them — “No family, no past, you were born for death,” she intones. “THEY’ve been WAITING!”

We already know who “they” are because of the Biblical  “Antichrist” passage quoted in the opening credits. And the waiting involves, what, nine months or so?

“Something’s wrong,” Sam keeps protesting about this baby. But Zach, video-mad Zach, takes forever to start looking back over his footage and figuring all this out.

A handful of high-end special effects lift this generic demonic possession tale, and a few killer scenes work — a Lamaze class where Samantha’s fetus gives the other women contractions, a First Communion celebration turned bloody by that thing growing in Samantha’s womb, the aforementioned supermarket scene (funny), Samantha’s super villain-sized explosions of temper.

The dialogue is dull, the performances perfunctory and while it is novel to leave out “the explainer” character — that slim hope that a priest, an expert on the Occult or whoever, can give the characters answers — common to this genre, robs the film of pathos and urgency. There’s no “We have to stop this from happening” because nobody knows what’s happening or that it should be stopped.

Except for the dog. And he’s not talking. He’s just hoping that unlike so many dogs in so many Satan-scented cinematic possession pictures, he gets to survive to the final credits.

MPAA Rating: R for language and some bloody images

Cast: Allison Miller, Zach Gilford, Sam Anderson

Credits: Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, written by Lindsay Devlin. A 20th Century Fox release.

Running time: 1:29