Movie Nation

Deadline.com is reporting that William Monahan, screenwriter of “The Departed” and “Body of Lies,” has been tapped to adapt John Le Carre’s latest novel, “A Delicate Truth,”  for the big screen.

Haven’t read the book. Are there cell phones in it? There will be by the time the movie is made. Because nobody has taken to the cell as plot device/filmmaking expediency to the degree Monahan has.

Actors, often never appearing in a scene together, shouting at each other over phones — phones as dead giveaways, revealing who is betraying whom. Phones and more phones.

I noticed it in “Departed,” was driven to distraction by it (Leo and Russell C. do pretty much ALL their scenes by phone) in “Body of Lies,” noticed it in “Edge of Darkness” and “London Boulevard” (if memory serves) as well.

Call it a clever integration of an omnipresent technology in storytelling, or a writer’s crutch, but Monahan solves a lot of his script hurdles by putting people on the phone. “Can you hear me now?”

Michael Bay has been saying his “Low budget” comedy “Pain & Gain,” a sometimes gory account of dopey doped up Miami bodybuilders who kidnap a shady businessman and torture him into signing over his fortune, only cost $26 million.

Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Rebel Wilson, Anthony Mackie, Ed Harris, Tony Shalhoub and Rob Corddry star in it. So no, it had to cost more than that.

A true story, Bay spares us no grim moment of violence in between the often hilarious bits about clueless crooks showing their cluelessness. He lacks the light touch that might have made this thing sing. Not terrible, but hard to watch at times, like Michael Bay’s version of “Blow.” Mixed reviews for that one.

“At Any Price” is an over-long, melodramatically ambitious family story of two generations (Dennis Quaid, Zac Efron) of farmers taking shortcuts in a win-at-all-costs culture. It’s from the director of “Goodbye, Solo,” so it has great performances and a fine sensibility about it, though things go somewhat over the top at times.

“Mud,” one of the best films at this year’s Florida Film Festival and maybe the best film of this still-young year, opens at The Enzian and in theaters all over the country Friday. Great performances by two kids who find this romantic but dangerous drifter (Matthew McConaughey) living in an abandoned boat. Nice work by assorted supporting players. Reese Witherspoon shows off her Britney-Trashy side as the woman the drifter is chasing. Southern Gothic, and very good– great reviews — for that one.

Lionsgate, which made its name on cut-rate horror, trots out a new logo and a new ethos with “The Big Wedding,” an all-star wedding comedy that is unlike most anything else they’ve ever released. But they embargoed reviews and neglected to show it early enough to gin up any pre-release interest in it from critics, crippling its chances of finding an audience (it’s got some laughs). Perhaps its time Lionsgate put on its big boy pants and let its movies stand up to the same scrutiny every other studio endures.

“Arthur Newman” goes into limited release Friday. Not bad, but a meandering sort of melancholy road-trip romance that is earning weak reviews, overall. Colin Firth and Emily Blunt are quite good in it, which is to be expected.

OK. I kid. The teensy-budget big screen answer to “Glee!” did over $200 million, in box office, VOD, etc. receipts.

So naturally Universal would like a little more of that, if you please. Can’t imagine a 2015 film that would bring back Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson, but stranger things have happened. Best bet, a new cast and a new variation on an a capella formula.

I think the only time I’ve ever talked with her was WAY back when she did “Night on Earth” for Jim Jarmusch and they brought it to the NY Film Festival. Yeah, that was in the last century.

Tabloid years, with her connections to various rockers and wannabe rocker Johnny Depp, aside, Winona Ryder has had a varied and fairly successful career — a Golden Globe, a couple of Oscar nominations, roles in watershed films from “Heathers” to “Ed Wood,” “Little Women” to “Alien Resurrection.”

She was Spock’s mom in “Star Trek” and plays the classic doesn’t-want-to-know hit-man’s wife in “The Iceman,” opposite Michael Shannon.

Questions for Queen Winona? I’m lookingfor suggestions. Post them as comments below, and thanks.

Here’s another story summing up the latest Chinese affronts to artistic freedom in the somewhat artistic world of the cinema.

For years, Hollywood has been reluctant to deliver Chinese villains, to place big screen wrongdoing in Chinese hands. Think back to “2012,” in which the human race is saved from extinction by gigantic, Chinese-built arks. Or “Red Dawn,” where the invaders were made North Korean and not Chinese. “Iron Man 3” has a villain named The Mandarin, and he’s played by Ben Kingsley. Nothing at all Chinese about him or the character. And so on.

Whatever changes the Internet Age, an increasingly global economy and culturally porous borders promise for China, for its leaders to be able to cow Hollywood into editing films to suit the perceptions the one-party dictatorship wants to preserve is counter-productive and slows the process of democratization.

Lots of people want to escape their past. Wallace Avery wants to escape his present. Which he does, pretty much before the opening credits are over in “Arthur Newman.”
That’s to be his new name. Plainly, he’s given it some thought in advance, as he meets the unsavory dealer in phony IDs (M. Emmet Walsh), purchases the sort of car he figures Arthur Newman would drive (a late model Mercedes 380 SL convertible) and fakes his death.
The pleasures of “Arthur Newman” come from figuring out the life he left, the dream he clings to for the future and the traveling companion he stumbles into on his way from Orlando to Terre Haute, Indiana.
Colin Firth gives Wallace/Arthur a nice end-of-his-tether depression and desperation. He’s been laid off from Fed Ex. He’s divorced and estranged from his teenaged son (Lucas Hedges, quite good). He’s dating a woman (Anne Heche) who is constantly disappointed in him.
So why not plan a rather obvious but seemingly fool-proof death, disappearing from a beachside park near Jacksonville? Why not stuff your savings into a gym bag, toss the golf clubs in the trunk and hit the road?
But that’s where he meets Mikaela, aka “Mike.” She’s blitzed out of her mind when the cops grab her, stealing the car of some man she’s lured with her wiles. And she follows that by overdosing on a chaise lying beside Arthur’s motel pool. His humanity shines through as he “saves” her. The fact that she looks like Emily Blunt doesn’t hurt.
It turns out Mike is on the run from her real identity, too. She’s streetwise, a petty thief with a mania for dressing up and play-acting in other people’s clothes in other people’s houses. Arthur, wounded soul that he is, can’t help but be smitten. But even he has to see what a train wreck she is.
Veteran screenwriter Becky Johnston (“Seven Years in Tibet,” “The Prince of Tides”) has concocted a melancholy, wistful and delusional romance that two very good actors bring to life.  There’s barely a hint of whimsy in their odyssey, despite their bemused selection of odd people whose homes they invade, the dress-up that comes with each home invasion and the beds they muss. This is more “Something Mild” than “Something Wild.”
But Firth and Blunt handle their characters’ many revelations with care and play with layers of hurt and disappointment with great sympathy and pathos. Whatever they’re running from, each has an inner humanity that only the other seems to sense. And if that’s not the makings of a winning offbeat romance, nothing is.

(My interview with Colin Firth about “Newman,” “Bridget Jones” and “The Secret Service” is here)
MPAA Rating: R for Sexual Content, Language, Brief Drug Use
Cast: Colin Firth, Emily Blunt, Anne Heche, M. Emmet Walsh,
Credits: Directed by Dante Ariola, written by Becky Johnston. A Cinedigm release.
Running time: 1:33

Once you’ve destroyed Pearl Harbor and let robots rampage across the Earth a few times, your whole idea of a buddy picture has got to be warped. Elephantiasis sets in, even on a caper comedy with daft characters and silly situations.
Michael Bay’s post-“Transformers” action comedy “Pain & Gain” is so afflicted. It’s a buddy comedy with three, not two, “buddies.” And every time you turn around, some minor supporting role is overloaded with big name talent. That line “No expense was spared” comes to mind, and not in a good way, as scenes and sequences are a tad overwhelmed.
So what could have been a tight, darkly comic thriller about three dopey Miami bodybuilders kidnapping a rich guy and making him sign over his properties to them because they’re not smart enough to see they could never get away with that becomes Bay’s version of “Blow,” a broad swipe at ’90s excesses, from self-help gurus to steroids.
It’s a “true” story, as the film keeps reminding us, about impatient self-help addict Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) who cons his ‘roid-ruined pal Adrian (Anthony Mackie) into a scheme to kidnap a faintly unsavory gym client (Tony Shaloub) to make him sign over his home, his bank accounts and his businesses to them.
When the tee-totaling, Born Again ex-con Paul (Dwayne Johnson, a hoot) shows up, Danny figures the team is complete.
“Listen, I watched a lot of movies, Paul. I know what I’m doing.”
There’s a nervous, insistent entitlement to these three gym rats, who figure their workout ethic and formidable physiques make them “supermen” who “deserve better.” Danny’s got his favorite financial guru’s (Ken Jeong) mantra memorized.
“Believe you deserve it and the universe will serve it.”
Wahlberg’s manic moron shtick may wear thin after a bit, but he pulls his buddies and us along with him for the ride.
Shaloub’s Victor Kershaw isn’t some mobster. He’s just a contemptuous nouveau riche jerk who won’t take the suggestion that he lay off the steaks and eat a salad seriously.
“You know who invented salad? Poor people.”
Adrian’s need for money is built around what he’s lost by using steroids. Rebel Wilson (more overkill) is the nurse all-too-happy to restore him, um, vigor.
Truthfully, “Pain & Gain” turns painful after the kidnapping goes down, even if we laugh at the ineptitude of Danny and his cohorts and the ways they seem to invite getting caught. “Nobody gets hurt” goes by the boards and the violence will make you flinch.
Ed Harris is the retired cop who starts sniffing around, unable to believe this “Evil ninja weight lifter” caper and unable to convince un-retired cops to look into it.
Everybody in it this is amusing, with Wahlberg and Johnson having great chemistry — Wahlberg grabbing weights to think — “I gotta get a PUMP on” — which causes Johnson’s even more naive Paul to lose his train of thought — “Yeah, get it. Get it.”
It’s just too much — too much graphic violence, too many plot wrinkles, too much stupidity, too many supporting players to track (Did I mention Rob Corddry is the gym boss?).
For a movie as physically fit as this one wants to be, “Pain & Gain” is carrying way too much extra weight.

MPAA Rating:R for bloody violence, crude sexual content, nudity, language throughout and drug use
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Tony Shaloub
Credits: Directed by Michael Bay, scripted by  Christopher Marcus and Stephen McFeely. A Paramount release.
Running time: 2:04