Movie Review: Francis Shrugged — “Megalopolis”

Posted on September 29, 2024 by Roger Moore

It’s a pity the great filmmakers can’t all bow out with “A Passage to India,” “The Dead” or “Charlie Wilson’s War.”

And it’s a shame Francis Ford Coppola didn’t have some dream literary adaptation, some piece of Italian or Italian-American history or grand vision he wanted to get on the screen — a master’s version of “Babylon” era Hollywood, his “Napoleon” or “I, Claudius” or “A Man for All Seasons.”

But here is the cinema’s greatest riverboat gambler, an Oscar-winning icon baring his soul and pouring his heart and money into one last roll of the dice, one last stab at relevence in the dying embers of a comic book movie age.

His vision of science fiction is “Megalopolis,” which is basically “Atlas Shrugged” meets “Caligula,” a civics lecture in “fable” form.

It’s about human creativity and a parable of utopianism and fascist oligarchy that overreaches even as it enfolds all the tricks of the trade that he’s learned in 60 years in cinema.

This self-consciously artsy, eye-popping extravaganza has a star-studded cast that includes a couple of Oscar winners and a few Coppola relatives. It has a screenplay that quotes the “To be or not to be” soliloquy from “Hamlet” at length, that references “Utopia” by Sir Thomas More and paraphrases Henry II’s invective “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest” about Thomas Becket, and gives the line to Shia LaBeouf.

“Metropolis” reaches for parallels to our times, when “rich men,” rabble rousers and tech demagogues, are doing so much injury to human liberty and human potential.

But a barely coherent narrative underscores a simple fact. There is no getting around the heartbreaking truth that this is never more than a Messianic mess.

Adam Driver plays the John Galt/Howard Roark Ayn Randish “creative” figure. Cesar Catalina is a Robert Moses emperor of New Rome’s Design Authority, a man bent on remaking this mythical version of New York (the Chrysler Building is practically its own character) over with his new wonder building material, Megalon.

Coppola loves Japanese kaiju movies?

New Rome is roiled by economic disparity, and with one interelated family controlling the mayorship (Giancarlo Esposito), the most powerful bank (Jon Voight) and that design authority, in Cesar Catalina’s mind, it is is a place tailor-made for remaking.

He wants a city “people can dream about,” with soaring new buildings and people-friendly people movers, gardens for all and the like.

“Is this society, is this way of living the only one available to us?”

Mayor Cicero (Esposito) is an ex-prosecutor who thinks himself a man of the people, and he can only see the current unrest and all the ways “utopian” thinking fails to address genuine ills. He and Cesar have ugly history.

Catalina has an edge in the PR wars, as he’s sleeping with popular sexpot financial reporter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), aka “The Money Bunny.”

But the mayor’s gorgeous socialite daughter Julia (“Game of Thrones/Fast-Furious” saga alumnus Nathalie Emmanuel) is struck by this imperious, Nobel prize-winning, Shakespeare-quoting Lord of the Skyline, and stalks Cesar until he falls for her.

The hedonism is Fall of Rome/Weimar Berlin/NYC in the ’70s decadent, with clubs and parties for the beautiful people and street marches and riots for the have-nots.

Julia’s crazed, sometimes cross-dressing sibling Clodio (LaBeouf) figures he can tap into that undercurrent of unrest and topple this rival to his father, the mayor. Maybe his rich banker uncle Crassus (Voight) could bankroll that.

Clodio culturally-appropriates “Power to the people,” and he’s on his way.

Laurence Fishburne plays Cesar’s trusted aide and the fable’s stentorian narrator — “When does an empire die? When people no longer believe in it.”

Jason Schwartzman, nephew of Coppola, plays a mayoral aide and Schwartzman’s mother, Talia Shire (Coppola’s sister) plays Cesar Catalina’s mother.

The acting is pitched somewhere down the theatrically-grandiose scale, with only occasional snippets of dialogue meriting this approach.

Coppola brings in heaping helpings of effects, but found himself editing many great bits of eye candy into mere seconds of screen time in a tedious tale that runs over two hours, and feels much longer.

The madness of it all includes the look of the picture — swastikas and Roman SPQR signs, art deco and Cadillac Escalades. The design ranges from sleek, colorful and fashion-forward to the odd, jarring “What was that costumer THINKING?” This universe imagines “stop time” effects, magical floating moving sidewalks, classic Citroens, MGs and Bentleys sharing streets with Yukons and Caddy limos.

But the love story doesn’t click. Driver’s given many of the dumbest lines and most humbling stage directions and his struggle does nothing to dispel his “Box Office Poison” rep.

Plaza has the sexiest, showiest role, and she’s forgotten through most of the middle acts.

The muddle of characters merely clutter the narrative and the bigger point gets lost in a sea of small ones. Dustin Hoffman’s mayoral “fixer” figure is dispensed with as perfunctorily as this Great Threat hanging over them all, an old Soviet nuclear satellite that could hit Labrador, or doom New Rome.

But if you’re a film buff, feel free to ignore reviews, box office failure and everything else to see the last film by the screenwriter of “Patton” and the director of “The Godfather” trilogy and “Apocalypse Now.”

Coppola’s attempt to tap into a generation raised on sci-fi and comic book films fails. He can’t out-Gilliam Terry Gilliam (“Brazil”), has no patience for repeating himself (Helloooo, Ridley Scott) and has never been enamored of literary adaptations.

He’s been using phrases like “washed up” in interviews for nearly 20 years. I know. It’s why I buy his wine.

But if this mad gamble is indeed the “final film” of a great director from the Golden Age of great directors, cinephiles can celebrate the fact that at least he got it cast, filmed, edited and distributed and lived to see its release. That’s more than Orson Welles could say.

Rating: R, violence, sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Giancarlo Esposito, Laurence Fishburne, Shia LaBeouf, Jason Schwartzman, Talia Shire, Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman

Credits: Scripted and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. An American Zoetrope/Lionsgate release.

Running time: 2:18

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Documentary Review: “Will & Harper” take a Road Trip to test America’s Transgender Tolerance

Posted on September 29, 2024 by Roger Moore

What was “the pitch” for “Will & Harper” like?

This road trip documentary about two longtime friends and colleagues getting together after one has transitioned is sweet as can be, but it’s “showbiz” all the way. Will Ferrell met Andrew Steele when they joined “Saturday Night Live” at the same time. One became perhaps the greatest star the sketch comedy series has ever produced, the other a writer who became head writer of the show.

After “SNL,” Ferrell starred in such Steele-scripted comedies as “Casa de mi Padre” and “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga,” and they collaborated on the comedy website “Funny or Die.”

Ferrell tells us and shows us how he learned of his friend’s transition from Andre to Harper and accepted it.

But whatever the pitch or intent of what is, in essence, a documentary version of 2005’s “Transamerica,” this “put two funny friends in a car to see revisit America after one has come out as a woman” road picture becomes a sociological experiment.

How tolerant is this country, where a whole class of politicians and preachers has made hating transgender people a brand, rallying bigots far and wide?

As Steele, under her “dead name,” has long loved doing what writers do, hitting out of the way bars, diners, sporting events and the like, “meeting people,” listening to them, plumbing for ideas, “characters” and dialogue, how will that work with her in a dress and an assortment of not-quite-Dame-Edna glasses?

Where will she be accepted, and where won’t she?

How much “s–tty beer” (Steele’s lifelong love of “Natty Lite” is rightly mocked) and how many varieties of Pringles chips can two friends consume as they motor cross country to conduct this study?

And whose vintage Jeep Wagoneer is Harper driving when she picks Will up in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx? It’s implied it’s Harper’s, but it has California plates. Is it Will’s? A properly “butch” classic rental for a gender-bending road trip?

Ferrell, whose “nice guy” bonafides are polished to a fine sheen here, is a surrogate for the audience in asking all the “s–tty questions you’re not supposed to ask people.” Harper welcomes this chance to deliver public service announcements in the basics. And being funny down to his bones, Ferrell finds the laughs.

On “boobs” — “Did you go to Nordstrom’s Rack once you got your rack?”

“Do you think you’re a worse driver as a female driver?”

Steele, whom Ferrell met as an “Iowa born, 501 jeans and s–tty beer” comic, never really comes off as all that funny, at least in this situation. She frankly admits that her life (formerly married, two kids) and the TV comedy writing career she had would not have happened had she transitioned sooner than her 60s. Tina Fey excepted, comedy writing has been by and large a “bro’s” game.

On their mid-winter trip, they’ll meet Harper’s two daughters, only one of whom is identified by name while the other invites questions left unanswered. They visit D.C. and Indianapolis for a Pacer’s game, accidentally meeting the state’s latest homophobic governor, unknowingly posing for “the photo you don’t want to be in.”

They’ll hit Harper’s hometown, Iowa City, stop in Oklahoma and Texas, at a car race and a honky tonk decorated with Confederate and Trump flags and worse, and a Texas steakhouse where Ferrell dons a Sherlock Holmes costume to compete in the “72 ounce steak is free if you can eat it in an hour” challenge.

Ferrell will also don a “disguise” that too closely resembles his “Zoolander” hair and costume to truly fool a Vegas waiter or anybody else.

And America, perhaps acknowledging the friend, relative or child, or friend or relative’s child we all know who transitioned, is for the most part polite and even accepting. Waiters and waitresses correct their “sir” to “madame,” and so on.

But on social media, where we’re at our meanest, a lot of those people taking selfies and cell shots and videos (even on the residential street where Harper’s Iowa City sister lives) take the time to share their online ignorance and their bigotry.

Steele is rattled, here and there. And Ferrell, who jokes around with his “celebrity” most of the time, has a few upsetting moments where he truly appreciates what his friend has gone through and is now subjected to and the dangers transgender people face in much of America.

We and he come to appreciate the role celebrity has in disarming such intolerance.

Whatever the original pitch to Netflix, “Will & Harper” became a hopeful, upbeat snapshot of a nation struggling with its own transition, just a couple of pals in a collectible Jeep, experiencing the “real” America — diners, dives and Walmarts — and the wide array of folks who inhabit it, at least some of whom are starting to “get it.”

Rating: R, profanity, adult subject matter, lite beer consumption

Cast: Will Ferrell, Harper Steele, Tina Fey, Will Forte, Tim Meadows, Molly Shannon, Seth Meyers and Kristen Wiig

Credits: Directed by Josh Greenbaum. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:51

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Movie Preview: Aisling Bea and Nick Frost take the kids on the Vacation from Hell — “Get Away”

Posted on September 28, 2024 by Roger Moore

Well, “We’ve taken holiday to a Swedish horror film” is how they put it.

A little “Wicker Man,” a lot of Every Other “We’re not welcome here” thriller. With dark dark laughs.

This horrific farce from beyond the sea is now an IFC/Shudder Dec. 6 release.

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Series Finale: “The Grand Tour: One for the Road” lets Clarkson, Hammond and May drive, sail and rail into the Sunset

Posted on September 28, 2024 by Roger Moore

I was late but not terribly late getting around to “Top Gear,” finally bingeing on DVD screeners of the series the BBC was sending me for review about three or four years after the motoring show was rebooted around star Jeremy Clarkson.

Like many, I became addicted, devouring every episode, reveling in the many amusing challenges and epic road trips undertaken by its well-matched stars — the grumpy, reactionary jingoist “Jezzer” Clarkson, the curious, practical pedant and Renaissance Man James May and radio-polished, handy-with-a-spanner but accident-prone”Hamster,” Richard Hammond.

I was also late getting on board their Amazon replacement series “The Grand Tour,” whose promise was only fulfilled when they turned it into a literal “Grand Tour” with more epic road trips, which were, by and large, not as epic as those undertaken for the BBC.

So of course I’m a tad tardy getting around to saying goodbye to these Brit-blokes and their last “classic cars across Africa” film together, “The Grand Tour: One for the Road.”

It’s a “greatest hits” adventure, most nostalgic in the minimal clips of their old series that they were allowed to use, revisiting their younger selves in the “Top Gear” quest episode that made them, their famed 2007 “Botswana Special.”

They’d made news with their “Polar Special” earlier that year. But taking three car nuts and three ancient and breakdown-prone autos on a rideabout through Botswana, with wildlife and largely unspoiled nature and terrible roads or no roads at all, gave all three the chance to shine and made their team and their show a worldwide brand.

Seventeen years later, they go where the BBC was not allowed to go –Botswana’s neighbor Zimbabwe — for a scenic victory lap and three personal curtain calls. They remember the trek that made them and slip neatly into the characters that the two series molded around them, one last time.

The conservative, technically-inept Clarkson — now putting his sometimes brilliant, sometimes lunkheaded “outside the box” thinking on display in the delightful “I know nothing about farming” “Clarkson’s Farm” series — rejoins the ever-curious cosmopolitan, the methodical, mechanically-minded May, and the amusingly provincial, born romantic and motorcycle wrencher Hammond for one last road rally.

The idea is that they were to “buy a car you’ve always wanted” to own for this drive.

So Clarkson insists, one last time, that road rally racing champ Lancias are the “best cars” for such quests, no matter how flimsy, oddly-engineered and absurdly unreliable they are. He brings a “slightly modified” 1980 vintage Montecarlo.

Hammond shows up with an early ’70s Ford (badged as a Mercury in the States) Capri, which was “supposed to be my first car.” Hammond fell in love with his 1963 Opel Kadet in “Botswana,” naming it “Oliver” and taking it home with him. Will he be as affectionate towards “Essex,” this Capri?

And May, the third player added to complete the iconic “Top Gear” trio, the “bloke” who made his bones on the show by delivering appreciations of his costly-to-keep vintage Bentley and his lifelong love of the Triumph TR-6, arrives with the much-maligned Triumph Stag, a stylish but company-killing car infamous for the unreliable, ever-overheating engine.

As May crossed Botwana in a reliable-as-a-Swiss watch 1985 Mercedes, we’re left to wonder if “the practical one” has gone soft in the head.

The show’s famed fakery — their feigned “revolt” against longtime producer Andy Wilman — is sampled as they’re allegedly supposed to finish their TV run with an endurance race around London in new electric cars. That allows Clarkson to snipe about electric vehicles one last time, “They’re washing machines, microwave ovens,” and plot a coup where they all revisit the Southern Africa scene of perhaps their greatest triumph.

They allow themselves to get reflective over the fame and wealth that spun out of that special that made the series, and them, worldwide phenomena, and led to epic drives through South America, the U.S., Australia and almost every continent on Earth, something underscored by a world map graphic that lights up with all the places they’ve visited.

And as they make yet another “wrong turn” in a far off land, one so underfilmed as to be a wonder to behold, they do another cars-as-trains turn, as railroad tracks are smoother than washboard roads that shake old cars to pieces, and another cars-on-boats trip, this time across the crocodile-filled “largest manmade lake in the world.”

Clarkson goes jingoistic over British colonial rail construction and British dam engineering, but little is said about the unhappy British history of the country the limeys colonized as Rhodesia. The trio’s devil-may-care, “this show is ending” so “bugger off” with your complaints is a backhanded reference to all the things they said and did that finally got Clarkson kicked off “Top Gear,” with the other two following.

But as they pass imported-species pine plantations and note the vast mineral resources of the country, and drive on some perfectly-finished highways at times, they’re Amazon-circumspect in never mentioning Zimbabwe’s exploitation by and connections to China. Amazon or BBC, they still have paymasters they don’t want to upset.

Gone are the youthful pranks and many of the hijinks. Well, not the drinking. A boozy bit of boating is included. And they still resolve to leave-any-man behind whose car breaks.

A contrived bit of “smuggling” border crossing drama is no match for the international incident Clarkson created in Argentina, which if the BBC was honest, it would admit was the real reason he was sacked.

It’s a sentimental journey, to be sure, not exactly dispirited but definitely lower energy, an older men’s trek through their past at an age where you’d think the two oldest — the paunchy former (let’s hope) smoker Clarkson and the now-whitehaired May — would have at last learned to use suncreen.

But that was a big part of the charm of their chemistry. Clarkson’s inability to properly “fix” anything, May’s “Captain Slow” driving and thinking style, Hammond’s perky pluck in fixing whatever clunker he’s fallen in love with are reprised, one last time, with feeling if not with anything resembling the old gusto.

They’re admitting they’re dinosaurs, and if they’re not exactly passing the torch (the golden age of gas “motoring” is over), they know it’s time to leave. When Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman are doing what they’ve done, giving us more local flavor in their travels, different “celebrity” laughs, and doing it on (at times) electric vehicles, we’re seeing the future.

Clarkson, May and Hammond can joke about their limited futures and we can have a laugh with them over “now appearing in panto, TV’s Richard Hammond as ‘Buttons'” because we, like they, know their legend is secure, even if their fossil fuel and tire-burning days are over.

Rating: TV-MA, alcohol, profanity

Cast: Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.

Credits: Produced by Andy Wilman, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. An Amazon Prime release.

Running time: 2:10

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BOX OFFICE: “Wild Robot” opens big, “Megalopolis” doesn’t, “Transformers” plunge, “My Old Ass” barely registers

Posted on September 28, 2024 by Roger Moore

I was betting that Deadline.com is lowballing, based on the hurricane-dampened “preview” night/opening day of “The Wild Robot” (right around $12 million), when their prognosticator said it’d hit $35 million on its opening weekend.

Saturday, post hurricane, should have been  huge. I was thinking $40 million+ was  within reach. Nope. It’ll take a very good Sunday to get it over $35.

As I said in my review of the sweet and poignant “Robot,” this adaptation of a Peter Brown book wasn’t easy to sell via trailers and commercials. This official trailer never comes close to getting at the essence of the film and why it’s magical. The word “robot” was supposed to sell it.

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” had no such branding problems, being the sequel to a beloved if somewhat uneven horror comedy that found its audience and never let go of it. Neither of the films was great, no matter how much affection fans have for the first true wild and wooly mind of “TIM BURTON” branded hit (it even spawned an animated TV series in the late-80s, early ’90s).

Another $16 million for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” will push it over $250 million, domestically, and might give Burton the leverage to make any “dream” project he has in mind. He’s had so many.

“Transformers One,” which brings Paramount’s creaking franchise back to the animated toy show it always was, is falling off some 60% from its opening weekend take, good for another $9.3 million. This one will clear $50 or so by the time its run ends. Hardly a blockbuster.

Indian cinema has become a big deal in the post-pandemic box office era, one of the most reliable corners of the market for theater owners. So “Devara: Part 1,” three hours of subcontinent action starring N.T. Rama Rao Jr., is opening over $5.6 million.

Francis Ford Coppola’s last cinematic throw of the dice, “Megalopolis,” isn’t opening to long lines and ticket sales befitting a legendary/visionary film storyteller. The sci-fi parable stars Adam Driver, and good actor or not, he isn’t “box office,” nor is really anybody else in the cast. Maybe it’ll find its audience at some point, but $4 million isn’t the kind of send-off, mixed reviews be damned, Coppola deserves.

The sentimental dramedy “My Old Ass” and the combat photographer biopic “Lee” aren’t making so much as a ripple, with holdovers “Speak No Evil” ($4.3), “Deadpool & Wolverine” ($2.6) and “Never Let Go” ($2.2) and “The Substance” ($1.8) jockeying with them for placement within the lower half of the Top Ten.

Donald Trump couldn’t pay people enough to show up for “Trump Vindicated,” and Matt Walsh has made his last real money off  ” Am I Racist?” with neither of these wingnut docs making the top ten this weekend.

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Movie Review: Kate Winslet plays a Combat Photographer few recall — “Lee” Miller

Posted on September 27, 2024 by Roger Moore

“Lee” is a sturdy, episodic and sometimes moving “what I did in the war” biography of combat photographer Lee Miller.

She was a pioneer in the field, breaking down barriers, making her mark at the time. The reason we’ve not heard much about her is that she was an American model-turned-photographer, she published her work in British Vogue, and some of her most important work wasn’t published until much later.

Kate Winslet brings her to fiesty, uncompromising life in an occasionally immersive history lesson served-up with a dash of cinematic license when the unadorned literal truth isn’t sufficient.

We meet brash Lee Miller in the pre-war South of France, hanging out with artists and models and other beautiful people who aren’t shy about shedding their tops. Her friends include Picasso (Enrique Arce), a noblewoman and journalist for French Vogue, Solange D’Ayen, played by Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, and the famous French poet Paul Éluard (Vincente Colombe).

They’re an artsy, louche crowd, but they’re how the cynical Lee meets the artist Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård), the love of her life.

Lee is a great beauty who doesn’t need to be reminded that typically, “ex-models travel the world and pretend to be interesting.” She may return to London with Penrose, but she’s a photographer hellbent on making a mark behind her Rolleiflex.

Vogue editor Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough) eventually finds a place for her, despite the sniping of famed staff photographer and future Oscar-winning designer Cecil Beaton (Samuel Barnett). And once there, when the war they all see coming finally begins, Miller becomes an integral part of British Vogue’s determination to “do our part” by showing British women doing theirs.

Miller captures women pilots who deliver bombers from the factory to air bases, nurses and anti-aircraft crews and those who simply “keep calm and carry on” during the Blitz.

After D-Day, she becomes an accredited American correspondant, getting around Britain’s rules against allowing women to cover combat. And she works the angles to break down the barriers the U.S. military throws up in front of her as the Allies march across Europe.

Andy Samberg plays Life Magazine photojournalist David Scherman, and they become a “team” and — it is implied — something more as they document battles, the liberation of Paris and The Holocaust.

Some of the most intriguing scenes here are recreations of how they sidestepped restrictions and curried favor to gain access to Nazi suicide scenes, the head-shaving punishmen of French “horizontal collaborators,” death trains and concentration camps. Hitler’s Munich apartment became the site of of one of Miller’s most famous poses and Scherman’s most famous photographs.

Cinematographer (“Summer of Sam,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) turned documentary and TV director Ellen Kuras ensures her feature debut looks documentary-real in the combat and wartime scenes and sun-drenched and somewhat carefree in the pre-war sequences.

The film meanders a bit, especially in the later acts. It’s somewhat hampered by a three-handed script that leans on a post-war interview “interrogation” Lee endures late in life, prompting her to recall her wartime efforts and exploits, dismissing them as “just pictures” but letting us see the images that were much more than that.

But Winslet is convincingly flinty, uncompromising and American in the part, a feminist in the truest traditional sense of the word. Excellent supporting cast aside, she’s the reason to see “Lee,” a one woman argument for why what Lee Miller documented and how she documented it mattered in a movie that honors her memory, and the memories that haunted her to the end of her days.

Rating:R, graphic war crime footage, violence, alcohol abuse, smoking, nudity and profanity

Cast: Kate Winslet, Alexander Skarsgård, Andy Samberg, Andrea Riseborough and Marion Cotillard.

Credits: Directed by Ellen Kuras, scripted by Liza Hannah, Marion Hume and John Collee, based on a biography by Anthony Penrose. A Sky production, a Roadside Attractions/Vertical release.

Running time: 1:56

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Movie Review: Navigating one’s teens might be easier with a little help from “My Old Ass”

Posted on September 27, 2024 by Roger Moore

There’s a cute coarseness that lets “My Old Ass” live up — or down — to its title and its standing as “An Aubrey Plaza Comedy.” That’s Plaza’s brand, after all, and she is the title character.

But this sentimental story of a child of 18 awakened to the realities, responsibilities and future regrets of that moment in life by her older self isn’t an Aubrey Plaza comedy. It’s a Canadian “last summer before college” romance set in cranberry country made quaint by its setting and the adorably outdated term we’d use for the nature of that romance — “bi-curious.”

Maisy Stella is our heroine, Elliott, a brash, self-absorbed teen who “can’t wait to get out of” the lakeside/cranberry bog-side Ontario village where she grew up. When we meet her, she’s blowing off a planned family birthday party to A) recklessly tool around the lake on her outboard motor skiff, B) make out with her store-clerk girlfriend Chelsea (Alexandra Rivera) and C) go camping to sample some “shrooms” with her besties Ro and Ruthie (Kerrice Brooks and Maddie Ziegler).

“My life is finally about to start,” she crows. What she doesn’t see is what’s about to end.

That’s what this dose of mushroom tea does for her. It earns her a “Hey, freak” visit from “39 year-old you,” dryly played by the queen of too cool for school, Plaza.

After a few “middle aged” backhanded compliments and protests about how they look nothing alike — Gapped teeth? “WEAR your retainer!” — the life lessons turn more serious.

Little brothers? Connect with them before you go. Mom? “BE NICE to her.”

Remember, “The only thing you can’t get back is time.” Oh, and one last thing.

“Can you avoid anyone named ‘Chad?'”

It isn’t until Elliott’s sobered-up and stumbles into Dad’s new summer hire for the cranberry harvest that she takes in what has really happened. The willowy cranberry charmer is an undergrad named Chad (Percy Hines White). And that new contact on her cell phone, the one labeled “My Old Ass?” That’s her future self, reachable by cell for further life advice and clues about what her future holds.

But who answers their cell any more? Plaza’s character recedes into the background as Elliott finds herself confused, with feelings and urges to work out, rewarded for finally reconnecting with her loving family, and punished for all that she’s already missed, the “changes” that were already underway, the “last time you will ever” do things that matter, that you want to ensure linger in the memory.

Actress (“What If,” “The Secret Life of the American Teenager”) turned director (“The Fallout”) Megan Park’s script is entirely too on-the-nose in many little ways. Naming your gay heroine Elliott after Canada’s most famous transgender performer Elliot Page, the designer girlfriend and best friends, having one of Elliott’s little brothers obsessed with actress Saoirse Ronan, making the beau who turns her head a super sensitive long hair are all easy, early draft touches to give a script its flavor.

Let’s show girls urinating a few times for extra “edge.”

That flavor could have come from the unusual locale, the local farming money crop and Elliott’s family, all of them given short shrift here.

When “My Old Ass” works, it’s comically judgmental, droll in the ennui the older feel about the young and sentimental about what you’re missing out on by focusing on the impulse of the moment.

It could have been a modern “Peggy Sue Got Married,” but it only comes close to that youth-revisited classic in one or two moments.

There’s no arguing that “Nashville” alumna Maisy Stella gets a “The next Florence Pugh” stardom making showcase here. But sweet as it is, “My Old Ass” could have used a bit more “old ass” to make the sentiments stick and the sense of losses to come more palpable.

Rating: R, drug abuse, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Maisy Stella, Aubrey Plaza, Percy Hines White, Alain Goulem and Maria Dizzia

Credits: Scripted and directed by Megan Park. An MGM release.

Running time: 1:29

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Movie Review: Nature meets High Tech Nurture in Dreamworks’ charming “The Wild Robot”

Posted on September 27, 2024 by Roger Moore

The charms of “The Wild Robot” sneak up on you.

A futuristic tale, the adaptation of Peter Brown’s kid-lit book summons up memories of the great animated films for children of the past.

It was bit of a hard sell, judging from a year of underwhelming trailers advertising this story of a robot learning virtues that have always been the province of the living — empathy, responsibility and nurturing.

But writer-director Chris Sanders has always had the knack for humanizing hard sells and finding the heart behind the laughs. “Lilo & Stitch,””The Croods” and “How to Train Your Dragon” prove that. Here, he reaches for the emotions of “Bambi” in a movie utterly modern in every other CGI way.

A robot is lost overboard in a shipping container, washing up on an uninhabited island somewhere in the Pacific Northwest of the post-climate-changed future. Rozzum 7134 is meant to be a “helper” for humans. But there are no humans here, only wild animals.

“Learning mode,” she chatters to herself (in the voice of Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o). Mimicking a crabwalk will get you out of the surf before it dashes you to bits.

We experience this world through her camera-eyes (with computer readout graphics), seeing the threats she soon faces from moose, bear and especially racoons, hearing her voice her every AI thought as she does.

All she wants is a “task,” something anyone she meets needs taken care of. It’s only after mastering the language of the critters here that she will learn the otters, deer, opossums and others regard her as a “Monster.”

A gosling has been orphaned on her arrival. Might this be her “task,” raising and “mothering” this baby goose?

“I do not have the programming to be a mother,” Rozzum 7134 complains. “No mother does,” mama possum Pinktail (the great Catherine O’Hara) counsels.

Roz, as she’s soon called, must get this gosling on its feet, able to feed itself, swim and fly before the fall migration. Her main help will be a self-described “expert” on geese — Fink the Fox (Pedro Pascal). He’s skeptical about this whole enterprise.

“Don’t get too attached to the little guy.” The movie may be sentimental. Nature is not.

The hated fox will be her spirit guide through all this, conning her into feeding and housing him, along with the tiny critter he’d love to have eaten as an egg, a gosling or a full grown goose. He even teaches her slapstick.

“Humor is based on…misfortune?”

“Imprinting” on a robot isn’t natural, so little Brightbill, as he’s named, develops a mechanical walk and programmic mode of speech.

It’s a pity he didn’t imprint on the fox. To Find, the chatty, almost suicidally clumsy baby possums are “appetizers.”

The best sight gags are the comic violence the animal kingdom visits upon poor Roz, whose 360 degree rotating hands, head, arms, legs and torso get her out of many a jam.

The comical problem solving — how to teach little Brightbill to eat, swim and fly — is inventive and will involve other critters (Brit funnyman Matt Berry is a beaver, Mark Hamill a bear, Bill Nighy a sage old goose and Ving Rhames a hawk).

And every animated sequence, comical or sweet, passes on the need for compassion, empathy and responsibility.

“A Rozzum always completes its task.”

The humor is largely physical, but witty in sly ways when it comes to dialogue. You want a gosling to sleep? Tell him a story. Who’d be good at that? A fox?

“Storytelling is lying-adjacent,” Pascal-as-Fink reassures us. And so it is.

The ending is over-the-top, violent and a bit out of character with the rest of the movie until you remember “Bambi” is kind of the guiding light here.

But Sanders & Co. have made that rare Dreamworks cartoon that’s more about the message and teaching than about the laughs, a gentle, touching comedy that turns out to be one of the best films this animation house has ever made.

Your responsibility, your “task” is simple — take your children to it. They’re never too young to learn to “always complete your task.”

Rating: PG

Cast: The voices of Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Boone Storm, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Matt Berry, Mark Hamill, Catherine O’Hara and Ving Rhames

Credits: Scripted and directed by Chris Sanders, based on the novel by Peter Brown. A Universal/Dreamworks release.

Running time: 1:41

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Movie Preview: Ana de Armas is no mere Tiny Dancer — “Ballerina” kicks ass in The John Wick universe

Posted on September 26, 2024 by Roger Moore

Ian McShane and the late Lance Reddick and Keanu are back to pass the torch. Oscar winner Anjelica Huston, Catalina Sandino Moreno and Norman Reedus are among the newcomers.

McShane’s hotelier/assassin world insider is a groomer?

Interesting.

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Movie Review: South Africans bungle their overreaction to “The Shakedown”

Posted on September 26, 2024 by Roger Moore

“The Shakedown” is an intermittently amusing dark comedy about blackmail and the “accidents” that happen when inexperienced folks overreact to it.

An over-achieving “wellness and medical” insurance broker irks his dopey mistress and she threatens to expose him, wrecking his happy family and affluent life, or at least the illusion of it.

As is the way of such comedies, exercise/wellness-obsessed Justin Diamond (Carl Beukes) conveniently has a “black sheep” sibling, Dovi (Emmanuel Castis), an ex-con who might be able to “scare” indiscrete Marika (Berenine Barbier) out of her attempted “shakedown.”

Dovi, whom Justin keeps at arm’s length and away from his family (Dovi has to crash Justin’s daughter’s bat mitvah), has words of warning for Justin even before things go very wrong. “It’s a dirty world.” And when the “scare her” turns into blunders, beatings and a death, he’s even more blunt.

“Now you’ve got dirt on your hands.”

He means “blood,” but we get it. Justin’s whole house of cards — the rented Porsche, the veneer of “success,” could crash down around him. Maybe his rabbi (Adam Neill) can help, offer a few words of moral equivocation and such. Sure. A “donation” is suggested.

Maybe Dovi’s warnings that the rabbi is a gambling addict are true!

For his debut feature, director and co-writer Ari Kruger peppers his dialogue with Hebrew phrases and Afrikaans slang. He samples insurance and wellness pitches (way too many of those) and peeks into a community that practices a certain insularity but which preys on its own.

Dovi grills their dementia-suffering mother to find out who among the congregation of their shul is heading out of the country on vacation, and Kruger then serves up hapless “blue cap gang” crooks (Zander Tyler and David Isaacs) who then go to rob their houses, tying up Black servants as they do. They’re the perfect pair to call on to “scare” a blackmailer, and botch the job.

Diversions into sex predelictions (an Antonio Banderas sex doll) and the like included, there still isn’t nearly enough funny stuff going on here to recommend “The Shakedown.”

And one can’t help but notice how retrograde this “ethnic” comedy is. It’s been decades since I’ve seen a South African film this whitewashed.

How do you excuse setting your movie in Cape Town, South Africa, and erase all the Black people — save for a housekeeper and delivery man — from it?

Anybody with a memory for history can probably explain that.

Rating: Unrated, violence, sex, profanity

Cast: Carl Beukes, Emmanuel Castis, Julia Anastasopoulos, Berenice Barbier, Adam Neill and Milton Schorr.

Credits: Directed by Ari Kruger, scripted by Ari Kruger and Daniel Zimbler. An MGM/Amazon release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:44

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