And you thought Canadians were nice. Well, aside from the hockey players and seal killers, I mean.
Here’s Woody, playing a torturer/killer from you-know-where, and of course Kevin Hart’s the EveryLittleMan confused for him who has to pretend he enjoys this sort of thing.
As do we all.
June 24, right after my Netflix subscription lapses. Could be funny, although sick and twisted and hammy seem safer bets.
An $85 million second weekend has turned “Top Gun” into Tom Cruise’s biggest US hit ever. It should clear the $300 million mark by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.
Boffo overseas, of course, but even Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible” career-savers didn’t dominate the way The Return of Maverick has.
“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” has dazzled, with another $8.8 million on its fifth weekend. That puts it over $388 million. Will “Maverick” hunt him down and bring him to heel?
“Bob’s Burgers” isn’t doing great, even for a cult animated TV series for adults adapted into a movie. Under $5 million on its second weekend, a 61-70% drop off from its opening.
The original animated caper comedy “The Bad Guys” is a reminder that even non-Pixar “original” animation, when done right and aimed for kids, is still the smarter bet. It earned another $3.3-4 and might come close to the $100 million mark before “Lightyear” from Disney/Pixar eats its lunch.
“Downton Abbey” is doing decent business for a period piece/sequel/TV adaptation-continuation. It earned another $3 but will be very fortunate indeed to reach $50 (it’ll have cleared $35 in North America by Sunday night).
The Indian wide(ish) release “Vikrum” did better on its opening weekend than David Cronenberg’s latest, “Crimes of the Future.” “Vikrum” will have netted $2.1 by Sunday night.
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” will have cleared $60 million by Sunday night. Another $2 million or so this weekend add to its total as A24’s biggest hit ever.
“The Lost City” is winding up its run, with another $1.3 million. It should end its theatrical run at around $110 million.
Neon’s “Crimes of the Future” did less business than “Vikrum,” which was only on 2/3 of the screens David Cronenberg’s latest is on. $1.17 million, a tenth place finish on opening weekend. This is what a marketing failure looks like.
A wealthy, 60ish husband is getting nagged by his wife in their United Arab Emirates mansion. She’s heard of a husband who built a mosque in loving tribute to his late wife.
Doesn’t her husband love her that much?
“Great,” he says. “I have land and I’m ready to start building.” Pause. Smirk. “The rest is on you!”
And there it is, ladies and gentlemen and Albert Brooks and anybody else “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World” — a marriage joke complete with set-up, punchline and laugh, all in Arabic and courtesy of the Egyptian comedy “Emergency Travel.”
It’s a broadly-played and simple “fish out of water” farce about mistaken identity, miscommunications, a search for a “father I never knew” and Egyptian bumpkins suddenly ensconced in oil money luxury.
Habib Ghuloom is the lead, playing a mouthy, not-wholly-broke Cairo “Doctor…” of computer, cell phone and vacuum cleaner repairs.
“There’s nothing wrong with your vacuum,” a complaining customer is told after passing on his spouse’s excuse for dirty floors. “There’s something wrong with your wife. You should marry another one, or just replace her!”
The jokes are corny and old-fashioned and way out of date, by Western standards, which explains the film’s G-rating.
A friend’s “business opportunity” has them wondering where they can round up some cash. “Maybe ask your Dad” over in the Arab Emirates, the friend suggests. Nope. Dad’s dead.
But later, “Doctor” Faris hears a confession from his late mother’s sister, Aunt Shushu (Badria Tolba). The father he never met “isn’t dead.” His mom only told him that as the final lie in a long-running effort to “shame” the man who never supported them.
There’s nothing for it but for Faris to fly to Abu Dhabi and find his father, based on sketchy instructions the flaky aunt passes on. And when those fail, there’s nothing for it but Aunt Shushu to fly over and “help.”
There is barely a laugh in a whole mistaken for a “real” doctor and expert on “The Common Arab Market” idea (Doctor Faris decides to LOUDLY wing it when asked for a “presentation”) that begins with an airport limo pickup and ends with Faris kicked out of an out-of-his-league luxury hotel.
He’s always griping “What Indian film is this?” as if his comic complications could only come from the country whose comedies most easily translate for the Arab world.
The search has a few “Around the World with Netflix” examples of what passes for comedy in Egypt and the Arabic.Middkw East m. One possible prospect for the long lost Dad lists his wives, one of whom is Chinese.
“When you married the China woman, did you BREAK her by accident?”
Aunt Shushu just howls at her own knee-slapper.
I got a little chuckle out of the “Beverly Hillbillies” third act, when they’ve finally located the rich man and proceed to upset his posh lifestyle with their modest, working poor ways. Aunty is “corrupting” and teaching lost-dad’s daughters how to properly pick, court and marry a man, when their father would rather do the picking for them.
Much ululating and laughing ensues at the old fashionwd old man’s expense.
There isn’t enough comedy that translates and travels in this Egyptian effort. But its general lightheartedness sets you up to be pleasantly surprised with the occasional out-of-nowhere giggle.
Rating: TV-G
Cast: Habib Ghuloom, Issa Arab and Badria Tolba
Credits: Scripted and directed by Nasser Al Tamimi. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:20
Imagine Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” staged and cast by gangster-obsessed Martin McDonagh and set to the music of Morrisey, imitating the work of Jonathan Larson.
That’s my best shot at describing “The Score,” Malachi Smyth’s debut feature about two mobsters waiting for a “meet,” with one of them falling in love and singing duets with the waitress at the remote cafe where things are about to, as they say, “go down.”
The structure has a tried and true sturdiness to it — tensions rising and tempers flaring as an annoying, impulsive tough guy and his meaner partner get on each other’s nerves about the dangers to come. The execution is novel, fascinating and just musically/romantically entertaining enough to not totally muck up the suspense that’s built in.
Will Poulter (“The Revenant”) and Johnny Flynn (“The Outfit,” “emma.”) play the criminal minds waiting for some sort of cash split. Troy (Poulter) is a brute who fancies himself a an English wit. He prattles on about words with multiple meanings — “sacked” and the like.
This “score” they’re about to make might involve “settling old scores.” And as the opening split-screen sets up their meeting and their goals makes clear, this “score” will be musical, as every now and then characters break into song — sometimes solo, sometimes in duets, occasionally acapella, often accompanied by offscreen musicians.
Troy’s brother is in prison. He kept all the money he and Mike (Flynn, who also composed the music) had from their “jobs.” Now, there’s some sort of split involving third parties whom Troy has never met.
The younger Troy has problems following the most basic instructions — “Stay here,” Keep quiet,” “Keep a low profile.” Guys like him always have to remind others “I’m not stupid.” He starts a brutal brawl waiting at the pumps at a rural gas station while hotheaded Mike “Mikey” is bullying the clerk inside into undercharging for this, making an exception to the “restroom isn’t for customers,” etc.
Troy further drifts off script when they arrive at the secluded diner where their “handoff” is slated to happen. The sassy, sexy clerk, cook and waitress (Naomi Ackie of “Small Axe” and “The Corrupted”) smarts off about him being “a poet” thanks to his word play. What’s your name? Troy?
“It’s classic,” he says.
“You mean classical,” she says, correcting him for the second or third time in their first conversation.
“You like telling people what they mean, don’t you?”
As Mike insults and glares at “Gloria,” bullying her into changing the diner’s rules just for him, Troy is falling into her smile and sense of style.
Every musical has its “check in” or “check out” point for viewers who are indifferent to the art form. When Troy and Gloria exchange lyrics in their first flirtation/courtship duet, the viewer faces that moment of truth. I went with it.
“I’m burning for thee,” he sings. “Run run run through me,” she replies. “Have a care to fill this vessel of your heart.”
He is smitten. She is smitten. She is wary of this embittered, testy tough guy Troy is paired up with — “He has the air of a wife-beater.” But as they sing in a beached rowboat out back, we get a sense Troy just might change his plans and his destiny for Gloria.
Everybody does his or her own singing, with Ackie and Flynn having the most interesting, soulful voices and Poulter holding his own.
The tunes are pleasant enough, depending on your taste, and no more memorable than most of the melodies Glen Hansard wrote for “Once,” or the vast majority of the work of “Rent’s” Larson or Lin-Manuel you-know-who.
They complement the story and heighten the emotions or the drama, which is all the songs need to do here.
Such “meets” to settle a “score” have a limited number of ways they can come out, but Smyth manages a few surprises in between the tried and true tropes. No, he’s no Martin McDonagh (“In Bruges,” “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”) or John Michael McDonagh (“The Guard,” “Calvary”), or even a Guy Ritchie.
But then, none of those tough guy filmmakers has had the nerve to set one of their mob-influenced morality plays to music, have they?
Rating: unrated, violence, profanity
Cast: Will Poulter, Naomi Ackie, Johnny Flynn, Lydia Wilson and Lucian Msamati
Credits: Scripted and directed by Malachi Smyth. A Gravitas Ventures release.
Running time: 1:40
The folks who made that Beatles dramedy “Yesterday” are behind this Will Poulter/Naomi Ackie/Johnny Flynn musical dramedy.
Flynn did the tunes, too. Looks fun. June 10, theatrical.
A tweenaged girl growing up in a beautifully-cluttered and weather-worn Japanese coastal village narrates the story of her mother, and her life with her, in the delightful “Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko,” an anime coming-of-age confection based on a YA novel by Kanako Nishi.
Director Ayumu Watanabe (“Space Brothers,” “Children of the Sea”) serves up a bubbly, touching tale of a skinny and pretty child learning to love and more importantly appreciate her mercurial, roly poly single mom and the life’s she’s had raising her.
To hear Kikuko tell it, her over-the-top, over-eater waitress/cook mother has been something of the town character every place they’ve lived. Kikuko is prepubescent, she tells us, but mature for her years. A fortune teller on TV makes her wonder about how her mother Nikuko’s “fate was sealed” by past lives, because her current one is something of a tale of woe.
There was “The Casino Dealer, “The Bar Tender,” “The Married Man” and “The Novelist” — men who used Nikuko, borrowed money from her and left her holding the bag, over and over again.
Mom traveled from a small village to Osaka, Nagoya, Yokohama, Tokyo and beyond, working until she was “worn out” at bad jobs, often working to pay down debt some feckless man left with.
They wound up in their current town, with Mom a fixture at Uwogashi’s Grill, serving “Meat, meat, meat MEAT” and rice or noodles dishes to the ravenous working class customers. They live on a rusting houseboat. And at school, Kikuko dreads any occasion that will expose her classmates and their families to this barrel-shaped barrel of fun who raised her.
Mom is fond of puns of many varieties, most of which don’t translate that well (“Fortune Favors” is in Japanese with English subtitles). But her very name is a pun. There’s “meat” in it.
What will a maturing Kikuko figure out about Mom’s life, via clues and hints related in flashbacks, that will explain her struggle and their current lot?
The sight gag above tips us as to Watanabe’s approach here. He’s taking just a little inspiration from Miyazaki’s “My Neighbor Totoro,” about the best friend a child could have, but a “friend” who’s something of a puzzlement.
Nikuko is a walking sight gag who morphs, in her daughter’s mind, into a chocolate Michelin Mom force of nature in her moods — bouncing, twirling, grinning constantly, entertaining customers, loud and not shy about her unchecked appetites.
Food and its prep are a big part of the animation — French toast for breakfast, “Meat Spag” (spaghetti) from a can, “meat meat Meat, MEAT” grilled, broiled or boiled.
Does that explain Kikuko’s thinness, her constant stomach aches? How is a girl who is “sweet on” a shy, face-making boy in class ever to get a boyfriend with a mother like this, she wonders?
The film has frankly adult suggestions about pieces of Nikuko’s past, not just her menial jobs, but connections with exotic dance clubs and sex work.
But “Fortune Favors” suggests that when a child’s old enough to care about and ask frank questions about her or his parents’ past, they’re old enough to understand them.
The physical comedy might appeal to younger viewers just getting hooked on anime. Nikuko’s rotund shape has its graceful and clumsy moments such as when she’s romping through the local aquarium until she practically passes out from joy, and a penguin squawks “DEATH to you ALL” in judgment.
Yet the ideal audience for this film is going to skew older, better able to appreciate the themes and the higher-end anime art that Watanabe and his team achieved.
Rating: PGish
Cast: The voices of Shinobu Ôtake, Cocomi, Natsuki Hanae, Ikuji Nakamura
Credits: Directed by Ayumu Watanabe, scripted by Satomi Ohshima, based on a novel by Kanako Nishi. A GKids release.
Running time: 1:37
Jean-Claude Van Damme’s career second wind, the one that showed up when he turned out to be pretty darned good at playing himself, a washed-up action star, in “JCVD,” has pretty much run its course.
He got a short-lived TV series and about a dozen years of B-movies out of that 2007 resuscitation. Watching him fade to black all over again has been painful for him and for us.
“We Die Young” is a new nadir, even for the star of too many awful “Kickboxer” sequels to count. It’s a reckless, ridiculous and borderline racist thriller about a silent man who fights against the infamous disgraced-ex-president/Fox News-hyped MS-13 gang to help a couple of kids escape Washington, D.C.
A gang leader even complains about his fears of “MAGAs” in one scene, just so you know the American-born Israeli documentary filmmaker Lior Geller’s politics.
Still, he films a nervy hand-held camera chase or two, and other unnecessary handheld and jumpy sequences to try and animate this corpselike thriller.
With a script that requires Van Damme to act without his voice — he plays a combat veteran managing his pain with legal and illegal drugs, “speaking” through a text-to-talk phone app — Geller pretty much reduces his star to an unemotional, inert supporting player.
That gives Geller free rein to dive into every Latin gang stereotype under the sun as we see a young drug runner Lucas (Elijah Rodriguez) try to save his even younger brother (Nicholas Sean Johnny) from that “life” and the influence of Shakespeare-quoting Salvadoran gang leader Rincon.
David Castañeda of “The Umbrella Academy” and the “Sicario” sequel plays Rincon with a flat menace that works for a scene or two, and bores for more that follow.
“I wasn’t always the biggest drug dealer in D.C.,” he tells his 14 year-old star delivery boy. “But I was the one who shot them!”
The story takes place over a couple of days on the “bad side” of D.C., with young Lucas, our narrator, scrambling to save his annoying sibling Miguel from being “jumped in” to the MS-13.That entails a group beat-down that the kid may survive, with a membership that follows that will almost certainly kill him.
As we’ve seen the boy persist in pursuing this, Lucas’s protests are to no avail, and make less sense than he thinks.
“It’s too late for me, but you’re smart.” No, he isn’t.
Van Damme’s drugged, battle-scarred veteran works in a body shop and is something of a neighborhood character — a soft touch for beggars, a pity case for a single mom (Joanna Metrass) who befriended the bullied, often-stoned “chavalo” in the ‘hood.
Events conspire to put Lucas, dragging his little brother, in the path of Daniel the Mute as the siblings try to escape Rincon and his minions.
We follow the kids mostly, identifying with their plight. Van Damme is just here for some sort of third act rescue, and is both misused and under-utilized in the process.
Geller embraces several racist Latin and Black tropes as he serves up his plate of ultraviolence. Rincon is a poorly-sketched-in character who loses the “color” invented for him (Shakespeare spoken through a face full of tattoos) and gives way to a lieutenant (Charlie MacGechan) who is less interesting, if more menacing.
The climax is a pitiless slaughter that suggests a “kill’em all, let Jesus sort’em out” ethos.
Still, the car and foot chases sparkle, even if the blur of edits undercut every other action beat, never letting the eye settle on an actor, an action or an emotion.
Rating: R for violence, language and some drug material
Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, David Castañeda, Elijah Rodriguez, Joanna Metrass, Nicholas Sean Johnny and Charlie MacGechan
Credits: Scripted and directed by Lior Geller. A Lionsgate film on Netflix.
Running time: 1:32
Man, you know times are hard at Netflix when it all comes down to this.
“Interceptor” is the marquee new release on the embattled streamer this week, a cheesy C-movie polished up to look like a B.
It’s about terrorists about to fire Russian nuclear missiles at the U.S., and a lone Army officer holding out at a missile interceptor station that’s under assault.
The premise might be one a lot of us can buy into — treasonous sellout American conservatives in league with the Russians. In this fictional future, #MoscowMitch, More Rubles Rand and the disgraced and treasonous former president aren’t in the picture, but “topical?” Close enough.
Elsa Pataky of the “Furious” and sometimes “Fast” franchise, and Luke Bracey (“Point Break,” the junky remake) are the stars.
And truth be told, I could have gone along with it — missile shield stations attacked, cities targeted for destruction, right wing grievance airing by the attackers with no identification of the Future Koch suckers financing the whole enterprise. It’s a version of an early ’80s all-star TV miniseries of some repute — “World War III” — with no stars.
Then, with Captain Collins (Pataky) barricaded in the launch control center of a floating mid-Pacific interceptor base, almost everybody else slaughtered by a hilariously overstaffed and treasonous “cleaning crew,” a ninja drops in. And Spanish-accented Captain Kickass must take him out to save us all…for now.
The sheer absurdity of the moment overwhelms the cornball tough-talk dialogue.
“Let millions of Americans die? I don’t you realize why someone joins the Army.” “Today, America dies in a PAROXYSM of FEAR!” “If you’re gonna kill me, just KILL me. No ‘mansplaining!'”
Worst of all, the ninja check-out scene happens in the first act, early in “Interceptor.” The dung flows downhill from there.
The brawls are decently-staged, and Pataky holds her own in them. She’s no MMA veteran or Noomi Rapace, but she’s a credibly compact combatant.
Bracey fights to hide his Oz accent, but oddly-chosen/oddly-pronounced words do him no favors.
The “messaging” — about the reasons her captain has been exiled to this outpost, the sorts of grievances the far right buys into on behalf of the far rich, Russian bad intent, etc — is broadly laid out and laid on thick.
But Australian novelist turned novice-director Matthew Reilly has no sense of screen pace –NONE — and no willingness to acknowledge the absurd in situations, set-pieces or dialogue.
“Did you just stab that dude in the eye with your GUN?
Throwing huge amounts of money at filmmakers and stars for overblown B-movies was obviously unsustainable for Netflix. “Bright,” “Triple Frontier,” “The Old Guard,” “Extraction” and “Extinction,” wholly-financed or even purchased at a cut-rate price when theatrical studios realized their misguided product wasn’t worth releasing, is a quick way to go broke. It’s also a quick way to lose subscribers when the house “brand” is “makes decent teen romances, but uniformly crappy action pics.”
One fears that this “brand” is further tarnished by business-model-that-works C-movies like “Interceptor.” A cut-rate cast, green director and a script so bad it wouldn’t attract betters actors or directors is no way to rebuild public confidence in your business, or its “Netflix Original” movies.
Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, profanity
Cast: Elsa Pataky, Luke Bracey, Mayen Mehta, Zoe Carides, Aaron Glenane and Marcus Johnson
Credits: Directed by Matthew Reilly, scripted Stuart Beattie and Matthew Reilly. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:39
A Rochester, New York synagogue and Hebrew School is the setting for the coming of age/coming-out dramedy “Tahara.”
Teenage girls Carrie (Madeline Grey DeFeece) and Hannah (Rachel Sennott) prattle on about crushes, sexual experiences and desires, tactlessly commenting on the day’s ceremonies, traditions and participants the way self-absorbed teenaged girls do.
But the film’s title should tell you just how inappropriate and heartless this is, in a “today of all days” sense. The synagogue is filled with teens. One of their classmates has died. Samantha took her own life.
Olivia Peace’s film, based on a Jess Zeidman script, is aggressively transgressive, sometimes hilarious and occasionally even tender. But not over the dead girl, who apparently wasn’t popular and lived under a sort of mean girl shunning isolation.
So when teacher Morah Klein (Bernadette Quigley) takes the kids into a classroom for some formalized (pre-printed handouts) “grief counseling,” and lectures that “as the Babylonian Talmud tells us, all Jews are responsible for each other,” it kind of falls on deaf ears. And not just because Ms. Klein has the bedside manner of a militant West Bank settler (she boasts about service “fighting for Is-RYE-el”).
In this insular world, teens will be teens. “Performative” grief runs up against eye-rolling narcissism. I mean, who has time for self-reflection?
That’s just the backdrop for the day-long conversations/confessions of Cassie and Hannah. Their banter ranges from who’s had a nose job to comparing their near-sexual experiences to crushes and talking dirty about their high school chemistry teacher. “Would you ever kill yourself?” even comes up.
Yes, they’ve been friends forever. So Hannah has license to go on and on and on about her lust for tall classmate Tristan (Daniel Taveras) and Cassie is obligated to listen, or pass notes back and forth right in the middle of the service.
Sennott, of the even-more outrageously sexual Jewish funeral comedy “Shiva Baby,” is as “out there” as ever, giving us real in-the-moment teen plotting and fantasizing and stumbling like the clumsy, thoughtless she’s playing. DeFeece (of TV’s “Blue Bloods”) is the reactor here, subtle enough in getting across the more-guarded and sensitive Cassie’s differences from horny Hannah.
She listens and indulges her friend, takes in everybody else’s reactions and identifies with any peer with the temerity to admit, “Today I feel so fake.”
But when Hannah stops prattling and playing with her zits in the mirror long enough to wonder if she’s a good kisser, the two swap spit to compare notes. And whatever self-assessment Hannah assigns her skills, Cassie’s world is rocked to the core.
Queer filmmaker Peace uses drawn or stop-motion clay animation to illustrate the erotic delights and flights of fancy the girls experience in their dreams — Hannah’s lust for Tristan — or the moment — Cassie’s hormonal eruption at locking lips with someone she wishes was more than just a friend.
There are laughs in the awkward ways Cassie tries to get a repeat performance, and universally recognized winces of recognition as we fear for her feelings about where all this is going. Sennott has mastered this sexually ravenous young woman “type,” and effortlessly finds the laughs built into her character. But DeFeece makes the most of every close-up, wringing pathos and laugh-at-her-pain longing out of scene after scene of this talky but mercifully brief day-I-came-out tale.
Peace shot the film in a cellphone-friendly 1:1 aspect ratio, which balloons out to Academy 1.37:1 to underscore the moment Cassie’s world opens up.
The boxy look doesn’t add to the movie, and feels like a young filmmaker’s semi-misguided “experiment” when whispered or note-passing scenes require subtitles. That creates technical issues rendering the titles into tiny fine print and emphasizes the movie’s unpolished indie pedigree.
But Peace and the cast create an amusingly complete “world,” with the class’s biggest cynic also its most passionate vaper/poseur (Shlomit Azoulay), the performative weepers and even a couple (Keith Weiss, Rachel Wender) bickering over a cell phone video that “proves” the Earth is flat.
And short conversations or long, tasteless or touching, DeFeece and Sennott make their conversations a fascinating hour of teen eavesdropping — repellant, ridiculous and risible all at once.
Rating: unrated, profanity, teen smoking
Cast: Madeline Grey DeFeece, Rachel Sennott, Daniel Taveras, Shlomit Azoulay, Keith Weiss, Rachel Wender and Bernadette Quigley
Credits: Directed by Olivia Peace, scripted by Jess Zeidman. A Film Movement release.
Running time: 1:18
Sort of a “Game of Thrones” vamp on Disney “Princess” fantasies?
Pouty princess Joey K of “The Kissing Booth” is told she’s got to marry that damned Dominic Cooper — twice her age — and she ain’t having it. Nossir.
From 20th Century pictures, July 1 on Hulu. Maybe they’ll pitch it, mention it’s coming up and offer a screener before I forget the damned delight is headed our way.
Movie Nation 