“True story,” the cusp of the 19th century, Dahomey, a power in pre colonial Africa, an Oscar winning star, a sometimes good director needing to redeem herself after that Netflix bomb “Old Guard,” this September 16 release looks promising but of course this could go either way.
A November awards season contender from a marquee director. Think it might be good?
That Menace 2 Society TikTok has created another distraction that’s birthing a mini-uproar.
Teens are dressing up in suits and ties and the like and showing up, “Men in Black” attired, to “Minions: The Rise of Gru.”
They’ve created an online TikTok “cult,” as a sort of game. A mock cult based on an animated comedy whose heroes speak and sing in gibberish? OK. Fine.
Seems harmless enough on its surface, right? But some theaters and chains are seeing “disturbances” in these repeat-viewing flash mobs. In the UK and the US, this copycat behavior is being banned from cinemas. Not sure if the kids are acting out and acting up in theaters, as this seems unclear.
If it was just young white males showing up en masse at daytime screenings of a child’s cartoon, I could totally see this ban. If you’re not a little freaked out by any odd white teen boy behavior these days, you’re not paying attention. Mass shootings, anyone?
Parents complaining at teenagers messing up their experience of taking their children to a CHILD’S movie is not unreasonable. And if the teens playing at this are indeed creating “disturbances” of another sort, sure. Ban them. Theaters have shut down screenings of movies that draw gangs on the fear that rival gangs might show up.
And if you want to carry on with your #gentleminions, do it at night. Any parent dragging their tykes to see “The Rise of Gru” after 9 or 10 seems less likely to sweat a few well-dressed nerds nerding out over a very funny movie.
Who doesn’t love a good hoax? The audacity, the cheekiness of the hoaxer, losing yourself in the question of whether or not you’d have the nerve to try “Inventing Anna,” to attempt becoming “The Phantom of the Open,” much less the confidence trickster of “Catch Me if You Can,” makes such stories irresistible.
What about a hoax where the stakes are much lower, so low as to seem “just the most bizarre thing,” making those victimized by it ask “What would POSSESS someone to do that?”
“My Old School” is about a 32 year-old Scotsman who enrolled at a just-elite-enough Glasgow private school, inventing an elaborate back story and lying on the fly to explain his look, his past, his unwillingness to produce a birth certificate.
When it all came out the press labeled him “The Peter Pan of Bearsden Academy.” But some of his less kind classmates were onto something when they taunted this early ’90s enrollee with the nickname of a recently-broadcast American TV series — “thirtysomething.”
The movie is one of those what’s real/what’s fake documentaries — Orson Welles invented the genre with “F for Fake,” half a century ago — a film that presented unique challenges that encouraged a unique solution.
The 32 year-old who called himself “Brandon Lee,” same as the then-recently-deceased martial arts and film star and son of Bruce Lee, agreed to be interviewed for the film, just not on camera. So the director talked the Scottish stage and screen star Alan Cumming to come in, master the guy’s lines and lip-synch the picture, every line “Brandon Lee” speaks acted-out by Cumming.
Filmmaker Jono McLeod got many classmates and a few surviving teachers to sit down for interviews. And for the flashbacks, he hired animators to recreate the early ’90s school and pop culture in the style of that early MTV hit “Daria.”
The resulting film is a fascinating mystery, a weird case study and an unalloyed delight.
Part of the joy of it is how amused the former students — who went on to become an actress, a mixed-martial arts fighter, a pharmacist, a chiropractor and so on — seem to be at having been fooled, and at how the snobby school was utterly buffaloed by this stunt.
There are any number of places this story could have turned sinister — a secretive, sketchy grown man mixing and mingling with high school kids, impressing their teachers, stealing their thunder and starring in the class musical (It sounds like Cumming sings the animated snippets of “South Pacific”).
The play required an on-stage kiss between “thirtysomething” and a 16-year-old classmate. “Icky.”
But the deeper we get into this documentary, the more we learn about this fellow’s motives, the more questions we — and the reconsidering classmates — have, and the more we and they have to chew on the unreliability of memory.
McLeod makes “My Old School” a nostalgic catalog of the pop culture of the day — “Brandon,” secretive and slow to socialize, making a few friends, driving them in his car (a CLUE) to see “Muriel’s Wedding,” passing on mixtapes not of Ace of Base, R.E.M., UB40, The Pet Shop Boys or Scotland’s own The Proclaimers, but of late ’70s-early-80s punk like Black Flag, television and Hüsker Dü.
Yeah, that another clue, the now-adult kids realize.
And then there’s this man-among-kids influence on school culture and social life, a delightful turn that starts with having somebody around who “knew how to mix cocktails,” but who also helped more than one student with his studies and brought social outcasts into a new social orbit via “Brandon Lee’s” approval.
The real Lee’s story has bits of pathos and misdirected energy, but also cunning and entitlement. If his classmates, interviewed in a classroom at old school desks, can’t quite form an opinion of him, what chance do we have?
The film’s third act turn towards the light side plays with those faulty memories and takes on a “28-Up” tone as we see how the kids have turned out, despite or perhaps because of this disruption of their last year of childhood by this stranger in their midst and the media circus that erupted when it all came out.
I don’t know if there’ll be a feature film on this subject (I seem to recall this project starting life along those lines), but it’s a natural — the dark parts of “Catch Me if You Can” married to the lark of it all of “Phantom of the Open.”
Perhaps Alan Cumming can play the earnest but self-important head master. Be a shame to leave him out of it.
Rating: unrated, some profanity
Cast: Alan Cumming, Juliet Cadzow, Dawn Steele, David Tattoo Dave McKinlay, with the voices of Lulu and Clare Grogan,
Credits: Scripted and directed by Jono McLeod. A (July 22) Magnolia release.
Running time: 1:44
Ever since the first trailer to Taika’s latest take on Thor I cannot get this damned tune out of my head, one of three GNR tunes in the tale.
A fourth Guns N’Roses tune turns up in the open to Apple TV’s “Black Bird.” A band having another moment?
I remember when this tune was new, how Mickey Mouse it seemed in light of the classic rock era that preceded it. But it’s terribly touching emotional shorthand in the trailers and the movie.
Nah, we don’t believe the camera tricks that put petite Natalie Portman in the frame with Man Mountain Oz Chris Hemsworth. But the tune resonates in a sort of love long lost but refound way.
This version? No Axl? No prob. It’s Slash’s tune anyway.
The Moray eel is a scary-looking sea creature that’s only really dangerous when it’s cornered. But hiding in the cracks and crevices of the deep, hunted as a delicacy, it’s pretty much “cornered” by default.
That makes it an apt metaphoric title for Croatian filmmaker Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic’s debut feature. “Murina” is Croatian for Moray eel. And this Cannes award winner for Best First Feature is about a dangerous and slippery subject to be wary of, even if you think you’ve got a handle on it — teen sexuality.
A teenage swimmer who has grown up on Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast is just old enough to bridle at her overbearing, bullying father’s control, how it impacts her mother and limits her own future. And in a scheme that has hints of “Lolita” and “Knife in Water” about it, she decides she’ll replace him with Dad’s rich, childhood friend, the Spaniard Javier.
Gracija Filipovic is Julija, 17 and just girlish enough to suggest her immaturity, just mature enough to alarm her ex-beauty queen Mom, Nela (Danica Curcic).
“What are you doing naked?” Mom hisses, as Julija has never shed her swimsuit-all-summer fashion choice. And “Stop LOOKING at him like that,” she hisses again, when inexperienced Julija can’t help but gawk at the sex appeal of rich and laid-back Javier, given a flirtatious edge by veteran character actor Cliff Curtis, of “Hobbes and Shaw,” “The Meg” and “Doctor Sleep.”
In this isolated island village, we see no locals Julija’s age, hear no hint of a “boyfriend.” “Paradise,” her bossy father Ante (Leon Luvec) calls it. “Paradise” Javier repeats when he returns to the scene of “many adventures” he had with her dad before becoming a Business Week cover-mogul.
Julija, ordered around like an employee by her father, is deep into her resentment over that, his hair-trigger temper and boorishness. Javier’s arrival coincides with her growing feeling that “There’s more to life” than this. There might even be more than Dad’s scheme to sell a chunk of the island to Javier for “a resort,” so that they can move and buy an apartment in Zagreb.
The contrasts between the men are obvious, but not archetypal. Javier is kind, solicitous of her and plainly aware of her and her equally-bullied mother’s plight. Ante is frantic, short-tempered, desperate to make this deal with a rich “pal” who might just be looking for a few days on vacation, lost in his more romantic past.
“If he gets this, he’ll be calmer,” Nela assures Julija (in Croatian with subtitles).
“If he gets money, he will be worse,” all-knowing Julija spits back.
As Javier used to have a thing for Nela, that becomes Julija’s first line of attack. And if that doesn’t work, what might be her Plan B?
Kusijanovic immerses us in this world of salt water blues and arid Mediterranean shores. Silent free diving — holding their breaths as father and daughter snorkel down to nab dinner — give Julija blissful isolation, with a hint of danger. There are a lot of ways to drown, poking around holes where the Murina eels hide. And then we take note of the spear guns.
As the sales banter with Javier turns from trying-too-hard (in English) to off-putting, Julija’s “acting out” gains consequences as she ups the stakes. Luvec (“The Load,” “The Miner”) paints Ante’s outrage at this in shades of insecurity. Like all bullies, the cards he has to play are limited. In front of the friend he needs to badly, he can’t slap his daughter silly, and she knows it. Insulting asides — “You have a boy’s shoulders” — is his calmest put-down.
Curcic (of Netflix’s “The Bombardment” and Spike TV’s “The Mist”) gives Nela a sort of haplessness in the face of her increasingly sexual daughter’s “power” to manipulate these two men, both of whom are much older than her, much less the manipulative teen she sees goading them on.
“Murina” is the sort of engaging and tetchy drama that keeps you guessing if it will cross into thriller, right up to the very end. Kusijanovic has given us a “Lolita” without exploitation, a “Knife in Water” with spear guns, and a disturbing riff on toxic masculinity and rash teenaged impulses simmered in a seaside chowder of sex and gamesmanship, making for a dazzling first feature.
Rating: unrated, violence, adult themes
Cast: Gracija Filipovic, Danica Curcic, Leon Luvec and Cliff Curtis
Credits: Directed by Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic, scripted by Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic and Frank Graziano. A Kino Lorber release.
Running time: 1:38
The late mid-80s were the heyday of the “trouble on the farm” drama, movies that warned us of the perils of Big Ag and small town bank takeovers, just before the Monsanto menace became obvious, just after farmers voted themselves into Reaganism oblivion. ‘
Joe Hall’s debut feature “The Road to Galena” is a less political and half-heartedly nostalgic “trouble” story set in the end game era of the Family Farm. It’s about a banker’s son (Ben Winchell of TV’s “Finding Carter”) who waxes lyrical about the work, the land and the people, and has a whiff of “Green Acres” about it in that regard. But “Galena’s” in step with the latest “back to the land” vibe, even if sustainable, small-farm agriculture is one of the many promising angles it all but ignores.
Cole Baird grew up on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, farm country on the banks of the bountiful (and never glimpsed) Chesapeake Bay. Back in the late ’90s he was a star student, University of Maryland bound. But every time he makes noise about changing majors, or at least adding “ag” to his classload, his dad (Jay O. Sanders) redirects him towards “giving yourself options.” Banker dad knows the good times never last. He’s seen as many farm busts as booms.
Cole may have his best girl Elle (“Friday Night Lights” alumna Aimee Teagarden) and his farm-family best friend Jack (Will Brittain of “The Forever Purge”), a guy who can always count on Cole to pitch in to keep his dad’s place running.
But as we’ve seen Cole in a D.C. law firm meeting in the film’s opening scene, and much of this story is told in flashback, we know college is going to change things. Ben’s rowing crew, dealing with lectures from his dad about focusing on his studies, headed to Georgetown Law at his father’s behest. His time “back home” is limited. At some point, Elle and Jack’s inherited farm, and its problems, take back seats to law school, passing the bar, making partner and all that entails.
Elle gets to make the “you’re never here” speech. Jack takes up with Cole’s girl, Cole’s mom gets cancer, etc.
But that work-the-land dream never goes away.
There’s much-plowed dramatic ground for Hall to dig into here, but he waters-down the drama to Hallmark Channel/Positiv TV blandness, which overwhelms the movie. Every character feels generic, every response to every situation more preordained by the simple goals of the script than organically developed.
The homey African American diner owner (Jennifer Holliday) gets one chance and once chance only to show us she’s the town sage — gently shaking Cole out of his sentimental attachment to “a way of life that’s disappearing.”
Cole finds out Jack is spending time with Elle, abruptly punches him, and all is instantly forgiven. Not much of a tussle.
The movie’s frightfully patriarchal, with Elle the practical woman her eventual husband Jack keeps out of the loop about their collapsing finances, and Alsia Allapach playing the rich lawschool girlfriend-turned-wife who schools Cole on the “ethics” of taking the monied, morally bankrupt clients, making partner and living “the good life” in defiance of Cole’s cliched rural values.
Almost everything introduced into this leisurely two hour movie feels undigested, under-developed. There’s an earnestness to all of this that feels more accepted than justified. And with much of the drama watered-down the big dramatic moments aren’t nearly as big as they need to be.
The acting is a bit bland, too, with only a couple of players making their characters pop. The setting is interesting and the stakes are high enough. But it’s hard to fall into a movie where big, risk-taking commitment is missing, in front of and behind the camera.
Rating: R, profanity (third act f-bombs)
Cast: Ben Winchell, Aimee Teagarden, Will Brittain, Alisa Allapach, Jill Hennessy and Jay O. Sanders.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Joe Hall. A Vertical release.
Running time: 1:53
A pandemic lockdown romance? July 22.
Grim stakes and goofiness, gods-bashing and GNR — that’s the latest Taika Waititi take on “the Space Viking,” “Thor: Love and Thunder.”
Sure, every Marvel movie panders, cluttered with cross-over characters, self-aware jokes, Easter eggs and cameos. As someone who figures that all of these movies should be played as a lark, emphasizing the silliness of it all, the “Thor” movies have long been my favorites. But this is the first one that really feels as if it’s pandering to me. And that shifting back and forth in tone from the deathly serious to the profoundly silly isn’t going to be to every taste.
That’s not to say that packing four Oscar winners into the cast — one of them the leading lady and another of them that rarity, a deadly villain with legitimate grievances — doesn’t pay off and give the film gravitas in the beginning and pathos in the finale.
But it’s the jokes that make it, with the self-mocking man-mountain Chris Hemsworth setting the tone and making it fun, and Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson and the rest taking their cue from him. The flippant funniness balances against this universe’s crisis of faith subtext, with Thor reassuring kidnapped and perhaps doomed children with the last thing they want to hear, dogma that’s no substitute for a long and happy life.
Not to worry, “If you die, you’ll end up in VALHALLA!” Yeah, that goes over like a beating the family puppy.
A somber opening has Gorr (Christian Bale), a pious alien who discovers his faith is wasted on a god who doesn’t answer prayers, such as ones to save his daughter. His eyes opened by meeting his (literal) idol, callous and cruel and dismissive in the flesh, a magical talisman, the Necro Sword, transforms Gorr into “The God Butcher.” The entire supernatural universe becomes his prey.
Eventually, he’ll have to get around to the God of Thunder, right?
One mercifully-short bit with the last and least of the Chrises — Chris Pratt — and his barely-in-the-first-act Guardians of the Galaxy later, lovelorn and losing-himself-in-his-work Thor finds himself assembling a fresh team to go deal with this new threat.
The ex-girlfriend “Jane Fonda, no, Jane Foster” (Portman) is back, with bad news on the health front and one busted and restored hammer on hand to pitch in with. There’s also “King” Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson, working on her posh Brit RP accent), who gets to give up running the tourist attraction New Asgard to join Thor in his quest, along with his old stone-faced chum Korg (a CGI Waititi).
Saddled with those story/cast requirements, Waititi finds ways to play around with all the seriousness, beginning with Korg amusingly narrating our “Space Viking” tale to a cave/classroom full of kiddies, a tale that involves kidnapping and the possible “extinction” of gods if our villain gets his way.
Thor’s acknowledgement that “This ends here, now,” has become Thor’s catchphrase, Hemsworth’s meaty meathead thrown-for-a-loss by love and Thor’s tactlessness never fail to amuse. Parents are fretting about the outcome of his free-the-kidnapped-children quest?
Not to worry, he and his crew will find and free them, “and then we shall FEAST!” Pause. “NOT on children.” Pause. “We don’t DO that anymore.” Pause. “SHAMEful time!”
Waititi gets laughs out of cameos — check out the “actors” in a Thor/Odin/Loki/ stage show attraction at New Asgard. And guess who plays a grumpy, blustery, Greco-Roman accented Zeus, as if you haven’t read the credits?
The “cool parts,” as you’ve seen and heard in the movie’s trailers, are turn-the-tide brawls all set to Guns’n Roses Greatest Hits, and they’re nicely timed to turn up once in each of the film’s three acts.
And Waititi doesn’t so much curb Marvel’s elephantiasis in running times as draw a line and stick with it — two hours of this is enough. Always.
The “message,” a better to have loved and lost and earned “that sh—y feeling,” comes through loud and clear. But that whole Guardians bit seems shoehorned in and does those characters and actors playing them (save for the scowling Dave Bautista) no favors.
The finales in these films are preordained and formulaic. The best you can hope for is that the CGI fights will at least be visually coherent, which they are in this case.
But Waititi is to be treasured for simply seeing all this as lightweight fun, a bit of nonsense with a bunch of movie stars dressing up like gods and having a laugh. A heroine who rides into battle on a unicorn? The Viking longship tourist attraction converted into a spaceship by the addition of screaming alien goats? The whole idea of supernatural deities reduced to needy, petty bullies or “Zeussettes” who faint at the sight of an accidentally naked Thor?
Hard to take any of that all that seriously, and Waititi, no matter how big the budget or how high the fan-fantasized stakes, never does. Bless him.
So no, “Love and Thunder” isn’t as much fun as its trailers. But it’s close enough, Sweet child o’mine.
Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, (profanity), some suggestive material and partial nudity.
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, Taika Waititi, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Russell Crowe and Christian Bale.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Taika Waititi, based on the comics by Stan Lee and others. A Marvel Studios release.
Running time: 1:58
A whodunit with a why he dunit rationale and a big con. Trickery in the “F for Fake” tradition?
This looks great.
Movie Nation 