Comically flat, emotionally thin but not-entirely-charmless, “Out of My League” is a distinctly Italian take on young love shadowed by terminal illness.
Like more than one Italian film that I’ve taken in as we journey “around the world with Netflix,” it seems quaint, dated and retrograde by North American standards. Would Hollywood serve up a self-described “ugly duckling,” the butterfly who “stayed a caterpillar” heroine we see here, what with all the image-embracing and “shaming” eschewing going on?
But this is Turin, not Tampa. Marta (Ludovica Francesconi) is a perky, petite pixie, a 19 year-old orphaned as a toddler, resigned to her Plain Giada looks. And that’s not all she’s resigned to.
“The worst is yet to come,” she narrates (in dubbed English, or Italian with English subtitles).
She was orphaned at 3, and the two things her parents left her are the family home, which she’s finally taken possession of, and mucoviscidosis. That’s another name for cystic fibrosis. Her lungs fill with mucus under a whole raft of conditions, and her future looks circumscribed and short.
She may have two gay BFFs, one more than the rom-com minimum. And Federica (Gaja Masciale) and Jacopo (Jozef Gjura) may go everywhere with her, even joining her for medical appointments. But they’re not amused by her gallows humor.
“How long have I got?”
Her doctor’s assurances of “What matters is your attitude” seems like a cop out. Because Marta is bubbling over with attitude. Her job at the local food coop includes giving sexy, sensual readings of “Today’s specials” memos over the PA system, so sultry that men and boys are always shoving come-on notes under her door. She pins them to her office “wailing wall,” laughing at her one chance to be the one dismissing potential suitors.
Her BFFs encourage her to scan through Tinder, even as she admits “my sex appeal is best expressed on a keypad.
But there is the one guy, young, rich and handsome, that she has eye for. As there’s no sense waiting around, she proceeds to stalk, pursue and generally get in the sightlines of hunky, arrogant Arturo (Giuseppe Maggio).
There’s a hint of “Sixteen Candles” to this pursuit. The last thing Marta expects is for Arturo to notice her back and call her bluff.
First-time feature director Alice Filippi and screenwriters Roberto Proia and Michela Straniero shove in the usual assortment of “big gestures,” first date makeover montage, the “karoake” moment (he sings “Fly Me to the Moon” in fractured English) and obstacles to love and devotion. Those of course are topped with the with the easily-anticipated “She’s not telling him she’s sick” twist.
Everything we see feels contrived. Nothing we see or hear plays as “funny” and even “cute” seems beyond this flat romance’s reach.
When you can’t make anything funny out of the two gay 19 year-old roommates (they live with Marta in her house) haplessly trying to make a baby for reasons we can never fathom, you ruin the highs before the story’s arc shows you the lows — coughing jags, oxygen tubes up the nose, hospitals and the like.
I never bought into any of this. Maggio is a foot taller and hits the gym, and Francesconi’s best efforts can’t make the scripted Marta witty, funny or charming enough to merit a second glance.
Rating: TV-MA, sexual situations, nudity, profanity
Cast: Ludovica Francesconi, Giuseppe Maggio, Gaja Masciale and Jozef Gjura.
Credits: Directed by Alice Filippi, scripted by Roberto Proia and Michela Straniero. An Eagle Films Netflix release.
Cary Elwes as a New York Times book critic? Will he survive his encounter with the grizzled, grumpy and soused old coot Caine plays in this Sept. 17 comedy?
They gave Oscar winner Chloe Zhao (“Nomadland”) her biggest check, lined up Jolie and Hayek as “names” and pulled together an “X-Men: First Class” sized ensemble of young superheroes to be super-heroic.
Gemma Chan, Brian Tyree Henry, Barry Keoghan, Kit Harrington and Kumail Nanjiani ensure this is a seriously diverse cast.
Not the most “box office” ensemble ever assembled, but it’s “Marvel” that sells these things.
“Eternals,” opening in November, promises to be another test of the modern post-“Avengers” pandemic comic book movie marketing model.
Embrace the “Blade Runner” sci-fi noir look, the post apocalyptic gloom and the embittered voice-over of the jaded hero, and you can roll with the punches “Reminiscence” throws at you. For a while, anyway.
“Nothing is more addictive than the past,” the grizzled Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman) muses. And that’s what people do, escape to the past — after the U.N. and Al Gore’s long-warned of climate catastrophe.
“When the waters rose and the wars broke out” this combat vet did his part to guard the higher ground. Now, he’s in mostly-flooded Miami, and yes, Miami never looked better — half-drowned, but cooler.
Nick and his former comrade-in-arms (Thandiwe Newton) offer a service here. Reminiscence is tech that might have been developed to augment interrogations. Put people in a (not-so-isolated) isolation tank, wire them up and let them replay the moments of their lives that meant something — falling in love, time with family, playing with a beloved dog.
The authorities use it as a threat against high-placed criminals who answer “I don’t recall” too many times. But Nick and Watts (Newton) sell it to the general public, with him hypnotically leading each client through a “Twilight Zone” narration that takes them “on a journey through memory.”
There’s always a dame in such film noirs, and this one (Rebecca Ferguson) says she’s just trying to find her lost keys. But as Nick and Watts watch Mae’s memories unfold (cool effect), the sultry nightclub “chanteuse” gives away that she’s mixed up in things, things which might connect her with a corrupt cop (Cliff Curtis) and one of the “barons” that runs this Waterworld.
Nick is intrigued, and smitten. “Reminiscence” is about his hunt for Mae, for answers and for closure — romantic, legal, etc.
“Westworld” producer and writer Lisa Joy scripted and directed this film, which is memorable only for a couple of acting moments, and the striking images of what Miami looks like when it’s half-drowned. Pedestrians wade the streets in Wellingtons, dinghies putter about as taxis, as some of the high rises are still inhabited with waves lapping at the ground floor.
The rich have “dammed” their way to safety and comfort, walled-off islands that keep the waters from their door, but flood everyone else’s. In light of recent a recent Miami building disaster (a subplot here) and the more recent IPCC report on the unfolding climate catastrophe, “Reminiscence” seems downright timely.
But this story, this plot? It goes off the rails faster than a Miami commuter train scooting over half-flooded tracks.
The third act’s twists and wrinkles aren’t worth the brain power it takes to sort them out. The scheme uncovered plays as low stakes, the violence simply an admission that “We need to give the audience something for their money.”
The film is forgettably similar to Neill Blomkamp’s “Demonic” in its “travel through memory/dreams” theme. His misfire also opens this week. But he didn’t spend Warner Brothers’ millions upon millions on his picture.
“Reminiscence” is the sort of flop that can make one appreciate the series-length hollowness of the Joy’s most famous work, “Westworld.” Yes, the acting’s good, with Newton showing us more shades of her much-deserved comeback. The themes engaged with are intriguing and the world created is arresting.
But what do you do with it? Joy, aka Christopher Nolan’s sister-in-law, has no idea. That makes “Reminiscence” a classic “August” movie, a high-priced all-star dud dumped in cinema’s slowest month and forgotten by Labor Day.
Rating: PG-13 for strong violence, drug material throughout, sexual content and some strong language
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson, Thandiwe Newton, Daniel Wu and Cliff Curtis
Credits: Scripted and directed by Lisa Joy. A Warner Brothers release.
Running time: 1:56
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Netflix has decided “hot for teacher” movies fit my algorithm. I don’t know why, as most of the movies of this warped little corner of thrillerdom that I review aren’t on Netflix, although many turn up there eventually.
And they’re pitched to me by film distributors, not films that I hunt down by subject matter.
But somehow, Netflix has ID’d movies about students getting romantically/sexually involved with a teacher as something they expect me to like. Ick.
Granted, they are popular, as I searched that phrase on this blog and several movies a year wear that genre label (with apologies to Van Halen, copyright pending). And I know for a fact that reviews of such movies are real reader magnets.
So yeah, I’m a little embarrassed. Maybe you should be, too.
“Black Island,” titled “Schwarze Insel” in its original German, is an erotic mystery thriller set on an unnamed Frisian Island. It’s a somewhat suspenseful tale of an old grudge and revenge that’s best served seaside.
I say “somewhat suspenseful,” because co-writers Miguel Alexandre (who also directed) and Lisa Carline Hofer give away parts of the game too early, and make another misstep or two on their way to a satisfying finale. Somebody should remake it and make the necessary adjustments as they do.
A brief prologue shows us a tragedy that happened on this island. And the funeral connected to that tragedy has an unhappy ending as well. But “tragedy” implies “accident.” And these “accidents” were planned. We see who carried those plans out.
Teenaged Jonas (Philip Froissant) is newly-orphaned. His friends are his only real comfort, especially Nina (Mercedes Müller) who might be a little sweet on him.
She’s depressed about the idea of him moving away to live with distant relations. But his estranged grandfather (Hanns Zischler), a retired schoolteacher, invites him to stay on and live with him.
A year later, a new German language and lit teacher takes over, midterm. Jonas, Nina and their friends are taken with Rilke buff Helena Jung (Alice Dwyer of “The Invisibles”). She even invites them over to put together her new IKEA furniture and install a little flooring.
She gives them beer. She tells them to call her “Helena.” Jonas seems to get her special attention. And that puts Nina, who doesn’t want the competition, on her guard.
Helena coyly defuses that with her “Are you guys an item?” queries (dubbed, or in German with English subtitles). But sooner rather than later Jonas takes the bait, and lets Helena’s “We’re both adults” rationalization ease his conscience.
Poor Nina. But she’s a smart kid, and a sly one. Nina, we suspect, is going to figure some things out.
“Black Island” finds charm in the way Nina courts Jonas, and sad resignation in the way he betrays her.
And in Dwyer, it has a first rate villainess, a schemer with just enough “crazy” behind her eyes to make this character work. She is subtle enough to never let us see the Full Glenn Close, but never leaves any doubt that she’s a woman with a mission and a grudge. Dwyer and Helena take over the film, which takes on her “Talented Mr. Ripley” point of view.
Whatever she’s done and she’s going to do, we’re privy to it, and to Helena’s efforts to tidy up in the aftermath.
I have to say the film’s set-up is more interesting than the resolution, which is seriously straightforward.
But the violence isn’t “Hollywood,” it’s human. And the remote, windswept setting has its chilling pleasures as well.
That makes this mixed bag of a movie a little more than “exploitation,” a little less than a fully functional thriller.
And if your algorithm tags you as a “hot for teacher” genre completist, it’s worth a look.
Rating: TV-MA, violence, sex, some nudity, teen drinking
Cast: Alice Dwyer, Philip Froissant, Mercedes Müller Hanns Zischler
Credits: Directed by Miguel Alexandre, scripted by Miguel Alexandre, Lisa Carline Hofer. A Netflix release.
First comes the gimmick. It looks like a green screen in need of a tune up, actors superimposed on a set, their images translucent and staticky, little bits of the set show through their bodies, clothes, etc.
As that effect, used to visualize characters being inserted into “the dreams” of someone, is not all that impressive, writer-director Neill Blomkamp had to find his frights elsewhere, anything that might give his latest, “Demonic,” a reason to exist.
From the crow-headed “demon” to various “demonic possession” tropes, “science” tackling the “problem” with Vatican-approved hardware, and a heroine who can seem put out — but never really terrified — it’s the conventions of the genre that let Blomkamp (“District 9”) down.
Or maybe Blomkamp simply has no flair for this genre.
The pandemic-filmed “Demonic” is about Carly (Carly Pope), a 30something who has returned to the place (in Canada) where she grew up for reasons the movie wastes zero time detailing.
She catches up with her self-identified “BFF” (Kandys McClure) and makes noise about shrugging off a text from an old acquaintance, Martin (Chris William Martin).
With his “insane theories,” she figures “I can’t go back there.” But of course she does.
Martin’s news is that he’s seen Carly’s imprisoned murderer Mom (Nathalie Boltt). She’s in a coma and being treated at some experimental facility run by Therapol.
Before she knows what’s hit her, Carly is contacted and summoned there and offered the chance to commune with her estranged, comatose mother via some new tech the company is testing. “The simulation” can insert Carly into her mother’s memories, “kind of like a dream,” the “physician” she meets with explains. Why not give it a try?
The guy (Michael Rogers) may be a tad pushy and look like horror icon Sig Haig in a suit. But sure, why not?
Her reasons become clear once she “contacts” her mother in some digital facsimile of the house where she grew up.
“I never got the chance to tell you how much I hate you!“
But something’s off about Mom. Something’s invading Carly’s own dreams. And this Therapol? Martin has some (conspiracy) theories about what they might be up to.
Pope’s character is so passive that it’s a relief to the audience’s sense of outrage and simple movie logic when she finally flips out at these tech-villains, whose “simulations” leave her haunted and even result in a nasty injury.
“We don’t have answers” is not what you want to hear from the “experts.”
“I’m talking DEMONS” is what you expect to hear from Martin, the conspiracy crank.
And “It’s COMING for you” is exactly what anybody who’s ever been to a demonic possession thriller is waiting to hear, as it sets up the showdown in the third act.
This is Blomkamp’s first feature since 2015’s “Chappie” debacle, something I hadn’t realized until I dug into his credits to see why he might be taking a shot at something this modest in scope and intellectual ambition, aside from the limitations the pandemic put on filmmaking.
If this is meant as a “comeback,” it doesn’t cut it. If there’s money for a possible “District 9” sequel, he’d better grab it.
“Demonic” just makes you wonder whatever possessed Blomkamp in thinking it would work.
Rating: R, violence, profanity
Cast: Carly Pope, Nathalie Boltt, Michael Rogers, Kandys McClure, Chris William Martin and Terry Chen
Credits: Scripted and directed by Neill Blomkamp. An IFC Midnight release.
In my mind, at least, Tom Everett Scott went straight from “Shades,” the cool, turtle-necked drummer in “That Thing You Do” to middle aged man “dad” roles, with barely a “boyfriend of the leading lady” in between.
So it’s a little jarring, if not exactly refreshing, to see him more hardboiled than usual in “Collusions,” a slow and pokey murder mystery set among corrupt cops, corrupted prosecutors and a never-seen mobster whose case “can get me to the bench,” one Assistant District Attorney figures.
Scott plays Martin, an LAPD detective whose partner of ten years, Sean, is “missing” for much of the film. In flashbacks, these two are tight, given to profane bitching sessions about the fey names for paint colors and a routine borne of years of dangerous work.
“You ready to go and maybe not come back?”
“Every day.”
The film’s slack pace isn’t helped by the constant back-and-forth/flashbacks-and-more-flashbacks script.
Sean (Jamison Jones) was last seen by his girlfriend, ADA Lindsay (Kelli Joan Bennett). They had a fight, and she has the bruises, busted lip and missing tooth to prove it.
Sean is a drinker with a temper, and Martin’s loyalty points him toward getting Sean “some help before he loses his badge.”
Lindsay is cagey, and in her flashbacks we see her angling to make her career with this high profile prosecution of that unseen kingpin. But one of her higher ups (Brynn Thayer) dangles a judgeship in front of her. “A bribe?” No, “a threat.”
And then there’s the Fed (Steven Culp of “Desperate Housewives,” “Thirteen Days”) who figures in all this, the threat of “justice” looming over a lot of people who seem willing to bail out of getting the bad guys because of careerism, bribes or threats or both.
Key grip and second time feature director Anthony Vietro (1998’s “The Perfect Leave” his other directing credit) makes this moderately twisty/turner police procedural the slowest 83 minute movie of the year.
Much of it is about the affair Lindsay was having with Sean, a guy who has to be reminded that “She’s not your girlfriend. She’s part of your job.”
There is no pace, little suspense and violence that arrives so late, and in such a muted form, that it only merits a shrug from any viewer still upright and awake into the third act.
It’s all talk talk talk talk talk, like a “Law & Order” with all the commercial breaks, shots of cops and attorneys getting in and out of cars, and the infamous electronic “DUN DuN” removed.
But Scott, last seen as Alicia Silverstone’s other half in “Sister of the Groom,” shows a menace that the movies don’t often let him play.
Making him one of the “bad people” in a tale where “bad things happen to bad people” works. If only the rest of the movie had.
One of the great character actors, the definitive “Frankenstein’s monster,” the one and only narrator of the only “Grinch” that matters, Boris Karloff gets a documentary tribute on Sept. 17.
“Confetti” is a pleasantly syrupy “a mother’s love” wish fulfillment fantasy, a story of how far one Chinese mom will travel to get her child the educational help she needs.
Writer-director Ann Hu’s film may play as far-fetched, sometimes extremely so. But that’s what “wish fulfillment fantasies” traffic in — the implausible making impossible dreams come true.
We meet the adorable moppet Meimei (Harmonie He) on her first day in school in a small city in China. Her mother Chen Lan (Zhu Zhu of TV’s “Marco Polo”) watches her during that first day, listening through the window when she can.
“Tiger Mom?” You bet. She’s also the school custodian. And she grimaces at her child’s difficulties, the cruel teasing of her classmates. Meimei can’t read or write and seems unable to keep up. “You should look for other options,” the callous principal says (in Chinese with English subtitles). “Your daughter’s not a normal kid. Just accept it.”
But Meimei’s American-born English teacher (George C. Tronsrue) picks up what she’s seeing in the English alphabet and is more encouraging. She “learns differently.” He uses this word the family has never heard — “dyslexia.” And if there are no schools in China that could help, he knows there are some in America, in New York where he came from.
There’s nothing for it but for Chen Lan to take her to America. But she and her tailor husband (Yanan Li) are poor. Chen Lan has no marketable skills, only a vague notion of joining the cousin of a friend at a New York “clothing factory” (sweatshop).
Where will they get the money for them to fly over? Teacher Thomas may arrange for them to stay with a friend, but how will they manage, with the costs of living in New York, the language barrier, all of it?
“Wish fulfillment fantasy” implies a certain “magical thinking” to all this. The costs aren’t considered, and Meimei is some sort of savant when it comes to learning English. She can translate for Mom.
Their hostess, a wheelchair-bound writer (Amy Irving) is skeptical about their quest, and about how useful they’ll be in her life, paying for their room and board with “help” she doesn’t think they’re capable of as they don’t speak English and have Chinese (slurping) table manners.
And the public school that accepts immigrant Meimei, no questions asked, may flatter itself in being “special needs” friendly. But Meimei is not improving and Mom is getting more frantic about it getting “too late” to make her daughter “normal.”
Of course there’s a pricey private school (Helen Slater plays the principal) that would be better.
Hu, who directed “Beauty Remains” and “Shadow Magic,” just waves her directorial wand at some of the natural, believable obstacles facing mother and daughter in this strange, expensive land, at the father and husband left behind. Voila, the problems are “solved” or simply ignored.
There’s value in movies that depict America as still-welcoming of immigrants in these divisive times, but “Confetti” (the title has to do with how Meimei sees letters, and processes information) rubs almost all the edges off.
That makes for a dramatically less dramatic story than this might have been. The odd interesting peek inside China’s mass production, assimilation-oriented educational system, a cute quip about “You know Chinese parents” from a Chinese-American tween who “translates” for their first principal and a testy, hubristic dig about “America is ranked 36th in the world in education” from a Chinese principal are the most interesting moments.
Zhu Zhu’s “Chinese parent” scenes have some edge and America-judging impatience about them.
But Hu is too often content to have psychologists and educators rattle off lists of names of people known or thought to have dyslexia, or show the little girl’s instant grasp of English, mastery of personal computers and the like.
I wish this wish-fulfillment educational fantasy had been realistic enough to make me invest in the characters and doubt the outcome of their hopeless quest, just a little.
Rating: Unrated
Cast: Zhu Zhu, Amy Irving, Harmonie He, Yanan Li, George C. Tronsrue and Helen Slater
Credits: Scripted and directed by Ann Hu. A Dada Films release.
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