Éanna Hardwicke plays Irish star player Roy Keane, and Coogan’s the manager/coach dealing with divas and bungles in prep for the 2002 World Cup, putting the Irish team through its paces in “the place that launched (bombers that delivered) “the atomic bomb.”
A sports history drama of the moment, as it were. The anti “Ted Lasso?”
The new sci-fi thriller “The Astronaut” is a somewhat ungainly marriage of “Alien” and “E.T.” It begins with mystery and danger and the best of intentions. But the longer the marriage goes on, the worse things get.
Kate Mara has the title role, a space traveler whose splash down from a trip to the International Space Station didn’t go as planned. We see recovery teams racing to her half-sunken capsule, see the water inside when they pop the hatch and note the busted glass visor on her helmet.
Uh. Oh.
Sam has nosebleeds, bouts of tinnitus and “zero gravity hallucinations,” which can be explained away. But those bruises that seem to spread? Her doctor (Ivana Milicevic) seems concerned. That’s why Sam is parked in a rural safe house after quarantine. But the film’s logic has us wondering why she’s left there alone, and why she wouldn’t smell a rat by that fact herself.
“Sounds like a horror movie,” she jokes.
Her academic husband (Gabriel Luna of “The Last of Us” and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D”) is halfway out the door of this marriage and the risks Sam seems hellbent on renewing. Only her astronaut pal (Macy Gray) understands the need for spaceflight speed.
“Even if you feel horrible, keep it to your damned self,” she advises if Sam wants to stay in the mission rotation.
But the nosebleeds, the nightmares, the blackouts, the visions and the things that go bump in the night outside this hi-tech “safe” house are a lot to keep from everybody. Her Air Force general father (Laurence Fishburne) is protective but strangely unconcerned.
Actress turned first-time feature director Jess Varley (her “Camping Safe” comedy does not appear to have been released) doesn’t hide her cards well. Every lapse in logic is rendered so obviously as to either make no sense or reveal “secrets” that the movie isn’t very good at keeping.
The jolts are mild by the horror/sci-fi standards of today.
Mara invests in the part and reaches for pathos amid the peril, and Fishburne, Luna and Gray are adequate in support.
But when the surprises aren’t very surprising except in ways that betray the picture’s tone and every illogical thing we can’t help but notice gives away those surprises, the only conclusion is that this “Astronaut” doesn’t have the right stuff even if Mara does.
Rating: unrated, violence
Cast: Kate Mara, Laurence Fishburne, Gabriel Luna, Ivana Milicevic, Scarlett Holmes and Macy Gray.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Jess Varley. A Vertical release.
Running time: 1:30
Got Apple TV+? This new doc by Ben Stiller is about his parents, one of the great comedy acts of their era, mught be reason enough to subscribe.
Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller were married comic foils playing married comic foils, good actors and funny in their bones, but a couple that had a hard time keeping the work life and home life separate.
God knows their kids (Ben, his sister Amy and his wife Christine Taylor also appear) couldn’t see the boundaries.
April 24, we find out how a tall, barking Irish Catholic and a short braying Brooklyn Jew met in an acting company and partnered for life. At their peak, they were never more than a few days between appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Tonight Show” or wherever.
It’s helpful to remember 2021’s “The Black Phone” when pondering all the things that are different about the sequel, “Black Phone 2.” Because many of those differences point to why the second film spun off a Joe Hill (Stephen King’s son) short story doesn’t work.
Director Scott Derrickson did both films, and his early ’80s visual aesthetic (with flashbacks to the late ’50s) is an arresting revisit not just to the Golden Age of Duran Duran, Dorothy Hamill bob haircuts and add-a-gold-bead necklaces. The images are grainy, home movie/early home video quality. It’s a winter tale this time, so there’s snow and cold and forests rendered in simple, stark blacks
And the sound — silences were so important to the first film’s horror — is crackly, the static of a “Poltergeist” TV set or a land line on its last legs.
But the terror was almost mythic in that first film, like a story passed through generations of tweens and teens. Somebody was snatching Denver elementary school kids off the street in the ’70s, somebody with a black van with black balloons spilling out of the back, someone entirely happy to wear monstrous mask.
“The Grabber” would lock children in his basement for his torturing pleasure. The story’s lone supernatural element is the phone in that basement. Children are communicating through time about this monster and their fate, and ways to forestall it.
In “Black Phone 2” the supernatural pre-Android is a pay phone booth at a Alpine Christian Camp for kids in the mountains of Colorado. A voice from the past reaches out from the horrors of the late ’50s to Gwen (Madeline McGraw) in the 1982 present.
It’s not like her family needs more trauma. Her dad (Jeremy Davies) is blitzed and disconnected from life. Brother Finney (Mason Thames) has soured into a bully who only needs a “new kid” to ask him about being the boy who killed The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) as an excuse to beat the hell out of that child.
Gwen and Finney are still having nightmares, with Gwen’s connected to her dead mother’s 1950s camp youth. In “Nightmare on Elm Street” fashion, “Black Phone 2” is about interrupting those dreams and surviving them. Because The Grabber, whom we all saw finished off, has become The Thing/Jason Voorhees/Michael Myers/Pennywise and Freddy Krueger with a van. He won’t die.
The cliche of summer camp horror since “Friday the 13th” has been slaughter visited upon such places just before opening for the season, or just after. Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill (“The Gorge,” ugh) send Gwen and Finney and their pal Ernesto (Miguel Mora) to Camp Alpine for a dead-of-winter Christian retreat. A blizzard keeps other counselors from making it through.
Only camp counselor Mustang (Arianna Rivas) and lone adult Mando (Demián Bichir) are there to take them in from the cold and get tangled up in this family’s history with a monster who got the camp closed in the late ’50s thanks to his abductions.
The bodies of three little boys were never found.
A call from Gwen and Finney’s mother (Anna Lore) sets a new “test” for the siblings in motion.
“She reached out to me for a reason,” Gwen figures.
The wintry settings — often filmed in a dark, snowy void — look like green screen effects, with nobody really reacting to the icy cold — even when plunged into the lake that no summer/winter camp would be complete without.
The performances register little of the terror that the first film’s younger children in peril got across.
Hawke, in scary mask and gruesome makeup underneath it, milks the inexplicable villainy of monsters who prey on children — murderers or pedophiles.
“I am a bottomless pit of sin!”
Bichir adds a little gravitas to the proceedings. Not much. Giving him a line nobody in 1982 uttered into a phone (an anachronism) doesn’t help.
“It’s been a minute.”
Both “Black Phones” are derivative, as you might expect from material from Stephen King’s apprentice/son. But the derivations Derrickson went for in the sequel are simply not as arresting or interesting.
The setting — snowy or not — is a cliche. The jolts aren’t here. The pathos of the first film is mostly missing, thanks to the absence of innocent and helpless younger children. The “escape” element of that basement dungeon and suspense of whether anybody will get out is left out.
But “Doctor Strange” director Derricson took the assignment, brought in his “Gorge” writer, cashed the check and delivered an inferior photocopy. That’s no way to bolster one’s reputation as the New Sam Raimi or Wes Craven.
Rating: R, graphic violence, much of it directed at children, pot use, profanity
Cast: Madeline McGraw, Mason Thames, Jeremy Davies, Ariana Rivas, Miguel Mora, Demián Bichir and Ethan Hawke
Credits: Directed by Scott Derrickson, scripted by C. Robert Cargill and Scott Derrickson, based on characters created by Joe Hill. A Blumhouse/Universal release.
Running time: 1:54
Keanu Reeves brings an offhand charm to his guardian angel turn in “Good Fortune,” Aziz Ansari’s season-neutral “A Christmas Carol” parable about America in general and LA in particular as a land of have-a-lots and have-nots.
Whatever inspiration the comic Ansari found in the State of the Nation, his nods to Dickens, Frank Capra and anybody else who’s taken an interest in the struggles of the working poor, his gig economy update features a star who is practically channeling “Starman.” Reeves’ line-readings always have an other worldly quality.
Ansari stars as a designated loser — a documentary film editor who can’t find work and can’t afford to live in one of the most expensive places in the country (LA) doing meal deliveries and “Task Sergeant” chores in an economy where the people doing the work get the shortest end of the stick. Arj is, angel Gabriel notes, “a lost soul” who shows lots of signs of “giving up.”
Arj is living in his VW Golf, chased from parking lot to parking lot night after night, lying to his family about his living arrangments, despairing that “nothing ever changes.”
Gabriel pleads his case to his boss angel (Sandra Oh). But his duties are limited to keeping drivers from killing themselves while texting and driving. Aged and sage Azrael (the great Stephen McKinley Henderson) is the Lost Souls specialist. Some angels are responsible for literary and musical inspiration, some change the course of lives. Gabriel just taps on people’s shoulders in traffic to keep them from GIF/emoji/texting themselves to death.
Gabriel is supposed to intervene in Elena’s driving. She’s played by Keke Palmer, who tones down her often manic patter to play the heart of this story. Gabriel thinks Elena and Arj have a future together. But making himself known to the struggling part-timer only shows Arj, who just lost a promising “assistant” job with an entitled venture capitalist Jeff (Seth Rogen) what a soul-crushing, impoverished grind that a life with her will be with no money.
So Gabriel figures he’ll show Arj of Little Faith the way to enlightenment. He’ll sample the “shallow” and indulgent hilltop mansion life of luxury EVs and $250,000 watches that Jeff — who seems isolated by his money and insulated from consequences firing someone as desperate as Arj is.
A car getting towed can create a life and death crisis for someone in Arj’s income bracket. Jeff, the son of a surgeon and a lawyer, hasn’t a clue.
Ansari cast this well and has easy rapport with Reeves, Rogen and Palmer. His script touches on everything from labor organizing in big box stores to a big reason so many underpaid restaurant workers smoke.
“It’s all I’ve got.”
That’s what Gabriel clings to as he’s demoted for his screw ups and rendered into a chicken “nuggies,” milkshake, taco and burger loving mortal. He can’t afford his simple pleasures on a dishwasher’s salary. So he lights up and takes a resigned drag or two every time he gets a break.
The film avoids the Great Depression era movie trap of showing us the rich as just as miserable as everybody else. Having money reduces struggle, uplifts your social circle and improves your prospects for a mate that will be a part of a happier, easier life.
Ansari takes pains to demonstrate that the big difference between the comfortable and the struggling is money — being born with it, getting access to the education and contacts as part of that privilege. Rogen does a marvelous job of showing a guy blind to head start his life gave him, and yet still sweet enough to pity (not much) when it doesn’t look like he’ll ever get his money, his house, his watches and his status back.
But this satiric fantasy-comedy plays like a series of pulled punches. When you’re doomed to struggle, finding a reason to carry on without falling into substance abuse escape can seem pointless, which the script ignores. The role-playing switcheroo never really lands a blow or draws blood.
The leads are engaging and some jokes land. But none of them cut deep because there’s little edge to any of this. This isn’t “Meet John Doe” or “It’s a Wonderful Life” or even “Wings of Desire.” It’s a movie the bard Randy Newman summed up in a three and a half minute pop song decades ago.
Rating: R, drug use, profanity, smoking
Cast: Aziz Ansari, Keanu Reeves, Seth Rogen, Sandra Oh and Keke Palmer.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Aziz Ansari. A Lionsgate release.
Running time: 1:38
This is a solo concert film by the Peal Jam frontman, with the performances filmed in Seattle, on behalf of charity aimed at finding a cure for epidermolysis bullosa.
The pitch is that this is more about the disease and those who suffer from it than it is about the grunge icon doing the singing.
“Matter of Time” opens in a platforming release in Nov.
A novel that wears its Agatha Christie antecedents entirely too obviously becomes a Keira Knightley star vehicle in “The Woman in Cabin 10,” a film whose producers were clever enough and careless enough to cast Guy Pearce as her foil.
There are two ways things can go when you put the estimable star of “Memento” and veteran heavy of “The Brutalist,” “Brimstone,” and many other villainous turns (He was even an “Iron Man” foe.) in your movie. He’s carried that baggage so well that the moment we see him in a thriller we figure either he’s whodunit or he’s a red herring tossed in to obscure the real killer.
Ruth Ware’s book updates the “Death on the Nile” formula for the age of oligarchs, and the screenwriters tap into the actual predelictions of ultra richies like Zuckerberg and Bezos — who compete to see who can build the priciest yacht, and then load it with fellows swells for ski trips or cruises to see the Northern Lights.
Knightley plays a reporter sent to document a seriously pricey charity cruise aboard a rich couple’s yacht, lazily-named the Aurora Borealis. Lisa Loven Kongsli plays a Norwegian shipping heiress who is dying of leukemia and has it in mind to donate a vast fortune to cancer research upon her death.
But who is heiress Anne Bullmer’s husband? The charming and faintly-patronizing Richard. When you cast Pearce in that part Richard instantly takes on sinister overtones.
Guardian newspaper reporter Laura Blacklock, “Lo” to her editor (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), was traumatized by her last story about a non-profit heroine murdered right in front of her after providing her evidence for that story. She needs a break. A short sail from Britain to Norway on a mini-cruise-ship-sized motor yacht to document a generous act and profile the woman making it would seem just the ticket.
But among those rich acquaintances — Michael Morrisey and Hannah Waddingham play a titled couple, Paul Kaye a swaggering, disolute rocker, Art Malik is a rich doctor friend of the Bullmers, Kaya Scodelario a rich guy’s trophy escort, etc. — is a photographer, Laura’s most recent ex, Ben (David Ajala).
Laura’s just started to try and fit in with this lot when she stumbles into the cabin next door and spies a blonde fresh out of the shower. She’s begun to accept that she’ll never fit in here when she hears a muffled, heated argument and a loud splash later that night.
Man overboard! Or woman overboard!
The vast crew springs into action, but there is no swimmer or body. Cabin 10? There is no one rooming there. That bloody palm print detail-oriented Lo spied? It’s gone.
The doctor is quick to suggest PTSD. The rich folk dismiss her as an “attention” you-know-what.
“I’m not imagining this.”
Confiding in her ex is a non-starter. She’s making waves and “these people run the world,” Ben warns.
But the reporter in her won’t let it go and the “investigation” begins, with the captain and owner Bullmer submitting to many a demand.
“I need to look at the CCTV!”
Knightley does justice to the doggedness one used to associate with journalism and the guarded contempt such people used to treat the world’s robber barons. We believe Laura’s discomfort in this world and even the peril she comes to feel she’s in.
But the plot rather lets Knightley and the character down, with one murder attempt so widely witnessed and calculated that nobody save for someone in a vested interest wouldn’t see it as such.
The casting makes us wonder if the screenwriters watched old episodes of TV’s “Columbo,” where a villain is ID’d in the opening act with the story about the heroine unraveling “your one mistake.” Then again, we figure, “They couldn’t be that obvious, could they?”
The action beats — chases and struggles to the death — play. But the finale is so hoary it’s covered in mold, almost laughably old-fashioned.
There’s too little “Is she just imagining this?” doubt, too few scenes for Pearce to tip us about whether he’s playing a killer or just someone everyone expects to be the killer.
They assembled a cast worthy of a “Death on the Nile” variation set in a fjord. But director and co-writer Simon Stone, who did a fine job with Carey Mulligan’s “The Dig,” is utterly at sea in this genre.
Rating: R, violence, profanity
Cast: Keira Knightley, Guy Pearce, David Ajala, Gigge Witt, Art Malik, Kaya Scodelario, Michael Morrissey, Daniel Ings, Paul Kaye, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Hannah Waddingham
Credits: Directed by Simon Stone, scripted by Joe Shrapnel, Anna Waterhouse and Simon Stone, based on a Ruth Ware novel. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:33
Austin North‘s a son on his way to his wedding, veteran heavy Holt McCallany is his ex-con dad, the only guy he can count on when he’s jumped in an Interstate rest area by goons who appear to be above-the-law local cops.
There’s a dog who gets hurt. There will be hell to pay, as there should be.
The latest from the director of “Run Hide Fight” is now streaming.
A bit conventional for A24, a post mortem love triangle involving the one she spent her life with and the one who got away.
Nov. 26, we figure out whom she chooses.
Trapped in Bro-town, the lone survivor of a corporate jet crash aside from sexist pig boss Dylan O’Brien.
McAdams revisits her inner Mean Girl in this one.
I’m SERIOUSLY digging the vibe from this Jan. 30 release.
Movie Nation 