The Crockett Johnson novel makes the journey to the big screen with Zachary Levi in the title role, Zooey Deschanel, Lil Rel Howery, Jemaine Clement and Alfred Molina.
The kid-simple gimmick is that anything Harold draws can come to life. That’s a pretty cool figment of one’s imagination to have as a child. As an adult? Tricky.
Aug. 2.
A noteworthy political life gets lost in its details in “Shirley,” a Netflix bio-pic about the first African American Congresswoman and first African American woman to run for president, Shirley Chisholm.
Veteran TV director (“Barbershop,””Guerilla”) and novelist John Ridley landed Oscar-winner Regina King for the title role, gave the great Lance Reddick (“John Wick”) a fine farewell role as Congresswoman/candidate Chisholm’s chief adviser, and had Terrence Howard and Lucas Hedges to work with.
But the lumbering script, taking Chisholm to her first days in Congress and then through the ordeal of that 1972 Democratic primary campaign, skips over or barely mentions much that was notable about those events and loses itself in internal debates and dramatically-flat meetings that were never quite confrontations, meetings with figures mostly forgortten now, save for Chisholm.
It’s a clumsily-condensed account of Chisholm’s life and career. And King, while managing some of the “Brooklyn school teacher’s” soaring rhetoric and accent, comes nowhere near imitating the Congresswoman’s distinct voice.
With Nixon in the White House, the Vietnam War raging and Civil Rights getting pushed into the background, Chisholm turns from her attention-grabbing 1968 election to the House of Representatives where her fight against a Speaker who assigned the Brooklynite to the House Agriculture Committee showed her resolve, to bringing an activist message to the 1972 presidential campaign.
“Don’t ever accept things as they are,” she tells a protege (Christina Jackson) and reminds an earlier intern (Hedges) whom she puts in charge of young-voter recruitment. The right to vote had been extended to 18 year olds just before the ’72 campaign. She’d have to weigh whether to pursue or accept an endorsement from so-called “radical” groups that were politically-active back then, the Black Panthers included.
But for all the film’s details about the “back room deals” of that fraught contest, the personalities involved (George Wallace, Ed Muskie, Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern among them) and the violence visited on it — Wallace was shot — “Shirley” never really grasps the woman’s idealism, her resolve and why a movie about this ground-breaking moment that barely moved the political needle is really necessary.
Reddick stands out in the supporting cast, with Hedges, Howard, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Michael Cherrie as her almost-anonymous, in-the-background husband Conrad, also registering.
Which is pretty hard to do as there was simply too much going on in that momentous year to get it all in or do justice to much of anything. Watergate, Vietnam, the rise of environmentalism, Muskie’s right-wing triggered meltdown, abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, rising Latin voter activism and the unfinished business of the Civil Rights Movement competed for Chisholm’s attention, the nation’s and this movie’s.
King handles the flashy moments — a big speech or two, a firm stand on principle or three. But there’s just not enough here, and too much at the same time, for “Shirley” to come off.
Rating: PG-13, Brief Violence|Some Smoking|Racial Slurs, profanity
Cast: Regina King, Lance Reddick, Terrence Howard, Lucas Hudges, Michael Cherrie,
Brian Stokes Mitchell and Christina Jackson
Credits: Scripted and directed by John Ridley. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:58
For about 45 minutes — roughly the length of the first act — Jake Gyllenhaal and “Edge of Tomorrow/Fair Game/American Made” director Doug Liman let us know that whatever the glories of Patrick Swayze’s crowd-pleasing bouncer dramedy, their version of “Road House” is reaching for another class.
Subtle acting moments, immaculate compositions and dazzling editing adorn a droll admission that what they’re doing is kind of a lark, a Florida Keys riff on rowdiness, corruption and Old West lawlessness.
And then the violence hits “next level,” Gyllenhaal gives us a couple of his least-convincing line readings ever and the whole enterprise drowns in the formula it’s attempting to rise above.
Gyllenhaal stars as Elwood Dalton, a homeless MMA fighter with a notorious past that only earns him enough to scare-off foes in back-alley brawls for money, and not enough to move out of his ancient Chevy Nova.
But as the trope goes, he’s there by choice. Even an insane offer of “$5K a week” to be a bouncer at some Florida bar that attracts too many rough customers cannot free him from the guilt that torments him and tempts him into a Suicide by Nova moment.
When that doesn’t work out, there’s nothing for it but to Greyhound his way to Glass Key (right next to “Kokomo,” the Beach Boys’ oldie on the soundtrack reminds us), where Frankie (Jessica Williams) and her unironically-named Road House reside.
It’s a Tiki Bar from Hell joint with a waterfront view, a giant thatched roof and a friendly staff (B.K. Cannon), including the obligatory protege bouncer Billy (Luke Gage).
All it takes is one night of sizing up the “rage-filled” biker sociopaths making Frankie’s life hell and her bottom-line filled with furniture replacement and busted-glass removal, and dealing with those rough customers, for Dalton to become a name everybody on the island knows.
He moves onto a half-wrecked trawler that the unsalty souls around him pass off as “a house boat,” crosses paths with the pretty ER doctor (Daniela Melchior), earns the ire of the nepo baby mob boss (Billy Magnussen) and crosses swords with the corrupt (In Florida? Shocking!) sheriff (Joaquim de Almieda).
And every now and then, in between upping the violence ante — think “gator bait,” only with a crocodile — Elwood Dalton has flashbacks to the world and ugliest moment in that world that made him who he is.
“You’re a nice person,” he tells the beautiful doctor. “You don’t want to know me.”
Liman and the screenwriters populate this Key with an almost colorful-enough supporting cast, and writers Anthony Bagarozzi and Chuck Mondry serve up a few pithy pearls in the dialogue.
The Keys’ long history with the drug trade (most of the filming took place in the Dominican Republic) is joked about by the locals who know the island chain’s name rhymes with a drug dealer’s slang for kilograms.
“Why do you think they call it the ‘Ki’s?”
The violence here begins as a bit over the top, with the ripped and cut Gyllenhaal taking a couple of knives to the ribcage. And then MMA psycho-peacock Conor McGregor shows up, strutting and flexing, bellowing and bullying and beating and making sure everybody knows his name. “Knox” he’s called, many times. “Knox” is tattooed all over his chest.
Gyllenhaal’s amused under-playing doesn’t hide the fact that there’s a hero/heavy imbalance, that the villains don’t add up to much until the fearsome McGregor shows up.
As with the strutting, dancer-turned-bouncer Swayze picture of yore, there’s an unreality to it all that gives “Road House” a comical lift. Some bad guys are whimpering pussycats when confronted, the bar really is over-the-top seedy — chicken wire protects the many bar bands that play there (I’d buy the soundtrack if they offer one) — and no bar anywhere in Florida could afford $5,000 a week just for a bouncer.
And once we’ve dropped into this “Watch out for that crocodile” world, checked-out its denizens and been reminded of the “Western” this whole brawling-not-shooting-match truly is by characters who see and state the obvious, the charm wears off and the blood spills and none of it stands up to a moment more’s scrutiny.
Rating: R, violence, nudity, profanity
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Daniela Melchior, Conor McGregor, Jessica Williams, B. K. Cannon, Billy Magnussen, Post Malone and Joaquim de Almieda.
Credits: Directed by Doug Liman, scripted by Anthony Bagarozzi and Chuck Mondry, based on the 1989 film “Road House.” An MGM/Amazon release.
Running time: 2:01
The Big Anime Eyes of Anya Taylor-Joy take over this trailer to what looks like another epic in the string of epics Aussie George Miller has made — going back about 40 years — on the same subject.
A post-World War III apocalypse where gas is more precious than blood turned out to be a perfect piece of world-building.
This is a real “WOW” of a trailer.
May 24.
There’s a dispiriting finality to the latest and perhaps least of the “Ghostbusters” movies, a sense of “deja vu all over again” in the situations, ghosts/villains battled, the stakes involved and all that.
It really does feel as if they’d done all they can do with the franchise, now that Bill Murray’s collected one more big fat check from Sony. And for what? He’s not the least bit funny here.
The over-stuffed cast adds characters and comical players, with nothing funny to say or do. It’s got an anachronistic deceased hottie for our teen leading lady character to connect with. Representation is supposed to add an audience to a movie, but in the cases of franchises, that rarely happens.
Reviews haven’t been kind. Even in the Land of the Lightweights and critics-come-lately, Rotten Tomatoes, it’s easily the worst-reviewed film in the decades-old franchise. It’s as bad-or-worse on the more seasoned critics’ aggregator site Metacritic.
I thought it sucked. “A ghost bust,” to pick a low-hanging fruit line.
Deadline.com is still projecting a $42-43 million opening for “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.” But last week they were flinging the number $52 up there. As late as Friday AM they were projecting $45.
“Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” did a brisk(ish) $4.7 million Thursday night, slightly better than the previous film’s preview Thursday, and about $16 Friday (less than “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” managed $16.6 million back in 2021).
With the film opening on 4300 screens, IMAX included (how I watched it), with Sydney Sweeney as a nun facing horror (“Immaculate”) as the only real competition, and heading into an Easter (second) weekend only a “Kong vs. Godzilla” thing as competition, the table seems set for a blockbuster. Will it happen?
Is the talk of a third film in the franchise further down the development line, on its way to inevitability? God, I hope not.
Meanwhile, “It” bombshell Sydney Sweeney’s horrors of being a nun thriller “Immaculate” is seriously underwhelming as far as ticket sales go. I guess the thought of watching her act and not wear a skimpy swimsuit isn’t as appealing. $5 million is less than half of what a weak horrror title usually manages on its opening weekend. It’s not on many thousands of screens, but still, that’s underwhelming.
“Dune 2” is chalking up another $16-17 million, and another second place finish. It’ll be well over $230 million by midnight Sunday.
“Kung Fu Panda 4” finally relinquishes the top spot to fall to third, with a still-healthy $15 million and change take. It’s over $130 domestically, or will be by weekend’s end. Doing well overseas, well enough in China. Moderate-sized hit.
“Arthur the King” isn’t showing “legs,” tumbling from a weak opening to a lousy $4 million second weekend. No, the great Mark Wahlberg comeback isn’t happening.
“Late Night with the Devil” is the third wide (ish) release opening this weekend, a horror tale with mostly good or at least decent reviews, and just enough screens to pull in $3 million. It should pick up with word of mouth, even if I wasn’t as impressed with it as some.
UPDATED: The final “estimated top five take Sunday afternoon via @BOXofficepro.
This debut feature from David Cronenberg’s daughter, whose prior filmmaking credits were “camera and electrical department” (Apprenticeship?) gigs, looks plenty dark and screwy.
Jay Baruchel, Emily Hampshie, Peter Gallagher, Enrico Colantoni and Alanna Bale star, and is that Isabella Rossellini’s voice I hear?
April 26.
Sept. 6.
Keaton and Ryder and Jenna Ortega and Willem Dafoe and O’Hara.
David Krumholtz is a once promising animator facing a terminal diagnosis and the world’s callous indifference in “Lousy Carter,” a droll “My midlife crisis is death” comedy set in academia.
The sort of fellow who’d accept and adopt as his “real” name a nickname he acquired on his high school golf team — “Lousy” — is almost asking for the insensitivity and downright cruelty that greets him the moment he’s abruptly given the news by an alleged “medical professional.” Carter jokes about whether or not he should “plan” on going to his 25th high school reunion to a doctor who abruptly advises him “no” when it comes to “plans.”
“You’re Carter, right?” He flashes an X-ray, offers a “Sorry about this” as his bedside manner, and dismisses his doomed patient to deal with the 20something office manager who is only focused on the bill.
“You guys usually shake people down right after the Doc hands down the death sentence?”
Krumholtz, just seen in “Oppenheimer” and probably most famous for his place within the “Harold & Kumar” universe and TV’s “The Deuce,” is well-cast as the hapless, paunchy 40something taking stock of his life and relationships in his “final days” as a single, unhappy and out-of-his-depth academic.
His therapist (Stephen Root slinging an Austrian accent) patronizingly shrink-splains “Schadenfreude” to him like he’s an idiot. His dry, humorously humorless fellow academic and “best friend” Herschel (Martin Starr) is blithely judgmental.
“The reason everyone is frustrated with you is you’ve diminished over the years.”
Lousy can’t bring himself to tell either of them. Or with his self-absorbed mother (Mona Lee Fultz) in the nursing home. Not when his almost sympathetic ex (Olivia Thirlby) can only muster an acknowledgement that this “man baby” was not a good match for “a real, live adult woman.”
Maybe he can do more than go through the motions teaching this graduate seminar on “The Great Gatsby” with his final days. Sure, the kids are entitled, lazy and argumentative dunces. Perhaps a fling with a smart, testy and witheringly-uninterested student (Luxy Banner) would be a way to exit this world with a smile.
“I don’t feel safe” she half-mutters as he keeps summoning her to after-class meetings. OK, perhaps just getting her to help him re-start this long-gestating animated version of a Vladimir Nabokov (“Lolita”) tale will do. Maybe grad student Gail can teach him how to pronounce “Nabokov.”
Writer-director Bob Byington has always been something of an acquired taste. Dry, wry comedies like “Infinity Baby,” “7 Chinese Brothers” and “Frances Ferguson” appeal to offbeat actors — Starr and Root have appeared in a couple, Nick Offerman seems like a simpatico fit — and make the rounds of film festivals and never find a wider audience.
There’s cleverness and wit and some shrewd observations about life and the sorts of people living it in his work. But there’s a superficiality to the films themselves and the characters in Byington’s movies, something kind of arm’s-length droll and witty but rarely laugh-out-loud funny.
Krumholtz, amusing enough to hold his own in a Woody Allen comedy — if that’s what you want to call “Wonder Wheel” — tests that thesis here, playing a funny but frustrated and frustrating character in a frustrating scenario that he can’t seem to insult his way out of.
When even the surprises and twists are cliches, we figure we’re being had — a bit — by our filmmaker/tour-guide. But when everybody strikes what seems to be the perfect tone for the material, and it’s never enough to lift “Lousy Carter” above the meekly amusing indifference that greets Carter himself with, we can’t help but feel we too are being talked-down “to.”
Rating: unrated
Cast: David Krumholtz, Martin Starr, Luxy Banner, Jocelyn DeBoer, Mona Lee Fultz, Stephen Root and Olivia Thirlby.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Bob Byington. A Magnolia release.
Running time: 1:17
To a generation of movie fans, M. Emmet Walsh was often the first name that came to mind when somebody used the label “character actor.”
That wasn’t by accident. The Coens launched him to prominence as a pitiless Texas hitman in “Blood Simple,” and turned him loose in a “character” part in “Raising Arizona” so’s we could see how funny he could be.
And then, unless my memory is playing tricks on me, “Siskel & Ebert” in one of the incarnations of their movie review show, did an entire episode on just this one guy. “Character actor.” We all knew what one was thanks to them. And to them the quintessential character actor of his era might have been Mr. Walsh.
“Blade Runner” to “Straight Time,” “Clean and Sober” to “Critters” to “Reds” to “The Milagro Beanfield War” to “The Mighty Quinn,” a decade or two of bit parts in film and on TV, and then all of a sudden he started turning up in everything.
Wilfred Brimley did mostly cuddly curmudgeons or no nonsense authority figures, to name Walsh’s chief rival for a lot of roles. Walsh played a much wider range of cranks and sadists and drunks and bullies and crooked cops and clowns. A native New Yorker, he made a pretty mean Southerner when he had to. “Blood Simple” sold that.
He had 234 acting credits, and did a delightfully sketchy turn in Mario Van Peebles’ “Outlaw Posse,” which came out a couple of weeks ago.
He learned to play the piano for “Cannery Row” (Doctor John doubled the “Real” boogie woogie) and sang in “My Best Friend’s Wedding.” That little punchline in one of the greatest rom-com moments in all of cinema might have been his biggest on-screen fright. Singing is scary.
Roger Ebert later made a “Harry Dean Stanton/M. Emmet Walsh rule,” that no movie with either of them in it was a total write-off. Not a bad rule.
Here’s what I rememember about Walsh from the two movies he made in a city where I reviewed movies and covered film production for the local newspaper. “The Music of Chance” and “The Lottery” were shot in greater Winston-Salem, years apart. The first was a classic “troubled production.” But not because of the ever-unfussy Walsh. Mandy Patinkin was the co-star, so need I say more.
On “The Lottery,” he was a grandfatherly presence on the set, putting on no airs, making no fuss, always happiest when people with little kids would stop by to watch him work.
He’d chat with them, and he’d give them something to remember him by — a 1943 steel Lincoln head penny. Not sure why he chose that, but they were rarely in circulation any more, cheap because they were plentiful, and it was a nice little thing he could do for a child meeting his or her first movie star.
I was too old to ask at the time, and it wouldn’t have been cool or particularly professional (we were a little more concerned with that in the pre-social media “influencer” reviewer era) to say “Hey, don’t I get a penny?” But damn, I wanted one of those “steelies.”
Damned fine actor, too. Rest in peace.
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” is one of those gold standard comedies that keeps on giving, a farce so unerringly-costumed, production designed and covered in muck that it looks like a documentary, with slapstick and sight gags that twist towards surreal and dialogue that takes on economic theory, the aerodynamics of cocoanuts and what constitutes “a mere flesh wound.”
This classic merits revival every few years, and this year, The Florida Film Festival is bringing it back.
And they’re hosting a Q&A with the very silly John Cleese afterwards.
The Pythons aren’t getting any younger, so you’d best grab this chance to come see and hear from Basil Fawlty and his “Fish Called Wanda.”
I’ve interviewed a couple of Pythons — “The Terry’s” — Jones and Gilliam. But never the erudite Oxbridge Master of Silly Walks. I’m moderating the Q & A. Which means “Right, I’ve got some homework to do.”
Just following Our Lord J. C. on Twitter will never do.
Enzian Theater, Maitland, the evening of April 14.
See you there.
Movie Nation 