He went for grandeur, the artist as emotionally needy being, and “larger than life” with this trailer for the holiday release/Oscar contender “Maestro.”
Cooper’s got the voice, the walk, the bravado down pat. Maybe people will stop talking about the prosthetic nose, now.
Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, SARAH SILVERMAN? — Matt Bomer and Maya Hawke star in Netflix’s best hope for Best Picture, a Dec. 20 release.
I’d lost touch with “The Ring” universe, assuming, like most Western filmgoers, that 2017’s failed reboot “Rings” was the end of the hairy horror harpy from the well tale.
Silly me. The “cursed video” whose viewers die mysterious deaths within 24 hours of watching it lives on in Japan. I count 14 film incarnations of the story first spun by actor and novelist Kôji Suzuki, and a TV series.
Of late, this creepy and influencial “J-horror” franchise has wandered into the area of camp, rebranded under the name of the demon/witch “Sadako” who appears on the vhs tape that gets handed around and copied, killing all — or almost all — who dare to view it.
“Sadako DX” is the latest film, now on Netflix, a variation of the story long after the letters “vhs” disappeared from the ranks of watchable media. Yes, the kids joke about that here. But the movie? It’s a goof that isn’t that goofy, and a horror film that fails utterly to horrify.
Our witch has lost her ability to shock, thanks to inept editing. We see too much of her to be scared. And it’s obvious witchy demon Sadako has learned to use conditioner, removing the fearsome frizziness that made her so terrifying to Japanese audiences, and Naomi Watts in the first Hollywood adaptation.
Here, a very smart Japanese coed and quiz show champ, Ayaka (Fuka Koshiba) matches wits on TV with spirutalist Kenshin (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi of “Ip Man” and “Limbo”) as they banter about this wave of “unexplained deaths” sweeping Japan.
“Curses are real,” says the showman/charlatan. Not so fast says Ms. Smarty Pants.
Of course he’s right and she’s wrong. Ayaka’s “200 IQ” take on the problem is to treat this original “viral” video like any other virus. Block its spread, or dilute its effects. “Herd immunity.” Something like that.
Director Hisashi Kimura can’t find a fright to save his life. So he infects his film with mousy-voiced pixie characters, mugging screen veterans, with cheap jolts involving the station’s plush character mascot and deaths that aren’t moving, alarming or amusing.
“Sadako DX” is so bad one wonders if “The Ring” franchise fell off, film by film, or if those recent Japanese “Sadako” movies were all awful, and Netflix is just now getting around to licensing one thanks to that October demand for horror.
hewrd immunity
Rating: TV-14, horror
Cast: Fuka Koshiba, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, Mario Kuroba and Yuki Yagi
Credits: Directed by Hisashi Kimura, scripted by Yuya Takahashi, based on the novel by
Kôji Suzuki. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:38
Erivo is a refugee who has made it to a Greek island, Shawcat is a tour guide she meets and befriends in this film festival darling, a February release.
Boudica, the wronged-woman turned warrior queen heroine of Roman era British history, has been featured in lots of movies over the decades, pretty much all of them B-pictures.
“Boudica: Queen of War” doesn’t break that curse. But as B-movies go, this just-stylish-enough Roman-gutting Olga Kurylenko star vehicle is the most fun of the lot.
Writer-director Jesse V. Johnson — “Hell Hath No Fury” was his — bathes his action scenes in the literal fog of pre-history. Kurylenko, the Ukrainian model whose turn as a “Bond Babe” 15 years ago led to a lucrative career in modest-budget action pictures, handles fight choreography well enough that one isn’t allowed to dwell on the dainty throw weight the willowy runway-ready brings to a fight.
Well, she IS Ukrainian.
And her reaction to this Roman outrage or that Roman garrison awaiting her vengeance is downright quotable, in impolite company.
“F–K them!”
Before she was labeled “Boudica” (Victorious Queen) she was the First Century wife of the king of the Iceni tribe (Clive Standen), doting mother of twin tween girls (Litiana and Lilibet Biutanaseva, who have worked with Kurylenko before and it shows), resigned to paying tribute to the occupying Italians, but not thrilled about it.
When her husband is killed, she signs over half her kingdom to the Roman procurator (Nick Moran, terrific), whose name is given a Monty Pythonesque pronunciation here — Catus Decianus.
But he barks about the rules of Roman patriarchy and the “insult” of her female-in-power status, takes her kingdom, has her stripped, flogged and branded in the face, her girls (history tells us) raped.
She recovers with the help of fierce Celtic woman warrior Cartimanda (Lucy Martin), who was the first to call her “Boudica” as the embodiment of a Druid prophecy, the one who would “free” her people.
Boudica’s fury accompanies training with a bronze sword — mocked in this Iron Age world — she inherits, which appears to have magical powers. She wins over other tribes led by warriors like Wolfgar (Peter Franzén), drops a few Celtic f-bombs about the Romans, and there is hell to pay in this corner of the empire mismanaged by the fey, decadent emperor Nero, a loinclothed hedonist given a Chalamet softness by Harry Kirton.
Yes, there are elements and moments that we’re pretty much invited to laugh at here. But much of the history (three Roman historians wrote about Boudica, Tacitus the most famous) checks out. The supernatural sequences have a Joan of Arc edge. I like the foggy almost “300” netherworld Johnson creates for the action scenes and the way the script connects mother with her daughters.
It’s a B-movie, not “Killers of the Flower Moon,” even if it is somewhat better looking than that overlong streaming epic.
And Martin, Moran and our leading lady bring fair value to a picture that struggles to be respectful but never wholly escapes camp.
Rating: R, bloody violence, Celtic F-bombs
Cast: Olga Kurylenko, Clive Standen, Peter Franzén, Nick Moran, Leo Gregory, Rita Tushingham and Lucy Martin
Credits: Scripted and directed by Jesse V. Johnson. A Saban Films release.
Running time: 1:41
Interesting then and now blend by the always daring and cutting edge McQueen.
“Coming Soon,” from A24.
A little pre-British history about fighting the Romans starring ex-Olympian, action heroine and much more than a Bond accessory, Olga K.
This opens Friday.
A Brit-flavored Hulu series with promise. This one premieres on Nov. 8.
Not sure Sydney Sweeney of “Euphoria” and Glen Powell (“Top Gun: Marverick”) move the needle for a lot of moviegoers yet. Maybe someday. Maybe after this rom-com (not a lot of “com” in this teaser) that’ll change.
It’s about a wedding in Oz, and Rachel Griffiths, Bryan Brown and Dermot Mulroney are the older adults in a cast that includes Alexandra Shipp and Darren Barnet of “Never Have I Ever.”
Dec. 26, here’s a bit of non “Oscar contender” counter programming at a cinema near you.
The best way I know of to ruin a vacation to this or that version of “paradise” — Aspen, Teneriffe, Curacao or Cozumel — is to make yourself see what the tourist websites don’t play up.
People are struggling no matter where you go. And once you notice the tourist advisories of neighborhoods to avoid in Kingston or Panama City, the Homestead, Fla. buses that drive service sector workers into too-pricey-to Key West every day, those cooks and hotel workers who could never afford to live in Aspen, the campers outside the city limits, it’s hard for most sentient beings to not feel empathy and guilt for the struggles of people most of us see as “a few bad breaks and that could be me.”
“Waikiki” is an impressionistic nightmare of paradise, a dreamy story troubled, struggling native-born singer and dancer hustling three jobs in one of the most beautiful places on Earth, where “rent” is a goal that’s forever just beyond her reach.
The first film written and directed by a native Hawaiian addresses the underbelly of a place the rest of the world sees as an idealized “escape.” In Christopher Kahunanhana’s movie, there’s no “escaping” to Waikiki Beach for many of the residents of Oahu.
For Kea (Danielle Zalopany), his heroine, the beach never figures into her life. She’s a hula dancer at a tourist trap restaurant far from the surf, and a karaoke singer/”bottle girl” at a somewhat seedy bar. She also teaches Hawaiian to at a local school.
Even with those three gigs, she can’t make rent, let alone support herself. So she lives in an ancient Toyota van. Kea holes up there because she fled her raging, abusive longtime beau Branden (Jason Quinn). And despite being young and beautiful with a work ethic and a little talent, there’s no escaping this trap for her. She grew up on one of the most expensive places to live on in America, an island.
There’s nothing for it but to don the skirt and bikini top and smile through another night to the syrupy, insipid hula strains of “Waikiki.”
But her after-hula gig at the borderline brothel-bar named for it’s owner (Cora Yamagata) Amy is where Branden catches up and lashes out. He’s hellbent on getting her out of this “slut bar” and “home.” And life-on-the-edge or no, Kea isn’t having it.
But making her getaway, she makes her biggest mistake of all. She hits a homeless man. Her rock bottom just found a new bottom.
The man seems dead, just a “pilau” (filthy) “crackhead.” Still, Kea won’t simply abandon him. Maybe she’s thinking twince before looking down on anybody. In no time at all, she’s out on the street with the homless man her only comfort, camping in the rough and getting turned down for housing by a barely sympathetic real estate agent.
Without legit paystubs and proof of steady income, “You’re not going to qualify for anything.”
There are hints of “Once Were Warriors” and the nightmarish dreams-in-close-up of David Lynch in Kahunanhana’s film, as we wonder about this homeless fellow named Wo (Peter Shinkoda) Kea has taken responsibility for, and thinks herself protected by.
Flashbacks show her childhood abandonment issues, and there are hints of a “family” she denies having. We aren’t sure which of her hallucinations to believe, which are accurate about the exact nature of this strange man in her care.
Zalopany’s riveting performance has desperation, manipulation, narcissism and panic folded into it. She makes us feel the disaster that having her van towed is for someone living in a car. We sense the pride that makes but a momentary appearance, the rage she can barely keep in check, the trap that her abusive relationship continues to be and the need that drives her begging and flirting with people who can help her out.
The dreamy, diffuse nature of reality in this narrative makes it feel incomplete. But Zalopany grabs our attention and has us fearing, not just for Kea’s precarious hold on survival, but for what we might not know about her that may or may not be revealed as she sinks or swims just off “Waikiki” beach.
Rating: unrated violence, profanity
Cast: Danielle Zalopany, Peter Shinkoda, Cora Yamagata and Jason Quinn
Credits: Scripted and directed by Christopher Kahunahana. A Level 33 release.
Running time: 1:24
Benny Safdie (“Uncut Gems”) is involved. Nathan Fiedler co-created (HBO’s “The Reheasal”) and co-stars. And it’s on Showtime.
Nov. 10.
Movie Nation 