Movie Nation

The payoff isn’t nearly as interesting as the cryptic set-up and disquieting performances and scenes that precede it in “The Wait.” Still, this movie about a family failing to deal with the death of the matriarch and the differing forms their denial takes is promising enough in premise that M. Blash’s solid script attracted actors of some repute.
Jena Malone and Chloe Sevigny are sisters who have gathered in their mother’s spacious home in a wooded subdivision in the mountains of Oregon. They’re there to say goodbye and watch mom die, which she does in the opening moments of the movie.
But Emma (Sevigny, of TV’s “Portlandia,” “The Mindy Project,” etc.) fields a phone call from a stranger, a woman with a folksy, re-assuring drawl.
“Love is in the air, darlin’. Things always happen for a reason.” And here’s the kicker.
“They will return. Have a good life, now.”
Emma is beside herself. She’s expecting a resurrection. Odd, seeing as how she’s a hospice nurse and there hasn’t been one of those in millennia. She refuses to surrender the body or even admit to a mortician that her mother has passed on. She enlists her young daughter (Lana Elizabeth Green) in her fantasy and starts planning a party.
Younger sister Angela (Malone, of TV’s “Dakota” and “Hatfields & McCoys”) is nonplussed, but apparently unwilling to challenge her elder sister. She finds ways to get out of the house and a reason to want to in the hunky would-be historian Ben, played by Luke Grimes of “True Blood”, just cast as the lead in “Fifty Shades of Grey.”)
And the sisters’ much younger brother, Ian (Devon Gearhart) wanders off, carrying a teenager’s priorities, and seemingly in shock at Emma’s decision to wrap the body in a sheet and wait for…something.
“You’re creepy.”
Everybody’s dealing with a secret something here, be it a troubled mind, a broken marriage or bisexual curiosity. And as they cope and try to avoid each other or learn about each other’s issues, a forest fire is working its way toward them.
“The Wait” is a quiet and austere picture, and the setting and tone are reminiscent of the Tilda Swinton thriller “The Deep End.” Except this isn’t a thriller.
Blash, who used the same two leads in his 2006 film, “Lying,” hints at mysteries within mysteries and maintains a faintly chilly tone. Is something sinister or supernatural about to happen? Are they all doomed by the coming blaze?
Striking landscapes — often with smoke in the background — and odd images prevail; a horse, accidentally doused in reddish-pink fire retardant, a viral video of a little girl yanking free of an adult to hurl herself in front of a train.
So Blash puts an awful lot of intriguing ideas and possibilities on the table. But he is plainly a filmmaker who hasn’t yet worked out that tricky business of making them pay off.
　
MPAA Rating: R for some sexual content, brief nudity, language and drug use
Cast: Chloe Sevigny, Jena Malone, Luke Grimes, Devon Gearhart
Credits: Written and directed by M. Blash. A Monterey Media release.
Running time: 1:37

A sense of mystery is a hard thing to create on film. So much so that discarding that sense, once you’ve created it, is almost always a mistake.
That’s the blunder of “The Truth About Emanuel.” It sets up a lovely psychological puzzle, things which we do not know about the title character, which the ensuing movie doesn’t really justify. And then it ruins the effect by over-explaining pretty much everything in the third act.
Emanuel uses the masculine spelling of her name.
“They thought I was going to be a boy.”
But this skinny, sassy and morbid beauty is anything but. Emanuel (Kaya Scodelario) is sexy, self-confident longer who lives with the knowledge that her mother died in childbirth. “It’s on my tab,” she narrates. “It accumulates interest with every passing day.”
Which may explain her dark take on the world, a persona she’s layered on top of the usual doses of teen sarcasm and self-absorption. She has the confident wit of a great beauty who knows she intimidates men — like the boy (Aneurin Barnard) she flirts with on the bus, or the boss at the pharmacy (Jimmi Simpson) who lets every rude remark slide, just to enjoy another day of her company.
Emanuel wants nothing to do with Dad’s newish wife (Frances O’Connor) or indeed Dad himself (Alfred Molina). But the fetching new neighbor, all bangs and long, diaphanous dresses, attracts her attention. Linda (Jessica Biel) is a new mom. And she needs a baby-sitter. Emanuel figures she can squeeze that in.
“I need the money. I’ve decided I’m going to become a collector of ‘Precious Moments.'”
But Linda has a secret, one which she’s apparently unaware of. Her baby, Chloe, is just a doll. And Emanuel cannot figure out how to process this or broach the subject with the “new mom.”
Co-writer/director Francesca Gregorini sets us up for something sinister, toying with Linda’s fixation on a static-filled baby monitor and Biel’s loopy interpretation of loony Linda.
Emanuel’s response — to keep Linda’s secret, to never point out to the crazy woman the obvious — suggests that she wonders if she’s hallucinating this reality, or merely bending that reality to suit her psychological needs. Somebody’s crazy. But who?
There’s a sort of “Juno” sass and swagger to Brit actress Scodelario’s interpretation of the character. She turns the over matched Claude, her bus acquaintance, into a “boyfriend” by fiat, shocking fellow bus-riders with whispered suggestions that she needs the seat next to her to tell her boyfriend that she’s pregnant. Her Emanuel gets away with rude eccentricity on her brass, her looks and her wit.
But the “Truth About Emanuel” that writers and director come up with is far too pedestrian for this catty, catwalk-ready monster. They had a couple of characters and a couple of actresses playing them who could have led us anywhere — into the dark recesses of guilt and insanity, or worse. Instead, they waste this cast and these characters on a story so conventional, so neatly wrapped up in the finale, that the real mystery is how Gregorini and co-writer Sarah Thorpe didn’t see that.
　
MPAA Rating: Unrated, with adult themes an situations
Cast: Kaya Scodelario, Jessica Biel, Alfred Molina, Frances O’Connor, Aneurin Barnard, Jimmi Simpson
Credits: Directed by Francesca Gregorini, written by Francesca Gregorini and Sarah Thorpe. A Tribeca Film release.
Running time: 1:36

“Breaking Bad” fans will get a kick of out of seeing Bryan “Walter White” Cranston in beard and sunglasses, slinging a Slavic accent. As a hit-man/courier in “Cold Comes the Night,” he sets the film’s quiet, menacing tone with long silences broken by the occasional blood-curdling threat, delivered in venomous Vladimir Putin-ese.

“Leetle girl,” he purrs to the daughter of his kidnap victim (Alice Eve). “You haff JACKet?”

“Of course, everybody has a jacket,” the child snaps.

“Plizz, to get yours.”

Sometimes, it’s as if we’re seeing TV meth maker Walter White vamping it up, pretending to be a Russian meth mobster. Maybe you giggle. I did. And then you snap out of it and appreciate this simple, deliberate and atmospheric thriller for what it is — a genre piece that works.

Co-writer and director Tze Chun takes us to a rural motel in upstate New York where Chloe (Alice Eve) lives a miserly, miserable single-mom existence with daughter Sophia (Ursula Parker). Chloe runs the place, cleans the rooms and takes her cut from the hookers and lowlifes who frequent it.

Child welfare is on her case to move, but she has nowhere to go — limited savings, limited horizons.

Then a couple of bad men making a run for the Canadian border stop for a night, things go wrong and this man with the accent needs Chloe to help him retrieve something the cops — including Chloe’s married cop boyfriend (Logan Marshall-Green of “Prometheus”) — have seized.

Chloe is threatened, slapped around and dragged into a situation the average person would wilt in. But she, like other characters in this myopic tale, has layers and inner resources we can only guess at.

Even though it’s just a semi-predictable, quasi-illogical genre piece, “Cold Comes the Night” manages several nice moments of suspense and a couple of wonderfully-staged confrontations — fights and shootouts. Eve (“Star Trek Into Darkness”) is just cagey and formidable enough to make Chloe work. Marshall-Green makes the most of a playing a cliche — a small town cop who reeks of corruption.

But Cranston takes small bites of this Beef Jerky Tartar script and chews, chews chews — savoring every corny fake-Russian line like the voice actor he was before “Breaking Bad” made him a star.

“I ask one last time,” he growls, letting us taste the Borsht with him. “You vill get me dat Jeep, or I will put boool-et in leetle girrrrl.”

He’s having fun with this, and so should we.  

MPAA Rating: R for violence and language

Cast: Alice Eve, Bryan Cranston, Logan Marshall-Green

Credits: Directed by Tze Chun, written by Osgood Perkins, Nick Simon and Tze Chun. A Sony/Samuel Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:26

“Divorce Corp” is a documentary that could have been required viewing for anybody getting divorced, or for that matter, getting married. Its cautionary message is that sobering.
But advocacy documentaries — be they about charter schools, Barack Obama’s parentage or the National Rifle Association — have conditioned us to wonder “Who’s paying for this?” and “What axe do these folks have to grind?”
Those questions hang over “Divorce Corp,” a ninety minute Dr. Drew Pinsky-narrated take down of the extra-Constitutional “family courts” and the unsavory connections between judges, attorneys and others. It is packed with anecdotal horror stories, cluelessly corrupt judges and unqualified “custody evaluators” who are so comfy within their insular universe they had no idea how they’d come off on film, talking about the conflicts of interest they — to a one — are willing to shrug off to the filmmakers.
Much of this stuff is accepted wisdom thanks to decades of reporting about the ways “domestic violence” has been turned into a generic courthouse threat, used against fathers, stories of high-handed judges throwing litigants in jail who question their verdicts in print or on blogs, divorces that drag out for years, bankrupting one or both parties seemingly at the whim of the lawyers and the judge who lets this happen.
We know we have an adversarial legal system, we know our courts and the lawyers who work in them aim to create a “winner” and a “loser” in every case, even ones involving ending a marriage and deciding where the children of that marriage live.
And maybe we’ve read or seen Dickens’ “Bleak House,” and recognize the motto distorted for use in “Divorce Corp,” “The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself.”
But that’s not enough for this film, which calls for reform of family law and for a system more like the less adversarial one in Scandinavia, to make its case. And it does this entirely with anecdotes and advocates, without hard numbers on virtually any issue it brings up.
Somewhere within the legions of lawyers, judges, legal advocates, reformers, a private investigator, TV judge (Lynn Toler) and notorious celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, filmmaker Joe Sorge should have found one expert who could explain how the system got this complicated and the reasons family court plays by rules that don’t seem Constitutional. Leaving that point of view out makes the film play as conspiracy-minded.
That undercuts what appears to be a perfectly credible timeline, the rising real estate market driving law firms to suddenly take a greater interest in family law, the invention of a self-contained world where judges can “retire” to these very law firms whose money the judge, while judge, makes certain that they get to collect. This “collusion” or potential for corruption stinks.
A Rolls Royce-driving private detective, John Nazarian, shakes his head at a system that’s made him rich. A Massachusetts lawyer can joke about kids in a divorce as “little bags of money.” And one and all can fume at the complexity that’s rendered this seemingly simple process too complicated for most people to navigate on their own in courtrooms where judges treat those who serve as their own counsel as “irritants.”
Many of the anecdotes beg for follow-up questions, as this case or that one is explained by one side of it in the most simplistic terms and even then the casual viewer can see holes in the story.
And without hearing exactly why things got this complicated — beyond the “given” that lawyers are “greedy” and have fixed the system — without viewing how parts of the world other than the legal “paradise” of Scandinavia have systems that contrast with our own,”Divorce Corp” is a lot pointed outrage that, damning as its seems, feels suspect.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with corporal punishment, adult situations, profanity
Cast: Gloria Allred, Lynn Toler, John Nazarian, narrated by Dr. Drew Pinsky.
Credits: Directed by Joe Sorge, written by James D. Scurlock, Philip Sternberg, Blake Harjes and Joe Sorge. A Candor Entertainment release.
Running time: 1:31

Everything old is new again at this movies this year. And we’re not just talking about sequels.

Hollywood has taken its “rely on established ‘brand’ names” thing to the next level.

So we have a new “Hercules” and a new Jack Ryan (Chris Pine, “Shadow Recruit”, Jan.). Aaron Eckhart is a new Frankenstein (“I, Frankenstein,” Jan.).

There’s a new “Godzilla” (May) and a new “Annie” (Dec.) to go along with that rebooted “Spider-Man” (May) duking it out for box office supremacy with those new “X-Men” (May).

And if you think about it, “Divergent” (Mar.) could be the new “Hunger Games,” with Shailene Woodley taking a sci-fi turn to match Jennifer Lawrence’s big bow and arrow payday.

The engaging documentaries and breakout foreign films will find their way to us more indirectly. But here are 14 titles with firmer release dates, films tempting enough to tease us through 2014.

“The Monuments Men” (Feb. 7) would have gotten lost among the other Oscar contenders over Christmas. So say good-bye to its Oscar chances, but “Hello” to having a potential quality, artsy and cerebral action film with George Clooney leading John Goodman, among others, as they try to save Europe’s cultural treasures from the Nazis and combat damage in the last days of World War II. A true story.

“300: Rise of an Empire” (Mar. 7) is not the only sequel to have history (Greco-Persian conflict) as its subtext. But this brawny, two-fisted How the Greeks Saved Western Civilization could have more going for it than “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” where the mutants, um, save mutant Western civilization.

“Veronica Mars” (Mar. 14) could turn out to be the ultimate expression of fandom, a  paradigm-shifting movie with implications for the future of film. Fans financed Kristen Bell’s return to the character who made her famous, going outside the studio system to get something they want to see on the screen. They paid to get a movie based on a TV show about a young, (now older), sassy private investigator made. And based on the trailer, they, and the rest of us, won’t be disappointed.

“The Grand Budapest Hotel” (Mar.) is Wes Anderson’s latest foxtrot into “twee.” And he takes Ralph Fiennes, in a rare comic turn, with him as Fiennes plays the legendary concierge at a legendarily daffy Old World hotel. Bill Murray and Jeff Goldlum are here, of course. Angela Lansbury, too. 

“Noah” (Mar.) could be, if we’re pessimists, this year’s “Lone Ranger” or “John Carter” or “Battleship,” that head-scratching fiasco that seemed like a hare-brained idea from the get-go. Darren Aronofsky (“Black Swan”) directing Oscar winner Russell Crowe in a no-expense-spared Biblical epic? Then again, it could be great, and Hollywood is at least trying to reach that supposedly built-in Christian film audience, as evidenced by February’s “The Son of God” and April’s “Heaven is for Real.”

“Tammy” (July) is where Melissa McCarthy cashes in on her epic 2013 at the box office, co-writing and starring in this road trip comedy about a newly unemployed, newly-ditched woman who hits the road with her foul-mouthed, hard-drinking diabetic grandma (Oscar winner Kathy Bates). If McCarthy is still a hot commodity, this will be the comedy that devours the summer.

“Magic in the Moonlight” (July) lets Emma Stone and Hamish Linklater, along with Oscar winners Colin Firth and Marcia Gay Harden, get their turn in a Woody Allen summer comedy.

“The Interview” (Oct.) is the new farce from the “This is the End” team of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. James Franco plays a talk show host, Rogen his producer and Lizzy Caplan is the C.I.A. agent who drags them into her assassination plot. Yeah, it’ll be dark, profane and chances are, fiercely funny.

“Gone Girl” (Oct.) gives us David “Zodiac” Fincher’s take on Gillian Flynn’s best selling thriller about a missing woman (Rosamund Pike) and the husband (Ben Affleck) everybody thinks did her in. Hitchcockian? Count on it.

“Interstellar” (Nov.) is Christopher Nolan’s latest thinking-person’s sci-fi epic, about wormholes and the possibilities of where humans can once we harness them. Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain are the headliners in the cast.

“Exodus” (Dec.) has Oscar winner Christian Bale as Moses, leading The Chosen People out of Egypt. Joel Edgerton should make a fearsome Ramses, and Ridley Scott found work for his old pal Sigourney Weaver (“Alien”) for this, the final Bible epic of the year.

“Unbroken” (Dec.) is based on the true story of an American Olympic hopeful who survives being shot down in the Pacific and imprisoned and tortured by the Japanese. Relative unknown Jack “O’Connell won the role, and Angelina Jolie (“In the Land of Blood and Honey”) directs this film based on Laura Hillenbrand’s best-seller.

“Into the Woods” (Dec.) offers up a little Sondheim twist on classic fairytales, a more highbrow “Wicked” if you will, with songs by one of America’s greatest Broadway composers. Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Emily Blunt, Chris Pine and Anna Kendrick are the stars of this Rob Marshall musical.

A few surprises in the nominated films the WGA figured noteworthy from last year — original script, adapted script and documentary script.

Woody Allen, Coen Brothers, “American Hustle,” Spike Jonze.Sure.

“Before Midnight,” “Captain Phillips,” “August: Osage County,” “Dallas Buyers Club,” Nebraska.” Expected.

Sarah Polley’s “The Stories We Tell” made the cut in the doc script field.

But “Lone Survivor,” a better than average actioner based on a true story of a Navy SEALs mission that went wrong, stands out. Not sure what I figure was left out of best adapted screenplay contender’s list by this odd inclusion (mixed reviews for the movie, good enough, but Peter Berg did “BAttleship,” for pity’s sake. Pick an action picture, sure. Why not pick a better one?).

American Hustle, Written by Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell; Columbia Pictures

Blue Jasmine, Written by Woody Allen; Sony Pictures Classics

Dallas Buyers Club, Written by Craig Borten & Melisa Wallack; Focus Features

Her, Written by Spike Jonze; Warner Bros.

Nebraska, Written by Bob Nelson; Paramount Pictures

August: Osage County, Screenplay by Tracy Letts; Based on his play; The Weinstein Company

Before Midnight, Written by Richard Linklater & Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke; Based on characters created by Richard Linklater & Kim Krizan; Sony Classics

Captain Phillips, Screenplay by Billy Ray; Based on the book A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea by Richard Phillips with Stephan Talty; Columbia Pictures

Lone Survivor, Written by Peter Berg; Based on the book by Marcus Lutrell with Patrick Robinson; Universal Pictures

The Wolf of Wall Street, Screenplay by Terence Winter; Based on the book by Jordan Belfort; Paramount Pictures

Dirty Wars, Written by Jeremy Scahill & David Riker; Sundance Selects

Herblock – The Black & The White, Written by Sara Lukinson & Michael Stevens;
The Stevens Company

No Place on Earth, Written by Janet Tobias & Paul Laikin; Magnolia Pictures

Stories We Tell, Written by Sarah Polley; Roadside Attractions

We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks; Written by Alex Gibney; Focus Features

A Tepid weekend at the box office, with holiday holdovers rounding up a few more bucks, pre-Oscar nominations (“American Hustle” is leading “Wolf of Wall Street” by a wide margin, which could shrink if the Oscars favor the latter).

“Frozen” did another $20 million. “Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones” managed $18 million.

“Walter Mitty” and “Wolf of Wall Street” should surpass “A Madea Christmas” (which reached $50 million) by next weekend. “Hustle” should hit $100 million by next weekend.

“Saving Mr. Banks” is on track to hit $75, unless Oscar pitches in.

“August: Osage County” is still on only five screens, but will roll out next weekend just as the Oscar nominations are about to be announced.

“Inside Llewyn Davis,” “All is Lost” and “Nebraska” all sit below $10 million takes, in desperate need of a little Academy Award nomination lift.

And “Anchorman 2” did another $11 million to leap past the $100 million mark.

Disney’s biggest animated hit of this past year — passing Disney Pixar’s “Monsters University” — is “Frozen,” which will have hit the $300 million mark by Sunday if Friday’s numbers predict the whole weekend. Maybe $22-24 million, according to Deadline.

“Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones” is doing OK, but its out of season release (Jan. 10 would have made a difference) and bad weather over much of the country will keep the take down below $20 million.

“Smaug” is losing screens and fell behind “Wolf of Wall Street”, which took third place.