Cliff Curtis and Temuera Morrison also headline eve of first contact with The West story of Hawaii’s various islands and tribes at war, with Momoa the baddest of the badasses ready to unite them.
They need to unite, because the white guys are showing up and ready to “colonize.”
This nine episode series premieres August 1 on Apple TV.
A missing person case in parkland that starts to look like murder, a lot of suspicions and superticions, characters, agendas and perils are faced by our intrepid crew (Lily Santiago is also in uniform).
Rosemarie DeWitt, Josh Randall and Taylor Hickson are also in the cast of this Netflix series, which drops July 17.
Bana’s been doing stand-out work in projects like this — typically indie films from his native Oz — for years. This looks good.
It was just a movie, but those of us who saw it and brought an adult persective to reviewing “Project X” back in 2012 picked up on the ante it was upping.
Decades of raucus youth party pictures, from “Animal House” to “Sixteen Candles, “Can’t Hardly Wait” and “Old School” to “Superbad” weren’t just mimicked, they were bested by the most over-the-top/out-of-control parents-are-out-of-town bacchanal ever put on screen.
It’s “the movie equivalent of that good-looking, well-off teenage boy your gut tells you to keep away from your teenage daughter,” I wrote way back when about this raunchy, no-rules romp that practically screamed “DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME” even as it invited teens to do just that.
Over the top, sexist, politically incorrect, occasionally hilarious but “wearying?” Sure. It’s from the producers of “The Hangover,” ferchrissake.
Alex Wood’s installment in Netflix’s “companies/phenomena/events gone wrong” series “Trainwreck” is an oral history of “The Real ‘Project X,'” an intimate teen girl’s party that turned into a town, region and nation-roiling event in The Netherlands back in 2012.
Oddly enough, based on the eyewitness accounts of those who witnessed it, plotted it and documented it, this documentary about that 2012 event is a testament to the enduring influence of the cinema.
Sure, social media was how it all came to be — a Facebook party invitation post by Dutch girl Merthe, about to turn 16, one that she carelessly rendered “public,” meaning it could be shared and spread by creeps like the 18 year old doofus Dutchboy Jorik and further exploited by aspiring Youtube moguls Giel and Thomas.
But a then-recent movie caused it. The canny Jorik Clarck knew a chance to recreate that epic, unforgettable and out of control teen party as depicted in “Project X” when he saw it. He made that hormonal, binge-drinking wish come true, right down to the riot, if not the actual burning down of the house depicted by Hollywood.
The Little Dutchboys and Dutchgirls satisfied themselves with just burning a few cars.
And almost every damned reference the victims, participants and cash-in goons who remember this event in this documentary make is cinematic — people were afraid to leave their homes, like “The Purge,” Dutch teens can buy booze at 16, unlike “McLovin in ‘Superbad,'” etc.
Yeah, a movie — the movies — did all that.
This documentary is short, snappy and suitably shambolic as we hear from council members, Merthe’s parents and those gonzo Stuk TV impressarios and sample their footage of the night’s unfolding disaster.
I laughed and laughed at this, slack-jawed at how it all happened and how outrageous and ridiculous the entire “trainwreck” was.
Wood, a veteran TV producer and director with “Secrets of the Zoo” and “Jared from Subway: Catching a Monster” credits, seems well-suited to be pointing the camera and listening without judgment to all these people talk about a slow-moving “trainwreck” that young Merthe, her parents and a few others saw coming, one that virtually no one in charge took seriously enough to intervene.
The then-mayor of Haren, Holland, declined to be interviewed for a reason. For all the kiddie fingers in this fiasco, he’s the dope who bristled at doing more than repeating on TV “There is no party. Don’t come,” in Dutch (with English subtitles).
Clarck also comes off as a villain, but even he picked up on how out of control things were getting, how young Holland’s hive-mind took hold of this and wouldn’t let Merthe or him cancel it in the eyes of those all wound up to get lit.
Facebook? Yea, this was partly their fault, too.
There’s even a would-be hero, a councilmember from a nearby Groningen titled “Night Mayor,” someone in charge of making nightlife events and making those planned by others safe. If Chris Garrit had had his way, one could imagine this entire calamity having a real “Hollywood ending.”
Picture hundreds of thousands of Dutch youth descending on tiny, tony Haren, directed to a park that could hold them, partying like it was 2012 and then joining in the biggest “Happy Birthday” sing-along ever to young Merthe to wrap things up, preferably without mass vandalism or a single Molotov cocktail.
Maybe when Hollywood makes a feature film version of “The Real Project X,” they’ll tidy it up in just that way. They should hire Nima Nourizadeh, director of the original “X” for it. His movie wasn’t anybody’s idea of a masterpiece. But it isn’t every film that connects with youth culture and then sets off a chain reaction “trainwreck” the way his did.
Rating: TV-MA, violence, binge drinking, profanity
Cast: Merthe Marije Weusthuis, Jorik Clarck, Giel de Winter, Thomas van der Vlugt and Chris Garrit
Credits: A Netflix release.
Running time: :41
“A Great Divide” is a righteous, topical and long-winded culture clash drama about America at its most racist and least welcoming.
Unlike the similarly themed “Minari,” it’s more directly about race and more overt in its messaging — downright heavy-handed at times.
And unlike “Minari,” it’s not a period piece. It’s an Unwelcoming West — Wyoming, in this case — as it might be today, in a country that’s finding a lot more tolerance for racism and xenophobia than we’d previously believed about ourselves.
Jae Suh Park (TV’s “Friends from College”) and Ken Jeong play parents who move to a monied corner of rural Wyoming for “a fresh start.”
Director and co-writer Jean Shim’s film goes a little bit wrong, right off the bat, by parking the Lees — sensitive and smart teen son Benjamin (Emerson Min) and his confidante, Grandma (MeeWha Alana Lee) are with them — in an Architectural Digest lodge/home, a hilltop “castle” in wood, glass and stone. They show up in a Lincoln Navigator.
And none of this is theirs. Husband Isaac’s old friend/new-boss (Margaret Cho) is setting them up out on the edge of the Tetons, with breathtaking vistas, moose and bison roaming the wild and an exclusive private high school all laid at their feet.
Sure.
All Benjy has to do is write a compelling essay to show “if I fit in,” at Riverton High, is how he puts it. Maybe Granny can help.
But will he fit in? Can they? His bestie from back in California (Miya Cech) comes for a summer visit, and his first girlfriend is a witness to instant blasts of hostility from the founding family’s entitled crank (Jamie McShane). A “friendly” and “helpful” privately-paid park ranger (Marshall Allman) is sent to give the kids a helpful “orientation” to the place, the wildlife and “the rules” here.
With the threat of “charges” being brought by Old Man McNather, the ranger visit is mandatory with a hint of bullying.
McNather is Mr. “YOU people” and others absorb “Leave the woods to those of us who belong here” ethos from him. As the Lees were passed by a Vanilla ISIS flag-flying pickup on the way from the airport, they’re practically braced for the “God-d–ned CHINESE” and “slanty-eyed” and “as long as you’re here legal” insults and veiled threats.
Mom is particularly sensitive to this. She has her reasons. Granny counsels Benjy that “At the end of hardship comes happiness.” Sure it does.
Director and co-writer Jean Shim’s script is built around a series of character monologues — about the struggles of immigrants, the racism Asians have faced in American workplaces and schools, the generational divide on how to cope with that and the like.
Those pauses to deliver long anecdotes can be moving, but to a one they stop the narrative in its tracks.
Jeong tries to play a few scenes “light,” making “Yee-haw” jokes with a drawl at the local self-labeled “redneck” eatery. That scene rings about as true as the “I’ve got this rich pal who’s given me a job, a mansion and a Matthew McConaughy Lincoln in Wyoming” set-up.
It’s disappointing that a film about such an important subject leans into unreality — artificial affluence, a teenager consulting Granny for everything — as it marches doggedly into melodrama.
The racism is over-the-top, but that doesn’t make it feel less real. Other plot elements are simplistic forshadowing for the predictable arc the story settles into.
The impulses behind depicting this “Great Divide” in modern America are noble and realistic. But the movie wearing that title is entirely too contrived and monologue-driven to live up to that promise.
Rating: TV-16, racial slurs, wildlife injury
Cast: Jae Suh Park, Emerson Min, Miya Cech, West Mulholland, Seamus Deaver, Marshall Allman and Ken Jeong.
Credits: Directed by Jean Shim, scripted by Jeff Yang, Martina Nagel and Jean Shim. A Gravitas Ventures release on Amazon Prime.
Running time: 1:40
Natalie Merchant, W. Kamau Bell, Josh Brolin, Jay McInerny, Matt Dillon and Kerouac’s pal, jazzman David Amran, are among those testifying to the genius of his masterpiece, “On the Road.”
Slick, star-studded, some guy from Michelle Obama’s WH staff directed it. But still…
August 1, all ye disciples of the world’s greatest Slim Gaillard fan gather at the cineplex for this one.
Nothing to see here, just another country and another culture coping with the Zombie Apocalypse.
“Ziam” is basically a test for those of us committed to watching any thriller featuring Muay Thai martial artists facing and dispensing with hordes of foes. We got hooked thanks to “Ong-Bak,” so it’s not our fault.
The film, directed and co-written “The Up Rank” filmmaker Kulp Kaljareuk, is generic in the extreme, finding little new to “say” about zombies and how they came to be in a literal or political/allegorical sense. Fighting off lurching, lunging monsters with “BRAINS” on the brain with your feet and fists isn’t wholly novel. But some effort was made to set this up differently from all the other zombie films that preceded it.
Climate change has brought human civilization to the brink. But Thailand has discovered a way out of mass famine. The mysterious scientist/tycoon Mr. Vasu invented nutrition bars that fill the food gap. The totalitarian government heralds this as their way of making Thailand “Siam” again, a nation of great import and a major player on the world stage.
Singh (Mark Prin Suparat) is a not-quite-retired boxer making his living as a delivery driver, one who’s able to fend off hijacking attempts. That latest load that he and his partner got stuck with? Fish.
That turns out to be Mr. Vasu’s latest miracle. He has made fish safe to eat again, or so he thinks when he gives his investors and top lieutenants a serving. The fact that Vasu’s not there should be their tip that every experiment needs guinea pigs. Somebody gets very sick.
Vasu (Mark Prin Suparat) has all but moved into the hospital, trying to find a miracle cure for his deathly-ill wife. But when one of his minions is brought there, sick and raving, Vasu won’t be the only one facing the consequences.
There’s Dr. Rin (Nuttanicha Dungwattanawanich), coming on duty after her latest argument with Singh over his dangerous line of work. Her favorite nurse (Pimmada Boriruksuppakorn) and that nurse’s asthmatic little boy (Wanvayla Boonnithipaisit) are also inside when that one raving patient becomes an outbreak that could threaten the city, the country and the world.
Luckily, Singh shows up to fend off the zombies and battle the SWAT team sent to fetch the tycoon, his wife and the doctor he now insists he needs to keep her alive.
Young Buddy is the one who’s seen lots of zombie movies, the kid who shouts “Hit’em in the HEAD. The brain controls everything” (in Thai with subtitles, or dubbed into English)! Buddy’s asthma is only evident when Mom gives him his inhaler. The character’s a cliche. And in such thrillers, so is his illness.
“Ziam” — the title’s a zombie “Siam” pun — is a slow-footed affair, delivering a few energetic if not all that interesting brawls, but little else.
Suparat, of “Necromancer 2020,” handles the fight choreography with ease. It’s not the most demanding we’ve seen, and other than that, there’s little that plays as “original” in this latest dance with the undead.
Our tycoon never admits his hand in this disaster, the kid veers from terrified to amused at all these lumbering, bloodied monsters who seem to have it in for him.
The doctor is plucky, but only in the dullest and most predictable ways. Self-sacrifice shows up at the most expected moment. And the ticking clock third act has been here and done that in more movies than one can count.
Still, as the headline says, “Ziam” is Muay Thai vs. Zombies. If they’d just titled it that they might have saved a lot of us 97 minutes that we’ll never get back.
Rating: TV-MA, gory violence, body parts, entrails and what not
Cast: Mark Prin Suparat, Nuttanicha Dungwattanawanich, Wanvayla Boonnithipaisit, Johnny Afone, Pimmada Boriruksuppakorn and Jason Young
Credits: Directed by Kulp Kaljareuk, scripted by Nut Nualpang, Weerasu Worrapot and
Kulp KaljareukA Netflix release.
Running time: 1:37
The late novelist Harper Lee was press-shy almost her entire life, especially after “To Kill a Mockingbird” made her world famous. That was her way of avoiding answering one obvious question that weighs on the mind of cinephiles.
“Did you ever read ‘Intruder in the Dust?'”
On seeing the
Clarence Brown film adaptation of William Faulkner’s novel while researching the University of Tennessee alum Brown for a profile I was writing, I distinctly recall formulating how I’d ask Lee the question if I was to ever get the chance.
“How many times did you watch that movie?”
Faulkner beat Lee to the innocent Black man in jail in the Deep South story by a dozen years. Brown, one of MGM’s longest serving contract directors, the studio’s choice for Garbo movies and auteur of such studio system classics as “The Yearling,” “National Velvet” and “Flesh and the Devil,” got his film of that 1948 novel in front of audiences a year later — in 1949.
Another “coming of age” tale from the director of “The Human Comedy” and “The Yearling” or not, America wasn’t ready for “Intruder in the Dust” in the late ’40s.
Lee sentimentalized her coming of age narrative, that of a child’s view of an accused Black man defended by the ultimate “white savior,” Atticus Finch, a lionized version of her father. The adoring, tomboyish Scout was her alter ego in the narrative. The novel became one of the most beloved texts in American literature and the Civil Rights Era release of the Robert Mulligan/Gregory Peck film version was a watershed moment for shifting race relations in America.
Faulkner wasn’t sentimental. Most filmmakers who tackled his novels tended to give them florid, drawling Tennessee Williams touches. Brown made sure his coming-of-age movie didn’t lapse into sentiment or Deep South soliloquies, even as he was casting his “Yearling” star Claude Jarman Jr. as his sympathetic if skeptical protagonist, a witness and grudging “friend” to the “proud, stubborn and insufferable” antagonist, a Black man (Juano Hernandez) accused of murdering a belligerant, racist bully.
Brown & MGM made a Southern Gothic noir, a suspenseful thriller that didn’t blink at the big questions it was asking, a movie years ahead of its time. MGM, run by the ever-cautious, don’t-rock-the-cultural-boat Louis B. Mayer, was a most reluctant partner in this one.
“Mockingbird” may be an emotional Oscar winning classic, influencing generations. But “Intruder” is Clarence Brown’s masterpiece, flinty and blunt and cynical, and not shy about showing racists in their natural environment, trotting out their favorite slur as the ultimate evocation of white privilege.
In an unnamed town (Oxford, Mississippi) in a nameless Southern county in the fictive 1940s “present,” a local tough has been murdered. It’s the buzz of the barber shop, which bristles with racist fury wondering if the sheriff (Will Geer) has “got the n—er” who everybody knows pulled the trigger.
That barber shops empties out when the sheriff rolls up in his mud-covered, one-tire-flat sedan and Lucas Beauchamp (Hernandez) is led out in cuffs. The accused is stoic and inexpressive. But that one kid (Jarman) he fixates on in a crowd of angry white men gets his attention. He wants to see the Chick’s uncle.
That would be the boy’s Uncle John (Brian James), an arrogant, cynical lawyer who wants nothing to do with this case, and makes that plain over Sunday dinner with the family. That’s one reason Chick takes his sweet time passing on Beauchamp’s message. Another is to underscore a point about how even the justice and fair play white folks in town are in no hurry to “save” this Negro. The murder victim might have been a redneck bully. But he was white. Beauchamp’s fate is sealed.
Even lawyer Stevens is resigned to the lynching to come. “Won’t be their first,” he notes, firing up his pipe as if he has all the time in the world.
The boy has history with the Negro, an awkard encounter (seen in flashback) that was uneasy because the boy didn’t know what to make of a proud, self-assured man who treated him as what he was, a boy, and not the “white boy” who expected and received deference from the other Black people he’s met.
Something about that meeting and their “exchange” has Chick feeling indebted to Beauchamp, or at least determined to get a humble “thank you” from him. That’s why he takes Beauchamp’s next and most unbelievable request to heart. With the help of a household servant (Elzie Emmanuel) and a little old lady (Elizabeth Patterson) determined to ensure the sheriff does the right thing, Chick sets out for the fresh grave containing the victim, far outside of town.
Do-nothing lawyer be damned, they’re going to look for what caliber bullet killed Vinson Gowrie.
Continue readingAn R-rated guardian angel with Keanu Reeves at his most dopey/earnest?
Sandra Oh and Sherry Cola show up.
Sure. This could work.
Oct. 17.
Zut alors! This looks adorbs.
The advent of streaming and video on demand has hastened an inconvenient and often downright unseemly devolution of “channels” and what they used to mean to the TV consumer.
The long-established “evolve or die” desperation of basic cable/dish meant that refreshing programming onn legacy channels in the search of a larger audience, or luring back an audience that strayed led to godawful “mission creep” for channels that we’d come to treat like info/entertainment utilities.
The Weather Channel was “always there” to let us know what to prepare for in our own world on any given day, with a dash of “white out” blizzards, deathly freezes, hurricanes, floods and tornadoes in places that many of us fled (Alaska, North Dakota and Florida), making us glad we did or relieved that we weren’t living there.
But if you can’t sell enough ads to keep people connected longer than “I don’t need a raincoat/need to take in the plants for a frost today” you start producing low-production-value weather documentaries, series and the like. If you can’t make your bottom line with the odd Jim-Cantore-standing-in-a-hurricane event, you start hyping your own events — doing your own storm “naming” and the like.
AMC started life as American Movie Classics. First the “American” movie labeling went, then “movie,” and “classic” until assorted series — too many of them built around zombies — became their bread and butter.
The History Channel was likewise pretty good at what they did at the outset. There are legions of legitimate historians with non-fiction books worth adapting into documentaries and PBS and “The American Experience/American Masters” can’t get to them all.
But then they realized people were nicknaming them “The World War II Channel.” The accountants told them that older demographic that was watching could only buy so many pills, therapeutic socks, footbaths and sciatica cures. So they went “Ancient Aliens” and turned the network into a series of freak shows filled with pseudoscience and pseudoscientists. Legitimate historians, by and large, avoided becoming sons and daughters of Erich von Däniken and avoided that garbage.
Ghost hunting and paranormal shows came next, often with a dose of Shatner included.
Their impartiality vanished as well, as agenda-driven, mass production/low-production-value assembly line docs seemed sponsored to publicize aspiring Republican politicians, virtually none of them “expert” on anything, much less say “The Gilded Age” robber barons whom one series claimed “made America.”
The cost of all this was legitimacy. You might not have drawn a crowd with Sander Vanocur hosting “Movies in Time,” interviewing historians about a movie depicting an historical event, fact-checking “Titanic” or “J.F.K.” But you didn’t embarass yourself or torch your brand in the process.
Even their legit history seemed over reliant on not-quite-my-field historians from lesser known institutions. Can’t find an expert on this or that? Contact the same telegenic regulars you use from The University of Kent or Kenyon College and let them bone up on punchy answers to pre-submitted questions.
But “Kevin Costner’s The West” and the Lebron James-produced “Jim Thorpe: Lit by Lightning” are stand-out productions packed with real historians and legitimate sports experts.
No ghosts or ghost-hunters, no fringe freaks riding the flying saucer circuit — just Mr. Integrity, Costner, hosting eye-opening recollections and recreations of “Bleeding Kansas,” which lit the fuse for the Civil War, “Johnson County Wars” (the basis for the Western “Heaven’s Gate”), balanced accounts of Indian conflicts and “erased” historical figures like Joaquin Murrieta, “The Robin Hood of El Dorado.”
And the authors and historians are mostly top-drawer, headlined by Doris Kearns Goodwin, the dean of American historians. It’s eye-opening and a long-overdue realization of what any “History Channel” series should be.
Native American filmmaker Chris Eyre (“Smoke Signals,” TV’s “Dark Winds”) was an excellent choice to bring Jim Thorpe’s story to the screen in a documentary. Leaning on Thorpe’s unpublished autobiography, a few recreations and historians who know their stuff when it comes to America’s treatment of Native Americans, Indian Boarding Schools and lingering cultural racism, as well as Olympic athletes and some well-known sports reporters, Eyre renews our connection with a singular figure, one of America’s first sports superstars.
If The History Channel’s proprietors have any interest in burnishing their brand — and they should, considering the piffle they’ve been packing their schedule with — that documentary and Costner’s series should be their template, a gold standard for who they get in business with and the lofty goals of reporting on “real history,” American and otherwise, inconvenient truths included.
Over the years there have been glimmers of hope — the odd stand-out show or one-off documentary — that suggested that the folks running this tent show remember what they’re supposed to being down, over the years. But a 24 hour broadcast day means there’s always room for flying saucer filler and the like. It’s no wonder Americans have turned so cynical about “facts” and agreed-upon truths. Even allegedly impartial, cold-hard-facts television has embraced snake-oil selling with a vengeance.
But if we tune in for these new offerings, maybe the numbers will convince them that repenting and sticking to facts pays off.
There’s long been a pronounced gap between the history produced on PBS and the boilerplate, formulaic docs cranked out for The History Channel. It’s time that gap narrowed, and maybe with these productions raising the bar, and a little “Let’s steal that ‘History Detectives’ concept now that PBS is done with it” and the like, The History Channel can be “saved.”
Movie Nation 