Sure, he’d have you believe that he’s ended his “retirement” to do a movie for a lad director named Ronan Day-Lewis.
But we’re not fooled. He jumped at the chance to play an old soldier haunted by his past with SEAN BEAN.
Samantha Morton also stars. Oct. 3.
The setting is forbidding, the political parable heavy-handed and human nature “inevitable” in “Eden,” Ron Howard’s dip into real history for a sociology lesson that can apply to today.
It’s an all-star rendering of a true story of Germans who tried to experience a new way to live on a tropical island — Floreana in the Galápagos Archipelago — during the Great Depression.
Despite having “It” girls Ana de Armas, Sydney Sweeney and Vanessa Kirby in the cast with Jude Law and Daniel Brühl, the Oscar-winning Howard found himself with a difficult-to-market survival tale, a movie possibly tainted by its reception at a Toronto Film Festival premiere, one that virtually no one wanted to distribute.
But the picture reaching theaters is a solid yarn, a well-acted and suspenseful thriller that covers well-worn “Lord of the Flies” ground about ugly features of human psychology that show up when “society” doesn’t smooth out the rough spots.
After the horrors of World War I, a Spanish Flu pandemic and with the Great Depression finishing off the Roaring Twenties, the philosphy-obsessed German physician Friedrich Ritter (Law) and his life partner, Dore Strauch (Kirby) set off to uninhabited Floreana Island to live simply and escape from society to a place where the Nietzsche-adoring Ritter could formulate a “new” philosophy that could save humanity from the doom he saw awaiting it.
He’s German. He’s seen what happened there and what’s brewing in the poisonous politics of the present. And given the second World War we all know is coming, he wasn’t wrong.
He sends letters talking up his philosophy and their contemplative vegetarian lives there which get published in newspapers and create an allure in “a world that’s gone crazy.” Maybe one can “get away from it all.” But whatever the purpose of his letters, he draws fans. “Eden” is about what happens when a family of them move to join them on the semi-arid volcanic rock they’re living on.
Heinz Wittmer (Brühl) is, Ritter decides, “a man broken by the war.” Scarred, widowed and recently remarried, Wittmer quit a civil service job, sold most of their possessions and brought young bride Margret (Sweeney), his tubercular teen son Harry (Jonathan Tittel) and their dog, along with supplies and tools, to live on the island near their idol.
Grumpy Ritter, resenting the distraction, directs them to one of the two tiny springs on Floreana, encourages them to set up housekeeping there and waits for them to fail.
“Life here is gruesome,” he warns them as he smirks to Dore, whom he’s claimed to “cure” of her multiple sclerosis in his letters. “Failure is inevitable!” As inevitable as the coming cataclysm back home, he figures.
But while the Wittmers may not be intellectuals, conjuring up a philosophy that will “save” the human race, they are prototypical pragmatists. With Harry getting some of his strength back in the hot, dry climate, Heinz’s muscle and Margret’s stoic practicality, they set up house and home and garden, tame a wild cow (left behind, like the wild pigs, wild dogs and Dore’s “pet” donkey, by passing sailors over the years) and do all this in a fraction of the time that the distracted intelligentsia managed it.
Ritter is barely adjusting to the fact that their failiure isn’t “inevitable” and that they may not take his “I’m no longer a DOCTOR” barks seriously when Margret gets pregnant when a boatload of other fans show up.
Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn (de Armas) is a flamboyant bon vivant with grandiose dreams of a “Hacienda Paradiso,” “the world’s most exclusive resort hotel,” which she will build on this “Eden” that the exaggerating doctor described in his published letters.
She’s got a South American “engineer” (Ignacio Gasparin) to help her start construction, and two lovers/helpmates (Felix Kammerer and Toby Wallace) to provide the well-digging, foundation-laying muscle.
Fat chance of that. They’ve been dropped off with a vast array of her luggage, lots of alcohol and canned goods, tents and a Victrola. But the good doctor pitched this place as a perfect setting for the “grandiose.” Maybe they’ll fit right in.
The baroness is arrogant, privileged, rude and manipulative. And those aides and “bodyguards?” We and the locals notice they’re wearing sidearms.
Let the “Lords” start lording over the “flies” and let’s see where this takes us.
This true story, complete with scandal, violence and political and social allegories built in, has been a part of popular culture — books, articles — in the decades since it happened. It could have inspired such film narratives as “Swept Away,” and it was the subject of a broadly-distributed 2013 documentary, “The Galapagos Affair.”
Howard and screenwriter Noah Pink (“Tetris”) set up a simplistic dynamic made for conflict, and let it play out accordingly. Stealing food and trying to set rivals against each other in a forbidding place with little survivable margin for error ensures that there will be blood. But whose?
The script and Howard, pursuing one last “dream project,” attracted a stellar cast and they do not disappoint. Law gives a fanatical edge to his dreamer. Kirby’s flintiness is channeled into an embittered, brilliant beauty, de Armas vamps and schemes and has never been more hateful and Brühl perfectly captures a pacifistic Everyman faced with neighbors who could cripple his family’s odds for survival.
And while this isn’t the movie that “made” Sweeney’s big screen career, it is her most impressive performance outside of TV’s “Euphoria.” She embodies the shrinking violet “hausfrau” who is no competition for the more vivacious, sexy and cunning other women on the island. Sweeney lets us see Margret’s pragmatism in her realization that everyone needs to get along. But while she may be steely enough to face childbirth amidst a wild dog attack (Whoa) alone, she is slow to figure out her trust in the doctor, Dore or the baroness is misguided.
Margret and to a lesser degree Heinz embody one message in all of this, that defaulting to kindness and mediating conflict is the way society should function. But the other lesson for life today here is the harder one to swallow.
There is no escaping fascism and the cruel creeps who embrace it. The utopian doctor may dream of “true democracy” inspired by a new philosophy. But the way of human civilization is “Democracy, fascism and then war,” he preaches. “It is INEVITABLE!”
That World War they all lived through wasn’t “humanity at its worst.” It was “humanity at its truest.”
“Eden” isn’t the subtlest allegory about life in troubled times, but Howard rarely makes a bad film and he hasn’t here. From its eyes-averting grimness to its eye-rolling obviousness and “inevitability, “Eden” is a parable that plays.
And whatever the box office prospects, nobody in this cast should run away from this resume credit. There isn’t a false note among them.
Rating: R, graphic violence, sex, nudity and profanity
Cast: Jude Law, Sydney Sweeney, Ana de Armas,
Daniel Brühl, Felix Kammerer, Ignacio Gasparin, Toby Wallace, Jonathan Tittel and Vanessa Kirby.
Credits: Directed by Ron Howard, scripted by Noah Pink. A Vertical release.
Running time: 2″09
Every thriller needs a good hook, and “Relay” has a doozy.
How can you protect your anonymity and preserve your identity in the modern surveillance state, when data harvesting, phone bugging and tracing has moved from the state into the private sector? How do you keep thugs of a corporate, criminal or governmental nature in the dark when there’s money and dangerous secrets you’re dealing with?
Our hero here has figured out the rules, tricks and arcane blind spots in the procedures of dying U.S. Postal service.
And he doesn’t just stop at a succession of burner phones when talking with people who would love to do him professional, personal or physical harm. He’s gained access to “relay” services for the hearing impaired. He can call in, have them complete the call — and then he types his side of the conversation with a corporate whistleblowers or the folks who want those whistles unblown. Nobody involved ever hears him, much less knows who he is and where he might be. That’s privileged communication.
So kudos for screenwriter Justin Piasecki, who gets his first produced script on the screen for coming up with this grand gimmick. And further congratulations for landing Riz Ahmed as his star, a sort of fixer, a non-violent “Equalizer” who stops intimidation and threats by people who hire heavies to keep their deadly secrets for them.
For much of the film, Ahmed’s unnamed (until the third act) fixer doesn’t speak. He communicates to those seeking his service via his Ameriphone dialogue phone, and for a long while we wonder if he’s playing another man with hearing loss after his powerhouse turn in “Sound of Metal.”
But no, this unnamed functionary is just very, very cautious. We see him communicate to a client (Matthew Maher), giving him precise instructions about how to hand off documents and a payoff from a corporate wrongdoer (Vincent Garber) in the opening scene.
A cute touch. They have to take a selfie together to seal the deal and ensure the threats will stop.
Our intermediary goes to great extremes ensuring his client safely makes his getaway. It’s implied that he probably provides his services to genuine do-gooders who expose those who endanger the public health by speaking out. But our “hero” isn’t a crusader. He’s a specialist getting paid by those whistleblowers needing protection, and money extorted from the wrongdoers they’re agreeing to not expose.
He’s anonymous to all involved, just a phone number with voice mail some lawyers have in case a client needs that kind of help.
Lily James is Sarah, a corporate scientist who saw an email pointing to cancer concerns in a new “fertile crescent” wheat varietal she worked on. She just wants the “harassment” to stop. She’ll hand over whatever documents she has if her former employer will “just leave me alone.”
Her car was set on fire. A quartet of corporate goons (Sam Worthington, Willa Fitzgerald, Pun Bandhu and Jared Abrahamson) are brazenly stalking her and staking out her apartment.
Sarah’s worries start to ease as she’s sent new phones, carefully detailed instructions and places to ship her documents and cash via these relay calls.
“Do not contact them yourself,” she’s told. “Do not respond if they contact you.”
He will do the talking, via text. He will threaten them with exposure, a bit of leverage that has lost much of its sting in our lawless, paranoid age.
The early acts in this David Mackenzie film — he did the terrific “Hell or High Water” — crackle with intensity and the quiet competence of a character who knows his tradecraft. Our “Equalizer” is always a step or two ahead of the bad guys, wearing disguises, sending Sarah traipsing through airports to sniff out who’s pursuing her and throwing them off the scent.
Even the more melodramatic turns in the story have a logic to them that works its way into the latter acts as we learn the guy’s name is “Ash,” that he’s in AA, that he’s smitten by the good-looking scientist who sees him as her savior and who wonders if he’s “lonely.”
And Ahmed, poker-faced start to finish, puts us in this guy’s shoes and in his head when his best laid plans are derailed, his “control” is shattered and his identity endangered. It’s another great character turn by a star who’s gained his leading man status the old fashioned way — by giving one raw, layered and compelling performance at a time.
Rating: R, violence, profanity
Cast: Riz Ahmed, Lily James, Sam Worthington, Will Fitzgerald, Jared Abrahamson, Eisa Davis, Matthew Maher and Victor Garber
Credits: Directed by David Mackenzie, scripted by Justin Piasecki. A Bleecker Street release.
Running time: 1:52
The dog days of summer cinema occasionally produce a gem.
“A Constant Gardener” was an Oscar winner that came out in late August, after all.
Maybe it’s “A Little Prayer,” opening next weekend. Austin Butler has an action comedy next week as well. Or maybe a Riz Ahmed/Lily James thriller or a Ron Howard period piece parable opening today is a sleeper.
Is our Oscar winning director facing the Rob Reiner fall-off that most marquee names deal with at some point or other? His latest being released by Poverty Row distributor Vertical in one of the deadest cinema weekends of the year is a bad sign.
“Where you come from doesn’t matter” when it comes to doggy obedience trials. Does it?
Jai Courtney, Deborah Mailman and Jack Thompson are the big names in the cast of this Down Under family film, with Craig Silvey writing a script based on his children’s novel.
Lily LaTorre is the child who finds the dog. But the character named “Runt” is billed as played by Kirk Hammett? Of Metallica?
“Coming Soon” from Samuel Goldwyn.
“Or Something” is a not-half-bad indie romance in the “Before Sunrise,” “In Search of a Midnight Kiss” tradition.
Two strangers are thrown together for a long day of trying to collect a debt. They talk and talk and try to make or avoid anything like a “connection” as they do.
Insights about their characters, pieces of their histories tell each other and us how they met at this Brooklyn apartment and why they have to take on this Quixotic quest from Broolyn to Harlem, home to “Uptown Mike” and their money.
Defense mechanisms go up and come down, kneejerk prejudices are offered up and swatted down, all folded into a day of generally engaging subway ride chats, diner discourse and walks through a nearly empty park mere days before Christmas.
Olivia (Mary Neely) meets Amir (Kareem Rahma) as they’re both heading for the same Brooklyn apartment. We’ve just seen her selling clothes to raise cash. He’s fighting some sort of family fire via cell phone.
As he’s walking in the same direction, just a few steps behind her, he earns a New York “Hello.”
“I will f—–g TASE you!”
Relax. He’s going to see Teddy. So is she. He lets her possibly racist hostility slide. Her “Sorry” is almost sincere enough to warrant it.
She needs cash that Teddy “owes” her. So does he. They both want the exact same amount — $1200. “Synchronicity?” Maybe. But Teddy (Brandon Wardell), in a wheelchair, his foot in a boot-cast, is all about deflection and distraction.
Couldya REFILL my Big Gulp? I could “write you an IOU on the IOU.”
Teddy’s manipulative. Teddy’s privileged. What New Yorker would trust Teddy to give them the time of day, much less money?
Surely they know that “your money is with Uptown Mike” is a dodge. No, Teddy can’t give you Mike’s exact address. No, he won’t give out the man’s phone number. There’s an excuse for why Mike has no social media presence/photo for them to look at.
Mike’s a “private dude?” Sure.
But off the two of them go, as beggars can’t be choosers and each appears to have some sort of cash-starved deadline. She wouldn’t talk at all, but she burns out her phone’s battery playing Sudoku on the subway. And when Olivia does converse, her attitudes, gender dogma and generation blurt out in a single sentence.
“Guys are only nice to the girls they want to have sex with.”
Amir’s reassurances to the contrary fall on deaf ears. Citing all the social media blasts from women who don’t “want to be approached” at work, in the gym, in the park or in the pubs and clubs is why “I just don’t talk to girls in real life.”
They have a day to work past this impasse, an afternoon fraught with confrontation (David Zayas plays the anti-gentrification crusader with a baseball bat, Uptown Mike), confession and confirmation bias.
A second tradition built into this project is the “Write a script you can star in” make-your-own-break ethos that sees Neely (“Happiness for Beginners”) and Rahma, who was in a couple of episodes of “Poker Face” cook up this story built around all this conversation, New York locations and two story arcs to follow, all of it divided into time-check chapters with cutesie titles riffing on the film’s title.
“Like 2…or something.”
The characters are interesting and the conversation, ranging from one’s “everything is connected” reason for being respectful, acting with kindness and morality to anecdotes about different cultures’ reactions to death and Istanbul as “the hair transplant capital of the world.”
But Neely and Rahma and director Jeffrey Scotti Schroeder find a light tone, a “vibe,” and then betray it in an effort to “explain” this or that behavior and worldview. The ending feels plausible but not “true” to the spirit of the film.
A lot of this feels screenwriterly, which makes Brandon Wardell‘s repellent, self-absorbed and unaccountable douche-bro poster child Teddy entertaining, but the sort of character who only exists in screenplays.
Our leads, however, make these New York “types” wholly believable.
And you have to credit “Or Something” for doing what it sets out to do — introduce two characters who neither they nor we would pay any heed, and make us interested in their lives and invested in their quest, hoping for the best from Teddy, Uptown Mike or an ending we can live with.
Rating: unrated, profanity, smoking
Cast: Mary Neely, Kareem Rahma, David Zayas and Brandon Wardell
Credits: Directed by Jeffrey Scotti Schroeder, scripted by Mary Neely and Kareem Rahma. A Factory 25 release.
Running time: 1:21
Fiftysomething, a contractor, and “I’m eligible.”
“Eligible for what?”
He’s “like a 59 year old ‘Rudy.'”
Mary Stuart Masterson and Rob Corddry co-star in this version of the true “redemption” story of Mike Flynt, which was finished a couple of years back.
Faith-based or at least faith-adjacent Angel Studios has this one, which comes out Sept. 19.
The director of “Longlegs” and “The Monkey,” Osgood Perkins, parks Tatiana Maslany (“Stronger,” the “Perry Mason” remake) and another son of Donald Sutherland in his latest, which arrives in theaters just in time for the holidays (11-14).
The horror. The horror.
The director of “Conclave,” the presence of Tilda Swinton, a gambling milieu and a veteran player’s descent into madness?
Fala Chen, a whiff of the gambling Mecca of Macau. Because Vegas isn’t the only gaming city with a fake Eiffel Tower in it. Is it?
In Theaters, Oct. 15, Netflix streaming Oct. 29.
Phoebe Dynevor, Zoe Deutch, Madeline Brewer, McKenna Grace and Dylan O’Brien also star in an edgy thriller about Her son’s new girlfriend, Mom’s scary ex-student.
“We don’t always know what our children are capable of.”
This new thriller from the Polish director of “The Hater” hits theaters Oct. 29.
Nice little bit of counter-programming for Halloween from Lionsgate, a big break for villainess Dynevor and another showcase for Diane Lane.
Movie Nation 