The gloriously human “CODA” comes back to theaters nationwide the weekend of Feb. 25-27, Apple announced today.
In Orlando, this moving, funny, Oscar nominated coming of age as the hearing daughter of deaf parents tale will be the star attraction at the Cinemark Festival Bay.
Check with your local cinemas to see who’s got it.
“Love and Leashes” is the K-pop of BDSM comedies. It’s cute (ish), innocuous and so sexless as to seem neutered, in case you wondered how movie about bondage, leather and sado-masochistic “release” could garner a TV-14 rating.
A demure Korean “explainer” of a film, it dives into a workplace relationship that turns towards dominance and submission when a stands-up-for-herself subordinate inadvertently opens mail intended for her new “superior,” and finds a bedazzled dog collar in it.
Yes, their names are similar — Jung Ji-woo and Jung Joon-hi — so you could see how that sort of thing could happen. But the guy had SEX toys shipped to his OFFICE address. Perhaps that fits into the whole surreptitious lifestyle. Or maybe the screenwriter is lazy and figures anybody watching this is an idiot.
Jung Ji-woo (Seohyun) lives with her mom and suffers under a sexist, harassing, homophobic dullard of a boss, until that day a new immediate supervisor, the “boy wonder” of the company’s PR, shows up. He’s named Jung Joon-hi (Joon-Young Lee).
Joon-hi is instantly an ally, heading off the boss’s insistence on hiring a Youtube star with a homophobic past as the face of an educational product. And while Ji-woo is always being told to “smile” and “be cute” by the boss and colleagues, Joon-hi seems into her whole Miss Bossypants, push-back act.
When she opens that package by mistake, her curiosity about him grows. He leaps to the conclusion that she’s “one of us,” and before you know it, “experimenting” or not, she is.
She’s not into being dominated. A collar and “dog play” will never do.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t even like turtle-necks” she imagines herself saying (in Korean, or dubbed English), should he approach. She doesn’t have to imagine. All she has to do is take the initiative, and the next thing we know, she’s ordering him about and he’s ordering red stilettos for her so she can walk on her back.
Director Park Hyeonjin and her co-writer Lee Da-hye go to great pains to separate the “pleasure from pain” aspect of these practices from anything seriously sexual. As psychologists are on the fence about a lot of issues, motivations and forms this practice takes and what people get out of it, there’s no quibbling with that.
So this isn’t “Fifty Shades” of anything. It’s a simplistic story of the journey from role-playing to romance, with rope, duct tape, leashes, collars and hot candle wax dripping on a fellow’s back. The fact that BDSM learning curve is playing out in an OFFICE environment should make this somewhat tiresome tutorial must-see TV for any HR department.
As a “comedy,” “Love and Leashes” seems more interested in explanations than laughs, though there are a couple. And it’s more interested in DS (dominance/submission) scenarios, the role-playing games that add on a level of danger when played in a locked office at work.
We don’t really see the characters softening for each other. He’s given to weeping and has ongoing submission issues with an ex. She’s doing homework, playing more elaborate games with more elaborate controlling/pain-inflicting “toys” (the film makes a point of having her lash a table, and not her submissive partner), and it’s hard to discern exactly what she’s getting out of this.
Well, the fact that he outranks her could be part of it.
“Love and Leashes” seems far more intent on explaining and removing “fear of the unknown” and the label “pervert” from BDSM than it is in actually titillating, amusing or entertaining as it does. It’s probably more valuable in a “What’s the harm, then?” sense than in any other.
Rating: TV-14, sexual situations, profanity
Cast: Seohyun, Joon-Young Lee, Sanyee Yuan
Credits: Directed by Park Hyeonjin, scripted by Park Hyeonjin and Lee Da-hye. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:57
The signs are all there — aggressive, hair-trigger-tempered creep comes on entirely too strong with women, bullies his friends.
He demonstrates that rape is most definitely a crime of violence, the victim “falls” and the fact that she survives that doesn’t matter. She’s a goner. One of his pals states the obvious.
“I TOLD you he’d do it again!”
“The Ledge” is a visceral, wildly implausible and all-too-obvious rock climbing thriller about a grieving woman chased up the face of Mount Anteleo, “The King of the Dolomites” (northern Italy) by a psychotic and his three friends.
Brittany Ashworth plays Kelly, mourning her late fiance and climbing mentor who died making this climb, witness to the murder of her climbing partner (Anaïs Parello), hounded up the rock face by homophobic, sociopathic and murderous Josh (Ben Lamb) and his reluctant accomplices.
Lamb makes a perfectly loathsome villain, and Ashworth is plainly fit enough to pull off the basics of the insanely unlikely stunts/predicaments her character is trapped in.
But this thriller lacks the breathless suspense of the chase. Most of it is static, Kelly trapped on “The Ledge” without what it takes to safely climb back down, with the bad guys on the ledge above her, taunting her and trying to kill her.
The villain may threaten, “I’m COMING for you, b—h!” He’s all talk, and standing around figuring out fresh ways to torment her rather than climbing down to “get” her
Ashworth dangles from this or that and catches her tumbling backpack with her foot, but we see little in the way of using “your mind, not your body” (advice from a flashback) to work the problem and pick off these “bros” one by one.
“The Ledge” has a simple set-up, a naturally perilous setting, a convincing heroine and a whole lot of hanging around, waiting for the next “That could never happen” narrow escape. The openly-foreshadowed payoff isn’t worth the viewing effort it takes to get to it.
Rating: R, violence including attempted rape, gore, profanity
Cast: Brittany Ashworth, Ben Lamb, Nathan Welsh, Louis Boyer, David Wayman and Anaïs Parello
Credits: Directed by Howard J. Ford, scripted by Tom Boyle. A Saban Films release.
Running time: 1:26
It’s a redemption story about a mug with dreams of stardom, who calls for a Catholic woman…and decided to become a priest?
This is what we call “The Big Mistake Theory.” You make a big enough mistake (Charles Colson, et al) or make enough of them, you grasp at religion.
Not shocking to see Mel Gibson is involved in “Father Stu.”
As redemption narratives go, this looks dubious, but may be there’s an audience for it.
This looks scruffy and DIY and oh so lowbrow.
March 22.
Kiefer Sutherland is their recruiter, Ben Foster and Pine are Army guys put out to pasture with bills to pay.
They’re “contractors,” the euphemism for “mercenaries.”
Looks tense. And with Pine announced as leading another “Star Trek” installment onto the big screen next year, Paramount is smart to keep his name and face out there.
“Strawberry Mansion” is a quirky, cheap DIY-looking sci-fi parable about a future when dreams are being taxed, and some villainous successor to Google or Facebook has figured out a way to inject “product placement” into those dreams.
It takes place mostly in the titular structure, a Pepto-colored folly that a film buff might see as being right at home on the streets where Terry Gilliam or his Canadian counter part Guy Maddin live. And if you aren’t passingly familiar with those two icons of odd, we need to have a little talk.
Co-writer/director Kentucker Audley, who turns up in lots of off-Hollywood cinema and in the occasional horror film (“She Dies Tomorrow”) stars as Mr. Preble, a government dream auditor who shows up at the home of retiree Arabella Isadora (Penny Fuller). She’s been dreaming off the books, and she’s kept all these now-banned format tapes of those dreams that Preble will have to don his whimsical dream-immersion helmet to research what she’s been using in her dreams.
A hot air balloon shows up? That’s taxable at a $35,000 rate. This restaurant or that beach scene has a value for tax purposes.
Damn.
“Bella” is sanguine about the whole misunderstanding and invites Preble to stay in her spare room, usually home to Sugarbaby (a turtle fed on strawberries). Once Preble gets started, he’s privy to all of Bella’s somnambular wanderings. He even sees her younger self (Grace Glowicki) in those dreams, while he is a translucent, flickering video image of himself as a bystander.
There are warnings in Bella’s voice from a trapped housefly. Is someone trying to kill him in her dreams?
“DREAM of me, Mr. Preble!”
Meanwhile, in his waking life, Preble is starting to become aware of his and everyone else’s craving for Rocket Fuel cola and Cap’n Kelly’s fried chicken, home of the new “chicken shake.” Yes. That’s right. And people CRAVE that.
The effects are adorably primitive, mostly 1970s TV era video “special” effects. Giant costumed mice in sailor suits crew the barkentine (a model ship) Preble finds himself commanding in one dream, a sax-playing waiter with a frog’s head might be in a dream, or might have stepped into Preble’s reality.
And then there’s the whole suggestion that he “turn yourself into a caterpillar” to get out of this.
Meanwhile, there’s this omnipresent “I’ve got your back” pal (Linus Phillips) who’s always there to catch Preble and offer him a fresh bucket of chicken to fortify him. Phillips is the stand-out player in the cast, largely by pitching his performance as “wacky” while everybody else goes deadpan.
There’s a whole lot of “bizarre” going here, but it’s easy enough to follow and its meaning and message are simple enough to understand.
Sure, there’s a chance you’ll empathize when Preble states the obvious — “I think I’m losing my mind.” But for those who like a couple of scoops of avante garde on their strawberry waffle cone, the weirdness rarely lets up in this original take on a big cultural bugaboo.
Rating: unrated
Cast: Kentucker Audley, Penny Fuller, Grace Glowicki, Linus Phillips and Reed Birney.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney. A Music Box Films release.
Running time: 1:31
It can seem that there have been as many film versions of “Cyrano de Bergerac” as there are stage productions of Edmond Rostand’s timeless romance. I can remember animated ones and bloody ones, witty ones and Cyranos set in high schools and in rural fire departments.
But modernizing it inevitably sweetens it up and strips away the tragedy of it all. You have to go back to the late 17th/early 18th century for audiences to tolerate “Cyrano” as the broken-hearted figure he truly is.
This latest tale of the swordsman, wit and lover too “ugly” to woo fair Roxanne is based on the 2018 stage musical, with stars Peter Dinklage and Haley Bennett reprising the lead roles. And it’s just lovely, with all the romantic longing, the heartbreak and the waste of war intact.
And then there are the sweet songs by Aaron and Bryce Dessner, mournful ballads that do the things musical numbers do so well — express longing, loss, venal rage and fatalism, and in ways that let the characters show us that mere words and moist, laughing or flashing eyes aren’t enough when it comes to expressing emotions this intense.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences didn’t pay this latest take on an old fashioned romance much heed. The songs feel modern, but lean more to ballads than the “Hamilton” hip hop of Lin Manuel-Miranda. The casting is daring, not exactly A-list prestigious, but quite good.
So let’s just say the Academy can suck eggs. This is gorgeous, and if it isn’t my favorite “Cyrano” (Jose Ferrer, one more bow, if you please.), it’s still a damned fine interpretation.
Joe Wright (“Atonement,””Darkest Hour”), moving the production to ancient and sundrenched Sicily, makes the fanciful characters and situations seem flesh-and-blood real. He takes us from a riot in the theater, where insults and wordplay lead to bloody swordplay, to balcony confessions of true love and to a grim, grey and expressionistic battlefield where the men who would woo Roxanne face their fate.
The story, as if you need reminding — Roxanne (Bennett of “Hillbilly Elegy” and “The Girl on the Train”) sashays around the unnamed city like the belle of the ball, confiding much, if not all, to her “dearest friend,” the soldier and poet Cyrano de Bergerac.
This Cyrano (Dinklage, fresh off “Game of Thrones”), who thinks himself too “ugly” to woo the fair lady hasn’t got the infamous nose standing in his way. He is a dwarf, and a sharp-tongued and short-tempered one to boot. He ridicules and bullies a hammy star actor of the day off the stage, is challenged by a foppish friend (Joshua James) of the Duke (Ben Mendelsohn) right there on that stage, in front of Roxanne and her suitor, the imperious, lusty Duke himself.
Whilst Cyrano is trying to impress Roxanne and spare the theater from being turned into a “stye,” Roxanne is swooning at the sight of a new recruit to Cyrano’s regiment, The Guards. Christian, played by Kelvin Harrison Jr. (“Waves,””The Photograph”), is young and handsome and just as smitten. But he’s a tad green.
When Roxanne insists her friend, Cyrano, look after the lad in the army, “I am your servant” is all he can say. Dinklage lets us see the utter devastation behind Cyrano’s eyes.
He will write the lady letters on Christian’s behalf. He will protect him from hazing rituals. And when Christian and Roxanne insist on wooing by moonlight, the romantic poet Cyrano’s baritone will be the voice from the shadows, speaking in Christian’s stead.
“I have no wit,” the lad admits. “Borrow mine” the dashing swordsman offers.
“Catfishing” was much more romantic this way, one must confess.
Bennett, who first gained notice in the pop musical (ish) “Words & Music,” has a lovely voice. Dinklage gives a pleasing, manly melancholy to Cyrano’s laments. Harrison is quite good, and Mendelsohn, playing another heavy, growls through his big number with panache.
There’s an elegant minimalism to Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s choreography for the film — army recruits balletically backing Christian’s reprise of that opening “longing” song sung by his beloved, Roxanne, bakers sensually plunging their hands in the dough and in rhythm in a scene without singing.
And cinematographer Seamus McGarvey and production designer Sarah Greenwood turn the ancient locations into lived-in, loved-in and fought-over spaces bathed in light and candlelit shadow.
No, the songs aren’t going to turn the soundtrack into a best-seller, and as is often the case with this source play, the middle acts sag and slow down from the giddy opening. But the film’s battlefield scenes, with their blasted (Volcanic?) landscape and limited, backlit color-palette are the real grabbers.
That’s where the film and the score’s greatest moment plays out, doomed soldiers writing letters to loved ones before a “suicide” mission, with various infantry (including singer Glen Hansard from “Once”) singing that “heaven” will be “Wherever I Fall.”
Forget the judgment of the distracted Academy, whose “youth movement” in expanding membership is probably not the audience for an old fashioned (diversely cast) tearjerker of a musical. You’ll see it’s not just Dinklage’s stunningly-soulful, Oscar-worthy rendition of the title role that will stick with you afterwards. Cyrano is meant to make you cry, and this musical and its star do, and more than once.
Rating: PG-13 for some strong violence, thematic and suggestive material, and brief language
Cast: Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Kelvin Harrison Jr, Bashir Salahuddin, Monica Dolan, Ruth Sheen, Anjana Vasan, Glen Hansard and Ben Mendelsohn
Credits: Directed by Joe Wright, scripted by Erica Schmidt, based on her stage musical which was based the play by Edmond Rostand. An MGM release.
Running time: 2:04
I dare say YouTube had a hand in greenlighting and titling this potentially cute and heartwarming tale, the movie Channing Tatum got to make when Marvel turned him down, to hear him tell it.
What’s huge on YouTube? Dog videos.
This one opens Thursday night/Friday.
Tony, monied, upscale and posh Winter Park is the high rent district/suburb of Orlando. I lived here for several years before moving to the coast.
Winter Park, being monied and almost Biblically prideful, designed itself a library and adjacent events center that is a wonder to behold, a showplace that holds its own among the most striking recent library builds anywhere in the world.
A fitting place for MovieNation to leave a copy of Lee Isaac Chung’s pre-Oscar “film festival film,” the quirky character study “Abigail Harm?” Film Movement recently released all of Chung’s pre “Minari” movies, and this was the last I got around to reviewing.
Anyway, here’s one for your collection Winter Park, courtesy of Film Movement and Roger DVDseed, spreading fine cinema across the Southeast, one library and one DVD at a time.
Movie Nation 