Movie Nation

There are many good excuses for a film buff to not “get around to” the Powell & Pressburger production, “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.”

It’s almost three hours long, is famous for its sentimentality and cinematic patience in getting round to those sentiments.

But the new David Hinton documentary “Made in England,” basically a filmed Martin Scorsese Master Class on why the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger stood out in their day and still matter now, talked me into at long last getting around to the one WWII Powell and Pressburger film I’d missed, all of them made as the war was raging.

“Blimp” is a mostly soundstage-bound Technicolor spectacle, offering Britons a few hours of escape just after The Blitz, just as the war in Europe was turning into an Allied offensive that would eventually crush if not exterminate fascism.

Inspired by a satiric newspaper comic strip character, a walrus-mustached old fart whose reactionary politics and out of date military acumen were the subject of fun, “Blimp” was a movie Powell and Pressburger made over the objections of much of official Britain at the time, especially Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

But the object of “The 49th Parallel,” “One of Our Aircraft is Missing,” “A Canterbury Tale,” “
“A Matter of Life and Death” and “Blimp” was to remind Britain and the world of what “we” were fighting for. Nothing unpatriotic about that.

The debates between “Colonel Blimp” and his pre-war friend, dueling foe and German officer Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff are about the dangers of militarism tied to political fanaticism — cult leader politicians goading the public with race-baiting nationalism, the masses rationalizing “any (murderous) means necessary” to achieve their efforts to dominate and rule. So yes, this 80+ year old saga has something to say to modern audiences.

The story, which has little to do with the comic, is framed in an embarrassing Colonel Blimp debacle.

An eager beaver Army officer (James McKechnie) uses his romantic connection to a female Army driver (Deborah Kerr) to start a war games assault on London six hours early.

It’s to be an Army attack with the WWII “home army,” recruited and armed militiamen — many of them older veterans — relied upon as a last line of defense in the event of an invasion. The war games are intended to simulate “the real thing,” but have a set start time.

“The war starts at midnight!”

Violating that rule allows this officer to storm into a London Turkish baths and seize the elderly officers in charge of the Home Guard, including “Blimp” plump Brigadier Clive “Sugar” Wynne-Candy.

A naked “Blimp” (Roger Livesey) bellows through his mustache at the “impudent” junior officer and drags him into the bathwater for a senior citizen thrashing.

“D’ye KNOW how many WARS I’ve been in?”

That sets up the flashback where we meet the young “Sugar” or “Suggie” Candy, a junior officer fresh out of South Africa’s Boer Wars, 40 years earlier. He’s won the Victoria’s Cross. And acting on his own newspaper-interview notoriety and a friend’s tip from a letter “niece’s governess’s sister,” a governess in Germany, he sets off for a place where “they HATE us” thanks to anti-British German propaganda ginned up by a spy who worked both-sides of that colonial conflict.

One in the Kaiser’s Germany, Candy meets the governess (Kerr, again), and sets out to trip up and taunt Kaunitz the spy (David Ward) in a very public restaurant. And the next thing he and the VERY disapproving local embassy know, he’s been challenged to a duel. He insulted the entire German Army, and German officers of “honor” won’t stand for it. They wear their sabre-cut dueling scars with pride in their increasingly militaristic imperial state.

A draw of lots pits Candy vs. Teutonic Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook) through an elaborately explained, protocol-governed duel by “the rules.” And as the two convalesce from their wounds, they become lifelong friends.

That friendship is tested by World War I, and Kretschmar-Schuldorff’s blind patriotism, even in defeat, and by the coming of World War II, by which time one old man has become wise to the threats of military dictatorships even if another still regards war as something of a sport, where “right makes might” when the other side is constantly cheating, killing civilians, introducing poisonous gas and sinking unarmed merchant ships.

So this summer’s dumb, gonzo shark movie is French, and is about endangered sharks “evolving” and taking their “swim-eat-procreate” act up the River Seine to Paris.

“Under Paris” lives down to that “dumb” label, with diver after diver suiting up, first scene to last, before our “expert” (Bérénice Bejo of “The Artist” and “A Knight’s Tale”) blurts out the obvious…in French or dubbed into English.

“There’s no point in diving and taking this RISK!”

Shark specialist Sophia blurts this long after she’s leapt in to save her husband and her “team” tracking a tagged mako shark in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The water is crimson, and littered with plastic. And she’s seen the freak-out on video when four divers are attacked. But in she goes, and without a tank.

Other divers will make this mistake again and again in this heartless, pitiless, gory and cautionary thriller. It’s got a couple of killer sequences of shark-attack mayhem in the Seine and the Catacombs beneath Paris, some arresting underwater shots — but little else to recommend it.

Characters are sketched-in, with villains in the usual places — officials in the River Brigade of the police force (Aurélia Petit), a “cover this up” mayor (Anne Marivin) who wants the big Paris triathlon to go on, sharks be damned.

And the picture’s pretty harsh on dreamy-eyed environmentalists, too. Activist Mika (Léa Léviant) and her peers, locally and internationally, are portrayed as misguided shark lovers.

“They won’t hurt anyone!”

Say what now? “She’s a SHARK, not a poodle!”

Sophia is shocked to see endangered sharks in an increasingly sickly ocean start to evolve, grow huge and adapt to their threatened world.

Traumatized by the loss of her lover and her team, she must join an intrepid river cop (Nassim Lyes) to try and prevent a tragedy. Ok, more tragedies. Well, let’s leave it at “Even BIGGER tragedies.” Because that’s a hallmark of this particular “cautionary” thriller. The body count is epic.

There’s nothing novel or new about “Edge of Everything.” But for half a century, every generation has needed its cinematic essay on growing up in a heedless rush.

Comedy or tragedy, cartoonish or cautionary, “Sixteen Candles” or “thirteen,” “Edge of Seventeen,” or “Kids,” film audiences are forever getting updates on “kids these days,” what they’re into and what might shock parents and those far removed from parenting about how “early” they’re “growing up.”

This Marin County coming-of-age drama is about a 14 year-old freshman, Abby, who loses her mother, comes to live with her Dad and his much-younger girlfriend and kind of goes off the rails as she falls under the influence of kids with less supervision, whose parents failed to warn them away from the dangerous pitfalls of that age.

It’s almost quaint in its genre conventionality, as nothing here has even a hint of “shocking” about it. It’s not timely or topical enough to wrestle with this generation’s gender fluidity fixation, for instance. But good performances by the teens, especially star Sierra McCormick, and a few good scenes about parenting in a “follow your bliss” self-absorbed era almost recommend it.

McCormick, of “The Vast of Night” and “VFW,” in her mid-20s and thus a bit mature to be playing fourteen-going-on-fifteen, is Abby, who has just lost her mother as we meet her. She’s safeguarding her Mom’s last voice mails, taking care as she moves her goldfish to her father’s house and soldiering through a Jewish funeral where the more outspoken relatives are muttering their contempt for her Dad (Jason Butler Harner of “Ozark”), who left her mom for a succession of younger women, the latest of whom, Leslie (Sabina Friedman-Seitz) lives with him.

Abby and Leslie engage in a simmering undeclared war of judgements, lies and insults. Abby starts acting-out by stealing from Leslie.

She’s trying to keep her distance from her dad, who we gather hasn’t been “there” for her in years. At least she’s got her classmates, Lena, Hannah and Sarah (Nadezhda Amé, Dominique Gayle and Emily Robinson), to keep her ninth grade moorings. Or so one would hope.

But Abby’s experiments begin with Youtubing how to make a bong out of an apple, buying pot and kind of nudging her still-kids besties to experiment with her. When they prove slow on the uptake, the wild child Caroline (Ryan Simpkins) grabs her attention in their favorite pizza joint. An unrestrained rebel who talks back to adults, she keeps clear liquor in a disposable water bottle and her eyes peeled for that next buzz, prank or boy to cross her field of view.

Abby is fascinated and more than willing to show how “cool” she is to her friends by taking up with out-of-control Caroline and joining in her partying, tipsy navel piercing or sex with older boys.

Actually, Abby is more on the sidelines for that last “You need to lose your virginity” benchmark. But everything else tangles up her emotions and misdirects her moral compass, wrecking relationships and causing her inexperienced-at-parenting father to resort to at-home drug-tests to rein her in.

Gassed, winded and showing its/their age, those “Bad Boys” are back — wise-cracking, trash-talking, gun-slinging and coping with their own mortality for “Bad Boys: Ride or Die.”

The franchise is almost 30 years old and its action stars are well into their AARP years. Closing in on 60, the phrase “I’m a grown-ass man” loses its comic sting.

Michael Bay’s no longer involved in this sassy Miami cops saga, although he’s got a cameo in their latest. Replacement directors Adil El Arbi and Billal Fallah handle the over-the-top shoot-outs and brawls well enough. “Ride or Die” features a few preliminary fights/shoot-outs, no chases, a helicopter hijacking and a closed gator theme park finale.

But the spark is gone, the amusement in Martin Lawrence’s strained mugging and eye-bugging is played. When he says “I GOT this,” we still don’t believe him. It’s just that it’s no longer funny.

The story this time starts with Detective Mike (Smith) getting married, a few moments of paying tribute to their late captain (Joe Pantoliano), a Marcus (Lawrence) heart attack and serio-comic dip into the after life.

He gets a warning from their late captain — killed in the last film — and a sense that “It’s not your time” means “You can’t kill me.”

That can’t be contributing to Mike’s sudden penchant for “panic attacks” that make him freeze in the clinches.

Eric Dane plays the new “cartel” enforcer who intends to test that “You can’t kill me” theory. Framing up the late captain is a start. Mike’s assassin son (Jacob Scipio), introduced in “Bad Boys For Life,” might be the one guy who can ID this new mob enforcer. And he’s in prison.

With a state’s attorney (Ioan Gruffud) now engaged to their new boss (Paola Núñez) and a scandal erupting over dead Captain Howard’s corruption, the FBI and U.S. Marshals involved and that dead captain sending them a video pointing towards who might be behind all this, things could get complicated.

Only they don’t.

The Chris Bremner script is cut-and-paste generic, the chemistry between our two stars is a tad forced and bringing in Tiffany Haddish as an unfiltered strip club owner doesn’t up the comic ante enough to make this pay off.

Any nostalgia that helped sell their last outing is gone baby gone.

Lawrence trying to lead Smith in one more verse of the title tune is just sad, although a scene where he slaps Smith several times to get over his latest panic attack has a “That’s for Chris Rock” vibe, which is about as edgy as this weary stumble down the mean streets (not the beaches) gets.

Rating: R, bloody violence, profanity, “sexual references”

Cast: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Joe Pantoliano, Jacob Scipio, Tiffany Haddish, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Ioan Gruffudd, Eric Dane and Paola Núñez.

Credits: Directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, scripted by Chris Bremner. A Columbia Pictures release.

Running time: 1:55

I think there were trailers to three hit man movies in a row before my screening of “Bad Boys.”

This one stars Dave Bautista, serves up Sofia Boutella as the love interest who doesn’t have a clue what her man mountain does for a living.

Think a medical diagnosis will change his work ethic?

Terry Crews plays a guy sent to him. And so on.

“Coming soon.” Looks like a movie we’ve seen before. Several times.

It’s hard for any film buff to believe that the famed British filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger ever went out of fashion. The co-writers and producers, with Powell doing the directing and Pressburger taking the lead on the screenplays, produced a near twenty year run of classics that fill any cinephile’s bucket list.

“The Red Shoes” and “49th Parallel,” “Black Narcissus,” “I Know Where I Am Going” and “The Tales of Hoffmann” are merely the best-known titles in their ouevre, films that advanced the art and set the bar on what a World War II drama should be about (“What are we fighting for?”), filmmakers who produced the three most gorgeous films made in the lush, over-saturated heightened reality of Technicolor.

And yet the two two, making films as “The Archers,” had their flops, their tussles with production companies and their critical misses. Listen to actors heard here reading the brutal reviews of Powell’s “Peeping Tom,” or marvel at the kinky low-budget picture he ended his career with, “Age of Consent,” and you get it. “Ahead of their time” or “out of touch,” they all but disappeared for decades.

With “Made in England,” British documentarian David Hinton, who made the definitive doc on the making of “Gone With the Wind,” aimed his camera at Powell & Pressburger’s biggest fan, Martin Scorsese. And “presenter” Scorsese — narrating and appearing on camera — makes it both a personal essay on what their films meant to him, how he experienced them as a boy and student and the ways he’s incorporated their themes and styles into his own work, and a Master Class in understanding and appreciating the cinema of two of the medium’s greatest innovators.

Scorsese, who befriended his idol Powell as a young filmmaker, breezes through brief biographies of each man, devoting most of this two hour+ love letter into a dissection of their work — the films themselves, generously sampled from prints Scorsese himself had a hand in restoring to their former glory before putting them back before the public.

We see clips of Powell’s maturing early work — he got his start in movies working for a French studio where MGM’s Rex Ingram shot silent films in Europe — and note the “leap forward” from programmers like the striking “The Edge of the World” to perhaps the greatest “propaganda film” of World War II, the gloriously entertaining and nuanced “The 49th Parallel,” followed by “One of Our Aircraft is Missing,” and “A Canterbury Tale” once he teamed with Hungarian immigrant Pressburger.

After the war, they plunged into Technicolor for “Black Narcissus,” “The Red Shoes” and “The Tales of Hoffman.”

And when they filmed something in black and white, it still stood out from the crowd, a non-“noir” drama about alcoholism, “The Small Back Room” or the simple, scenic and evocative “anti-materialism” romance “I Know Where I’m Going,” which Scorsese labels “one of the most magnificent love stories ever told.”

Scorsese connects their films visually and thematically to his own, embraces Powell’s “All art is one” art ethos, which drove him to reinvent the ballet movie with “The Red Shoes” and do the same for opera with “The Tales of Hoffmann.”

In their trio of Technicolor masterpieces, Powell turned “each shot” into “a production unto istelf,” innovating the “total cinema” of acting, lighting, costuming, editing, music and dance into a new way of storytelling.

“Ride” is a somber, tense Texas melodrama about a rodeo family faced with a sick daughter, a prodigal, substance-abusing son fresh out of prison and the bankrupting power of the American healthcare system.

Director and co-star Jake Allyn gave good roles to screen veterans C. Thomas Howell and Annabeth Gish, who immerse themselves in these parts and this world. And Allyn cast cowboying stuntman/actor Forrie J. Smith to give this story grandfatherly gravitas and Texas rodeo life authenticity.

When Forrie, as a former rodeo cowboy turned preacher and grandfather and the only family member to visit Pete (Allyn) in prison lectures the lad about to take his next bull ride, “Champions aren’t made ridin’. They’re made that first few seconds after they fall,” this intimate indie feels epic, real and lived-in.

Howell, whiskered, grizzled and mastering the lariat for this role, plays a retired cowboy whose little girl (Zia Carlock) is “facing another battle.” The cancer is back.

That struggle was a big reason his wife (Gish) moved out. She’s the local sheriff, but surprisingly passive when it comes to how they’re going to finance this Hail Mary treatment that their doctor signs them up for out of town. John’s got to unload “anything that’s sellable,” horses included, and beg for another mortgage and early payout of his FFA school teacher pension to come up with $160,000.

Cowboy John and Sheriff Monica are not communicating all that well over that when their 20something son Pete gets out of prison, with grandpa there to pick him up. Pete did something awful, and in a small town like Stephenville, Texas, people may be polite and they may even forgive. But they don’t forget.

Jake jumps right back on that bull and puts that oxy monkey right back on his back, promising his rodeo winnings to dealer and ex-con Tyler (Patrick Murney) in exchange for drugs.

He only sees his younger brother Noah (co-writer Josh Plasse), as the rest of his family have bigger problems and guilt over shutting him out. The sheriff has a pushy and flirty deputy (Scott Reeves) who might be angling for her job, or more. And John is simply overwhelmed.

Events conspire to throw them all back together as Pete impulsively tries to buy his way back into their lives by helping with the cancer costs via money that isn’t his. Rodeo is “in the blood,” which means somebody needs to “cowboy up” and set their world to right.

Jake Allyn is an actor (“No Man’s Land,” “Someone Like You”) and writer. For his directing debut, he does the rodeo scenes justice, in front of and behind the camera, and makes “unfussy” his style. His smartest move, after the casting, was letting the close-up be his friend.

Screen veterans Gish, Howell, Reeves and Smith invest in their characters and this grim rodeo world reality, and their buy-in makes us buy-in. Allyn holds his own in scenes with them and carries off his “problem son” part with a sullen grit.

The plot turns are largely predictable, and the casting kind of threw me in the early scenes, with Howell and Gish both old enough to be more convincing as “young” rural South 50something grandparents. The relationships are underexplained for most of the first act. Howell’s scenes with Smith’s patriarch/preacher need to make that assocation clearer. I never heard the word “Dad” and they’re close to the same age.

Talking veteran players into plum indie film roles has to include an appeal to their vanity. Maybe they didn’t want to play grandparents of a sick grandchild, or maybe Allyn was too shy to make that his pitch.

But those are quibbles about a beautifully-acted genre picture with a wonderful sense of place, and of the sorts of problems that visit every corner of America, especially Texas.

Rating: R, violence, drug abuse

Cast: C. Thomas Howell, Annabeth Gish, Jake Allyn, Josh Plasse, Patrick Murney, Scott Reeves, Zia Carlock and Forrie J. Smith.

Credits: Directed by Jake Allyn, scripted by Jake Allyn and Josh Plasse. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:53

Well, isn’t just the most doggoned adorable kid-friendly adventure movie trailer we’ve seen in ages?

“Illusionist” dad returns for the first time in a decade, tween daughter sets out with him in search of an elusive panther.

New Zealand co-stars in this one.

The movie that sealed John Woo‘s reputation, and the genre with which he’d be most comfortable in the years to come, was 1986’s “A Better Tomorrow,” a gangland shoot-em-up that featured his longtime muse, tall, cool action icon Chow Yun-Fat.

But sitting on the shelf when that instant classic came out was a gonzo Vietnam War B-movie masquerading as a drug war thriller.

“Heroes Shed No Tears” was titled “The Sunset Warrior” when filming in Thailand had finished. Filmed and given a limited release in 1984, it can be deemed a part of the whole renewed interest in “Vietnam” as a subject, much of it stirred up by Sly Stallone’s first outing as Rambo, “First Blood” (1982).

It’s filled with gunplay, positively packed with ordnance, explosions and silly tropes of the trade. Heroes and villains exchange fire waving their machine guns about willy-nilly as they do. It’s amazing that any viewer would believe anybody involved hit anything, as few of these geared-up mercenaries, drug soldiers and Vietnamese troops actually took the time aim at what they were shooting at.

There’s a child in jeopardy, women imperiled, and a big novelty for a Woo film — before and since — a soapy full-body massage nude sex scene. Hey, when in Thailand…

But as daffy as it is, for a Woo completist, it’s an interesting look at how he first approached filming and editing combat. No doves fluttering into the church rafters, because there is a brothel but no church. But slow-motion shootings, brutal, long beat-down fights, bloody self-sacrifice and over the top explosions? Yup.

Eddy Ko plays a commando-turned-mercenary leading a small team into “The Golden Triangle” to kidnap a drug lord/general (Pang Yung-cheung), who looks to be holed up on the Laos/Vietnam border. About half a dozen Hong Kong mercs go in with grenade launchers, time bombs, machine guns and a flame thrower and nab General Samton over the dead bodies of scores of his Vietcong-“pajama” clad minions.

“You can’t get away once you’re in my territory,” the general sneers (in dubbed Cantonese with subtitles). “When I fight, I don’t hold back.”

With the general dropping charms off a Buddhist prayer bracelet for his army to track him, it’s pretty obvious this crew will be fighting its away across borders on its way to Thailand.

Merc leader Chang Chung (Ko) hadn’t counted on black-clad drug gangsters snatching his little boy (Ma Ying-chun) or Julie (Lee Hoi-suk), the kid’s caregiver and Chang’s too-patient girlfriend. And then there’s the Vietnamese Colonel (Yuet Sang-Chin) who loses his cool when his border crossing gets all shot up.

He and his men had just murdered a French journalist, and just started raping the journalist’s girlfriend (Cécile Le Bailly).

And when his army unit joins the drug gang in pursuit of Chang Chung’s Dirty Half-Dozen, the Col. brings in what we can take to be Hmong tribesman to “track” the elusive soldiers of fortune.

The payoff if they get this general to Thailand? Chang and his family will be able to move to America.

On this odyssey, they will fend off ambushes aplenty, loot bodies, gamble with locals and reload reload reload while building a body count the IDF would envy. Chang will cross paths with an old Vietnam War buddy, an American deserter (Philippe Loffredo) with a bordello filled with arms and wired with explosives.

It’s all rather nonsensical, as we can’t even pin down what borders they’re crossing or why this building gets blown up more than once.

As for performances, even the kid is pretty good, and Woo’s use of closeups and quick cutting showcases most of the players at the very best they can be, acting or in “action.” The fight choreography is passable and the drawn-out big finish isn’t a bust.

But the best that can be said for the script is “I’ve seen worse,” a phrase that anyone who ever saw a Chuck Norris movie can utter with confidence.

And everything notable about Woo’s technique, which was being refined as he entered his second decade as a Hong Kong action film director, is only glimpsed here and there in this last job-for-the-Golden Harvest production co. money before the artist Woo came into his own.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, sex, nudity, drug trade subject matter

Cast: Eddy Ko, Ching-Ying Lam, Yuet-Sang Chin,
Kam Kong Chow, Lee Hoi-Suk, Pang Yung-cheung, Ma Ying-chun, Cécile Le Bailly and Philippe Loffredo

Credits: Directed by John Woo, scripted by Peter Ho-Sun Chan, Leung-Chun Chiu and John Woo. A Golden Harvest production now on Film Movement+.

Running time 1:29

Whatever intrigues, insights and darkly comic charms writer-director Savi Gabizon gave audiences for his oddball Israeli dramedy “Longing” are mostly lost in translation in a Richard Gere remake he filmed in Canada.

A tale of a middle-aged man who learns he had a son, and that he just died, and who experiences grief, regret and a “Longing” to have known the 19 year old, longing that warps from awkward into something increasingly bizarre, it just doesn’t play among those indulgent and ever-so-polite Canadians.

Gere, for all the soulful brooding his career’s had him play, seems miscast and a little lost as a “father” who imposes on the good folks of Hamilton, Ontario (filmed in and around Hamilton, Cambridge and Kitchener), takes liberties and crosses lines with people who, sooner or later, are going to have to tell him “ENOUGH!”

Suzanne Clément of “Death of a Ladies Man” plays Rachel, an old lover who visits Daniel Bloch (Gere) in New York. Their meeting sets the tone for the film to follow. It’s awkward, with pointless bickering over the mere “45 minutes” he could “give her today” when he had much more time tomorrow.

Not that she even needs 45 minutes. They split up 20 years ago, and she returned to Canada. She didn’t tell him she was pregnant when she moved, because “I knew you didn’t want children.” They have a son, Allen, 19. He’s amazing. Well, actually, he’s dead. I’ve got to go.

It’s a decently-performed scene, but leaden — ironically and gratingly wordy. Awkwardness about this situation is the rule. As Gere’s Daniel somberly broods, when she ducks out of the dining room, calls his lawyer.

“Longing,” from this point on, proclaims its sadness, but reaches for this quirky undercurrent of dark comedy. As Daniel flies north for a funeral that, oddly, only he attends (not the ex, her husband, Allen’s friends or classmates), a mystery unfolds.

Was he into drugs? Someone calling himself Allen’s “best friend” comes asking for money for a deal that went sour with Allen’s “accident.”

The kid was obsessed with his French teacher, writing her poems, expelled from school for stalking her and painting a sexually explicit poem on the wall of their school. Daniel meets the teacher, who is played by Diane Kruger, so he gets and we “get it.” But did she lead the boy on?

Asking some stranger you’ve just met something like that just isn’t done. Not in Canada, or anywhere. Well, maybe Israel.

As Daniel meets this girl passing herself off as Allen’s “girlfriend” and that father still mourning a dead daughter in the cemetery, his visit is extended, his investment in this son (Tomaso Sanelli) he never knew grows and he dreams about conversations with a pianist teen who “kept to himself,” who hadn’t lived with his family in years to try to fill in the blanks.