Movie Nation

There’s value in taking on a first-rate villain. Ask Michael Keaton about that.

And what villainy could be more personal and relatable than an obnoxious “tenant” with “rights” who simply refuses to leave, and cannot be easily evicted? Remember Keaton in “Pacific Heights?”

The great François Cluzet of the downbeat French buddy comedy “The Intouchables,” the recent charmer “The Kitchen Brigade” and “Tell No One” makes a seething, loathsome impression in the deed-or-no-deed thriller “The Man in the Basement.”

He plays an older, down on his luck ex-teacher who gets a break from the owner (Jérémie Renier) of an unused basement space in the apartment he inherited that the teacher wants to buy.

“We trust each other,” Simon chirps (in French with English subtitles). He’s happy to have this property off his books. “You’re doing me a favor,” the new owner, “cleaning out my late mother’s place” and thus needing storage, agrees.

But it turns out, the guy’s mother died years before. It turns out, the “teacher” was fired for cause, for teaching disinformation to his history students. It turns out, the guy’s a Holocaust Denier.

Simon is Jewish. And he doesn’t find out any of that until a neighbor tells him “The man who bought the cellar slept in it last night.”

Thus begins an ever-escalating war of wills and struggle over “legal rights,” threats, “Pacific Heights” harassment with a hint of “Cape Fear” as the “teacher” gets in the head of not just Simon’s neighbors, but of Simon’s impressionable teenaged daughter (Victoria Eber).

This looks hilarious. Feb. 24 on Netflix.

Credit Belgian director and co-writer Lukas Dhont for knowing the one “special effect” his drama “Close” has going for it. Every chance he gets, he makes the audience lose itself in the mystery of his star’s limpid, boyish eyes.

As 12 year-old Leo, Eden Dambrine lets us see curiosity about the world, take in the carpet of color that is ground zero in Belgium’s world famous “floriculture” (flowers) industry, and deep affection and connection for his “BFF,” Remi (Gustav De Waele)..

They spend their days, their meals and many of their nights together playing, working the flower fields and bicycling, often ending those days with sleepovers. They are inseparable and mutually supportive.

But when school starts, the notice of their classmates affects Leo a lot more than Remi.

“Are you a couple?” (in French and/or Dutch, with English subtitles) is as tactful as any of their classmates get. The girls are curious. The boys are quick to grab hold of a slur.

As Leo turns touchy about this, his eyes let us see the fear, the fury and then the guilt as he decides to distance himself from his best friend, who is confused and then deeply hurt over a bond that’s breaking and a love — however platonic — that’s been taken away.

Dhont, who also did the ballerina-with-gender-dysphoria drama “Girl,” keeps everything asexual and innocent in this tale of what might be that moment of sexual awakening. Both boys are sensitive, but Remi, a promising young oboist, is the more sensitive one.

As Leo doesn’t articulate what he’s doing — perhaps neither has the words yet to express their feelings — Remi is shattered and bereft. An attempt to sever the bond of sharing a bed during their sleepovers devolves into a wrestling, shoving match because Remi’s mom (Émilie Dequenne) isn’t there to do what parents do, in Flanders, Fife or Philadelphia.

“Boys, use your WORDS!”

But Remi can’t find the right way to protest and complain through the hurt. And slight, soulful Leo, who bristles at slurs flung their way, starts to hang with the jocks and takes on youth hockey. He can’t find a way to insist on “boundaries” with a friend whom he starts to question thanks to the cruelty of a few classmates.

And as tightlipped as kids are, parents and school counselors can only know so much before a situation gets out of hand and tragedy strikes.

It was an Oscar field that seemed, if not set in stone, at least more or less sketched-in, the way “awards seasons” go. But then expectations were upset when the favorite, a Best Actress winner in years past, took her bully pulpit acceptance speech in an earlier awards show to herald a little-seen turn by an actress no one had been talking about.

Another Oscar winning actress turned full-time influencer also weighe- in.

And then, surprise of surprises, Andrea Riseborough comes “out of nowhere,” as they say, to join the field of five nominees when the Academy Awards voting was done and the nominees were announced.

The striking, English actress’s actress, noticed back in “Birdman” and acclaimed in “Brighton Rock” and “W.E,” so in demand that she was in everything from “Amsterdam” to “Roald Dahls Matilda The Musical” just last year, was finally given recognition and the spotlight for playing a Lotto-winning/Lotto-squandering alcoholic in “To Leslie” thanks to the efforts of sister actresses Cate Blanchett and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Colleagues took it on themselves to see to it that a wonderful performance in a movie that barely cleared $20,000 at the box office in the U.S. was recognized, taking the decision out of the hands of the frauds at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the nobodies of the National Board of Review, and the ever-growing TV, radio and online American-Canadian Critics Association.

Good for them, you think. Every entertainment award should be more in the hands of the people who do the work and recognize what it takes to be great doing it and less about “For Your Consideration” campaigns and lobbying, more Screen Actors Guild Awards voting and less how much Netflix, Disney, Apple et al want to spend promoting the work.

Then you see “To Leslie,” now available via Amazon Prime. And maybe you have to take seriously the blowback and shade fans and peers and activists are throwing at this turn of events, many of them insisting that this action “robbed” Oscar winner Viola Davis of a nomination for “The Woman King,” or more poignantly, Danielle Deadwyler of her moment in the spotlight for her moving performance in the riveting, important, timely and also-little-seen “Till.”

As a longtime fan of Riseborough, I’m happy to see her finally a part of this annual, self-congratulatory conversation. As the title character in “To Leslie,” she is transformed, an impulse-control trainwreck whom we meet years after she drank and “partied” through $190,000 and burned every bridge to friends and family she ever had.

Riseborough, like most actresses, is a beautiful woman, and does the classic “dressing down” that earned Charlize Theron an Oscar for “Monster” and joins a long tradition of plunges into alcoholism that earned Oscar notice, from “The Lost Weekend” to “The Days of Wine and Roses,” “Tender Mercies” and “Leaving Las Vegas.”

Leslie, “Lee” to the one or two ex-biker friends (Allison Janney, fierce as ever, and Stephen Root at his scariest) who still acknowledge her, is a wreck, an emaciated walking liquid-diet stick aged far beyond her years thanks to decades of abuse.

It’s almost shocking to see Riseborough as Leslie, her often-blackened eyes hollow sockets and hair reduced to a stringy blonde dye job that “grew out” months before. We are stunned by her commitment to the part, an Englishwoman who morphed into rural Texas honkytonk trash forced to come “home” to a place that remembers her and the bar where she won her Lotto ticket just six years before because she’s betrayed her now 19-year-old son (Owen Teague, Riseborough’s “Bloodline” co-star) one last time.

It’s great work, a top drawer performance. The film? It doesn’t move the needle, doesn’t improve on the many “rock bottom looking to climb out” tales that came before it and seems pat and pre-ordained in many of its story beats.

We catch Leslie’s peak moment, hooting and hollering “Drinks on ME” as she’s interviewed for a local TV story on her “big win.” And then “six years later” we see her stagger out of a bar, onto a bus and off it as Leslie summons her son to pick her up at a bus stop. She long ago ran out of cash, and now cadges drinks and lives hand to mouth, kicked out of her last apartment — her sweet talking pleas for help shifting to a profane tirade when neighbors and the landlord she hit up finally turn her down.

Her son James picks her up off the bus, her few possessions stuffed into a worn pink suitcase. His furtive phone call with the people who raised him has him admitting “I can’t smell it on her breath” and that “She’s not gonna hurt me,” with “again” implied.

Of course that’s what she does. The script spares no time at all in showing Leslie’s manipulations and “act,” James heading off to work and Leslie’s pleading smile turned to stern purpose as she rifles through his flat and his roommate’s belongings for cash to hit the bar just as “the shakes” set in.

That’s how she ends up where she started, not with the parents she blames for how she turned out, but with pals from her bars and booze “good times.” It’s just that Dutch and Nancy (Root and Janney) are done with her nonsense, too. They try to make her work, try to turn her around. But even if they’re probably barely functioning alcoholics themselves, or people who just “know when to say when” as they push 60, they have no tolerance for the trap that’s become her life.

One night of stumbling around — drunk and homeless — later and she’s even lost the suitcase. But the two guys who find it, running a rundown dive of a motel, could be salvation. Royal, the owner (Andre Royo of “The Spectacular Now,” another alcoholic drama) may remember Leslie as bad news. But Sweeney (Marc Maron) has a little compassion left in the tank. He charmingly tricks her into accepting what could be her last lifeline.

Feb. 10, a streaming service does a sort of “Bachelor/Bachelorette” set-up “couples” romance by parking the young and relationship-hungry in Paris, City of Light, City of Loooooooooove.

Looks different.

Wow. SO dumb.

Who wants to see Jennifer Lopez get married? Again? In a “Shotgun Wedding,” no less?

Kind of tasteless, too, right? I mean, who thinks a tropical wedding party taken hostage at a Filipino resort is promising fodder for comedy? Maybe my memory’s too long. At least they aren’t terrorists. Terrorists with bombs.

But watch the stars’ eyes, the exertion, how Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel throw themselves at this action rom-com nonsense. The running, the brawling, the shooting, the ziplining (with stunt assistance, no doubt), the motor-boating — get your MIND outta the gutter — almost make us buy in because THEY buy in.

Whatever our maybe-they-will/maybe-they-want couple decide on their nuptials, which seem on the rocks before the first grenade of “Shotgun” comes out, these two COMMIT to this comedy and put on a show for the folks. And they set the tone for the rest of the cast that gives this slicky, junky movie a shot.

Golden Globes MILF and “White Lotus” viper Jennifer Coolidge leading a wedding reception sing-along of Edwin McCain’s “I’ll Be?” Lopez, playing a lawyer who faints at the sight of blood in a “comedy” with more than a little blood in it? Screaming at a pirate that her fiance has just killed, “Sir, SIR! Are you DEAD?”

Yeah, it’s dopey, but fun enough you’ll want to stay with it through the credits.

Lopez is perfectly-put-together Darcy, about to marry never-quite-a-big-league baseballer Tom in a resort wedding done on a budget, with Tom doing the table settings himself and Darcy forced to wear Tom’s pushy mom’s (Coolidge) “lucky dress.” It’s a “big wedding” she didn’t want but he railroaded her into.

Her mother (screen legend Sonia Braga) is sniping about everything, including the presence of Darcy’s ran-off-with-the-yoga-instructor father (Cheech Marin). Dad was gauche enough to insist they invite Darcy’s dashing Peace Corps-era beau, Sean (Lenny Kravitz).

“He looks like he’s leading a PORN safari!” Darcy’s sister (Callie Hernandez) gushes.

It’s no wonder the couple-to-be is at loggerheads right before the ceremony. Perfect time for pirates dressed like road warriors to pull up in a commandeered dive boat and take everybody — except the bride and groom — hostage.

All Diane Keaton and William H. Macy need to justify an assignation, cheating on Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon, is a cheap motel, a bucket of chicken, a six pack, cable porn and no “Bible” in the room.

Cheaters have to have standards, after all — ground rules.

Gere and Sarandon, playing their spouses, met under other circumstances and started their own affair. And that was months ago.

Is it any wonder that these two couples, who don’t know each other as couples, raised a daughter who dreams of fairytale love that lasts forever and a son who hurls himself between his beloved and the bouquet she is certain to catch rather than face up to the Big Question? His and her parents are still wrestling with that, decades into their marriages.

“Maybe I Do” — the question mark is implied — is a beautifully cast and performed trifle of a rom-com. It’s about marriage and commitment, boredom and unhappiness, straying and guilt. But mainly it’s about a nagging doubt that the blush of new romance hides, but which might never go away.

“Are we living our best lives?”

The AARP-qualified leads — two Oscar winners among them — deliver snorts and cackles from the bitter, biting and cynical exchanges, rejoinders and petty humiliations they lightly fling at one another.

And then the young people these two unwittingly-connected-by-infidelity couples gave birth to, Michelle (Emma Roberts) and Allen (Luke Bracey) — quarreling, splitting up and yet still hoping for a Hail Mary — resurrect the face-flushing warmth of a dream worth clinging to, idealized love shared for a lifetime.

Writer-director Michael Jacobs, adapting his own stage play, has produced a clockwork rom-com, ticking over with a precision born of dialogue, situations and blocking polished on the stage.

It’s too on-the-nose, too tidy and entirely lacking an edge. But this cast delivering that dialogue? That’s worth checking out.

Compassionate Grace (Keaton) meets weepy Sam (Macy) at a showing of a melancholy subtitled Scandinavian romance about old age.

“I can’t satisfy my wife,” is his sad admission, when the fried chicken and sixpack fail to set the mood. They spend a night walking and talking instead.

The bloom has gone off the rose of the affair Howard and Monica (Gere and Sarandon) started. They’ve checked into a much nicer hotel. She’s in a silk robe and ready for some action.

“I’m naked under this,” she purrs.

“I’ll take that into consideration,” he grumps.

Her “I exist, and you hurt me” leads to a seething threat of “killing you” just when Howard least expects it.

“Nobody has to kill anyone. Time is doing a fine job of that.”

And just as these mismatched, timeworn couples are taking stock of the “taking stock” that made them want to stray, Monica and Sam’s son Allen dives for that bridal bouquet and humiliates “perfect” Michelle, daughter of Grace and Howard.

“It was the most awful moment in the whole history of women being stuck with you idiots!”

Can any of these relationships be saved? Should they?

“Life Upside Down” is a pleasant enough and appropriately downbeat “COVID Lockdown Comedy” of no particular consequence.

As there have been so many rom-coms set during the height of the “shelter in place” era, it’s difficult to find something fresh to say about the strain of being apart/being thrown together that someone else hasn’t put into release before, and that dogs Cecilia Miniucchi’s film, start to finish.

The presence of a first-rate cast, headlined by Bob Odenkirk, Radha Mitchell and Danny Huston, is a saving grace, and if not quite the only one, it might as well have been.

The director of the parking cops comedy “Expired” takes us into a sort of Woody Allen Lite scenario, a couple of cultured couples and a well-educated single woman/college professor cope with isolation and the strains it puts on relationships, legally-bonded or illicit.

Its setting — houses ranging from nice to tastefully swank — underscores how the Allenesque, casually affluent world managed to get by with work and income shut down but fine food delivered to their doors and Zoom calls anchoring their socializing and canoodling.

Odenkirk is Jonathan, an abstract artist quite hot for the lovely blonde academic Clarissa (Mitchell), and not just because she’s hooked him up with an avid, well-heeled buyer, Paul (Huston).

But Jonathan is married, something we only figure out AFTER he and Clarissa have ducked into an gallery office for a chocolate-covered-strawberry quicky the afternoon of his latest opening. Jeanie Lim plays his unsuspecting wife, mother of “the twins,” who are grown and off at college.

Paul, a colleague of Clarissa’s, is married to a much younger woman (Rosie Fellner), something Clarissa teases him about.

“Life Upside Down” puts these two couples, and lonely Clarissa, through the major disruption of masks, gloves, isolation and enforced “social distancing,” which Paul labels “this strange moment, this forced ‘domesticity.'”

A boy of about nine has been bitten by his mad dog, and badly injured. He has a seizure at the hospital and his nurse mother is wracked with worry. She rushes to his side when he he wakes up, only to find him sucking away at the plasma bag that was feeding into his arm.

Wow, you think to yourself. “Never seen THAT before.”

“Blood” is a sturdy, well-cast and superbly-acted thriller, a “Nurse Jackie” tale with vampiric leanings. It’ may be a genre picture, but it’s smart enough to send one to your favorite search engine to see what might explain what has infected little Owen, ably played by Finlay Wojtak-Hissong.

That’s what newly-divorced Nurse Jessica (Michelle Monaghan) does. She’s moved Owen and older sister Tyler (Skylar Morgan Jones) out to a farmhouse she spent much of her childhood in, and within a week, her son’s in the hospital and she’s doing online consulting with physicians to see what’s ailing him.

Because Jessica’s panic-stricken, and Jessica’s noticed something. What might her son’s seeming preference for “oral transfusions” indicate, Doctor?

Jessica can’t talk about this with anyone else. She can’t let Owen go to school, because as she figured out in the hospital, only one thing keeps his fever-spiking and flatlining at bay — “Blood.” Letting him decide where he gets it would be a mistake.

Skeet Ulrich plays the ex who took up with, impregnated and married the nanny — we’re not sure in which order. He wants a bigger share of custody, and that’s when this black and white situation turns grey.

Jessica’s hours and the nature of her work gave her the stress and access to start using drugs. And here she is, fighting for her kids with that ex, trying not to look or sound crazy or drugged, struggling to keep her little boy alive by stealing plasma, and knowing she and Owen “can’t tell ANYone” what’s going on.

Just spitballing here, but I’d say “custody” is very much up in the air here.

Will Honley’s script — he did “Bloodline,” so he’s found his niche — teases out who learns about this Type A predicament, and when. I really like the depiction of Owen as a headstrong, impulsive kid in early scenes, which makes “controlling” him and his cravings all the more precarious.

And you thought making your kid take care of her BRACES was tough.

Director Brad Anderson did “The Machinest,” an indie triumph for Christian Bale almost 20 years ago, and he takes his time with this, avoiding — probably to his detriment, considering the “horror” label — cheap scares and simple jolts.

“Blood” is a movie of family connections, motherly devotion and a dilemma that ranks right up there with “Sophie’s Choice.” It’s not overstating the case to say this has genuine heartbreak in it as Jessica faces one horrible choice after another, as a mother and a nurse.

Aside from a moment here and there in the Jamie Lee Curtis canon, I’m hard-pressed to think of another recent horror film that drew a tear and made the emotional connections “Blood” does.

It’s not high art or a great film, just a genre tale with a twist. And it’s a tad predictable, by the time that third act rolls around. But Monaghan and the kids sell the premise, and the movie plays.

Rating: unrated, bloody violence, profanity

Cast: Michelle Monaghan, Skylar Morgan Jones, Finlay Wojtak-Hissong, June B. Wilde and Skeet Ulrich

Credits: Directed by Brad Anderson, scripted by Will Honley. A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:49

Love for “Elvis,” less than expected for “Top Gun Maverick” and “Avatar: The Way of Water,” just my first thought–seat of the pants take on this AM’s Oscar nominations.

“Everything Everywhere all at Once” led all nominees, grabbing recognition on 11 categories. A bit much, but it’s a lot of fun.

“The Banshees of Inisherin” and “All Quiet on the Western Front” collected nine each.

“Elvis” has not left the building. Baz Luhrmann’s film took eight nominations.

As I feared, no women were recognized as Oscar worthy “Best Director” material this year. “Women Talking” was nominated for Best Picture, but not Sarah Polley. “Best Directors make Best Pictures” is the old rule, so one of the best movies in that field has little chance of winning.

Tom Cruise was thought to have a shot at Best Actor, Viola Davis a shot at Best Actress, Luhrmann another director passed over. “Till” and its star, Danielle Deadwyler of “The Devil to Pay” (Now on Netflix, WATCH it) unheralded. “Snubbed” seems a hard label to sell in a secret ballot popularity contest, but there you go.

Spielberg, McDonagh, the Daniels for “Everything,” Ruben Ostlund for “Triangle of Sadness” and Todd Field, the writer director of “TAR” are the Best Director nominees.

In my opinion, nominations for “Blonde,” (“Best Actress?”) “Bardo” (Best Cinematography) and anything for “Triangle of Sadness” were squandered on lesser — sometimes BAD — films.

I griped about “Fabelmans” as a spoiler a few days ago, and it copped director, score, Michelle Williams, Judd Hirsch, original screenplay and best picture nods, seven nominations in all.

The Best Picture field has blockbusters and art films and “Triangle of Sadness,” which was pretty much neither. “Elvis,” “All Quiet,” “Avatar,” “Everything Everywhere,” “Banshees,” “TAR,” “Fabelmans,” “Top Gun” and yay “Women Talking” made the cut. I’ll be pulling for “TAR” and “Women Talking,” but fine with “Everything Everywhere” or “Banshees” winning.

Colin Farrell (“Banshees of Inisherin”) and Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”) seem like the Best Actor favorites, but legendary character player Bill Nighy (“Living”), Austin Butler‘s breakout version of “Elvis” and Paul Mescal’s very fine performance in “Aftersun” got in there, too.

Cate Blanchett got Andrea Riseborough a Best Actress nomination for “To Leslie.” Cate did that. Critics Choice acceptance speech, Cate said “Make it so,” and damned if that didn’t happen. Tickled for Riseborough. Yeoh of “Everything Everywhere” and Blanchett are the favorites, but Michelle Williams (“Fabelmans”), Riseborough and Ana de Armas’s divisive turn as Marilyn Monroe in “Blonde” are in the field.

I love the idea of Angela Bassett scoring an Oscar, but for that work in a that middling comic book adaptation sequel? She’s up for Best Supporting Actress for “Wakanda Forever,” with JAMIE LEE CURTIS in “Everything Everywhere,” Hong Chau’s sensitive turn in “The Whale,” Stephanie Tsu for “Everything Everywhere” and Kerry Condon in “The Banshees of Insherin” rounding out the field.

It was a great year for actresses and prestige roles in nominatable pictures, and that field shows it.

A lot of craft guilds love for “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the big Netflix contender this year, a best picture nominee.

“Babylon” was recognized for score and costumes. Give “Everything Everywhere” the editing Oscar and be done with it, even though “Elvis,” “TAR,” “Banshees” and “Top Gun” are in that same field.

Great to see Brian Tyree Henry get recognized for a fine supporting turn in “Causeway.” Nominations for Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan from “Banshees” recognizes two very good character actors, and the fact that both are nominated makes literally everybody else the favorite. Judd Hirsch, a sentimental pick for a hammy but soulful turn in “The Fabelmans” and Ke Huy Quan, the actor all the fangirls and fanboys adore from “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” because the onetime child actor disappeared for 20 years and magically came back an Oscar-worthy performer.

Right.

I smell a Roberto Benigni disaster in that category.

There’s a terrific Best International Feature field, with “All Quiet” (also a Best Pic nominee) up against the donkey “EO,” Belgium’s “Close,” the quiet drama “Argentina 1985” and Ireland’s “The Quiet Girl” (in Gaelic) heading up a field that could have had a dozen nominees this year. Why nominate “All Quiet” in both? “Secret ballots,” no “organized” effort to prioritize one nomination over the other, etc.

Best Animated Feature has two Netflix movies, “Pinocchio,” del Toro’s Oscar favorite, and “The Sea Beast” recognized. “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” got a nod, with “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” and “Turning Red” pitting Dreamworks against Pixar, as usual.

The 95th Academy Awards and its scores of statuettes will be handed out on ABC TV the night of March 12.

For the complete list, go to Oscars.org.