Movie Nation

It’s a match made in movie heaven, or so one would think.

Apply the twee stylings of America’s most precious and airlessly droll filmmaker, Wes Anderson, to the darkly comic fiction of Britain’s frightener of children, Roald Dahl.

“The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” is a Dahl parable of wealth, indolence, “true story” magic and life remade with purpose, every bit as stylized as any of Anderson’s cinematic exercises in pointilistically-detailed deadpan.

It’s a short film in narrated-story form, with Oscar winners Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes, as well as Benedict Cumberbatch and Dev Patel doing the narrating, a couple of them playing multiple parts.

A film with 75 minutes of narration squeezed into 40, and 20 minutes of “action” padded out to 40, it is a triumph of style even if its dry wit feels slight, even when it’s being performed by such luminaries.

At one point, two Indian doctors are narrating the section of the that tale’s book within a book. Patel is Dr. Z.Z. Chatterjee, who wrote “A Report Imhad Khan: The Man Who Sees Without His Eyes.” They are amazed at having bandaged this would-be yogi and circus sideshow act Imhad Khan (Kingsley) and witnessing him stroll confidently out of their hospital, mount a bike and pedal figure eights in front of them.

Anderson cast the British comic and “IT Crowd” legend Richard Ayoade as Dr. Marshall, just a witness and reactor to Dr. Chatterjee’s vocalized memories of this encounter.

“His whole face was rigid with disbelief,” Dr. Chatterjee recalls of his colleague. Dr. Marshall. Ayoade turns to the camera — like everyone else here — to demonstrate precisely what that looks like.

The whole film is like that, beginning with a writer (Fiennes) meant to be Dahl, garreted in his “Gipsy House” writing hut and telling us the story of rich, “greedy” and unmarried posh Henry Sugar (Cumberbatch), a man of no redeeming qualities until he stumbles across this hand-transcribed “book” by Chatterjee in a wealthy man’s book collection and marvels over the idea of how being able to see “without his eyes” could be deployed in cheating the house at his favorite casinos.

The mildly loathesome Henry will train himself, like a yogi, to read the backs of playing cards.

Like a lot of Anderson’s work, it’s dry to the point of parched, deadpan to a deathly degree.

The motor-mouthed narrations are amusing enough until they’re exhausting, as once we’ve gotten Dahl’s point about “all rich people of Henry’s ‘type'” and fallen into the film’s arch style. It’s the clever scene changes, transitions and under-reactions of the players to every event — astonishment at Imad Khan’s skill, Henry’s blase realization he need never lose at blackjack again, changes of heart and matters of life and death — that entertain here.

It’s not among Dahl’s greatest hits or Anderson’s grand meringue delights, but “Henry Sugar” amuses here and there and passes by quickly, unlike the interminable “Asteroid City” and sometimes strained earlier Anderson outings.

Rating: PG, some smoking

Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Benedict Cumberbatch, Richard Ayoade and Dev Patel.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Wes Anderson, based on a short story by Roald Dahl. A Netflix release.

Running time: :40

An “institute” that’s developed a “test to make the bond of love grow stronger.”

Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, Jeremy Allen White and Luke Wilson star in this Oct. 27 release, coming to Apple TV+ shortly thereafter.

Love that cast.

Some entertaining truck stunts are the chief recommendation of “Overhaul,” a big rig racing, big-rig hijacking thriller from Brazil.

This “Around the World With Netflix” outing is a “Fast and Furious” knock-off with dull characters, generic situations and little that makes it “furious,” even when it’s “fast.”

Thiago Martins stars as Roger, a perpetual also-ran in the BR (Big Rig?) semi racing series, driving for his father’s team. He’s forever ignoring race-and-engine management advice from his mechanic, Danilo (Raphael Logam), forever flying off the handle whenever anyone — from his father to the woman (Sheron Menezzes) who is his biggest rival — who dares call him what he is.

“Brat!”

An argument with Dad directly contributes to the old man’s death in an accident. The next thing the brat figures out is that the racing team is bankrupt, the sponsors are fleeing and this shady fellow Odilon (Evandro Mesquita) is aiming to collect on some debts.

There’s nothing for it but for Roger to take on a bunch of truck-hijackings as the “pilot” of the chase and getaway semi, with his pal Danilo coming along to figure out ways to improve on this “side market” business of a “slightly illegal” nature.

Actually, it’s totally illegal and dangerous, and the cops are interested in all these trucks filled with cell phones and what-not are going.

Tomas Portell’s film — in Portugeuse or dubbed — gives us only tiny glimpses of a Brazilian underworld and a racist culture where Danilo faces more severe punishment because he’s Black. Maybe making a statement on that world in a film for the domestic market isn’t something most Brailian films do. But the memorable ones always immerse us in settings, people and the flavor of that criminal subculture.

Leandro Soares’ screenplay is strictly formula, from its first races to it’s “Who will be kidnapped the moment Roger says ‘I want out’?” third act, with dialogue just as unsurprising.

But some of the truck stunts are cool and believable.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity, adult situations

Cast: Thiago Martins, Milhem Cortaz,
Raphael Logam, Sheron Menezzes, Vitoria Valentin and Evandro Mesquita

Credits: Directed by
Tomas Portella, scripted by
Leandro Soares. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:41

How does this Nov. 22 Mouse House offering sound to you, look to you?

“Bland beyond belief” was my first take on it, seeing this trailer in front of “The Creator” last night.
“Cutesy” Happy Meal toy characters.

Generic story elements, flat, direct-to-video animation.

And does this voice cast light up the marquee?

• Angelique Cabral as Queen Amaya, the wife and sounding board of King Magnifico;
• Victor Garber as Asha’s grandfather, Sabino, who—at 100 years old—is patiently waiting for his wish to be granted;
• and Natasha Rothwell as Asha’s loving and supportive mom, Sakina.

Plus, Asha’s tight-knit group of confidants, protectors and forever friends:

• Jennifer Kumiyama as Asha’s dearest friend, Dahlia, who’s an accomplished baker and unofficial leader of their group; 
• Evan Peters as the strong guy with a big heart and bigger yawn, Simon; 
• Harvey Guillén as Gabo, who may be cynical, but he has a heart of gold; 
• Ramy Youseff as Safi, who’s plagued by allergies;
• Niko Vargas as Asha’s joyful, always smiling buddy, Hal; 
• Della Saba as the seemingly shy teenager, Bazeema, who’s full of surprises; 
• and Jon Rudnitsky as Asha’s rosy-cheeked, wiggly-eared pal, Dario

The timing could not be more perfect for a thriller flipping the current AI debate on its head, an updating of everything “Blade Runner,””A.I.” and “The Terminator” wrestled with in action epic form.

“The Creator” is derivative, but inventively so, a dazzling platform for state-of-the-art sci-fi tech impressively parked in a post-nuclear Los Angeles, or the terraces, future cities and rice paddies of Southeast Asia.

The director, Gareth Edwards, did my favorite of the recent “Star Wars” installments, “Rogue One.” And co-screenwriter Chris Weitz once wrote “About a Boy.”

But somewhere around the time we see metallic robotic refugees from the “Star Wars” design studio warming their articulated metal, wire and gears “fingers” over a campfire, I muttered my first “WTF?”

Why...never mind.

Right about the moment when one of these two-legged vacuum cleaners talks through pointlessly flanged and hinged lips covering an equally pointless machine-tooled mouth, “The Creator” started to feel like the dumbest AI movie since “Short Circuit.”

The humans have no trouble tracking, chasing down and surprising their AI foes on the battlefield. It’s as if the machines are all operating on Windows 95.

In an alternate future set up with a vintage “robots and you” styled newsreel opening (robots on the Space Shuttle, etc.), America is leading the West in the fight against artificial intelligence which the East has embraced, and apparently allowed to nuke Los Angeles.

John David Washington plays Joshua, a man whose seemingly idyllic life with his very pregnant wife (Gemma Chan) is interrupted by an attack from the NOMAD (North American Orbital Mobile Air Defense) combat platform on their corner of New Asia (Southeast Asia, judging from the Thai islands and Vietnamese fields and rice paddies).

It turns out Joshua is a sergeant working undercover in search of the Nirmata, the brilliant Asian creator of much of the new AI that’s coming out. They’re packaged as “Simulants,” sentient robots with human features and skulls with visible holes through them (For…ventilation?). The US Army in the persons of Gen. Andrews (Ralph Ineson) and Col. Howell (Oscar winner Allison Janney) want this creator dead.

The raid is premature and a debacle, leaving Joshua embittered and widowed. But years and many fruitless debriefings later, he is ordered on a new mission to find this Nimrata, the creator’s new superweapon, and perhaps the missing wife Joshua was sure was dead.

A new team is NOMAD delivered to a new strike zone because the East is helpless against the giant, IUD-shaped “Avengers” aircraft carrier in the sky. All that AI tech and the robots and Simulants living in harmony amongst the simple, happy natives can’t even spot armed commando teams marching down ridgelines, lit up with flashlights and assorted mobile assault vehicles in the pitch dark.

You’ve seen the trailers to the film. You know that the “secret weapon” is a Simulant in the form of an adorable, seemingly omnipotent child (Madeleine Yuna Voyles Alphie), and that Joshua finds himself trying to smuggle her to his bosses, to get her to lead him to his long-lost wife, or to a future where “robots can be free.”

It’s kind of clever, putting the ultimate threat to human civilization in the form of a little girl. Awww, who’d want to hurt her? She’s harmless and helpless and cute. I guess making her a cocker spaniel would have been too on-the-nose.

But among the script’s many lapses in logic, her omnipotence has its limits. And even so, it’s hard to feel for her, identify with her and root for her despite how cute this “Alpha O” (“Alphie” for short) is.

Joshua is stuck babysitting this “Little Sim,” explaining “death” and its electronic equivalent (“On,” “Off” and “Standby”) to a computerized child who wonders about heaven and if robots can be free there?

It’s all just too precious. Throw in hilariously illogical (talking suicide robots shaped like oil drums) bomb-delivery systems and tech, the undermotivated expectation that we’ll “root” for AI, and the under-explained heedless Asian embrace of this tech future.

OK, maybe that last one makes sense in a racially stereotypical way.

Director Edwards imagines this as a clumsy Vietnam War analogy, with armed and murderously heavy-handed America imposing its bloody will on foreigners who don’t “look like us.” There are hints of “Apocalypse Now” in a few sequences.

But the nonsensical nature of much of this took me right out of the movie. It’s one thing for “Star Wars” to see the need for gold-played British butler robots that look like walking Oscar statuettes. It’s another to think computered-assisted efficient design wouldn’t see the need for moving lips (there are no “eyes” on the metallic ones), for hand-held radios (comms would be built in) or hand-held laser rifles (ditto).

As the picture careens around towards its anti-climactic climax, one really does wonder about the point of it all.

If you aren’t reading the words “John David Washington” with an involuntary “Uh oh” on your lips these days, you haven’t been paying attention to the parade of piffle this most famous of “nepo babies” has turned up in since “BlackKklansman.” He’s not a bad actor, no matter how little training he got. He’s just a consistently uninteresting one, no matter how handsome he might be.

If he’s starring in the movie, it means they couldn’t get anybody better to take the lead.

And here he is, giving another colorless leading man turn in a movie that desperately could use a big dose of charisma, which only mean-Ms. Janney and noble-but-underwritten “Sim” leader Ken Watanabe provide.

Clumsy efforts like make one wonder if AI editing software wouldn’t have asked a lot of questions and demanded better results than this screenplay delivers.

Rating: PG-13 (Strong Language|Some Bloody Images|Violence)

Cast: John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Madeleine Yuna Voyles Alphie, Ken Watanabe and Allison Janney.

Credits: Directed by Gareth Edwards, scripted by  Gareth Edwards and Chris Weitz A 20th Century release.

Running time: 2:13

Matthew Vaughn’s latest is a “Kingsman” styled spy good/spoof with Bryce Dallas Howard as a novelist whose latest hits assorted spies and spy agencies where they live.

Sam Rockwell and Samuel L., Catherine O’Hara and Bryan Cranston and Henry Cavill, mayhem and bombshells and a digital kitty cat. Looks fun.

Feb.

As thrillers go, “Accused” is simplicity itself. It’s just a guy, hunted, identified, harassed, threatened and tracked-down online, trapped in his parents’ house, waiting to be doxed, swatted or worse.

The clever touches in the script to this new British thriller, now streaming on the free TV streamer Tubi, include having our victim Harri see the disaster that his life becomes unfold in near real time, in the most toxic chat rooms and comment boards of the Internet.

Writers Barnaby Boulton and James Cummings show our protagonist, a 20something middle class Brit (Chaniel Kular of Netflix’s “Sex Education”) of undefined Middle Eastern heritage stare, slack-jawed, as he first is told by his girlfriend (Lauryn Ajufo) that he “looks just like” this “person of interest” in the morning’s train station bombing. Next thing he knows, others are talking up “I think I know that guy” in chat threads. They’re egged on into naming their hunches.

Harri’s name gets out. Crowd-sourcing and facial recognition software outs his girlfriend, Chloe, his address, his parents and eventually his parents’ address.

“Nothing like a good foxhunt,” one of the anonymous accusers chortles, Internet brave because of that anonymity,” certain they have their quarry — as are many — because of his or her mad Google Search skillz.

Best of all, we know little of Harri’s work life or experience of the world. He’s got no “particular skills.” Calling the police isn’t wholly futile, but it’s close. And this is Britain. The house isn’t stuffed with guns or even all that secure.

He’s just a fearful young man, house-sitting the family dog as his parents take a vacation, waiting for the ever-escalating online rhetoric to inflame someone enough to come looking for him with intent to harm.

Actor turned director Philip Barantani (“Boiling Point”) parks us in this world, showing Harri’s reluctance to even go public with his “secret” girlfriend, but helpless to avoid popping up in strangers’ selfies as he boards a train in that very station the very morning of the attack.

“Privacy” is a myth.

The film limits its point of view to what Harri knows, and what we see and he can guess about his racist, quick-to-judge online accusers. As we’ve learned time and again in recent years, online crowd-sourcing can be quick to ID a mass shooter or a domestic terrorist attacking the U.S. capital. Sometimes the crowd even gets it right.

The plot plays out in seriously conventional thriller ways. It’s a wonder anybody bothers with foreshadowing any more, but good screenwriters still add it by force of habit.

“Accused” and its star do an excellent job of capturing Harri’s helplessness, his fear that the police won’t be bothered, or might instead come for him, that his parents’ neighbors might not be as tolerant as they seem, that no one will save him and he’s too panicked to save himself.

And the viewer is reminded that none of us are ever more than an anonymous slander away from a “piling on” by people quick to judge, eager to escalate and impossible to get to apologize.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity

Cast: Chaniel Kular, Nila Aalia, Nitin Ganatra, Frances Tomelty and Lauryn Ajufo

Credits: Directed by Philip Barantani, scripted by Barnaby Boulton and James Cummings. A Tubi release.

Running time: 1:27

The full trailer to this “world’s greatest spy” thriller drops tomorrow.

Why all the fuss? Sam Rockwell, Bryce Dallas Howard, Samuel L., a digital cat, with Dua Lipa, Henry Cavill, Sofia Boutella, CAtherine O’Hara, Rob Delaney and many others.

But it’s being released in the Dog Days of Feb. So…expectations dampened.

An outstanding cast overcomes a tendency by the filmmakers to try too hard in wrestling with arcane financial maneouvering in “Dumb Money,” a sort of “Big Short Lite” about the Gamestop stock manipulation war of a couple of years back.

Director Craig Gillespie (“I, Tonya” and TV’s “Physical”) uses a colorful cast of often loathsome characters and a lot of sass, profanity and lowdown-and-dirty hip-hop to give this Davids vs. Goliaths take the feel of a generational rebellion. What he botches is setting this fight up, giving his hero the background that made investors trust him and properly explaining the machinations, methodology and market meaning of instigating a “short squeeze.”

It’s a movie with the speed and funny fury of “The Big Short,” but that demands we root against this or that figure simply because he’s a “type” being played by Vincent D’Onofrio, Seth Rogen and Nick Offerman. And the script relies on a flurry of acronyms, profane tirades and web-nerd slang of the “stonk” variety to bluff its way past its shortcomings and seem hip.

“Dumb Money” is about the hilarious recent tug of war over fading video game retailer GameStop, villains who have bet a fortune on its stock market collapse, and a plucky band of nerds, coeds, and working class Gen Zers who decide to follow a youtube stock-tipper over a cliff to try and stop them.

Paul Dano plays Keith Gill, married (Shailene Woodley), with a new baby and a steady job at Mass Mutual in some sort of financial analysis gig. But by night, he dons his samurai headscarf and kitten-covered t-shirt, sits at his computer, shows off his (underwhelming) financials and as Roaring Kitty, passes on stock tips and investment advice via his vlog and connection to Reddit’sWallStreetBets feed.

Reddit is an anarchic safe space for the politically-incorrect and ulfiltered name-callers, with WallStreeBets having something of a “Burn it Down” credo (not really gotten into here) in the face of cynical, conservative corporate America’s assault on the middle class and the gamesmanship they’ve used to destroy the American Dream for everybody under 40.

Keith? He’s just a guy who looks at all the “short” bets on GameStop by assorted big hedge funds, and via a combination of nostalgia for the company and obviously stupid over-exposure by those betting it will fail, draws his own conclusion.

“I like the stock.”

Next thing he and we know, a generation dabbling in the market via small-time “retail” investor platform Robinhood goes full tsunami/all-in on GameStop. As the stock soars, COVID-stressed nurse Jenny (America Ferrara), Texas coeds Harmony (Talia Ryder) and Riri (Myha’la Herrold), dying mall GameStop store employee Marcus (Anthony Ramos) and Keith himself make a killing.

“Holy s–t!” they exclaim in glee.

Those hedge fund managers betting GameStop is going extinct, sneering fat-cats like Steve Cohen (D’Onofrio), who keeps a pet boar in his mansion, Gabe Plotkin (Rogen), who has bought a neighbor’s house just to knock it down so he can build a tennis court and play during the pandemic, and the richest of them all, the inscrutable, unflappable Ken Griffin (Offerman) find themselves exclaiming “Oh s—!” And not in glee.

Gillespie and the screenwriters set up the stakes for Keith with his trusting wife and confidante, and let the doubts be underlined by his can’t-hold-a-real-job brother. Every word out of this jerk Kevin’s mouth is filthy, funny, and dead wrong.

“This ass—e thinks he’s Jimmy Buffett!” You don’t have to be smarter than brother Kevin to know that he means “Warren Buffett.” But you have to give the devil his due here. This mouthy dope of a loser was tailor-made for Pete Davidson, and he’s hilarious in the part.

As the “movement” gains momentum and the insiders stop cracking jokes about the “dumb money” getting thrown around by “retail” investors, who “always lose,” the “system” and those who know how to game it fights back.

I like the way Gillespie uses his younger players — Dano, Ferrara, Ryder and Davidson, et al — and their taste in music to show a generational fault line in this battle. We hear snippets of the filthiest hip hop available — Cardi B singing “WAP,” works made famous by Darko and Kay Ro$e — to set the tone on “furious” and “foul-mouthed” in depicting young, Internet-empowered, Reddit-organized outsiders seeking “revenge” on the economy-manipulating, business-destroying “ass—–s” who’ve done so much to limit their futures, and who are the first to squeal like stuck pigs when student loan forgiveness is mentioned.

The film suffers from a surfeit of sinister figures, including the real life jawboning jokers of financial TV and those “rob from the rich, broker for the poor” “heroes,” the guys who founded Robinhood. Sebastian Stan plays co-founder Vlad Tenev as so cowardly and dishonest even Elon Musk is dismayed by him. Dane DeHaan plays the clueless Gamestop Store manager still following the company Bible in hopes he can make the store/chain profitable, if only Marcus would do the same.

There’s so much going on around these people (we never meet the main cheerleaders of WallStreetBets) in this time (COVID is a backdrop trying to move to the foreground) that “Dumb Money” never seems to develop the flow that would really put it over.

It’s an amusing but choppy affair, with Congressional hearings, sibling rivalry, bad guys winning and good guys fighting the good fight, often to their own detriment.

Portaying a figure beloved enough to inspire “If he’s in, I’m in” financial followers without a backstory explaining that loyalty (it isn’t just Trump Cult seniors who are “gullible” these days) is a big burden to lay on Dano. But his open-faced earnestness encourages us to let that slide.

The movie doesn’t make us smarter or more wary about “the system,” or set up false prophets the way “The Big Short” did. Let’s face it. There are aspects of that film’s point of view that aren’t aging well.

But for a Quixotic, quick turn-around comic thriller about stock market winners, losers and supervillains, “Dumb Money” isn’t half bad.

Rating: R, profanity and lots of it.

Cast: Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Shailene Woodley, Pete Davidson, America Ferrara, Olivia Thirlby, Talia Ryder, Anthony Ramos, Myha’la Herrold, Sebastian Stan, Dane DeHaan, Nick Offerman and Vincent D’Onofrio

Credits: Directed by Craig Gillespie, scripted by Rebecca Angelo and Lauren Schuker Blum, based on a book by Ben Mezrich. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:45

Two Oscar winners face off in a tale of a notorious romance from 20 years before — Portman interviewing and getting to know Julianne Moore, a woman who once had an affair with a “seventh grader.”

Charles Melton and Kelvin Han Yee also star in this awards season potboiler from the director of “Far From Heaven” and “Carol.”

Dec. 1 on Netflix.