September 9, SOME of will be taking a break from the relentless NFL and college concussion bowl coverage to check out this documentary about the rink and the young guys who hope for a better life, away from The Iron Range, thanks to their mastery of it.
Eveleth, Minnesota, Ground Zero in “Hockeyland.”
A “lost daughter” who grew up in poverty has her life changed — in ways good and bad — when her rich hotelier father “finds” her and takes her in in “The Entitled,” a lowbrow comedy of manners from The Philippines.
That’s the polite description of what is basically one long bodily function romp wrapped in the veneer of “a story with heart.” And diarrhea. And badly in need of a “Brazilian wax.”
Gauche and vulgar and gross and almost fitfully amusing, it manages the dated trick of mocking the poor “simple” people whose values it backhandedly struggles to embrace.
Alex Gonzaga of “Love the Way You Lie” and Mary, Marry Me” dresses down — WAY down — as Belinda, a dirty, smelly urchin tracked down by the attorney (JC De Vera of “Love is Love”) at the behest of the father (Johnny Revilla) who never knew her.
Belinda is to be cleaned up, taught manners, “trained” and brought into the family business. That earns her incessant social media pranking from her younger, spoiled new half sister (Andrea Abaya), patronizing indulgence from her stepmom/”Auntie Matilda” (Ara Mina) and a curious lack of attention from her ever traveling dad.
Naturally, not all is as it seems. Belinda’s dim-witted klutziness make her the perfect pawn in something more sinister.
Belinda blurts out whatever comes to mind, which can be as cute as “Is this all for US? Is this ‘The Last Supper?'” at a lavish spread, to misunderstanding, in a sexual way, every gesture and common expression uncommon to her.
Yes, “show her the ropes” can be taken as “dirty.”
Much of the intended humor comes from Gonzaga’s broadly playing every single moment, like a first year student in mime class. There’s also a steady, um, stream of bodily function/bodily jokes. Gorging on every food item put before her, spewing it out one end or the other, masturbation jokes, endless stomach-churning sound effects — even a spitting gag — pepper the script like dated slapstick rendered gross and new.
But funny? Wrestling with the mouthy maid (Melai Cantiveros) over an under-cooked steak ends up in SOMEbody’s face. Shocking. Well, maybe it earned laughs back in the days of silent cinema.
The lowest joke might be the only one that landed for me, a “Brazilian wax” sight gag that just keeps on giving.
The rest? Nothing to it.
Rating: TV-MA, innuendo, profanity, bodily function jokes.
Cast: Alex Gonzaga, JC de Vera, Andrea Abaya, Ara Mina
Credits: Directed by Theodore Boborol, scripted by
Noreen Capili. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:39
An action comedy with a whiff of “Gross Pointe Blank” farce to it and Brad Pitt and cultures clashing on a murderous train dash through the Land of the Rising Sun.
Sandra Bullock, Joey King, Zazie Beetz, Michael Shannon — quite the supporting cast.
This hits theaters shortly, and it’s such a big action deal that it merits an Imax — not Mini Max — preview screening.
It does look fun, and at least Pitt seems terribly entertained. It’s the next to last action “Beast” of the summer, so fingers crossed.
“The Stunt Man” was the first cult film I remember seeing.
Its storied pre-production history, years in the making, no studio wanting to distribute it until it won festival acclaim and played in Seattle (if I’m remembering the legend correctly) for three years prior to being picked up — didn’t keep it from eventually earning a decent enough release. But that agonizing creative process was a part of its lore by the time it hit a midnight showing at the Tanglewood Mall Cinema in Roanoke, Va., where I caught it with other public radio folks at the station where I was interning.
Long before Tarantino, this Richard Rush motion picture — made the old-fashioned way, on celluloid, on a shoestring, with a few big names getting it financed — was the ultimate movie-lover’s movie. Read the “trivia” on the film’s IMDb page to get a dose of the many actors lined up for it, the reason Steve Railsback of TV’s Manson Family mini-series “Helter Skelter” got the title role.
I’ve been on a lot of sets over the decades, and no movie more perfectly encapsulates the highly-competent chaos of film production on location. I dare say there are plenty of behind-the-camera-talents, many of whom I know, who were inspired by this movie, starry-eyed script supervisors and ADs and the like who just wanted to be a part of the impromptu family it takes to make a movie.
Watching it again for the first time in decades, a couple of things leapt out at me. The bravura opening, with a wanted man (Railsback) on the run, stumbling into a film shoot and ruining a shot that ended with a stuntman’s death — or at least disappearance — is notable for two things.
First, nobody played manic, wild-eyed and confused like Railsback. He not only played Charles Manson (in 1976), he went on to play “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” inspiration “Ed Gein.”
And second, man oh man can you tell this movie’s simple yet stunningly-dangerous camera helicopter sequences were shot three years before “Blue Thunder” and “Twilight Zone,” the film whose on-set accident killed Vic Morrow and two kids and changed what Hollywood was allowed to do with such aircraft. It’s as jaw-dropping to see these sequences — with film-within-a-film director Eli Cross (Peter O’Toole,in rare form) glaring quizzically out of the seat in front of the bulky 35mm Metrocolor camera.
Movies just aren’t made with choppers doing all that stuff, with real biplanes as opposed to CGI recreations for “Devil’s Squadron,” the symbolic and seriously anachronistic WWI drama that Cross and his cast and crew decamped to Coronado, Flynn Springs, La Jolla, San Diego and Sacramento to film.
.
Yeah, they look just Franco-German enough to work, Cough cough.
Railsback is chased onto this set and blackmailed into taking over the job and identity of the stunt man his intervention supposedly killed. The charismatic Cross — you can see how bloodshot O’Toole’s eyes are in every closeup — doesn’t make it sound like that. It’s “your, ass, it’s just like mine. Maybe I can save them both.” He doesn’t lose three days of this location by having to admit he lost a stunt-man, the cops don’t catch our unnamed man-on-the-lam, nicknamed “Lucky,” because he’s now “Bert,” the blond driver who supposedly drowned in a stunt car.
Barbara Hershey plays Nina, the director’s muse, ridiculed by the set hairdresser for her “love the one you’re with” ways, which bewitch naive “Lucky.”
Veteran character actor Phillip Bruns, who briefly played Jerry Seinfeld’s dad, was never better as the unflappable-but-time-pressed producer. Allen Garfield, billed as Allen Goorwitz here, is the screenwriter Sam, perhaps the weakest character coupled to the weakest performance here.
And actor, stuntman and stunt coordinator Chuck Bail plays a version of himself, forced to train the star’s new double, eager to please his director and to keep his protege alive, a real man’s man at home in his own competent skin.
Visit any film set, and male or female, the stunt folks are the most laid back, “brass balls” being a trait that’s gender neutral. Ask Zoe Bell.
Over the course of those three days on this location, our stuntman-in-training is hurled into death-defying gags, long rooftop chases shot in long takes, airplane wing-walking and the like. “Lucky,” first scene to last, never seems to know what’s coming next. He’s in a stumbling panic the whole time.
One thing he figures out, though. He’s disposable to this director. He’s sure Eli is trying to kill him.
“You never heard of movie magic?” Eli purrs, setting up this ask or that “faked” bit of business. But what “Stunt Man” recreates better than most any film about making movies ever has is the mania to “get it on film,” “the madness” of making a movie. ‘
Other movies — “The Player,” “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” — have topped the set pieces in “The Stunt Man,” and found bigger laughs on the set. But none can touch this 45 year-old movie’s sense of fun, a love letter to making movies on the fly, glorying in the messiness of it all.
Rating: R, violence, sex, nudity, profanity
Cast: Peter O’Toole, Steve Railsback, Barbara Hershey, Chuck Bail, Allen Garfield, Phillip Bruns, John Garwood and Alex Rocco
Credits: Directed by Richard Rush, script by Lawrence B. Marcus and Richard Rush, based on the novel Paul Brodeur. A 20th Century Fox release on Tubi, Shout! TV, Amazon, etc.
Running time: 2:10
Salons and barber shops, with their bitchy gossip, rotating cast of customer-characters and general jokey atmosphere are one of the most popular settings for comedies, no matter what culture you’re in.
The Brazilian “A Cut Above” centers around a Rio de Janeiro “favela” (working class neighborhood) shop, like so many in the movies “about to be closed,” and the efforts of a just-graduated teen son to save it.
It’s a shambolic film that bops about, parades through too many characters and far outstays its welcome, sticking around for a solid half hour past its dramatic climax. But it’s worth a look just to see favela life that isn’t depicted as an impoverished, violent tragedy but as a scrappy village of friends, competitors and underdogs all looking to get by.
Lucas Penteado is our talk-to-the-camera narrator, Richardsson, a cinematic trick that underscores how much this Rio lad looks like an “Everybody Hates Chris” era Tyler James Williams.
He sings the praises of the place, says “We all take care of each other” and then proceeds to show us how that might or might not be true.
His Mom (Solange Couto) has long run Saigon de Beleze, a beauty parlor that has seen better days. His dad (Serjão Loroza) died years ago, but appears to Richardsson — in a bright orange suit, a playful spirit who might intervene and guide him. Only he never really does.
His sister (Juliana Alves) is a college coed and a campus activist who, like his mother, expects Richardsson to matriculate.
And the gorgeous classmate he crushes on (Rebecca) kind of expects that, too, even though she’s involved with Cheese Curd, an about-to-break-big rapper.
Mom’s salon has lost its cachet to bombshell Greice Kelly’s (Hah!) place across the street. Greice (Jennifer Dias) is her own gorgeous best ad for her salon. Greice and Mom’s landlord are scheming to evict Mom and her two kids from Saigon because the rent is overdue.
And Richardsson has to decide, pretty much right now, his course for life. Law? Business? Cutting hair? Mom is sure a visit to a Santaria conjure woman will help him pick a career, but all she advises is that he buy a chicken and look to “Feathers” for guidance.
Three writers and co-directors Rodrigo França and Letícia Prisco pack the screen to its very edges with this colorful preacher, that old flame of Mom’s, customers, relatives, favela “militia” gangsters and the like. They don’t do much with any of them.
Try as they might, they can’t keep us from seeing — via Richardsson’s steady insistence — that he might be the “answer” to Mom’s money problems. Want to bet the word “viral” will enter into that? So they keep throwing characters at the screen to distract us.
It’s all good-natured enough (in Portuguese, or dubbed into English) if rarely — if ever — laugh-out-loud funny.
Rating: TV-MA, profanity, inuendo
Cast: Lucas Penteado, Solange Couto, Juliana Alves, Rebecca, Serjão Loroza and Jennifer Dias
Credits: Directed by Rodrigo França and Letícia Prisco, scripted by Marcelo Andrade, Anderson França and Silvio Guindane. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:31
Looks lovely, maybe CG assisted stop motion animation puppets?
Netflix this holiday season.
If a tidal wave of Christmas romances and parade of second-chance-at-love pictures were no giveaway, “Purple Hearts” should be the Netflix warning shot that makes its point.
“We’re COMING for you, Hallmark Channel!”
A marriage-of-convenience dramedy about a Marine who could use some extra “marriage allowance” cash and a diabetic singer who needs insurance offers up the promise of conflict between a conservative soldier psyching himself up for a combat tour and an immigrant’s daughter, pacifist and would-be pop starlet quickly sours in a screenplay that loses its nerve and leads who have no chemistry whatsoever.
Arguments about “entitled” feminists and the “casual misogyny” of a “bro” culture military begin over-the-top, and are abruptly abandoned. With one Marine blurting, We’re good enough to fight for your ass, but not to touch it,” maybe that’s for the best.
Screenwriters Kyle Jarrow and Liz. W. Garcia and director Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum skipped “Subtlety” day in film school. But not Schmaltz 101.
As they tell the story of waitress-and-aspiring singer-songwriter Cassie (singing actress Sofia Carson) and new Marine Luke (Nicholas Galitzine), everyone involved is charged with translating “Green Card” into a story of military insurance and benefits and “faking” a marriage until romance blossoms.
In leaving out the charm and the romance, and abandoning the picture’s “edge” to make it play for Hallmark Channel America, they pretty much blow it, even if scenes here and there work and deliver something like an emotional payoff.
Cassie and The Loyal — her band of waitresses and waiters — get the attention of Marines on leave in Oceanside, California. Cassie gets the attention of Luke, thanks to the fact that she’s not having this boys-will-be-boys grab-assing, and that she “used to babysit” Frankie (Chosen Jacobs), another Marine in Luke’s platoon.
The leads “meet cute” in a way that starts testy and practically leads to blows before they go to their separate corners.
But when Cassie ducks out to check her sugar levels in the parking lot, and take an insulin shot (“Type One”), we see her vulnerability. Not being able to pay for refills on her waitress/cover-band earnings, we get it. She’s facing a life-or-death medical problem that can’t wait.
An awkward “proposal” to old friend Frankie earns her a scolding from his son-of-an-M.P. pal Luke, “prison” threats and “scam” accusations. But then we see his vulnerability. Luke owes a low-rent mobster (Anthony Ippolito) money. Lots of it. He has a “past.” Cassie’s pitch just might work with him.
When they reach a bargain, we’re served awkward group scenes with his platoon, an awkward wedding and a seriously clumsy good-bye (after an abrupt night of passion), and he’s off. All she has to do is stay in touch, video call sweet nothings that the rest of his platoon sees, and get back to writing songs, only now they’re apparently inspired by Luke.
The character arc here is strictly Cassie’s, as the liberal “illegal alien’s” daughter comes to appreciate — slowly and clumsily — the sacrifice men in uniform make on this or that combat tour in the Middle East. “Purple Hearts,” from its very title, panders to corners of the country that hold military service in hallowed regard. Nicholas Sparks and others have gotten rich surfing America’s urban/rural/Blue State-Red State “sophistication gap.” Why not Netflix?
But most viewers, including me, will see through the movie’s ham-fisted manipulations and poorly-executed tugs at the heart strings.
Yes, a military funeral is all but guaranteed to draw tears. But every other emotion, every plot twist towards “love” and away from “convenience,” is handled so poorly you cringe.
Carson’s breathy singing voice is pleasant enough and very much of its time, even if the ballads she plows through here fit well only because so much of what surrounds them is also pure schmaltz.
Galitzine and pretty much the entire remainder of the cast achieve “adequate” in their best moments.
I wouldn’t have minded seeing a film wrestle with these real rifts in the culture, intra-generational gaps that have widened since the end of the draft. That sort of conflict could have set off real sparks and provided a basis for the chemistry our leads sorely lack.
“Purple Hearts” plays like a Cassie-gets-her-big-break wish-fulfillment fantasy with the whole fake marriage business, debts and medical issues and everything else mere afterthoughts.
Rating: TV-14, violence, sexuality, profanity
Cast: Sofia Carson, Nicholas Galitzine, Chosen Jacobs, Linden Ashby and Anthony Ippolito
Credits: Directed by Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum, scripted by Kyle Jarrow and Liz. W. Garcia. A Netflix release.
Running time: 2:02
A decent Thursday followed by a just-brisk-enough Friday ($9.3 million Thursday night/Friday) points to “DC League of Super-Pets” opening on the soft side of expectations — $23 million or so, per Deadline.com. Box Office Pro is still saying $25, and Exhibitor Relations thinks $24.
There’d been talk of a bigger “surprise” than this, as Warners’ previous DC cartoon outing (“Teen Titans” bombed), and a $30 million take with the talking critters toon seemed within reach.
It’s pleasant enough, and reviews haven’t been deal breakers. Most of them, anyway. But $23 will have to do. One piece of bad news? Exhibitor Relations notes that it cost $90 million to produce, cheap for an animated feature, but a long way from being something they’ll break even on.
“Nope” is tracking towards a $17-19 million second weekend, a 60% drop. The problem with “event” movies, as this one has been pitched, is they need an epic opening to drive later weeks’ business because everybody else wants to see “the movie everybody’s talking about.” It sat on the shelf, finished, during the pandemic, never seemed like an easy sell and the sale was always based on hiding its true nature from audiences.
Ticket buyers know the obvious “secrets” now, some of them anyway. It’ll do fine, when all is said and done. But it’s not a culture-shifting phenomenon like “Get Out” or a divisive debate creator like “Us.” I dare say a lot of people thought twice about seeing it based on a bad experience with “Us.” And Keke and Kaluuya aren’t “names” as far as the box office is concerned. She could be, after this. He’s not the most magnetic screen personality, and is far less interesting than he needed to be here.
“Thor: Love & Thunder” and “Minions: Who Needs Gru?” are dueling for third and fourth places, somewhere south of $10 million but above $5 million. “Minions” is well over $300 million, domestically, “Thor” should clear it by next weekend.
“Where the Crawdads Sing” cleared the $46 million mark by Thursday, its second week of release. Figures for its third weekend coming shortly.
“Top Gun: Maverick” will flirt with the $650 million mark, all-in (North America) by the time this weekend is over, and should cross that mark by Tuesday.
Focus Features released and forgot “Vengeance.” Sort of like my memories of B.J. Novak on “The Office.” Oh, he was on that? Nobody’s going to see it. Shockingly.
Sept. 9, a piece “inspired by true events” from Czech history hits screens.
Helluva cast. That Michael Caine just keeps going. No retirement for him. Treasure him while you can.
Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist” is dressed up as a modern day graffiti artist in the income-inequality London of today in “Twist,” a contemporary take on the tale which — our narrator/hero promises — “won’t ‘ave no singin'” or dancing.
And looking at the cast, the Banksy/Amy Winehouse era Carnaby Street-Revisited costuming, it’s easy to shout “Oy, you lot are ONTO something!”
Lena Headey (“300”) as a murderously mop-topped menace Sikes, Rita Ora as a sexy, swaggering artful Dodger, Jude and Sadie’s fit, handsome and youthful son Raff Law as Oliver “Twist” and Oscar winner Sir Michael Caine as a twinkling, scheming old rascal Fagin, with all the best lines?”
“We’re all ‘orphans,’ here.”
Dickens wasn’t really writing the first “caper comedy,” but you can see it in the characters, situations and structure of the novel and every adaptation, especially this one, with its recognizable rich “mark” (David Walliams) and ever-present legal interloper Bumble (Leigh Francis).
Make your hero a graffiti bandit infamous for “reaching places other people can’t” for his art/vandalism, throw in a little parkour, turn the tug of war over “Nancy,” tagged “Red” (Sophia Simnett) here, between Sikes and Oliver into something romantic and sexy, and the hard work is done.
This plays, and thanks to the lovely leads, dazzling costumes and high-class nature of the caper — art theft — it is easy on the eyes and practically skips by.
No, it’s not deep and lacks pathos or any emotional investment in the characters. And really, there’s nothing remotely surprising in the phone-hacking/security-cracking/painting switching plot. But what do you expect out of a 90 minute lark?
The wall-tagging spray-painter Twist falls in with Dodger, Batesy (Franz Drameh) and the gang after intervening in a near-arrest. He takes in their pilfered/pickpocketed vintage-clothing-boutique “club house” digs and it isn’t long before he abandons his rooftop tent camping and joins the mob.
Having a fellow parkour practitioner, the fabulously fit and beautiful Red, to “train” with is an enticement. But the sage Fagin closes the deal.
“An idealist, eh? ‘All property is theft?’ Ideals are useless, like an appendix. Cut’em out!”
Twist joins the “merry band” for a revenge heist, looting the illegal hoard or big time art dealer (Walliams, famous for “Little Britain?).
The lingering threat of the murderous Sikes hangs over the entire gang, with cops hounding Oliver and trying to “turn” him, Sikes standing in the way of his pursuit of Red and the like. The obstacles and “twists” arrive — preordained, right on cue and utterly unsurprising.
But it’s cute enough, with Caine lending it some charm, Law holding his own and Headey toting the “heavy” load. Call it a “bad movie” that plays, because that’s all this shoots for.
Rating: R for some violence and language (profanity)
Cast: Michael Caine, Lena Headey, Rita Ora, Raff Law, Sophia Simnett, Franz Drameh, Leigh Francis and David Walliams.
Credits: Directed by Martin Owen, scripted by John Warthall, Salley Collett and Matthew Parkhill. A Saban Films/Roku release.
Running time: 1:32
Movie Nation 