This remake of the Norwegian dramedy “A Man Called Ove” looks as adorable, which is not quite what I remember about the original film. Bitter softening into less bitter is what I recall. But Tom Hanks is just too cuddly for that to come off.
A limited release on Christmas, opening wide in early January.
Peyton List is among the stars of this “We’re young and we’ll be friends forever” thriller.
Nov. 11.
A former government wracked by criminality, a fascist coup and a country divided between a majority crying out for justice and a dogmatic minority who won’t hear of it, “facts” and “evidence” be damned.
America, 2022? No, “Argentina, 1985.”
Argentine director and co-writer Santiago Mitre’s engrossing, nervous film takes us back to the troubled days just after Argentina’s latest military dictatorship ended, when fears of violent reprisals or even another coup hung over a new administration and a justice system pondering whether to prosecute the leaders of the military junta who presided over mass kidnappings, torture and murder, “crimes against humanity” in the name of “saving” a country from leftist influence and unrest.
Mitre (“The Summit,” “Paulina”) recreates the unease that lapses into paranoia of the prosecutor fated to take on nine of the most powerful men in the country in a legal move unprecedented in human history — civilian authority taking “genocidal” dictators to court. And Mitre finds the dark humor in that situation in his anti-heroic protagonist, the prosecutor named Julio César Strassera, but who also goes by a nickname — “Loco,” aka “Crazy.”
What makes this skewed take on the man work is Mitre’s choice as star. Ricardo Darín might be the most famous screen actor in Argentina, and with “The Secret in Their Eyes,” “Nine Queens” and “Truman” among his credits, he’s certainly the most accomplished. This is Mitre’s third film with him. He brings just the right blend of determined seriousness and martyred paranoia to a nervous man about to try a case as the whole world watches.
In 1984, the film opens as the nation’s highest court is deciding whether or not to try the nine men who took over the country and taught the world the Spanish phrase “Los Desaparecidos.” That’s they called the women and men snatched by the military’s right wing death squads to be imprisoned without trial, tortured and often murdered — “The Disappeared.”
We meet “Loco” as he’s dodging calls from the bureaucrat who appointed him and accusing questions from his wife (Alejandra Flechner) and tweenage son (Santiago Armas Estevarena). Threatening calls are coming to his house, his wife is baiting him with the accusation that he’s “afraid” the justice system will make him pursue this case because he’s been in the job for years, and never got out of line and took action when the generals and admirals were in charge.
“I won’t be the moron picked to be the face” of a sham trial, he fumes (in Spanish with English subtitles). He might be afraid of “the most important prosecution since Nuremberg.” But he’s damned certain that the high court and justice system won’t have the nerve to prosecute.
His son is trying to figure out if Dad’s worth idolizing. And Julio/Loco is most worried that his teen daughter (Gina Mastronicola) is being seduced by a “spy” from “the services” (the military) sent to “get to me through her.”
As the judicial system decides to proceed and the old friends he figured he could count on as his “team” chicken out, a young assistant prosecutor (Peter Lanzini) shows up, “assigned” to him. And once Julio’s gotten past Luis Moreno Ocampo’s youth, his ties to the military and the well-heeled, fascist-sympathizing rich, the young guy becomes an invaluable sounding board about the optics of this case as they dicker over how to proceed and consider just who in this divided country they stand to win over in court.
A staff of eager and idealistic young lawyers is brought on board via a cute and jokey hiring montage. They’re not needed just for their energy and enterprise as they will be the ones chasing down witnesses, case files and evidence. It is their generation who needs to be convinced this is important. The televised trial, and TV chat show appearances might help make that case.
One of the greatest Argentine movies ever was “The Official Story (La historia oficial),” a so-fresh-the-wound-was-still-bleeding 1985 drama about the covered-up extrajudicial killings. More recently, there’s been a gripping documentary about the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the parents of the “disappeared” who started silent public protests in Buenos Aires which unraveled the legitimacy and the support for the dictatorship as they doggedly pursued answers about their missing children and justice for Argentina.
Mitre’s script, co-written with Mariano Llinás, takes care to bring in those mothers, who along with the UN and Organization of American States, took pleas compiled evidence about what was going on in Argentina during its junta and the junta’s “dirty war.”
The mothers and some of the witnesses are shown greeting the case with biting sarcasm about the years nothing was even attempted on a legal front to account for the missing and start accusing the murderously guilty.
All of which informs the character Julio, who no doubt feels guilt over not doing more (he himself might have “disappeared”) and still can’t be as glib about this dangerous and historic undertaking as his wife and kids, who shrug off the ugly phone calls.
“It’s just a threat, Dad!”
Darín brings a befuddled, twitchy energy to “Crazy” — chain-smoking, eyes-darting, fretting over what might happen and yet refusing police “protection” because the cops were in cahoots with the junta. Julio exchanges taunts with the smug, smirking and “patriotic” defense attorneys, and all but flips out over the tricks the defense uses to stall, delay and smother justice before it can be adjudicated and served. The pressure gets to him in serious and amusing ways.
But “Argentina, 1985” earns its gravitas from the gripping testimony of those who survived kidnapping, or who witnessed it. And while the closing argument might not be “To Kill a Mockingbird” poetic, it is blunt and moving, its usage of the simple yet inspiring “never again” standing as a challenge to anyone shrinking from the duty of pressing on with a case, under great duress and in a violently divided land, to bring the criminally powerful to justice.
Rating: R for (profanity)
Cast: Ricardo Darín, Alejandra Flechner, Peter Lanzani, Santiago Armas Estevarena
Credits: Directed by Santiago Mitre, scripted by Mariano Llinás and
Santiago Mitre. An Amazon Studios release (now streaming on Amazon Prime)
Running time: 2:20
This one is quite timely, and is due out Nov. 1.
The great gift that “Black Adam” offers casual comic book filmgoers is the chance to experience a lesser-known character in a less familiar “universe,” a film you can take in with few expectations.
We know Dwayne Johnson’s in it, and dude is credibly bulked-up and superheroic, just in his street clothes. Aside from that, and the fact that the man’s been hyping the hell out of this for years, we’re walking in with a blank slate.
It has that DC cinematic universe look — soundstagey, filtered lighting, Marvel on an overcast day. B-movies-on-an-A-picture-budget filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra (“Orphan,””House of Wax,””Jungle Cruise”) is behind the camera. Let’s see what they come up with up.
Not much, as it turns out.
It’s a jumbled, cluttered “origin story” whose opening scenes have a “Conan the Barbarian” look and feel. The rest? “Shazam!” with a staggering body count, a jokey, murderous action epic of confused loyalties and uninteresting characters, dull performances and Dwayne Johnson spending a lot of time proving Rocks can fly.
Between “Conan” and “Shazam!” there’s an Indiana Jones interlude, a quick bit of poking around in a ruined ancient crypt, cuneiform-reading clues and intoning an ancient summons to bring a Middle Eastern nation’s ancient “Champion,” “Teth-Adam,” to life.
Kahndaq is an ancient land, the world’s sole source of Eternium (Did James Cameron come up with that, or steal it for his “Unobtainium?”) which led to the people being enslaved to mine it. A young slave strikes a blow to free his people, and vanishes in a flash 5,000 years ago.
A modern day academic Adrianna (Sarah Shahi) is hunting for an ancient crown made from Eternium and containing the magic of six demons, because as her skateboarding son (Bodhi Sabongui) notes, “We could really use a superhero right about now.”
Kahndaq has fallen under foreign occupation as multi-national mercenaries and those who hire them exploit their resources. Asssorted villains want that crown, too, chiefly Ishmael (Marwan Keznari) we figure out is a heavy the moment we see him. There’s nothing subtle, mysterious or nuanced in this film. It’s as obvious can be, which contributes to the mind-numbing dullness.
Summoning Teth-Adam (Johnson) gets the attention of the world’s Justice Society, competing for attention with the Justice League, the Avengers and The Evolution Revolution, no doubt.
These movies — and this isn’t just a DC adaptation problem, although theirs do a worse job at hiding it — are just feeding on each other now, repeating themselves ad nauseum. The result is stunningly-decorated tedium, as boring an experience as any sentient cinema-goer’s going to have at the movies this year.
Pierce Brosnan is Dr. Fate, Aldis Hodge is Hawkman, Netflix “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” hearthrob Noah Centineo is awkward Atom Smasher and Quintessa Swindell is the windswept Cyclone. These members of the Justice Society are sent by the non-nonsense Waller (Viola Davis) to calm the situation in Kahndaq, “peace keepers” who do nothing about the oppression and exploitation that was the reason a desperate Dr. Adrianna summoned the unstoppable killing machine Teth-Adam in the first place.
“Good guys don’t kill people,” Hawkman lectures the out-of-control Adam.
“I’m not a good guy.”
The film’s attempts at the “Shazam!” jokey tone are largely provided by Adrianna’s kid, Amon, who coaches Adam to take on a whole “Man in Black” persona. Adam, glimpsing a Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western on the kid’s TV, hears him out. “Catch-phrase, THEN kill them!”
“Tell them that the Man in Black sent you.”
There’s a lot of exposition early on, telling us the prehistory that created Teth-Adam. I was somewhat engaged in the opening slave rebellion scenes, but this fiasco fritters that attention away in a flash, losing itself in an endless series of brawls, shootouts with Black Adam catching the bad guy’s bullets, Black Adam flying and Black Adam crashing through walls because “I suppose you didn’t have doors” in his life, five thousand years ago.
The acting is indifferent, save for the teenager, who has no screen presence and must have been hired for his skateboarding skill rather than any acting training. I hate picking on kids, but he is “Phantom Menace” level awful — dead line-readings, literally wilting in front of the camera.
The best thing in “Black Adam” might be the hairstyling. Brosnan, Swindell and some others have screen-saver-ready locks. Johnson? He’s bigger than we’ve even seen him, and balder.
This picture is Johnson’s baby, talked-up and hyped for years before the cameras finally rolled. Apparently his towering ambition is to get one more franchise on his books while he’s still got the clout to do it. This was a mistake, and it’s all on him.
The cut-and-paste writing and lackluster direction are the main failings. There’s little to this that you’d call a “story,” even less “story” that makes sense. At one point, Black Adam is entombed, locked away, willingly submitting to authority in the service of the greater good, only to be released in the very next scene. Pointless crap like that is scattered throughout this script-by-committee screenplay.
I guess that’s to be expected in any movie whose real catch phrase is “A bad plan is better than no plan at all.”
Rating: PG-13 (Sequences of Strong Violence|Intense Action|Some Language)
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Sarah Shahi, Aldis Hodge, Quintessa Swindell, Noah Centineo, Marwan Keznari and Pierce Brosnan
Credits: Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, scripted by Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines, Sohrab Noshirvani, based on the DC comic book character. A Warner Brothers/New Line release.
Running time: 2:04
This November film release on Amazon Prime promises a lot of Ugly American behavior in the UK for Bell’s half-sister’s posh nuptials.
Cynthia Addai-Robinson (“Lord the Rings: Ring of Power,” “Chicago Med”) is the sister, Black and British.
Ben Platt is the brother — gay. Quite a stretch for the Evan Hansen of “Dear Evan Hansen.”
Looks like a party. Tony Goldwyn’s in it, so I guess that cinches it.
Nov 4, let the caller and host cat-and-mouse game begin.
As long as there are movies to be made, there’ll be fresh versions of the hoariest thriller plot of all, the one based on a short story with a pun in the title.
Man/human beings are “The Most Dangerous Game.”
“Hunted” was titled “Hounded” (better title) when it was released in the UK. It’s another story about the inbred and entitled rich hunting their fellow humans for sport, another variation of Richard Connell’s classic short story from 1924.
Like every adaptation, it has its unique twists and touches. But this Tommy Boulding tale is depressingly straightforward and generally lacks the urgency of people being chased to death and the menace of upper class twits on horseback dressed for the hunt and dressed to kill.
This time, it’s a gang of young London robbers who find themselves trapped, taunted and released by the family that owns the gigantic and ancient rural brick pile, The Redwick Estate.
Leader Leon (Nobuse Jnr), his getaway driver little brother Charlie — “That’s CHAZZ!” (Malachi Pullar-Latchman), lockpicker Vix (Hannah Traylen) and East European muscle Tod (Ross Coles) figure they’ll do — say it with me — “One Last Job” for their antique-shop owning fence.
But it goes “pear shaped” as they say in Jolly Olde, and they find themselves hogtied, driven into the middle of nowhere, and lectured by the Redwick matriarch (screen veteran Samantha Bond, who played Moneypenny when Pierce Brosnan was 007).
“This country,” she intones, “used to have a natural order…the rulers, and the ruled.”
These impudent breaking-and-entering commoners have upset that order. The four thieves are left on their own, with a lot of questions they need the answers to.
“Why did they let us go? Why did they wish us luck?”
On hearing the sound of a distant horn, the thunder of hooves and baying of hounds — “I thought they banned fox hunting.”
“They did.” Wait for it. Wait. Wait. “RUN!”
Interestingly, the class consciousness has always been a subtext of the “Game” story, although many films avoided that because the filmmakers/producers were afraid of pointing out how the robber baron rich would just as soon kill us as let The People exercise power.
Decades of “Well, there’s no sense letting them label us communists” thinking prevailed in Hollywood if not everywhere.
Here, it’s introduced and joked about but somewhat lost in the search for inventive ways to kill the hunted and clever twists that let the prey become the predators.
As I mentioned at the outset, there’s a serious lack of menace among the horseback riders. They have four servants working with them, so they may have access to guns, but only carry “ceremonial” knives with them. Damned if I couldn’t overcome an old man, an OAP-aged woman, a daft 50ish father or his skinny inbred punk son. Maybe not all at once, but one on one.
The hounds, tails a-wagging and whatnot, come off as big ol’boo-boos and not killers baying for blood.
Some of this is rectified for brief moments, but the overall feel is of a chase that has low stakes until we see our first victim killed.
Bond gives fair value as the most entitled of the entitled, a woman with lots of miles and plenty of resentment for her inferiors.
“”This country used to be ruled by lions. Now it’s led by LAMBS.”
The rest of the cast? Adequate to a one. That doesn’t quite go for the picture, which has a fine moment here and there, and begins and ends well enough.
It’s all the not-that-scared slow-walking-escape that kicks off and finishes off the middle acts that blow this “game” before it really gets started.
Rating: unrated, violence, profanity
Cast: Samantha Bond, Malachi Pullar-Latchman, Nobuse Jnr, Hannah Traylen, James Lance, Nick Moran, Ross Coles, Louis Walwyn and James Faulkner
Credits: Directed by Tommy Boulding, scripted by Ray Bogdanovich and Dean Lines. A Saban Films release.
Running time: 1:34
Is the setting France? The character names are French, so probably.
Jason Patric and Judd Hirsch also star in this WWII drama.
Nov. 11 this streams and hits VOD.
There’s a stately, old-fashioned gentility to “My Policeman,” a period piece romance from the days when homosexuality was “The love that dare not speak its name” in the United Kingdom.
It’s the sort of tragic gay melodrama that stood out in many a fall film festival in Toronto and New York, not quite Douglas Sirk era guarded and 1950s oblique, but something that would have been considered sexually “daring” as recently as Todd Haynes’ homage to Sirk, 2002’s “Far from Heaven.”
As dated as it is, I expected the source novel to be antiquated, and not a relatively recent publication. The story arc has a familiarity and the tropes trotted out are tried and true. Seeing Linus Roache as a sexually-conflicted retiree here reminds us he first gained notice playing a tormented and closeted “Priest” back in 1994, and the presence of Rupert Everett pays tribute to his role in making gay characters mainstream, and the career price he paid for being out and the leading man roles he probably lost, handsome as he was in his youth.
All of which is a way of saying that this overfamiliar and somewhat predictable tale from the 1950s (and today) has value. At a time when gay rights are under renewed assault at home and abroad, it’s worth remembering “the bad old days” and the rippling pain of relationships that could never be, and the hurtful, stifling influence of “the norm.”
A very old man (Everett) is delivered, by wheelchair, to a home by the sea in Brighton. A retired school teacher (Gina McKee) is taking him in, and gets cursory instructions on how to handle him. “No cigarettes,” no matter how much he badgers you, for starters.
Is this some program in which the public is paid to take in the elderly and infirm? Are they related? No to both.
The fact that her retired husband Tom (Roache) has turned to long dog walks along the sea-lashed breakwater rather than meet this failing old man speaks volumes. They have history — all of them.
In flashbacks, we meet Marion (Emma Corrin) just as she’s finishing school and about to start teaching, and Tom (Harry Styles) as he’s just finished his military service and started police work. They meet through a friend of hers, and she is quite taken.
Tom is kind, considerate and curious, a “copper” who would love book recommendations from Marion. But just as they’re starting to become a couple, he introduces her to a museum curator (David Dawson) who’d love to give them a private tour.
Tom met him at work, and the cultured, worldly Patrick becomes a third in their couple — inviting them to recitals, proffering tickets to the opera, leading them in restaurant sing-alongs. He’s the life of the party, a tour guide to life on a higher place. He’s also a third wheel. Her friends think the educated Patrick might be smitten with Marian. She’s sure Tom’s the one for her.
As Patrick is setting off the viewers’ gaydar, the question the picture asks becomes “How did Marian find out, and when?”
“My Policeman” backtracks to Tom and Patrick’s meeting, which is a cliche. And it fills us in on clues Marion is given and misses or grasps, colleagues she confides in, as this “third wheel” enlivens their cultural and social lives, but who invites himself for a visit at the country cottage where Tom and Marion honeymoon.
As I type that, I am wondering anew what publisher took on a typescript that is this far from the social/sexual cutting edge — in 2012. Perhaps there is subtext that the film adaptation lacks. Then again, Bethan Roberts went on to write an Elvis novel (“Graceland”). So maybe not.
Director Michael Grandage did the nicely-realized publishing period piece “Genius,” in which Colin Firth played the Golden Age literary editor Maxwell Perkins, who made Fitzgerald, Wolfe and Hemingway legends. “My Policeman” shares that film’s attention to character and setting, and its quiet tone, with flashes of melodrama and splashes of not-quite-explicit sex.
The cast is also quite good. I wasn’t wholly on board the Harry Styles as cinema star bandwagon with “Don’t Worry, Darling.” In this period piece, he leans into his still boyish looks (grease on the celebrated forelock) and plays up the character’s lack of sophistication but desire to acquire it. He works in the part.
Corrin, who played Princess Dianna on “The Crown,” strips away a half century of sexual sophistication playing a wife of the one of the last “the last to know” generations.
Dawson, who was the skinny, over-matched and yet cunning King Alfred in TV’s “The Last Kingdom,” has an Alan Cumming vibe about him — “dashing,” worldly, sophisticated and not boorish about it.
There are but glimpses of the closeted gay life of the era — the furtive back-alley assignations that begin in the one gay bar in town, brutal police abuse.
The film’s core is the war of wills that emerges, competing agendas, everybody selfishly wanting what’s best for themselves. Marion and Patrick are destined to be hurt. But what about Tom? Who gets to be selfish, who faces consequences?
As familiar as much of this can seem, the players draw us in and make us invest in it. Even if the resolution is entirely too pat and emotionally lacking, the mere casting of the legendary Everett, the quintessential “Gay Best Friend” in “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” McKee (“Notting Hill”) and Roache, most recently a regular on TV’s “Vikings” and “Homeland,” gives the present day scenes the weight they need to work, even if that part of the story is given short shrift.
They ensure that whatever its shortcomings, “My Policeman” is never less than watchable, a frustrating romance from an era when same sex love affairs were, by law, bound to frustrate, curse and wound the lovers. Remembering that simple fact, and that this wasn’t that long ago, has value far beyond what might be just another gay romance with “tragic” undertones.
Rating: R, for sexual content (nudity)
Cast: Harry Styles, Emma Corrin, Gina McKee, David Dawson, Rupert Everett and Linus Roache
Credits: Directed by Michael Grandage, scripted by Ron Nyswaner, based on a novel by Bethan Roberts. An Amazon Studios release.
Running time: 1:53
Movie Nation 