Movie Review: A stumbling mush through memories of “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point”

Posted on October 16, 2024 by Roger Moore

A little holiday cheer is expressed and even more is shown, or at least sampled, in “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.” And almost nothing is explained.

The idea behind Tyler Taormina’s (“Ham on Rye”) warm, aimless and largely laugh-free Christmas Eve wallow in nostalgia is the selectivity of memory, and perhaps how drab the “colorful” memories our director and co-writer decides to show us turn out to be.

Unexplained, disorganized and cluttered with characters we strain to identify in banal situations that go nowhere, this isn’t one that’s going to replace “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “A Christmas Story” or even “The Family Stone” or “Feast of the Seven Fishes” on anybody’s holiday movie list.

What we figure out — eventually — is that this extended family is gathering on snowy Long Island for what could be the “last Christmas” with Grandma Antonia (Mary Reistetter). Eventually, a “Carmine” is mentioned and a couple of other names that suggest this is an Italian American clan.

We see a flip phone, a ’90s Buick wagon and a ’92 Jeep Cherokee and piece together that this an “Eve” in the early 2000s.

A couple of siblings bicker with a couple others over “Sunrise Nursing Home” or “live in aid” options for their mother, over who is not doing enough to help this situation and who is.

The little kids are kind of passed-over — merely underfoot — as the adults cook, smoke cigars, kvetch and reminisce, and the teens and tweens experience traditions such as “the walk,” “the bird” (cooked) and “the parade” — decorated fire engines that pass in a blur. Some kids borrow a family Cherokee for a run out to a cemetary, a little drinking and carrying-on shared in dark close ups and hook ups.

“Car equals FREEDOM!”

We assume they’re not kissing cousins, but hey, when you don’t explain Jack, there is is some doubt.

A couple of local cops (Gregg Turkington and Michael Cera) gawk at some of this while on duty and get into one awkward conversation meant to be comical.

And the soundtrack to it all is early ’60s doo-wop and pop, perhaps for its Italian-American connotations.

I found the entire experience a dissonant disconnect as there is barely anyone to identify, much less identify with, there’s little novelty to anything presented here and nothing to root for because basically a lot of nothing or nothing much is all that happens.

Save yourself the drive. Rent “Feast of the Seven Fishes” and get a load of THOSE Italians if you want to see a memorable period piece about a memorable Christmas.

Rating: PG-13, smoking, teen drinking, sexual situations, profanity,

Cast: Elsie Fisher, Maria Dizzia, Francesca Scorsese, Ben Shenkman, Matilda Fleming, Sawyer Spielberg, Leo Chan, Gregg Turkington and Michael Cera.

Credits: Directed by Tyler Taormina, scripted by Eric Berger and Tyler Taormina. An IFC release.

Running time: 1:47

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Movie Review: A mourning comedy becomes Thai travelogue? There’s a “Cautionary Tale

Posted on October 16, 2024 by Roger Moore

In the cinema, there are dramedies and tragi-comedies, and whatever the heck the indie “Cautionary Tale” turns out to be.

It begins as a funny dark comedy about two men bickering over the ashes of their loved ones.

Neil (Ted Limpert) lost his ex-wife and daughter in a car crash. Jake (Andy Baldeschwiler) lost his wife. And stepdaughter.

They used to be “best friends.” So blame is flung back and forth. About “brake pads.” The phrase “Jake the homewrecker” comes up, as does “Neil the cuckold,” and who won’t have “my daugher in a box” on whose “table.”

And then Neil, who plays a children’s TV entertainer named Safety Sam, finds out that his show’s revival depends on its sale to Asian markets. His contract requires him to go to Thailand and glad-hand buyers.

Nice change of scene, free travel, a chance to mourn.

But Neil fights it, tries to insist he’s more than just this one character, picks up his guitar again and tries his hand at insipid folk pop. And he makes the contractually obligated trip.

That hijacks the movie, which doesn’t really grapple with the mourning that well as Neil lies his way through the country and into a friendship with a musical expat (Steve Calalang) and a Thai singer (Napak Boonruang) who needs help with English translations of her lyrics and who might be the woman who brings Neil back to life. Or not.

There’s an unemotional emptiness to the travel and Thai “coming to grips” sequences that left me cold.

There’s even an off-mike issue with many scenes and characters, on-camera and off, set in New York that isn’t present in the Thai travels and negotiations. Thailand has elephants, which Neil’s daughter loved, and better on-location sound recordists.

The germ of a good indie dramedy idea is here. But the execution — script, direction, acting and editing — never climb far enough beyond amateurish to be affecting.

Rating: unrated, profanity

Cast: Ted Limpert, Napak Boonruang, Matias Proietti and Steve Calalang

Credits: Scripted and directed by Christopher Zawadzki. A FilmHub release on Tubi, Apple TV

Running time: 1:27

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Movie Preview: Barry Keoghan stars in new grit from the director of “American Honey” — “Bird”

Posted on October 15, 2024 by Roger Moore

Nykiya Adams has the title role in this latest “How the other half life, love and grow up” tale from Andrea Arnold.

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Movie Review: Jackie Chan finds fun in his “Panda Plan”

Posted on October 15, 2024 by Roger Moore

In “Panda Plan,” Jackie Chan finally remembers that there’s nothing sadder and more boring than an aged action star who turns to endless gunplay in his fragile, creaky-joints dotage. It’s a rough and tumble martial arts comedy of the sort the cinema’s greatest martial arts clown used to turn out a couple of times a year back in the ’80s and ’90s.

Daffy to the point of kid-friendly — remember, he did a kids’ cartoon series — it’s lighthearted fun with little of the grim seriousness and unsubtle People’s Republican messaging of his recent films. Because this time, Jackie Chan plays Jackie Chan.

We meet the action star on a set, stirring up the mayhem with tumbles, punches and a hail of bullets. The moment the director finally yells “Cut” — after a blast of blood-squibs have all but assured us of the hero’s on-camera demise — Jackie’s goofy assistant (Xiang Wei) shuts down any talk of “another take” (in English and Mandarin, with subtitles).

He may not look it, thanks to makeup, hair dye and flattering editing, but Jackie Chan is 70 years old. He famed on-set accidents don’t make the outtakes the way they used to in the closing credits of his Hong Kong films. Now they make the news, as grandpa can’t risk serious injury any more.

David the assistant reads off a calendar of events, and Jackie blows off appearances at festivals and the like. He’s already got his honorary Oscar, after all. But when the Noah Zoo, an island holding the world’s rarest panda baby, invites him to come adopt it, he’s down.

Who doesn’t love pandas? Certainly not the Arab potentate who decides he must have the Big Babe.

That’s how Jackie finds himself at the zoo, smiling and scarfing ice cream with the staff, including the “panda nanny” Xiaozhu (Ce Shi). They’re all gaga over meeting Jackie Chan.

Heck, even that mobile assault ship full of Western, Eastern and African mercenaries on its way to snatch the panda has its share of fanboys on-board.

“Oh my GOD, he’s just like in his MOVIES!”

Jackie, hapless David and fearful panda nanny have to trick and fight their way through muscular minions to save the baby (CGI) panda from Persian Gulf imprisonment.

Chan’s best gags were always the punches he ducked, the deaths he cheated. There are laugh out loud bits scattered all over this picture, which looks as if it was filmed on the “Jurassic Park/World” sets.

Jackie mugs for the mugs, letting them think “I’m just a filmmaker.” But we know better.

“Don’t MOVE!” he warns villains he’s gotten the drop on. “I’ve never shot a real gun before!”

It’s been dispiriting to see Chan show up in vengeful, humorless gunplay fare like “The Foreigner” and “Bleeding Steel.” So while “Panda Plan” may be one of his lesser films, he’s so engaging in it and so good at finding the laughs in the unlikely fights, escapes and one-liners you can’t help but smile as he summons up memories of the straightforward but outlandish martial arts action comedies of his heyday.

And his best message before Chinese xenophobia started showing up in his films was always the one implicit in movies like “Panda Plan.” Don’t try this at home, kids.

Rating: unrated, action violence, some of it comic, fart and poop gags

Cast: Jackie Chan, Ce Shi, Xiang Wei, Andy Friend and Temur Mamisashvili

Credits: A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:39

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Movie Review: Losing her “fur baby” has this beau feeling “Hangdog”

Posted on October 15, 2024 by Roger Moore

Frustration can be a great launching point for laughs, and the comedy “Hangdog” revels in it.

Our “hero” is a frustrated “big city” hipster relocated to Portland, Maine. Uptight Walt is seriously out of step with the laid-back Mainers.

Walt, played by Desmin Borges of “Only Murders in the Building,” has given up on his advertising art director dreams and is both “proud” and secretly resentful of all the “new app” success about to rain down on his adoring and adorable girlfriend, Wendy (Kelly O’Sullivan of “Cha Cha Reel Smooth” and “Saint Frances”).

When she proposes to him because he’s hesitant to pull that trigger, he’s upset. And he’s a tad irked at the affection she’s showering on their adopted terrier mix, Tony.

Imagine how frustrated he is when she entrusts him with the dog while she travels to New York to pitch her “Etsy of sustainable shopping” app to backers.

He can “handle a dog,” he assures her. “How f—–g hard can it be?”

We if not he instantly consider those to be “famous last words.” “Hangdog” Walt loses Tony in a moment of self-involved carelessness. “Hangdog” is about the comically frustrating Portland odyssey Walt undertakes to recover Tony before Wendy returns to find her beloved “fur baby” gone.

Husband and wife director and writers Matt Cascella and Jen Cordery take us on a tour of scenic, street-musicians, coffee shops and weed dispensaries Portland, from its seaside parks and West End to Peaks Island, all places Walt papers with fliers about Tony — promising a reward — many locales featuring quirky locals for him to encounter.

There’s the droll lesbian neighbor (Barbara Rosenblat) who chuckles at his angst, suggests he discover the joys of “zero f—s” living and the sketchy fishing boat skipper who has “information” about the dog — or about how to get over grieving for a lost pet.

Walt lies to Wendy on the phone and desperately follows up each lead, leading him to Peaks Island, where he meets a pickle-packing fisherman (Steve Coulter) and locals who might be unsavory enough to have an idea about the fate of his girlfriend’s dog.

Bourges, always seen in a black stocking cap and a look that varies from stricken to “given up,” is a delight in the title role — driving the viewer a little nuts with his clumsiness, spinelessness and gullibility, letting us exult as he does when he rents a bike and forgets his anxiety, just for a few minutes, on that island in the harbor.

Rosenblat and Coulter amuse, and “Stranger Things” and “Orange is the New Black” alumna Catherine Curtin brings a comically scary edge to her menacing mama who figures in the story’s darker intrigues.

And for all the relationship insights dog-lovers-savvy our screenwriters fold into this slight, low-stakes tale, they wisely let underfilmed Portland itself take on a co-starring role in a movie that reminds us that Left Coast “Portlandia” has nothing on Stephen King country when it comes to quirky, colorful and comically-frustrating folks and folkways.

Rating: unrated, comical violence, drug use, profanity

Cast: Desmin Borges, Kelly O’Sullivan, Barbara Rosenblat, Catherine Curtin and Steve Coulter

Credits: Directed by Matt Cascella, scripted by Matt Cascella and Jen Cordery. A Good Deeds Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:30

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Movie Review: Elijah Wood, trapped in the New Zealand wilderness with a “Bookworm”

Posted on October 14, 2024 by Roger Moore

“Bookworm” is a quirky Kiwi comedy that pairs-up The Once and Future Hobbit Elijah Wood with an eleven year-old girl in the wilds of his old stomping grounds, New Zealand.

It’s a generally warm, kid-friendly adventure with tiny bits of suspense, a seriously scenic tale that surfs its shifts in tone well enough.

Nell Fisher has the title role, a bookish child with a matronly librarian’s name — Mildred.

When Mum has an accident, here’s how the off-key Kiwi character actor doctor apprises the child of her condition.

“She’s not dead. You don’t need to worry about that. But she’s not really alive, either.”

Seriously doc, the kid’s smart for her years. The word “coma” would do.

There’s nothing for it but to summon the child’s closest living next-of-kin. That would be an American magician living and working in Las Vegas.

Strawn Wise (Wood) believes in making an entrance. The “biological father” as he always refers to himself, makes poofs of smoke with his flint flasher thumb, does card tricks and tries to impress a kid whose won’t quite let on how worried she is about her mother.

“It’s called MAGIC,” he crows. And she’s not having it. But he can take over on that camping trip that she and Mum had planned, if it’s no trouble.

Mildred wants to find proof of “New Zealand’s Bigfoot,” a creature called “The Canterbury Panther.”

Strawn, to his credit, is game. Even though he “doesn’t know the first thing about camping.” Even though he doesn’t know this child, whose mother he um, “met” only once.

No worries. She pops into her safari togs (pith helmet included), refers to her many newspaper clippings for research, packs a video camera for the “proof” and they’re off.

Director and co-writer Ant Timpson makes the unfortunate “bookish” choice to tell the story in cutesy intertitled “chapters” labeled “Terrible Taste in Men” and the like. But otherwise, this story skates along, with a fish-out-of-water magician coming to terms with his failings and fears, a too-smart child who turns insufferable sooner rather than later, a panther and other perils to face in some of the most striking scenery on Earth.

Even the locals refer to this or that site in cinematic terms , not all of them Tolkienesque– “the rock where Liam Neeson played a lion in that movie (“The Chronicles of Narnia”).”

There’s a soft-pedaled turn towards the sinister that serves up our moment of truth as it throws in survivalism, a pursuit and narrow escapes leading to a jolting finish.

Shifts in tone aside, you’d still have to call “Bookworm” a winner — or I would — with Wood at his most vulnerable and winning and Fisher justifying her chattering pedant paycheck serving up equal parts adorable and insufferable.

Rating: unrated, peril

Cast: Elijah Wood, Nell Fisher.

Credits: Directed by Ant Timpson, scripted by Toby Harvard and Ant Timpson. A Vertical release.

Running timer: 1:43

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Netflixable? Korean Cops and Intel agents duel in “Mission: Cross”

Posted on October 13, 2024 by Roger Moore

Say this for “Mission: Cross.” They spent some serious money on this crap.

Flipping cars, explosions, drone shot sequences, legions of black-helmeted commando minions cast, costumed and slaughtered in a James Bond “villain’s lair” finale — that doesn’t come cheap in Hollywood, Bollywood, Nollywood or South Korea.

Writer-director Lee Myung Hoon’s debut feature is an action comedy that, even allowing for humor that doesn’t translate or cross Korean borders, is hard-pressed for laughs and only “funny” enough to undercut the thriller it’s grafted onto.

Yum Jung-ah (“Alienoid”) is the crusty, no-nonsense police captain Kang Mi-Seon, a two-fisted force of nature who always gets her woman and man, often by pummeling them with her taser-equipped “stun knuckles (glove).”

The guys under her command are scared of her. So is her husband in a marriage she narrates her droll contempt for. Park Kang-moo (Hwang Jung-min of “Kill Boksoon”) cooks, cleans, gets her up for breakfast, and when she’s off to work, drives a school bus, taking particular interest in one particular child as he goes about his duties.

He gives massages as well.

The captain’s subordinates call him “Wifey Kang” (in Korean with English subtitles, or dubbed) in contempt, sometimes even in front of the captain. Little do they know…

Her husband has a past. Meeting a woman, Jang Hee-joo (Jeon Hye-jin) from that earlier life inspires more nurturing instincts, and flashbacks. Back in the day they were agents of an intel agency charged with protecting Korea from Russian weapons supplied to nefarious actors at home or abroad. That big mission went wrong, with comrades killed or captured and tortured at the orders of a mysterious General Park.

Now, Jang Hee-joo has resurfaced, attacked by minions of their old foes.

But Captain Kang’s “team” sees them together and starts surveilling them as they try to summon up the courage to tell her “Wifey Kang” is cheating. They imagine Kang-moo’s every meeting from her in the most salacious tones.

When she finds out, will their captain flip out, lose focus on the big pursuit of an underworld figure she’s long had in her sights? Or worse?

“Mission: Cross” takes forever to settle into the middle and late act action beats, with chases, shootouts and twists that play into them. They don’t arrive gracefully, either. The convoluted scandal behind all of this, which ties the stories and the couple-who-don’t-really-know-one-another together, is both Bond-exotic and money-laundering blasé.

The performances are perfunctory, with little heart, heat or whimsy. The picture never looks cheap, but the melodramatic flourishes dumb it down at every turn.

I went in expecting mayhem and action comedy fun, and while there’s a little of the former, there’s little evidence of the latter. One-liners don’t land and the best gag — the lady cop’s stun knuckles — are abandoned far too early to suit me.

If you’ve seen one “Let’s empty out my secret stash of machine guns, Kevlar vests and grenades” for the big finale, you’ve seen them all.

Rating: TV-MA, bloody violence, torture, gunplay and profanity

Cast: Yum Jung-ah, Hwang Jung-min, Jeon Hye-jin and
Kim Chan-Hyung

Credits: Scripted and directed by Lee Myung Hoon. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:44

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“Saturday Night” reminds us Garrett Morris had a stand-out talent in the “Not Ready for Prime Time Players”

Posted on October 13, 2024 by Roger Moore

I was poking around YouTube after watching Jason Reitman’s fun trip down Boomer TV lane because “Saturday Night” makes a point of reminding us that Garrett Morris could sing.

His most famous sung performance, heard in the film but actually written and  performed long after opening night, was “I’m Gonna Find Me a Shotgun and Shoot Every Whitey I See.”

He sang other times. I remember the homophobic Village Persons (Village People) ditty “Bend Over Chuck Berry, Put Your Guitar Away.” And then there was Walter Matthau’s generous demand that Garrett come on and sing a little Mozart aria when Walter hosted.

That’s what I really wanted to track down.

But one thing mentioned about the oldest and most accomplished performer brought in with that original cast was his singing background during the folk boom, a piece of pop culture history I had never heard.

Here he is with the Harry Belafonte Folk Singers, years before “Live from New York,” verifying that bit of lore tossed into “Saturday Night.”

You’ll recognize him.

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Movie Preview: Another raunchy, rowdy trip to the Bowling Alley — “The Gutter”

Posted on October 12, 2024 by Roger Moore

Shades of “Kingpin!”

 Shameik Moore, D’Arcy Carden, Susan Sarandon and Paul Reiser are among the stars of this farce that adds some color — and flava — to…bowling?

“It’s Walt Liquor time, baby!”

“The Gutter” rolls on Nov. 1.

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Movie Review: Chinese expat learns to trust “luck” on her “Green Night” with a Korean Drug-smuggling Pixie

Posted on October 12, 2024 by Roger Moore

An airport security guard finds her life upended by a sketchy/flirty pixie in green hair and fingernails in “Green Night,” a Chinese romantic thriller starring Fan Bingbing that gives international exposure to Ms. Trouble in Green, Korean starlet Lee Joo-young.

Our heroine is one of those nameless global functionaries with a metal detector wand who checks you as you enter the airport, in this case in Seoul, South Korea.

The short young women in green sets off her detector, but protests to her boss that there’s something in the passenger’s shoe fall on deaf ears. Green girl “goes through here every week,” after all.

There’s a red flag. When the young woman promptly ditches her shoes and walks off barefooted, there’s another.

Later, they have another encounter, this time missing the bus in the airport parking lot. Wait, don’t you have to clear security for OUTgoing flights?

The flirtation that might have disarmed a less duty-bound Korean version of a Homeland Security agent pops up again.

“Are you Chinese? You owe me a pair of shoes.”

There’s nothing for it but to bring her to the guard’s Spartan airport-adjecent apartment, where several things are established. The girl is indeed a drug runner. “Your boss” knows this comes out, but only after guard Jingxia has called to alert him. Those bruises and that scratch on the Chinese woman’s face? Her estranged husband gave her those, the church-going creep who called her landlord and told him she was moving back in with him, so that he’d cut off her water.

It’s going to take money to get out of this marriage and this work/citizenship trap, and the Chinese-Korean figures the Korean drug mule is the solution. They’ll make the delivery and split the take.

Thus begins an odyssey through the bowels of Seoul, with violence and threats so dire they reluctantly wind up at her husband’s (Kim Young-ho) over-his-restaurant apartment. It’s not like the violence will end there.

There are plenty of Western versions of this sort of “life upended for a day or two by a manic pixie stranger” plot (“Something Wild,” “After Hours,” etc.). But this is no “Desperately Seeking Susan” comedy.

Her dizzy unnamed partner may not know where the drugs came from, exactly. Can Jingxia really get through this predicament, score some cash and escape her abusive Christian husband by taking the stranger’s advice and letting “it all boil down to luck” (in Korean and Mandarin Chinese, with English subtitles)? And might there be a mutual attraction that they have a spare moment to act on?

Fan Bingbing has been an international star for over a decade, with a “Resident Evil” and “X-Men” installment on her filmography, along with “The King’s Daughter,” “The 355,” “The Meg” and “I Am Not Madame Bovary”

Here, she’s playing a not-wholly passive participant in her own life, struggling to avoid confrontations, emboldened by desperation, peril and her new spirit guide in green. Her performance has nuance as her character’s journey has hope in it, but feels incomplete.

Lee Joo-young (“Maggie”) isn’t quite playing the manic pixie dream girl of Hollywood cliches. Her protagonist is light-hearted for a drug mule, and forward. She makes an effort to get what she wants and when someone is threatened, she’s tiny but tough enough to take action. Lee and her character are interesting enough to steal the picture, but that’s not allowed.

Director and co-writer Han Shuai (“Summer Blur”) lays on the homo-erotica right up to the moment when she abandons it. The violent people and violent world Jingxia has gotten mixed-up in move to the fore, perhaps making this Chinese thriller more palatable to Chinese audiences.

That makes one consider the Chinese censor-approved messaging, about the dangerous plight of “mail order brides” when they leave China for men they do not know. Korean corruption at all levels of law enforcment and the violence there can smell like Chinese agitprop.

“Green Night” plays, but mostly in fits and starts. It’s immersive enough, luring us into this world and fearing for our heroines’ safety. But the abrupt shifts in focus make one wish Han Shuai had taken some more crowd-pleasing course, or gone all-in on the darkness of this underworld an out-of-her-element ex-pat finds herself in.

Cast: Fan Bingbing, Lee Joo-young, Kim Min-gui and Kim Young-ho.

Credits: Directed by Han Shuai, scripted by Han Shuai and Lei Sheng. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:32

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