Ali Larter, Madison Wolfe, Sean Astin and Brec Bassinger are the stars of this “true story” of a Florida serial killer NOT named Ted Bundy.
“I think he’s following me.”
“You have to stop over-exaggerating.”
Not often we get that kind of butchery of English grammar in a movie trailer. But hey. “FloriDuh.”
Dec. 13 this hits theaters.
There’s no heavy lifting in “Goodrich,” the Michael Keaton/Mila Kunis dramedy about a workaholic second-time-around dad forced to reconnect with his kids, including the one old enough to be pregnant.
The jokes about trying, after 60, to learn to be a dad, are easy to reach to the point of cute and mostly low-hanging fruit. The formula in play is another “I did my best” parent facing a sometimes comic, sometimes sad reckoning.
At its most somber, it reaches for “Kramer vs. Kramer.” In lighter moments, one can wonder if all involved could have just turned this into a sequel to one of Keaton’s earliest hits, “Mister Mom.” The edgiest thing about it is its rating, “R,” for profanity. It would have reached a wider audience as a PG-13.
But this it’s well-acted and it plays. More or less.
Writer-director Hallie Meyers-Shyer was an actress before getting that first writing-directing (Reese Witherspoon’s “Home Again”), but is still most famously the daughter of writer-director couple Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer, who remade “The Parent Trap” and “Father of the Bride” before divorcing. She doesn’t embarrass herself and give Hollywood “nepo babies” a bad name here any more than she makes her name with this slight, derivative star vehicle.
Keaton has the title role playing the embattled owner of a tony, boutique art gallery struggling to stay afloat by surfing the ever-changing tastes of Left Coast art lovers, the ups and downs of “the market” and the mercurial moods of artists he needs to please.
Goodrich Gallery may be going under (Kevin Pollack plays the not-so-silent “business” partner) if he can’t land The Next Big Thing. But that’s not what wakes owner Andy up in the middle of the night. His wife is calling. From rehab. She’s checked herself in to shake her pill addiction.
“The woman that I live with doesn’t have a drug abuse problem!”
He’s the last to know, she tells him, because “We live totally separate lives.” And by the way, she’s leaving him.
Sixty-something Andy might be on his own with those two late-life nine-year-old twins, Billie and Mose (Vivian Lyra Blair, Jacob Kopera). He can only lie to them about where Mom went for so long. Maybe his 36 year old daughter (Kunis) can pitch in, as he’s “got a thing” pretty much every night, wining and dining artists and buyers.
The movie is about Andy’s belated transition to attentive father, and his oldest daughter’s resentment that this transition didn’t happen thirty years sooner.
The jokes are of the Dad-doesn’t-know-which-grade-his-kids-are-in variety. That drone Mose is playing with in their expensively-decorated house in the Hollywood hills?
“Who GOT you that thing?” “You and Mom got it for us last Christmas!”
The father/oldest-daughter banter may not be original, but Keaton and Kunis make it work.
“This is me begging you. How often do I do this?”
“Do you want me to answer that?”
“LATELY. I was going to say ‘lately.'”
The script doesn’t do a great job of zeroing in on that relationship, as it drifts off into gallery concerns, with the daughter (Carmen Ejogo) of a just-died famous artist to charm and a divorced gay dad (Michael Urie) of a sickly child at their kids’ school to, um, bond with.
Honestly, the picture teeters on the edge of “hackneyed” more than once, although at least some of that is recognizing comic crutches and “types” we’ve seen in plenty of screenplays by our writer-director’s Mom Nancy Meyers and to a lesser degree Dad, Charles Shyer. That new gay friend, his no-nonsense Israeli babysitter? Vintage Nancy and Charles. Did they offer their daughter tips?
But Keaton still has the timing, and aiming for “sweet” as his career veers towards repeating himself (“Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice”), TV, B-thrillers (“Knox Goes Away”) and lesser superhero fare wasn’t a bad choice. Kunis gives her pregnant, resentful daughter some edge.
And Ejogo and Andie MacDowell (as Goodrich’s artist “first wife”) make decent impressions.
There’s nothing about “Goodrich” that would scare producers away from working with a filmmaker whose only goal might be to become “Nancy Meyers: The Next Generation,” even if there’s little original to lure them in either.
Rating: R, for profanity
Cast: Michael Keaton, Mila Kunis, Carmen Ejogo, Kevin Pollack and Andie MacDowell.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer. A Ketchup Entertainment release.
Running time: 1:50
Willem Dafoe’s presence gives away the A24 take on a vampiric Gremlin monster rescued by a tweenage girl.
A Scandinavian music video director brings this tale to the screen next spring.
Mom’s raising the kids in California, but “In the Summers” they go to Las Cruces, New Mexico to stay with their troubled but loving father.
This saga about kids growing up with and without their dad did the festival circuit, got a limited release in Sept. and hits streaming Nov. 5.
Looks brittle and lovely.
“Advanced Chemistry” is a sex farce, which is not to be confused with “romantic comedy” as a genre, although that distinction has rarely been applied to a more “PG” picture.
Clunky, timid and tame-right-to-the-edge-of-chaste, it’s a dull dive into biochemistry, “monogamous attraction” via hypodermic needle, air guitar as an art form and “full facial nudity.”
That’s as romantic and as sexy as this one relationship — with a germophobe and central to the plot — gets.
Samba Schutte and Kiaran Deol play chemistry students under the tutelage of an impatiently lceherous mentor (Iqbal Theba).
Allen (Schutte) is a hapless doormat when it comes to love. He’s always losing that potential bar pick-up to his aggressive, lesbian bestie. The ladies — even the straight ones — can’t get enough of Marsha, Marsha Marsha (Chaunte Wayans).
Allen and Lisa (Deol) are competing for that one spot to be funded in their university’s program. He’s working on “Bondo,” a drug that will encourage chemical fidelity to a loved one the way voles practice monogamy. Lisa’s “Lixi” promises better orgasms in women.
As Marsha is “a cheater from a long line of cheaters,” she begs to be a human test subject for Bondo. That’s how Allen tumbles into a world of misdirected needles creating irresistible attractions — few of which he has any interest in.
But Lisa might be different, a co-conspirator in his illegal “test” case and a germophobe repelled by the idea of physical contact, much less physical attraction.
Every so often, as this or that person in the broader plot gets injected, on purpose or accidentally, they have to hide Allen’s actions from wacky, over-committed Safety Officer Nancy (T’Keyah Crystal Keymáh), who pops up like zealous “safety” Nazi.
Director Etana Jacobson keeps the tone light and screwy. The players do their utmost to take things over the top. But the pacing is flat, few jokes come close to landing and the cast’s “utmost” just doesn’t get us there.
“Advanced Chemistry” has problems with the basics.
Rating: unrated, sex, profanity and “full facial nudity”
Cast: Samba Schutte, Chaunte Wayans, Sarah Burns, Kiaran Deol and Iqbal Theba.
Credits: Directed by Etana Jacobson, scripted by Alec Moore. A Good Deed release.
Running time: 1:35
Osgood Perkins was an actor who became a writer and then a writer-director (“Longlegs,” “Gretel & Hansel”), and now he’s tackling a Stephen King short story.
Horror hits home via a wind up “Monkey” Feb. 22.
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
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
Nykiya Adams has the title role in this latest “How the other half life, love and grow up” tale from Andrea Arnold.
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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