Well, tonight’s scheduled screening of “Bones & All” got canceled because the publicist who handles that title is in Miami, even though Orlando and Tampa theaters won’t be closed by a tropical storm that blows a bit and rains a bit. Guess it was just easier to cancel them statewide.
So I’ll catch up with this Focus Features under promoted James Gray “personal” movie instead.
No quiet quitting for me.
Not every “mystery thriller” needs to have much of a mystery about it to work. But none can get by without that “Eureka,” aka “Oh (snap)” moment. And in “The Good Nurse,” that’s a doozy.
This true story, with some minor alterations, provides an acting showcase for two of the best, Oscar winners Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne. They both play nurses, but only one of them is “good.” And the “aha” here is when one figures out how the other one is killing patients in their hospitals, and has done so in hospitals all over Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Danish filmmaker Tobias Lindholm, who gave us “The Hunt” and “Another Round,” serves up a slow, deliberate story of empathetic caregivers and CYA-fixated hospital administrators, of a nurse who has become an angel of death and of dogged cops who struggle to make a case when they’re being stonewalled by the institutions where these deaths happened and continue to happen.
Chastian is Amy Loughren, a single mother of two with the overnight shift at her hospital and a secret she needs to keep for a few more months. Amy has a dangerous heart condition, and she won’t be covered by her employers’ insurance until she’s been on this job for a full year.
She is, in many ways, nursing’s ideal — talking to the coma cases, comforting family, bending the rules to make a bad situation a little easier.
Charlie Cullen also calls patients by their first name, also seems to go the extra mile when it comes to compassion. He learns Amy’s secret and he keeps it and pitches in to help her finish her trek to the “insured” finish line.
“I’m gonna help you get through this.”
But we’ve seen a “code” he was involved in at a previous hospital. And when a patient he and Amy share on their shift dies as well, we — if not she or anyone else — can do the math.
Veteran character actor Noah Emmerich and Nnamdi Asomugha (“Sylvie’s Love,””Crown Heights”) enter the picture as two cops summoned, by state health dept. mandate, to investigate what the euphemism loving “risk manager” (Kim Dickens) labels “an unexplainable incident.”
Somebody died. The hospital did a mortality report, and now, almost two months later, they’ve had to inform the police.
“The Good Nurse” has two villains — a killer and a parade of (mostly unseen) corporate suits who cover up the deaths. The film is about catching one and trying to work around or confront the other.
Administrators circle the wagons, cops lose their tempers and the title character struggles to reconcile what she’s going through, her judgement of the friend and colleague with what she’s learning.
Redmayne gives us a “quiet type” version of “the banality of evil,” not giving much away, even in the eyes. Lindholm spends little screen time showing his point of view.
Chastain has more to play and makes her character’s conflicts empathetic and understandable. This guy is saving her life and her job. He can’t be…or can he?
The police procedural element of “Good Nurse” is the most potentially riveting, and damned frustrating. But justice has proven to be a slippery thing in America in recent years, with lawyers flinging up road blocks and villains running out the clock so that even good cops can’t nab the guilty.
Lindholm’s patience with this material kind of outlasts ours. There needs to be more flesh on the bone to justify the two hour running time. The dead spots show.
And with an accompanying documentary also coming out, we can judge for ourselves if there were opportunities missed in giving the feature film treatment to this notorious case.
Rating: R (profanity)
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Eddie Redmayne, Kim Dickens, Nnamdi Asomugha and Noah Emmerich.
Credits: Directed by Tobias Lindholm, scripted by Krysty Wilson-Cairns, based on the book by Charles Graeber. A Netflix release.
Running time: 2:03
The band Lord Huron has produced, I guess, this trippy feature film inspired by their album “Vide Noir.” And for the record, the music’s pretty cool, kind of twangy “Twin Peaks” ethereal, unmoored in time, fitting for a pseudo-psychedelic film noir set in 1960s LA.
The movie? It’s best summed up by the phrase “interesting failure.” It has a great look, some striking scenes, a pretentious, pedestrian story that crawls by performed by something short of the most compelling cast every assembled.
Too mean? Hey, I’m a big David Alan Grier fan, too!
Victor Mascitelli plays Buck, a mop-topped young man who wakes up woozy and filthy, lying in the dirt amidst the detritus of whatever was in his 1967 Chevy Impala — a map, a pocket knife, a Voice-o-Gram 45 rpm disc that he recorded with his best gal back home in Detroit.
As Buck has awakened in the dark in the dust on the edge of the desert outside of LA, we can guess the story without the need for any hard-boiled film noir voice over narration.
There’s a dame. Her name is Lee (Ashleigh Cummings). She’s a singer. And in over-edited quick-cut flashbacks, we hear her wondering if Buck is ever going to get her out of Detroit.
News flash — he didn’t. News flash — she left. That’s how he wound up in LA. And we’re guessing, that’s how he got himself beaten up and left for dead, “Black Brained” into a near stupor by the mob guy who got Lee’s attention and got Lee studio time to cut an album.
The narrative takes us through the events that led to this dumping in the dust, sections of story given chapter titles — “The Emerald Star,” “Whispering Pines” etc., mostly taken from Lord Huron song or album titles — because that’s something Tarantino did and every green screenwriter figures it’s the only way to organize a script.
Buck bumps into a psychic, assorted thugs, a mobster who notes his name “sounds like the stuff legends are made of,” a ’60s street gang banger, musicians and even a dead singer that he hallucinates as fronting a band he’s listening to in a not-quite-swank nightclub.
He picks up clues. And he keeps hearing about this hot new drug, “Vide Noir,” the best way to escape, “obliterate the self,” all that jazz.
Buck’s the sort of anti-hero who takes a licking and keeps hunting down Lee. Buck’s a guy who’d never roll into LA without his old hunting rifle in the back seat, or that buck knife in his pants in case he gets clobbered and locked in the trunk of his own Impala.
The best scene has him crashing a recording session set up for Lee, pretending to be a replacement player and not even trying toftake his way through reading sheet music or playing his learn-by-ear acoustic guitar. The Great D.A. Grier is the session producer.
But even that scene plays as flat, under-developed and kind of amateurish. Mascitelli’s IMdb page is all “additional crew” and “camera and electrical equipment” credits, which is obvious from his performance.
Without a compelling, believable lead, someone who can come off as naive and out of his depth, but who just might have inner resources he calls on to “save my Lee,” give us emotions showing he longs for her, fears for her and faces down his own fears to find her, “Vide Noir” devolves into some pretty set pieces that might grab the eye and set up as classic genre moments, but wither and die thanks to the performances.
The production design is cool, the cutting and staging are sharp. But the movie that comes out of all that doesn’t play.
So maybe I’ll give the record a listen.
Rating: unrated, violence
Cast: Victor Mascitelli, Ashleigh Cummings, Kanya Iwana, Todd Stashwick and David Alan Grier
Credits: Directed by Ariel Vida, scripted by Ben Schneider. A Yellow Veil production, a 1091 release.
Running time: 1:36
She’s a veteran of the Afghanistan occupation, recovering from problems physical and mental, finishing up physical therapy for one, taking “‘don’t shoot yourself in the head’ kind of medicine” for the other.
He’s a sad-eyed mechanic with a prosthetic leg.
They’re just two broken people dealing with hurt, loss and grief in the town she couldn’t wait to get out of, the one that’s home to his every memory, good or bad — New Orleans.
“Causeway” is an intimate, downbeat character drama that pairs up Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry of “Widows” and TV’s “Atlanta” for a story of reflection and regret and the slim chance of making a connection that might lead each out of the hole they’re trapped in.
Not a lot happens, and some of what does is predictable in that “This is the point where the conflict kicks in” formulaic indie drama sort of way. But it’s very well-acted and its somber tone gives it heart and gravitas that the leads cash in on, time and again.
Lawrence is Lynsey, whom we meet in a wheelchair, somewhat shellshocked and in the care of a kindly widowed retiree (Jayne Houdyshell) who took up home nursing, and taking in patients, after caring for her late husband for years.
“What a miserable life” is all unfiltered Lynsey can blurt out when hearing that.
She’s got physical therapy to master, and memory issues and other PTSD symptoms. It takes time just to get her to a point where she can go “home.” And when she gets to the house she grew up in, her got-the-date-wrong mother (Linda Edmond) isn’t at home, telling us this is how Lynsey was raised — indifferently. Lynsey is “back,” but only for a “visit.” She can’t wait to get out…again.
It’s only when she borrows the family’s ancient pick-up that she meets someone she’s willing to have a conversation with. That would be James, the mechanic who looks over the aged, under-maintained Chevy Scottsdale she’s limped in with under a cloud of smoke.
James has a limp, too. He’s compassionate and easygoing and “interested” in ways that may go beyond the fact that she’s beautiful. She’s finally got someone she can talk to without opening the chat with her condition. And he gets to have a conversation with an attractive, smart and pretty woman.
The chief virtue of this Lila Neugebauer film — she directed the fine Netflix series “Maid” — is how lived-in these characters feel. Nobody takes on a N’awlins accent, but Lawrence has little trouble finding her way back to working class in this role. Her line-readings have a dry, flat quality that make us wonder what’s happened to Lynsey, what drained her and made Lynsey how she is.
Henry’s easy-going way with a line, a gesture or a suggestion from somebody else keeps him near the top of Hollywood stars most anybody’d love to have a beer with. James responds to someone he can have a sensitive conversation with like a man relieved of a burden. He, like she, has “secrets” and pain that we can see even if we don’t know the specifics.
It’s a little surprising that it took three screenwriters to conjure up what connects these two — a city and the shared music and history that comes with it. Somebody figured out she’d need to grab the first job that presents itself — cleaning pools, and found things to do with that. Somebody else probably figured out James’ real agenda.
“Causeway” is slight but immersive, warm with the occasional chill and engaging in ways two very good actors can manage with just the barest bones of a story and a scattering of secrets to give away, one pained revelation at a time.
Rating: R (profanity), smoking
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Brian Tyree Henry, Linda Edmund and Stephen McKinley Henderson.
Credits: Directed by Lila Neugebauer, scripted by Otessa Moshfegh, Luke Goebel and Elizabeth Sanders. An A24 Film on Apple+.
Running time: 1:34
The “Black Panther” movie in which we say goodbye to the character as he once was and the actor who played him might rightly be expected to be a journey through grief.
But while Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” manages some grace notes and touches on some of the way stations of such a journey, it’s much more concerned with new threats, greater violence, world expanding and new eye candy. This is “fan service” that isn’t as much service to the fans as you’d expect.
The most moving remembrance of the late Chadwick Boseman is in the re-configured Marvel comics flip-book logo at the beginning of the film, something echoed — almost as an afterthought — in the finale.
Boseman’s loss may hang over this impressive, grim and bloody sequel. But his spirit is sorely missed in a movie that’s never less than heavy going, even as it delivers big action beats above and below the sea, testy confrontations in tight close-up and realistic underwater footage that might get an approving nod from no less than James Cameron, should he deign to check it out.
We don’t really get to mourn Boseman/Black Panther, not in any emotional way. A funeral service in a forest, a procession that is an attempt at African upbeat (New Orleans without the brass bands), a bit of the Queen’s speech here, a mention there. The catharsis of grief is missing.
And nobody in this cast, working with this “show something new” sequel even gets to attempt to provide the lighter touch Boseman brought to this universe. Without that or grief, the film plays as kind of flat, lacking highs or lows that move us or move the needle.
All the futuristic medicine at Wakanda’s and Princess Shuri’s (Leititia Wright) disposal cannot save the stricken, off camera King T’Challa. The loss is acknowledged movingly but briefly by his mother, Queen Ramonda. A brief funeral, a brisk procession and the realization that this isn’t enough cannot allay the grief or force the film to take the time to address.
A Black Pantherless Wakanda is under threat. The Americans (Richard Schiff), French and others at the UN let the tiny but all-powerful kingdom know how much they covet the magical mineral in this Marvel universe — vibranium.
“You perform civility here,” the Queen hisses, warning that Wakanda will “protect our resources.
But there might be another source of the vibranium. Lake Bell plays a scientist running a deep sea drilling project whose possible strike of the Mother Lode is interrupted when they’re attacked from beneath the waves.
Mermaids sing a siren’s song, luring workers and commandos to their deaths. Mermen and Merwomen spill blood without hesitation.
When the world assumes Wakanda did this to protect its monopoly, Shuri and General Okoye (Danai Gurira) must get to the bottom of this act of war and deal with the hitherto unknown Atlanteans and their leader, Namor (Tenoch Huerta of “Sin Nombre” and “The Forever Purge”), hear their story, figure out their beef and decide whether these menacing mer-Mayans are friend or foe.
Finding somebody to give Wakanda an evenly-matched foe to struggle against in this sequel was always going to be tricky. Bringing in The Sub-Mariner (never so-named here) and his pre-Colombian/escaped-the-Spanish civilization expands this corner of the Marvel universe and embraces — just enough — the broader racial representation that made “Black Panther” not just a hit, not just a cause, but a phenomenon.
But I doubt we see the Wakanda end zone and post-dunk salutes that spread of their own accord when the first film came out.
And while Huerta is striking and wonderfully menacing in the part, there’s little about this addition to the franchise that suggests this inclusion will be any sort of cultural draw.
Truth be told, the movie’s just not much fun. No, funerals aren’t supposed to be, but even that feels neglected in the script’s dogged march into war and showing off new Wakandan tech and its Atlantean counter-tech. The conflict seems contrived, more something “we need for this movie to have an impetus” than anything that feels particularly organic.
If you cast Julia Louis Dreyfus as the CIA chief and even she has trouble finding an intended laugh, that’s on you. And the CIA agent played by Martin Freeman fares no better this time out.
Wright is solid but less than wholly inspiring as the willowy princess who must carry the mantle of the franchise, something that doesn’t seem a huge problem until you throw her into scenes with Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o, who is gifted with more screen presence and gravitas. Bassett is at her fiercest and Winston Duke the only lighthearted player in the lot.
Dominique Thorne plays the pawn in this new struggle, an American college kid/Wakanda fangirl whose inventions are allegedly triggering all this new strife. Aside from the character’s “Macguffin” like function in the plot, she is simply here as a surrogate for the audience, a “fan” who gets to mix it up in Wakanda’s latest struggle. Pausing to admire her vintage Dodge Challenger might be fan friendly, but it’s one of many ways this picture finds to stop and clumsily restart.
Pacing is something of a problem, as Coogler has to zip from location to location and always give us a long screen graphic — first in Wakandese, or Atlantean script, then tediously translated into English — to identify Haiti, the Yucatan Peninsula, etc.
As I’ve mentioned in many reviews of films of this ilk over the years, this isn’t my favorite genre. Unlike the somewhat better “Black Panther,” this installment was always going to be more somber thanks to the loss of its star. What the film lacks is the will to make that loss heartbreaking.
Rating: PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, action and some language.
Cast: Angela Bassett, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Martin Freeman, Julia Louis Dreyfuss, Richard Schiff, Lake Bell and Lupita Nyong’o
Credits: Directed by Ryan Coogler, scripted by Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole, inspired by the Marvel Comics characters. A Marvel Studios release.
Running time: 2:41
This latest taste of a murder mystery set during a murder mystery weekend plays up the ensemble more than Daniel Craig. Norton and Janelle Monae and Kate Hudson and reaction screams from Kathryn Hahn, Bautista…they all get their moments. .
Of course it looks fun.
Nov 23 on Netflix.
Every filmmaker hopes to get a rise out of her or his audience, to provoke us in some way or other, push our buttons.
So writer-director Zach Koepp can take a bow for achieving that, at least, with his debut feature. I started out exasperated and settled into a seething rage over the 73 minute long miscalculation titled “The Willowbrook.”
A soft-spoken, under-acted, near-whispered “thriller” that does no credit to the word or the genre, it’s about a cultish “influencer” who lures her “followers” to a remote estate house in the middle of winter, people who need to “heal” and “trust the process” on their way to a “transformation.”
Then she drugs them and won’t let them leave. Apparently.
Lacey (Jessica Bishop) likes things very quiet, and “loses it” when there’s noise. She needs silence as the backdrop to her online affirmations about “trusting in the flow of life.”
So there’s a reason for how quiet everybody is, the dull monotone of line-readings. As you can imagine, that makes for a serious insomnia cure of a movie.
Jordan (Erin Day) has been invited to The Willowbrook, owned by Lacey Willowbrook, after an overdose. Her also-orphaned “brother” (Lawrence J. Hughes) comes along for support. But Ace doesn’t question Lacey’s diagnosis of “co-dependency” with Jordan. He accepts quarters up the hill, away from the big house, at The Farm, where the creepy, trigger-happy “muscle” in this operation, Dakota (Chris Boudreaux) holes up.
The film’s opening scene is a woman (Jay White) fleeing across the snow in her bare feet and pajamas. It’s also pretty quiet — save for a gunshot. We meet the mute guitar player (Kyle Klein) and see Lacey lie to family members who come looking for missing “guests.”
What exactly is going on here? What’s the villain’s motive, the play here? How could that help her online business? Can you grow a cult by kidnapping and drugging people with no financial benefit? Who will break free of the medication and control of Lacey to stage a (probably quiet) rebellion?
Pitching almost the entire movie as a whisper is a disastrous decision for a seemingly simple thriller like this. The movie has no real highs or lows. Everyone is passive save for Lacey, who pegs the shrill meter a time or two in the third act.
Scene after scene frustrates, partly for failing to advance the plot, mostly for just slowly spinning its wheels and lulling the viewer to sleep.
The film’s title is either a bizarre coincidence of an unfortunate choice. An infamous state school for mentally disabled children by that name “Willowbrook” was the big break expose for a once crusading reporter named Geraldo Rivera, and has been the subject of films and books over the decades.
Very little happens at this Willowbrook, and almost nothing happens that’s interesting. And what does happen generates no response because no one raises his or her voice, there’s no rising suspense or management of anything resembling tension.
Which makes one wonder how this trifling misfire got picked up. Might young Mr. Koepp be related to the more famous Koepps of Hollywood, New York, etc? Can’t seem to easily nail that down, unlike this movie, which begs for a stake of holly and an unmarked grave.
Rating: unrated, violence, profanity
Cast: Jessica Bishop, Erin Day, Lawrence J. Hughes, Chris Boudreaux, Christian Olivo, Marc Sudac, Kyle Klein and Jay White
Credits: Scripted and directed by Zach Koepp. A Gravitas Ventures release.
Running time: 1:13
“Bar Fight!” is an 84 minute long break-up “Who gets custody of ‘our‘ regular bar?” comedy that hits the wall at about the 30 minute mark.
Writer-director Jim Mahoney did the offbeat friends playing-a-game comedy “Gatlopp,” sort of “Jumanji” for grownups. That was more original and funnier, with more going for it than this one.
Take away that “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” Rachel Bloom, who takes-no-prisoners as the mouthy, mean BFF of our heroine, and this would be a “Bar Fight!” that never lands a punch.
Nina (Melissa Fumero) and Allen (Luka Jones) are cheerfully running a Venice yard sale when we meet them. She’s an attorney playing hardball with the hagglers, he’s a “chill” furniture maker serving toddies to everybody who buys something from them.
They’re splitting up, and it’s as amicable a holiday breakup as can be…without a prenup.
There was no argument over the furniture of giant screen TV. But when Allen and his biz partner Milan (Julian Gant) knock off work and hit The Martinez Lounge, of course they run into but Nina and her married-with-two joy-sucking little girls pal Chelsea (Bloom).
“Who gets to stay ‘regulars’?” Much of the staff — bartenders (Shontae Saldana, Daniel Dorr) the scary cook (Dot-Marie Jones), the “pacifist” bouncer (Patrick Byas) — has an investment in who wins. Not the manager (Vik Sahay). And probably not Autumn aka “Florida” (Hope Lauren), the new “actress” waitress from Tampa.
“What goes in a Cape Cod?” “It’s just a vodka-cran(berry juice)!” “Why didn’t they just SAY that?” “Welcome to Los Angeles!”
We get just enough of the staff’s different personae to figure we’re in for a “Waiting…” style riff on the working stiffs in a Venice bar, when “the competition” is dreamt up for Nina and Allen to decide “custody,” and with a vengeance.
The staff throws the feuding couple into “The Big Wheel Race,” “Blind Man’s Darts,” “Human Bowling” and a game to see who can get the “most phone numbers” from members of the opposite sex by closing time.
The games are a lot like that first contest, the Big Wheel (trike) race through the bar, gags played at half speed.
Only the “phone numbers” bit finds much that’s funny, mainly from Bloom’s hilarious riffing on this jerk Nina has to hit on, or that one.
“I feel like we’re in some ‘douche’ ‘Who’s on First?’ time warp!”
The leads are supposed to make us invest in hoping they can work things out, or at least get really ugly as the games heat up. Nothing doing.
Mahoney is on safer ground with the assorted gonzo “types” in the bar, the pushover manager who can’t even talk an older woman into not stealing their copper “Moscow Mule” mugs whenever she comes in, the charming bartender with great people skills and great “game” with the ladies, and zero ambition, that scary cook, the customer who pretends he’s an agent to cadge free drinks…
And then there’s Bloom, the “sidekick friend” living vicariously through her vivacious unattached pal and more than a little manic about it.
She’s funny. “Bar Fight!” isn’t.
Rating: unrated, alcohol abuse, profanity
Cast: Melissa Fumero, Luka Jones, Rachel Bloom, Julian Gant, Patrick Byas, Shontae Saldana, Vik Sahay and Dot-Marie Jones.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Jim Mahoney. An IFC release.
Running time: 1:24
Movie Nation 