This paranoid sci-fi thriller, based on a hit novel by Rumaan Alam, comes to theaters in Nov. and then Netflix Dec. 7.
“Mr. Robot” veteran Sam Esmail makes his feature film debut directing this, with BBC “Industry” star Myha’la Herrold (she’s losing the “Herrold” in billing, now) getting big exposure in this prestige pic from Netflix.
There are a lot of telltale signs that “Grieve,” a pretentious, cryptic and childishly obscurant title loosely labeled as “horror” and inexplicably picked up for distribution by Terror Films, might be a student film.
I try not to review student films, even those whose filmmakers are cheeky enough to get an off-off brand distributor to pick their movie up. They’re mostly bad, and I don’t grade on the curve. Which is a way of saying I can be pretty mean. Ask anybody.
Writer-director Robbie Smith hasn’t made anything else, near as one can tell.
His screenwriting betrays a certain in-his-own-headspace insensibility that opens with nearly three minutes of a character curled up on a floor, listening to what appears to be (the audio mix is poor) an old phone message while the screen is covered in large block letters “GRI” over “EVE.”
A prologue that is a pointless structural blunder (the “credits” come after it) sets up our grieving Sam (Paris Peterson) before he is sent home from the office and into his family’s cabin out in the snowy, overcast woods. Somewhere.
Sam is grieving for Sarah (Danielle Keaton), whom we finally glimpse in a flashback over 20 minutes into the nearly-dialogue-free opening act. And he reconnects with a childhood friend (Jacob Nichols) from cabin country, unhappily married, working class and ready to “party” with pills and what not.
Sam starts to hear voices. Sometimes, it’s his voice, narrating…something. Every now and then, he hears cryptic pronouncements whispered in French.
“Nothing festers in the cracks and expands…Nothing lives and grows.”
Yes, it’s as inane in English as it is in French.
By the time Sam sees a gnarled hand reach out of the ground, we wonder if he’s losing it, if he’s having pill flashbacks or he’s actually encountering something supernatural, apparently unrelated to his grief. By the time he has his first “accident” (self harm), we still haven’t figured out what exactly is going on here.
Helpfully, Smith provides an explanation for the plot on the film’s IMDb page. There’s little that he wrote there that actually jibes with the pseudo-artsy, choppy, indifferently-plotted movie we’ve seen on the screen. And “explaining” away your intentially obscure movie with a director’s statement is very “student film,” BTW.
The cast is neither accomplished nor interesting — mostly-unknown, with Keaton’s long career of bit parts apparently deemed unworthy of documenting on Wikipedia.
Obscure, clumsily-pretentious, under-scripted and flatly acted, there’s nothing to recommend here.
But if it’s a student film, there’s always the hope that things will click further along, maybe in grad school. Or not.
As it is, I can’t for the life of me figure out what any distributor saw in this, and even the publicist sending out pitches for this waste of time mis-titled “Grieve” “Grief” in bold block letters of her own.
Good grief.
Rating: unrated, violence, drug abuse
Cast: Paris Peterson, Danielle Keaton and Jacob Nichols
Credits: Scripted and directed by Robbie Smith. A Terror Films release.
Running time: 1:05
“Reptile” ends with a few delicious twists and such a satisfying punch that it’s a shame we have to talk about “Netflix editing” again, that lack of cutting that makes even a pretty smart and dense thriller play like a New Orleans funeral.
The film, co-scripted by star Benicio del Toro, starts slowly, slows down for a few more complications, meanders a bit and finds its way to a fine finish that’s a bit late arriving.
It’s a tale of murder, infidelity, drugs, real estate and a cop with a past on the case. A willowy young real estate agent (Matilda Lutz) is murdered. Her handsome but older real estate tycoon beau (Justin Timberlake) is Suspect One.
But Det. Tom Nichols (del Toro), a Philly cop new to the suburban Scarborough P.D., and his partner (Ato Essandoh of TV’s “The Diplomat”), his captain (Eric Bogosian) and his department have a lot of other possibilities thrown in front of them as this case progresses.
There’s the dead woman’s “artist” not-quite-ex-husband (Karl Glussman). The mother of our real estate tycoon (Frances Fisher) gives off strong dragon lady vibes. This nut the real estate hustlers screwed over (Michael Cameron Pitt) figures in their deliberations as well.
So do a lot of other variables in this slow-to-unravel tale, one that throws in an “It was just a dream” red herring — one among many — and shifts points of view several times, even as though is the dogged, perhaps-tainted Nichols that is our protagonist here.
They went for a bit of stunt-casting that really pays off — re-pairing del Toro with his “Excess Baggage” (1997) co-star Alicia Silverstone, who plays the earthy, sexy and brassy cop wife who gives as good as she gets from her detective husband.
There’s also a kitchen renovation that isn’t going well, a real estate business that has some off-the-books tax tricks that add an extra whiff of corruption, some back and forth over clues, DNA and a misidentified vehicle of interest, all set against a cop culture that sees a lot of off-hours socializing amongst the Blue, with the cynical, callous detectives placing cash bets on suspects and the sage Nichols noting to his new partner that “overtime” in police work is for “milking,” if you need the extra money.
That casts a shadow over Nichols’ self-rightous lecture to a subordinate “uniform” at a crime scene.
“When you walk through that front door, there’s a jury of twelve watching you.”
There’s something about Nichols that has his captain insisting he’s “clean” to the chief, that has one cop-obsessed suspect declaring “This is your chance to redeem yourself,” that makes us wonder about that opening act hand wound that Nichols walks onto the crime scene with.
Justin Timberlake was born looking “guilty.” But maybe that’s just meant to throw us off.
Just guessing here, but the poker-faced, iguana-eyed Oscar-winner del Toro, of “Traffic,” “Sicario” and “The Usual Suspects” is as good an inspiration/explanation for the title “Reptile” as any. Still, the script is littered with self-serving, scaly characters up and down the line.
Music video director Grant Singer, who makes his feature directing debut and co-wrote the script, gets a lot of misdirection plot threads in a story almost overstuffed with characters, some of whom we’re meant to underestimate, some we fear and others we fear for.
Love del Toro in this part, love seeing the sparks he sets off (as a jealous husband) with Silverstone, and it’s great seeing the under-utilized Pitt, Fisher and Bogosian in chewy roles for a change.
But Singer has of now no feel for pacing, and Netflix has made it some sort of streamer policy that they don’t push newcomers or screen legends like Scorsese, Spike, Cuaron and Campion to deliver brisk, tight cuts with pace and urgency. This lizard drags for the first 90 minutes and only really gets up to speed in the third act.
It’s perfectly watchable, but let it play on during the bathroom breaks and search for snacks. It’s so slow you probably won’t miss anything vital, not until the third act.
Rating: R, violence, drug content, profanity
Cast: Benicio del Toro, Alicia Silverstone, Justin Timberlake, Eric Bogosian, Frances Fisher, Tom Nowicki, Ato Essandoh, Karl Glussman, Dominick Lombardozzi, Matilda Lutz and Michael Carmen Pitt.
Credits: Directed by Grant Singer, scripted Grant Singer, Benjamin Brewer and Benicio del Toro. A Netflix release.
Running time: 2:16
Before the band that would Change the World became The Beatles, the template for all rock quartets to follow, they had a floating lineup of many musicians of varying talents, generally taking the stage with six members.
In addition to guitars and drums, they had washboard, banjo and “tea-chest bass” players in their aggregation, that last instrument homemade with a wooden box, a stick and a string.
They played the jazzed-up folk/blues that was all the rage in the U.K. of the late 1950s, skiffle. And their name came from the corner of Liverpool where most of them grew up and the boys’ school many of them attended — Quarry Bank High School.
“Pre Fab!” is an amusing, informative and bittersweet documentary about the “forgotten” players in a band that would be founded by John Lennon, and would eventually include Paul McCartney and George Harrison, The Quarrymen.
If you’re a Beatles “completist,” you’re going to know at least some of this story. But this new documentary from the director of the equally fab “Women in Motion,” about the NASA career of “Star Trek’s'” Nichelle Nichols, rounds up the survivors of that group, including Paul McCartney, to talk in depth about those years. We get insights about the relationships, influences, group dynamics and key moments that took that teen group to the very pinnacle of fame and success when they formed and reformed as The Beatles.
You think you know The Beatles? You don’t unless you know Colin Hanton, Len Garry, Rod Davis, John Duff Lowe, original “manager” Nigel Walley and the other Quarrymen and their first-hand accounts of pop culture lightning st it struck just after their time getting to know John, Paul and George.
The anchor interviews are with Quarrymen drummer Colin Hanton, a twinkly retired upholsterer who makes “Life isn’t fair” a cute running gag as he recalls his near-miss shot at fame, and the co-writer of his memoir, Lennon curator Colin Hall.
They and Beatles historians, along with John Lennon’s half-sister, Julia Baird, Billy Bragg and musician, Beatles contemporary and Apple Records A & R guru Peter Asher paint a picture of post-war Britain, the generation that grew up free from fear of air raids and bridling at the country’s hidebound classism and genteel working class poverty.
And they flesh out the cast of characters in this “garage band without a garage,” filling in the blanks of how this fellow knew that one, who got who into the band, an ever-shifting lineup of teens who embraced Lonnie Donergan’s wildly popular, high-energy cover of “Rock Island Line,” sort of the Ur Text of Skiffle.
Some of them were ready to adapt as the band embraced Buddy Holly, Little Richard and American rock’n roll. And some were washboard, tea-chest bass and banjo players.
There’s terrific stuff like hearing the earliest surviving recordings and how they survived, band members relating how Lennon’s mother Julia knew how to play the banjo and passed on “banjo chords” and tuning to the nascent guitarists — like John — trying to get pleasing sounds out of their axes.
And there’s the also-ran players’ cheerfully-philosophical realization that McCartney, who knew proper tuning, and Harrison, already a very young guitar fanatic, changed the band and made it more likely they’d all drop-out or get pushed aside as ambition and professionalism set in.
Hanton is a spry, droll presence at the heart of these recollections, the film’s tour guide through the Liverpool of “Eleanor Rigby’s” grave, “Strawberry Fields” and tea-chest bassist Len Garry adds a cheeky sparkle to the testimonials.
The film’s history makes it a must-see for any Beatles fanatic. But the third act’s adorable surprises and redemptive yet comic touches lift the film above simple history and take it into the realm of re-examining “Life isn’t fair,” because sometimes it all works out in the end.
This bright, sunny amd brisk pre-history makes a fine companion to Peter Jackson’s laborious but thorough “Get Back,” which lays out — in great detail — how the “Fabs” from “Pre Fab!” reached the end of their “long and winding road.”
As origin stories go, it’s hard to beat the self-effacing personalities and musical myth-building of “Pre Fab!” It’s finishing its festival run now. Hopefully, some smart distributor and rodent-mascot “Get Back” promoting streaming service will give this delightful musical history lesson a proper home.
Rating: unrated
Cast: Colin Hanton, Paul McCartney, Peter Asher, Julia Baird, Colin Hall, Sylvia Hall, Billy Bragg, Len Garry, Bob Harris and Rod Davis, with John Lennon and George Harrison (archival footage).
Credits: Directed by Todd Thompson, scripted by Mark Bentley, Joe Millin and Todd Thompson, based on the memoir by Colin Hanton and Colin Hall. A Stars North release.
Running time: 1:33
My old friend Todd Thompson, an Orlando filmmaker who struck gold with a Nichelle Nichols doc “Woman in Motion” that every “Star Trek” fan saw, is back with a Beatles before they were The Beatles film.
His doc “Pre Fab!” is showing to friends, family, backers and an Orlando film critic at the historic Garden Theatre in bucolic, bike-crazed Winter Garden, Fla. I’ve been following/covering this dude for 25 years and I could not be prouder of the filmmaker he’s become.
The Garden was built in 1935 and was the first sound cinema in Greater Orlando, movies in the middle of citrus orchards and mosquitoes.
The place used to be so quaint and rural that you’d see bobcats in the empty streets, that Jodie Foster was set to film the period piece “Flora Plum” with Russell Crowe here some years back. Russell blew out his shoulder, the picture was put in turnaround and eventually was filmed somewhere else at a later date.
Now, a bike trail-inspired development boom has made Winter Garden a much more populous Orlando and theme park workers bedroom community with scads of restaurants and amenities.
It’s a rainy Sunday in Central Florida. Who’s ready to “Get Back” before they were Fab?
Who remembers skiffle?
“Limbo” is a darker-than-dark Hong Kong serial killer thriller in the “Se7en” mold — formulaic, but brutish and bleak and bloody-minded.
Veteran director Pou-Soi Cheang (the “Monkey King” action pics were his) shows us a Hong Kong rarely seen on the screen, an underbelly of poverty, crime, trash and murder, all of it captured in lurid, dank black and white.
An adaptation of a novel by Lei Mi, “Limbo” is a standard new-detective-assigned-to-jaded and heavy-handed-old-pro when bodies and body parts start turning up anywhere people dump garbage in the Pearl of the Orient. In Hong Kong’s case, that’s almost anywhere, including a statue-covered shrine where Cham Lau — played by “Ip Man” veteran Kat-Tung Lam — frets and sniffs over the first corpse.
Women drug abusers, sex workers and thieves are dying. Female hands are turning up here and there.
Young detective Will Ren (Mason Lee of “Dead Pigs”) is expected to “learn from” the grizzled Cham. But as the older cop slams a car hood down on one person of interest’s hand, and shows a willingness to get down and dirty in the shoe-leather work that is the biggest part of the job, the younger man tries to rein him in.
Cham also seems distracted, a brooding man relentlessly hunting for this petite street urchin/car thief, Wong To (Yase Liu). When Cham beats the hell out of her, his new partner tries to put a stop to the abuse, to no avail.
This side case is personal, and of course will somehow eventually tie into the serial killer who is priority one in their precinct.
There’s a breathless chase with the seemingly-possessed Cham hounding Wong To through every back alley and parking garage in the city, her gasping and on foot, him relentlessly running her down in his ancient Mitsubishi Pajero, Will Ren sprinting in pursuit, trying to keep his partner from executing this always-apologizing (in but unreformed ex-con.
The grunt work is depicted as so grisly you can almost smell it, cops in face masks fumbling through refuse and waste and body parts.
And the settings are so grim and foul that you’re grateful “Limbo” was filmed in black and white. Color would render this squalor Third World vivid. This film is the polar opposite of a “postcard picture” that might entice visitors to Hong Kong.
The performances are buttoned-down, with Liu inviting sympathy just because of the amount of abuse Wong To endures, and the characters are never much more than cop movie archetypes, including the villain and his depicted “motivation.”
The dialogue is limited, hardboiled, and delivered in Cantonese, Japanese and snatches of English when Will Ren wants to REALLY get Cham Lau’s attention.
“I’m TALKING to you!” “You’re f—–g CRAZY.”
But director Cheang keeps this brutal movie on the march, stomping through the sordid side of a city he knows well, giving up his story’s twists grudgingly and keeping us engaged no matter how ugly things turn.
Rating: Unrated, graphic violence, dismemberment, rape, profanity, smoking
Cast: Kat Tung Lam, Yase Liu, Mason Lee
Credits: Directed by Pou-Soi Cheang, scripted by Kin Yee Au and Kwan-Sin Shum, based on a novel by Lei Mi. A Capelight release.
Running time: 1:58
Quick show of hands, anybody frightened, shocked or spooked by the tenth torture porn tale in the “Saw” franchise?
Sure, it’s great seeing Tobin Bell back as the original “moral” judge, jury, torturer and exucutioner Jigsaw, aka John Kramer, here seen in a story set between two early installments (II and III, some say, but I couldn’t tell you) in “Saw X.” And I guess it’s fine that Shawnee Smith returns as the “assistant” and “protege” punisher of the morally/ethically lacking, as decreed by John Kramer.
But another two hours into the “Saw” franchise and we still don’t figure out how these insanely baroque torture-dismemberment “trap” games are engineered, or how Kramer developed the skills to whip them up in a flash, after getting the drop on this or that quarry.
The whole affair has a whiff of “Going through the motions” to it, as the self-butchery and slaughter visited upon “guilty” victims is handled without suspsense or pathos. One pitiless, perfunctory murder follows the next with a sort of shrug.
Well, using intestines as a lasso and other gory moments can be added to the “horrors we can’t unsee” that the “Saw” franchise has served up. But big deal.
John Kramer has just gotten his cancerous death sentence in this tale, and has crossed into Mexico where a Norwegian doc (Synnøve Macody Lund) has a new chemical cocktail and surgery regimen that should fix him right up.
Yeah, we know where this is going the moment that set-up is engaged. It’s just a matter of time before a group of those who tricked Mr. Kramer learn the many uses of the word “Jigsaw.”
The creepiness of the early films hung on the mystery of Kramer, the dispassionate hiss of his (unseen) pronouncements and the alarming doll/marionette he used as his avatar.
Merely seeing that revived here is worth little more than a shrug.
Hearing Kramer describe his “work” as “I help people overcome inner obstacles” isn’t clever or particularly cryptic.
And the death-dealing is just doing a gorier version of what we’ve seen in the earlier films.
Not casting bigger names than this lot doesn’t help, either. We’re light years away from an original film that made us care what happened to Cary Elwes and Danny Glover’s characters because of the agonizing dilemmas they faced.
Here there’s no empathy behind the camera or from the viewer. It’s just “Here’s another one. What can we do with her intestines that people haven’t seen in horror before now?”
If it wasn’t for the actors screaming — some of it more convincing than others — I swear I’d have dozed off before this hit the halfway mark.
Rating: R, graphic violence and lots of it, profanity
Cast: Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Synnøve Macody Lund, Renata Vaca, Joshua Okamoto, Octavio Hinojosa, Paulette Hernandez and Steven Brand
Credits: Directed by Kevin Greutert, scripted by Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger A Lionsgate release.
Running time: 1:58
If Oprah taught us anything, it’s that we’re all the heroes of our own narrative and entitled to speak our “Truth.”
So let’s give Louisiana’s Robertson clan, who brought camo, duck calls, huntin’ and fishin’ and Z.Z. Top beards into vogue during the run of their sometimes controversial 2012-2017 TV “reality” series, a movie to spin their own origin myth.
It’s hard to overstate the impact this rowdy crew of “redneck millionaires” and swamp s—kickers had on pop culture — at least for a spell. Fans tuned in each week to a white Southern Protestant family’s “Beverly Hillbillies” nouveau riche cavorting with cash, with its patriarch’s duck call and Duck Commander brand the source of their wealth
The show had its critics, especially when that patriarch, Phil Robertson, let his “traditional” Southern Christian conservative beliefs get out off camera — homophobia and patronizing racism included. That didn’t get the show canceled, but it made the decision easier to wrap it up and usher them more or less off the air in 2017.
“The Blind” lets Phil and matriarch Kay tell their stories — mostly Phil’s — as related in a mid-life chat held with a friend in a duck blind, years before TV entered the picture.
It’s a fictionalized, family-authorized “true story” that’s equal parts “Where the Crawdads Sing” and classic Christian redemption story of the “Sergeant York/Apostle” variety.
The film, which ends with a post-sermon homily by Robertson himself, let’s us see the irresponsible, selfish, childish hellion he was before alcoholic rages and the near end of his marriage led him to Jesus.
Movie versions notwithstanding, this is a classic narrative of white Southern culture and remains wildly attractive to people with hard lives who recognize the turning point faith might have offered them and other “lost souls” they know.
The film, a choppy, sometimes amateurish affair that stumbles into as many questions as it answers, lets the Robertsons have it both ways. It establishes Phil’s s—kicker bonafides, which is a vital part of the family brand, and ties his success in life to his Baptism, also a big part of the family brand.
There was a lot of talk about the “fake” nature of reality TV when this series was at its peak, with every week serving up a “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” “Honey Boo Boo” or “Duck Dynasty” “what they’re REALLY like off camera” scandal. So one can’t vouch for the veracity of the Robertson family lore related here.
But here’s what they, or the screenwriters and the actors playing younger versions of them, tell us happened.
Black-beared Phil (Aron von Adrian) relates to a friend the hardscrabble life he (Ronan Carroll plays him as a tween, Matthew Erik White plays Phil as a teen) and his siblings endured, daddy “away on a job” (oil rigs in the Gulf), mom (Kerry Knuppe), stressed, broke and furiously losing her grasp of reality in their dire situation.
We see how Phil met the local grocery store owner’s daughter Kay (Scarlett Abinante and Brielle Robinard play her as a tween and teen), the “woman I was gonna marry,” zeroing in on her lack of judgment about their different stations in life and her kind contribution of groceries to the starving Robertsons.
There’s an account of Phil’s athletic prowess, which got him into Louisiana Tech, that seems only slightly exaggerated. No, he probably didn’t tell future Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw “It’s your turn” when he dropped out off the team because “It was huntin’ season,” and he’d married young Kay and started a family.
Years pass, jobs change, and taking ownership of a bar does nothing to help Phil’s yearning for self-employed/self-sufficient “freedom” and indifferent parenting.
The narrative shifts points of view every so often as we see the years and trials caused by Phil’s refusal to stick to school teaching, preferring a life of fishing and hunting, his taking up smoking and drinking thanks to a school administrator buddy (Connor Tillman) and Kay’s struggles with this irresponsible absentee lout who got violent any time his drinking and shiftlessness were brought up.
And then there’s the preacher (John Ales) who gives Kay a lifeline, and eventually reaches out to Phil when he hits rock bottom, as such stories ordain that he must.
The script skips forward in leaps and bounds, leans too heavily on Phil’s voice-over narration, misses some touching moments and fails to move us in others.
The acting is indifferent, the production values single-wide/swamp skiff/wrecked pickup cheap, with a score built on plaintive violin solos and cut-rate covers of pop hits from a couple of eras, with I think Billy Gibbsons covering his “La Grange” for a version for use in the film’s 1970s scenes.
A cynic might note that given Phil Robertson’s unenlightened attitudes on race, the script made sure to get Black folks into two scenes.
And the whole religious part of the Robertsons” “Family, Faith and Ducks” creed reminds one that “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” and “Religion is the hustlers’ last con.”
Whatever potential it had, the film just isn’t very good, with or without fact checking. That redemption story arc works for a reason. Done right, it touches people. Director Andreww Hyatt, who did the Caivezel “Paul, Apostle of Christ” picture a couple of years back, can’t make this version work and the script’s humorless, emotionally flat treatment of the material smothers “The Blind” in the crib.
But Robertson clan fans know about it, as a packed matinee showing I caught in rural Florida proved, and a rural Virginia’s ticket seller confirmed by mentioning to me that I could have any seat I wanted at their first “Creator” showing, because “everybody here’s getting tickets for ‘The Blind.'”
And that fanbase, showing up in beards and camo, can’t get enough of whatever the Robertsons are still selling.
Rating: PG-13, violence, smoking, profanity and duck shooting.
Cast: Aron von Adrian, Amelia Eve, Matthew Erik White, Brielle Robillard, Connor Tillman and John Ales and Phil Robertson.
Credits. Directed by Andrew Hyatt, scripted by Andrew Hyatt and Stephanie Katz. A Tread Lively release.
Running timer: 1:48
The action auteur returns to theaters Dec. 1.
Let the mayhem begin.
I didn’t bother catching the formerly straight to streaming “Paw Patrol” sequel when it previewed last weekend. But here it is, dominating Friday and looking like a BO winner, heading to a $22 million+ opening weekend, per deadline.com.
Not great by animated A picture standards, but found money for Paramount.
I probably won’t bother reviewing it, no matter how much the kindergarteners at Rotten Tomatoes rave it up, the dears.
I am on my way to a Sat. screening of “Saw X,” just to ensure Lionsgate and the screenwriters did right by Tobin Bell. It’s on track to come close to $19 million on its opening weekend.
And 20th Century Studios’ “The Creator” is making decent money, maybe $14 by midnight Sunday. Not bad for derivative, shiny and manipulative sc fi. Not nearly enough to justify the budget, but there you go, hiring John David Washington to cut talent costs. That almost never works out.
“The Nun 2” and “Haunting in Venice” are hanging around, $5 and $4 million respectively.
Sony expanded “Dumb Money” into a wide national release, and the fact that it will be lucky to clear $1 million proves they had no idea how to sell it.
No early box office numbers for “The Blind,” which I may get to today as well. It’s selling well in the rural South, as I discovered when I watched “Creator” in a nearly empty house as the camo clad “Duck Dynasty” crowd packed the theater for that one.
I’ll update this post as more boxoffice data rolls in.
Movie Nation 