This film, directed by Piven’s sister — their parents are acting/comedy/improv royalty in Chicagoland — is making the festival rounds now, with a planned release in January.
A pre-WWII story about a struggling Jewish tap dancer whose troupe gets a big break — in pre-war Budapest — just as Jews are fleeing Germany and environs — it’s based on a short story by the great playwright Arthur Miller.
Every classic film fan has her or his go-to stars, just as film fans did back when the movies were young, or stepping into middle age. I’ll watch most anything with Bogart and/or Bacall, William Powell, Gary Cooper, Joel McRea, Dick Powell, Stanwyck, Fonda, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart or Gregory Peck in it.
Any film John Wayne did with Howard Hawks or John Ford is worth watching and re-watching. Glenn Ford? Alan Ladd? Take’em or leave’em, depending on the subject, the setting, the director and the studio the movie was made under.
But to my tastes, life is too short to waste on movies starring Robert Taylor, Spencer Tracy, Randolph Scott or Van Johnson.
And I never warmed to “The King,” either. Clark Gable, who made most of his pictures for big-budget, high-gloss MGM, had his moments — “It Happened One Night” and “Red Dust” stand out. But maybe it was the gloss MGM packaged him in, his acting style, which isn’t aging as well as more “natural” performances by many of his peers (Peck, Stewart, Fonda and Ford especially). But something always feels “off” in his Hemingwayesque posing and posturing, the starchy machismo he clung to as if he had no greater fear than being perceived as “soft.”
“Mogambo” (1953) gave the ageing star in one of his last macho hits, an on-location-in-Africa spectacle that paired The King of MGM with one of the greatest American directors for a romantic thriller of “The Great White Hunter” school.
It’s old fashioned, as more evolved generations see Big Game hunting — even just to capture animals for zoos and circuses — as barbaric and destructive. The greying, 50something Gable doesn’t just “get the girl,” he all but has his choice of two leading ladies in this love triangle story set on a safari.
Grace Kelly was less than half his age. Ava Gardner was 20 years his junior and too much woman for him, or almost anybody any studio paired her up with.
But off we, he and legendary Western filmmaker John Ford go into the wilds of British colonies that became Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya for the story of a bachelor safari leader tempted by two women who fall under his gaze.
Vic Marswell (Gable) runs a business where he has to maintain good relations with the natives as he leads well-heeled customers on hunts or expeditions, often capturing wild animals with one competent subordinate (Philip Stainton) and one malevolently incompetent one (Eric Pohlmann).
Then this blast of blowsy, showgirl sex appeal shows up. Gardner plays Eloise “Honey Bear” Kelly, a brassy broad summoned by her “old pal,” a maharaja, only to discover the rich twit left days before.
Vic doesn’t like having women around, but he’s knocked-down and kept on his heels by this dame.
She calls him “Mister whoever-you-are” and “my little white hunter,” and when she sees him in safari shorts, gives him a “Bless your big bony knees.”
Her “Look, Buster, don’t you get overstimulated with me!” warns him off.
As she cuddles with the caged critters — some of them not that cuddly — he sizes her up. He knows her “type,” he says — “not an honest feeling from her kneecap to her neck.”
It must be love. Or would be, if she wasn’t anxious to catch the first boat back out of the middle-of-nowhere. And when Vic’s scientist-client (Donald Sinden) and his very young wife (Grace Kelly) arrive as Vic’s next clients, only an Act of God, or engine trouble on the boat, could trap Honey Bear here with Vic’s next woman of interest, the beautiful Brit blonde married to a sickly anthropologist.
That manly Gable always needed an Ashley Wilkes he could show up in movies like this. But worldwise Honey Bear sees Vic as he really is.
“This is no Sir Galahad who loves from afar. This is a two-legged boa constrictor.”
Unspoiled African scenery (mixed with a lot of soundstage shots), wild animals in cagees, or in second unit nature footage inserts aside, this is Gardner’s picture. It’s not quite lifeless when she’s not on camera, but Gable’s posturing and posing — the fodder of generations of comic impersonators — gets old after a bit.
Kelly’s winsome protests meant to hide animal lust because “Women always fall for ‘The Great White Hunter'” are little more than a plot device. But our leading man was still picking his leading ladies up — literally — when the need arose.
Movies in this setting during that era make one all but expect racism, but despite filming in the middle of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, or perhaps because of it (Gable had bodyguards, Ford had to change locations due to threats) there’s little of that nature here — just a generally patronizing American and European attitude towards the sometimes servile natives, some of it conveyed by the mere presence of a Catholic missionary-priest (Denis O’Dea).
It’s the animal stuff that’s more likely to carry a cringe these days.
There’s very little action, but it’s ably conveyed by Gable’s glowering take on his character’s shoot-from-the-hip experience with this world.
This was Gable and MGM’s second take on this story, as 1932’s “Red Dust” was the picture that made his name with the studio, with the same screenwriter (John Lee Mahin) adapting the play it’s based on anew, transplanting it from pre-WWII Vietnam to post-war Africa.
That film, a “pre-code” drama co-starring Jean Harlow, was lusty and virile and transgressive, with Gable’s adulterous rogue walking a finer line between likable and loathsome. Ford’s take on this tale is more scenic, but the adultery is tame and aside from Gardner, the whole enterprise is humorless.
Howard Hawks took John Wayne to Africa for the more rambunctious men-among-men Big Game (trapping) safari comedy “Hatari” a decade later, and got a better picture out of it, even if the attitudes in it are little more enlightened.
“Mogambo” isn’t all that, but it isn’t bad. And it says something for audience’s long-standing love for Gable that it became a good-sized hit, despite coming out less than a year after the similar and edgier Peck/Gardner and Susan Hayward Hemingway adaptation “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”
Today it’s most interesting as a lesser picture in the Ford canon, and a movie that prolonged Gable’s leading man career long enough for him to joke around in Doris Day’s limelight in “Teacher’s Pet,” get upstaged by the scenery-chewing Burt Lancaster in the sub thriller “Run Silent, Run Deep” and earn a nice grace note for his long career by sacrificing what was left of his health enduring Marilyn Monroe and John Huston in the desert of “The Misfits.”
It was always good to be “The King of Hollywood,” even if too much of the time, you watched Gable and wondered who else could have done that part, and maybe given it another dimension or two.
Rating: PG, violence, adultery, smoking
Cast: Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Donald Sinden, Philip Stainton, Eric Pohlmann and Denis O’Dea.
Credits: Directed by John Ford, scripted by John Lee Mahin, based on the play “Red Dust” by Wilson Collison. An MGM release on Tubi, Amazon, etc.
Running time: 1:53
Elsie Fisher and Gregg Turkington also star in this offbeat romp.
A multi generational Italian family holiday gathering in the ancestral home turns testy? Go figure.
Throw in a couple of Hollywood “nepo babies” and you get financing.
This hits theaters Nov. 8.
Any dude with the barest hint of a singing voice and a lot of adenoids can manage a Bob Dylan impression with just a little practice.
The bigger test in this Dec. 25 release will be if Monica Barbero can summon up the ethereal range and soul of Joan Baez, if indeed they’re letting her sing like Joan.
Love the casting of Boyd Holbrook atsJohnny Cash, badass. That works. Director James Mangold (“Walk the Line”) knows a good Cash when he sees him.
Edward Norton’s Pete Seeger, Norbert Leo Butz is folklorist/record producer Alan Lomax, Dan Fogler becomes agent Albert Grossman, Scoot McNairy is aged legend Woody Guthrie and, for Dylan fanatics, Charlie Tahan plays guitarist turned first-time-ever organist Al Kooper on that legendary “Like a Rolling Stone” recording session.
It may dazzle, and I can’t imagine it won’t at least occasionally thrill fans of the Bard of the Iron Range.
“It’s What’s Inside” is a high-concept body-switch thriller that relies on performances to convince us that this or that little-known to utterly-anonymous actors has switched roles to come off.
They don’t and it doesn’t.
While writer-director Greg Jardin does his level best to bowl us over with “technique” (split screens, endless 360 degree handheld pans, etc.) and does a decent enough job at complicating his role-playing-game-run-amok plot, a somewhat bland cast of players can’t manage to convince us that they’re possessed by the mind and spirit of someone else.
Making all of the characters “types” — the influencer, the tech nerd, the Buddist hippy chick, the rich dude, the hothead — and the other three so uninteresting as to barely qualify as “types” doesn’t help. Because these college pals meeting years after school at the mansion of the richest member of their ranks aren’t distinct enough as characters and aren’t good enough actors to “suggest” that some other colorless character is under their skin.
The best-known among this crew is “White Lotus” alumna Brittany O’Grady, playing the seriously sexy but shy Shelby who can’t interest her not-in-her-league beau Cyrus (James Morosini) to role-play revive their years-together-and-no-ring sex life.
That doesn’t keep them from showing up at the pre-wedding fete rich Reuben (Devon Terrell) is throwing himself at his artist/mother’s country estate.
Reuben also invited pretty advice-to-the-lovelorn vlogger Nikki (Alicia Debham-Carey), artist Brooke (Reina Hardesty), hippy Maya (Nina Bloomgarden) and blustery “bro” Dennis (Gavin Leatherwood).
And as a wild card, he’s summoned the guy whom he and Dennis had a hand in getting expelled from college. Forbes (David W. Thompson, whose credits go back to “Win Win”) went West and became a tech success. Is he still holding a grudge?
The “edge” of his arrival is taken off by this gadget he brings in a green suitcase. You just tape a couple of electrodes on your skull and those skulls around you and this thingy (VERY analog looking) will “download” your “brain files” into whoever, with other “brain files” uploaded into your head.
This gadget is basically an electronic aid for “role playing,” as characters body-switch and act on impulses — cheating, tricking, betraying, or in the case of Cyrus and to some degree Shelby, “avoiding” that outcome.
“Call me Nikki!” “Nikki.” “Say it AGAIN.”
The conceit doesn’t work because nobody in this in crew is convincingly switched to another body. The cast is a pretty and pretty generic lot stuck playing a forgettable collection of types. And even the more outgoing characters, the easiest ones to “switch,” make little impression in that regard.
And then there’s an “accident” and the party turns to chaos as characters blackmail one another to achieve some goal — a sexier life, a richer life, a better pairing, avoiding jail, etc.
The final act works much better than the earlier ones because the performances finally achieve some level of “out there,” with bigger emotions, higher stakes and evil twists that arrive in a seriously confusing blur.
But even then, the cast doesn’t manage to adequately convey a new persona inside someone else’s body. A lame joke about whether Dennis has license to use “the N-word” when he’s inside Reuben is about as far as that goes.
The title “It’s What’s Inside” demands that we buy in to the switches. But the cast’s inability — pretty much to a one — to manufacture the externals necessary to make their transformations believable does in writer-director Greg Jardin’s superficially showy feature film debut.
A little less camera blocking and a lot more rehearsal could have worked wonders on this set.
Rating: R, sex, violence, profanity
Cast: Brittany O’Grady, James Morosini, Alicia Debnam-Carey, Devon Terrell, Gavin Leatherwood, Reina Hardesty, David W. Thompson and Nina Bloomgarden
Credits: Scripted and directed by Greg Jardin. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:43
Megan Stevenson, Ruth Syratt, Jane Horrocks and Sophie Thompson are in the cast, Stephen Fry narrates, much as he did the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” movie.
But this looks 1963 “Doctor Who” cheap, goofy and sure to be a festival darling (it’s just now starting its fest run) if it’s any good at all. It premieres in Austin, if you’re heading for the only tolerable corner of Texas.
Edgar Ramírez and Adriana Paz also star in this edgy tale of a cartel kingpin who wants to retire…as a queen.
Audacious Jacques Audiard wrote “A Prophet” and “Rust & Bone” and this comic thriller/musical.
Limited theatrical release as this could be an awards contender, Netflix Nov. 13.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt gets to play a detective’s “Eureka” moment in “Killer Heat,” a new mystery thriller from the French director “Night of the Kings.”
As ex-NYC cop (Aren’t they all?) Nick Bali, he rolls his eyes, paces the crime scene and holds his arms open wide in his best “How did I miss this?”
And we, the viewers, wonder the same damned thing. Because Nick’s epiphany comes one hour and eight minutes in this scenic but generic private eye tale. The average viewer figured all this out an hour (or more) earlier.
The film is set in the Zorba the Greek corner of the Med, the under-filmed island of Crete, which is a plus. Beaches by “the wine dark sea,” an ancient, fortified harbor, twisty, scenic roads winding into the the rocky hills to the edge of even rockier cliffs, this picture is a postcard from a trip you’ll want to take, regardless of the muddled murder mystery that is the movie’s reason for being.
Gordon-Levitt’s got the private eye hat and world-weary gumshoe narration down. The script has him go on and on about “the myth about the guy who flew too high.” What was his name? Oh yeah, “Icarus.”
“Sometimes you use a carrot,” Nick growls in Gordon-Levitt’s best film noir PI voice-over, “Sometimes you use a stick. Sometimes you just lie your ass off.”
He does this all the way through the picture. And considering what the screenplay has Shailene Woodley play, JGL got off easily. Almost every line from the formidable Woodley is exposition, back-story or “explanation.” Actors look at scripts loaded with that for dialogue and mutter “Oh yay. But at least I get a free trip to Crete.”
Woodley plays Penelope, an American with a name from Homer’s “Odyssey” who married money. But the the young director of the family shipping concern (Richard Madden) has died in a free solo climbing accident up those cliffs. Penelope married the dead man’s twin brother, and has her suspicions about what really happened.
So does the viewer and by extension, the reader of this review. But let’s soldier on no matter what we instantly start to “think.”
Continue readingShe’s ready to flee the nest and move to California. He’s determined to make the case that staying in the Buckeye State is her first, best destiny.
Alas, he doesn’t turn on the weather channel and show her the wide swath of 105 degree+ days assaulting the climate-changed West Coast. Might have sealed the deal.
Then again, she could point to Ohio politics, the Gym Jordans and J.D. Vances, and say “Sayonara.”
Jessica Michael Davis directed, and co-wrote and co-stars in this with Collin Kelly-Sordelet.
“Escaping Ohio” has finished its festival run and Gravitas Ventures has it. Release date? The dears didn’t put that on the trailer, which suggests straight-to-streaming.
I interviewed Dr. Patrick Steptoe, who pioneered “test tube babies,” when he traveled America for a lecture series some years back.
Netflix holding back this British film about a hot button political subject seems like cowardice or worse.
Nov. 22. By which time the dunderheads here could have voted this procedure out of existence.
Movie Nation 